Africa is home to more than 3,200 recorded freshwater fish species — a number that grows annually as new species are described, including 28 in 2024 alone. Yet many of these species live in isolation, bound to single lakes or rivers. The continent’s geography, fractured by plateaus, mountains and deserts, has produced distinct and stunning radiations of life.
Consider the cichlids of Africa’s Great Lakes: Lake Malawi alone harbours over 800 species, most found nowhere else. Some parent their young by brooding them in their mouths; others, like Nimbochromis livingstonii, feign death to lure prey. In the Congo’s lightless rapids, Lamprologus lethops has evolved with skin-covered eyes.
Lungfish, relics of the Devonian era, survive years of drought by burrowing into mud and breathing air through primitive lungs. The ornate bichir, another ancient lineage, gulps air through a lung-like swim bladder and can endure short stints out of water if kept moist.
Cichlids and cuckoo catfish
In Lake Tanganyika, the cuckoo catfish surreptitiously deposits its eggs among those of mouthbrooding cichlids, leaving its young to be raised — at the expense of their foster siblings — by another species.
These are not curiosities, but rather sentinels. Freshwater fish are the regulators of aquatic ecosystems — grazers, predators, cleaners and recyclers of aquatic systems.
They “are an aquatic version of the canary in the coal mine for Africa’s rivers, lakes and wetlands,” the report warns. “If the continent’s freshwater ecosystems deteriorate to the point where they can’t support thriving fish populations, they won’t be healthy enough to continue to underpin Africa’s societies and economies”.
The cost is already being felt. On the Kafue Flats in Zambia, once a thriving fishing ground that supplied 15-22% of the nation’s catch, dam construction has altered seasonal flood pulses. Permanent inundation has decoupled the river from its floodplain. Five key fish species have become commercially extinct.
In Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, local fishers have resorted to toxic fishing methods, poisoning the very waters they depend on. Along the Rufiji River in Tanzania, traditional species like the Rufiji tilapia are declining under pressure from monofilament nets and habitat loss.
Despite the devastation, the report also offers hope. Community-led conservation is showing results. In Tanzania’s Lake Tanganyika region, 21 Beach Management Units — local organizations of fishers, elders, and women — are enforcing seasonal fishing bans and banning destructive gear. In Zambia’s Liuwa Plain and conservancies in Namibia, fishers are co-managing resources with support from WWF and The Nature Conservancy.
Conserving freshwater ecosystems
In Angola, community leaders are building bottom-up monitoring systems to track and protect fish stocks. In Madagascar, captive breeding programs are trying to save rainbowfish and cichlids teetering on the edge of extinction.
Still, freshwater ecosystems remain the “forgotten sibling” of terrestrial and marine conservation. Their decline has unfolded quietly, out of sight of many global decision-makers. “It’s time we stopped treating freshwater fishes as an afterthought,” said Nancy Rapando, WWF’s Africa Food Futures Lead. “They are central to Africa’s biodiversity, development and future. We must act now before the rivers dry out.”
The report outlines a science-based Emergency Recovery Plan — a six-pillar framework that includes restoring natural river flows, improving water quality, protecting habitats, ending unsustainable use, controlling invasive species and removing obsolete dams to let rivers run free.
“These six pillars have all been successfully implemented successfully around the world,” said Eric Oyare, WWF Africa’s freshwater lead. “With bold leadership, African countries can adapt them to local contexts.”
The Freshwater Challenge, a growing coalition aiming to restore 300,000 kilometres of degraded rivers and 350 million hectares of wetlands now includes 20 African countries.
But headlined declarations are not enough. What’s required is a shift in how governments, funders and societies value the submerged world. For decades, development decisions — from damming rivers to draining wetlands — have ignored the true cost of fish loss. Policies rarely account for the food, labour and cultural systems tied to inland fisheries.
“Africa’s freshwater fishes are not forgotten by the people who depend on them, whose lives and livelihoods are interwoven with the continent’s rivers, lakes and wetlands and the fish beneath their surface,” the report said. “But they have invariably been out of sight and out of mind for policymakers, especially when it comes to big decisions that impact freshwater ecosystems.”
Questions to consider:
1. What is the goal of the COP15 meeting in Brazil this year?
2. Why do freshwater lakes deserve the same protections as oceans?
3. What freshwater lake is nearest to you and what lives in it?
Peggy Carr, the former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, at her Maryland home on July 1. Carr worked for the Education Department for more than 35 years before the Trump administration placed her on administrative leave on Feb. 24. Credit: Valerie Plesch for The Hechinger Report
Peggy Carr’s last day on the job came so abruptly that she only had time to grab a few personal photos and her coat before a security officer escorted her out of her office and into a chilly February afternoon. She still doesn’t know why she was summarily dismissed as commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), where she helped buildthe National Assessment of Educational Progress into the influential Nation’s Report Card. NCES is the federal government’s third-largest statistical agency after the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Running it for three and a half years was the capstone of Carr’s 35-year career at the Education Department.
And suddenly, she was out in the cold with no explanation.
“I would say that what has happened is a professional tragedy, not just for me, but for all of NCES and my staff,” said Carr, 71, in a recent interview. “But for me, it really was a personal tragedy because I have spent my career helping NCES build its solid reputation as a premier statistical agency in the federal system.”
Carr doesn’t know if the decision to fire her came from the White House, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency or an outside policy advocate.
But she is clear about what was lost by the firing of the head of a nonpartisan statistical agency: an objective assessment of how American students are doing. And she finds it “ironic,” she said, that her increasingly grim reports were President Donald Trump’s public rationale for dismantling the Education Department.
Although Carr was the first woman and the first Black person to run NCES, her “firsts” go back decades. She joined NCES in 1993, after teaching statistics at Howard University and a stint as a statistician in the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights. “I was the first person of color in NCES to ever have a managerial job, period,” said Carr. She broke a long record: The education statistical agency dates back to 1867, created in the aftermath of the Civil War as part of an effort to help the South recover during Reconstruction. She was appointed commissioner by former President Joe Biden in 2021.
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“It’s a kill-the-messenger strategy,” she said. “We have just been the messenger of how students in this country are faring.”
Congress established a six-year term for the commissioner so that the job would straddle administrations and insulate statistics from politics. Carr’s term was supposed to extend through 2027, but she made history with yet another first: the first NCES commissioner to be fired by a president.
Carr wasn’t thinking about her gender or her race, despite the fact that three days earlier, Trump had abruptly fired another Black senior official, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Maybe they found out I was the only Biden appointee left in the department,” Carr said. “Maybe they didn’t realize that until then.”
Carr has reason to be puzzled by her firing. She is hardly a radical. She defended standardized tests against charges that they are racist. She publicly made the case that the nation needs to pay attention to achievement gaps, even if it sometimes means putting a spotlight on the low achievement of Black and Hispanic students. “The data can reveal things about what people can do to improve it,” Carr said.
She was dismissed on Feb. 24, more than a week before Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s Senate confirmation on March 3. The department named Carr’s deputy, Chris Chapman, to act as her replacement, but subsequently fired him in a round of mass layoffs on March 11. The agency was then leaderless until July 7,when another senior department official was told to add NCES to his responsibilities.
Civil servant
In January, at the start of the second Trump administration, Carr thought her job was relatively safe. As a career civil servant, she’d worked with many Republican administrations and served as second in command under James “Lynn” Woodworth, whom Trump appointed as NCES commissioner in his first term. Both Woodworth and Carr say they had a good working relationship because they both cared about getting the numbers right. Indeed, Woodworth was so troubled and disturbed by Carr’s dismissal and the fate of the nation’s education statistics agency that he spoke out publicly, risking retaliation.
Even Carr’s fiercest critics, who contend she was an entrenched bureaucrat who failed to modernize the statistical service and allowed costs to balloon, condemned the humiliating way she was dismissed.
“She deserves the nation’s gratitude and thanks” for setting up a whole system of assessments, said Mark Schneider, who served as the director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which oversees NCES, from 2018 to 2024 and as NCES commissioner from 2005 to 2008.
The official appointment of Peggy Carr as commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics by former President Joe Biden. Credit: Valerie Plesch for The Hechinger Report
A landing team
The transition seemed normal at first. A “landing team” — emissaries from the Trump transition team — arrived in mid-January and Carr briefed them three times. They asked questions about NCES’s statistical work. “They were quite pleasant, to be honest,” Carr said. “They seemed curious and interested.”
Days later, DOGE arrived. Still, Carr wasn’t worried. “We actually thought we were going to be OK,” Carr said. “We thought that their focus was going to be on grants, not contracts.”
The Institute of Education Sciences had awarded millions of dollars in grants to professors and private-sector researchers to study ways to improve diversity and equity in the classroom — priorities that were now out of favor with the Trump team. Carr’s agency is housed under the IES umbrella, but Carr’s work didn’t touch upon any of that.
However, NCES has an unusual structure. Unlike other statistics agencies, NCES has never had many statisticians on staff and didn’t do much in-house statistical work. Because Congress put restrictions on its staffing levels, NCES had to rely on outside contractors to do 90 percent of the data work. Only through outside contractors was the Education Department able to measure academic achievement, count students and track university tuition costs. Its small staff of 100 primarily managed and oversaw the contracts.
Keyword searches
Following DOGE instructions, Carr’s team conducted keyword searches of DEI language in her agency’s contracts. “Everyone was asked to do that,” she said. “That wasn’t so bad. The chaotic part really started when questions were being asked about reductions in the contracts themselves.”
Carr said she never had direct contact with anyone on Musk’s team, and she doesn’t even know how many of them descended upon the Education Department. Her interaction with DOGE was secondhand. Matthew Soldner, acting director of IES, summoned Carr and the rest of his executive team to his office to respond to DOGE’s demands. “We met constantly, trying to figure out what DOGE wanted,” Carr said. DOGE’s orders were primarily transmitted through Jonathan Bettis, an Education Department attorney, who was experienced with procurement and contracts. It was Bettis who talked directly with the DOGE team, Carr said.
The main DOGE representative who took an interest in NCES was “Conor.” “I don’t know his last name,” said Carr. “My staff never saw anyone else but Conor if they saw him at all.” Conor is 32-year-old Conor Fennessy, according to several media reports. His deleted LinkedIn profile said he has a background in finance. (Fennessy has also been involved in getting access to data at Health and Human Services and spearheading cuts at the National Park Service, according to media reports.) Efforts to reach Fennessy through the Education Department and through DOGE were unsuccessful.
“It was chaotic,” said Carr. “Bettis would tell us what DOGE wanted, and we ran away to get it done. And then things might change the next day. ‘You need to cut more.’ ‘I need to understand more about what this contract does or that contract does.’”
It was a lot. Carr oversaw 60 data collections, some with multiple parts. “There were so many contracts and there were hundreds of lines on our acquisition plans,” she said. “It was a very complex and time-consuming task.”
Lost in translation
The questions kept coming. “It was like playing telephone tag when you have complicated data collections and you’re trying to explain it,” Carr said. Bettis “would sometimes not understand what my managers or I were saying about what we could cut or could not cut. And so there was this translation problem,” she said. (Efforts to reach Bettis were unsuccessful.) Eventually a couple of Carr’s managers were allowed to talk to DOGE employees directly.
Carr said her staff begged DOGE not to cut a technology platform called EDPass, which is used by state education agencies to submit data to the federal Education Department on everything from student enrollment to graduation rates. For Carr, EDPass was a particular point of pride in her effort to modernize and process data more efficiently. EDPass slashed the time it took to release data from 20 months in 2016-17 to just four months in 2023-24.
Carr said DOGE did not spare EDPass. Indeed, DOGE did not spare much of NCES.
On Feb 10, only about a week after DOGE arrived, Carr learned that 89 of her contracts were terminated, which represented the vast majority of the statistical work that her agency conducts. “We were in shock,” said Carr. “What do you mean it’s all gone?”
Even its advocates concede that NCES needed reforms. The agency was slow to release data,it usedsomeoutdated collection methods and there were places where costs could be trimmed. Education Department spokesperson Madi Biedermann said that the department, “in partnership with DOGE employees,” found contracts with overhead and administrative expenses that exceeded 50 percent, “a clear example of contractors taking advantage of the American taxpayer.”
Piloting an old airplane
Carr said she was never a fan of the contracting system and wished she could have built an in-house statistical agency like those at the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But that would have required congressional authorization for the Education Department to increase its headcount. That never happened. Carr was piloting an old airplane, taped together through a complicated network of contracts, while attempting to modernize and fix it. She said she was trying to follow the 2022 recommendations of a National Academies panel, but it wasn’t easy.
The chaos continued over the next two weeks. DOGE provided guidelines for justifying the reinstatement of contracts it had just killed and Carr’s team worked long hours trying to save the data. Carr was particularly worried about preserving the interagency agreement with the Census Bureau, which was needed to calculate federal Title I allocations to high-poverty schools. Those calculations needed to be ready by June and the clock was ticking.
The DOGE sledgehammer came just as schools were administering an important international test — the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The department was also in the midst of a national teachers and principals survey. “People were worried about what was going to happen with those,” said Carr.
Even though DOGE terminated the PISA contract, the contractor continued testing in schools and finished its data collection in June. But now it’s unclear who will tabulate the scores and analyze them. The Education Department disclosed in a June legal brief that it is restarting PISA. “I was told that they’re not going to do the national report, which is a little concerning to me,” Carr said. Asked for confirmation, the Education Department did not respond.
Another widely used data collection, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ECLS-K 2024), which tracks a cohort of students from kindergarten through elementary school, was supposed to collect its second year of data as the kindergarteners progressed to first grade. “We had to give up on that,” said Carr.
NAEP anxiety
Carr said that behind the scenes, her priority was to save NAEP. DOGE was demanding aggressive cuts, and she worked throughout the weekend of Feb. 22-23with her managers and the NAEP contractors to satisfy the demands. “We thought we could cut 28 percent — I even remember the number — without cutting into critical things,” she said. “That’s what I told them I could do.”
DOGE had been demanding 50 percent cuts to NAEP’s $185 million budget, according to several former Education Department employees. Carr could not see a way to cut that deep. The whole point of the exam is to track student achievement over time, and if too many corners were cut, it could “break the trend,” she said, making it impossible to compare the next test results in 2026 with historical scores.
“I am responsible in statute and I could not cut NAEP as much as they wanted to without cutting into congressionally mandated activities,” Carr said. “I told them that.”
While Carr and DOGE remained far apart in negotiations over cost, a security officer appeared at her office door at 3:50 p.m. on Feb. 24. Carr remembers the exact time because colleagues were waiting at her door to join her for a 4 p.m. Zoom meeting with the chair of the board that oversees NAEP.
The security officer closed the door to her office so he could tell her privately that he was there to escort her out. He said she had 15 minutes to leave. “Escort me where? What do you mean?” Carr asked. “I was in shock. I wasn’t even quite understanding what he was asking, to be honest.”
The security officer told her about an email saying she was put on administrative leave. Carr checked her inbox. It was there, sent within the previous hour.
The security officer “was very nice,” she said. “He refused to call me Peggy,” and addressed her as Dr. Carr. “He helped me collect my things, and I left.” He opened the doors for her and walked her to her car.
“I had no idea that this was going to happen, so it was shocking and unexpected,” Carr said. “I was working like I do every other day, a busy day where every minute is filled with something.”
She said she’s asked the department why she was dismissed so abruptly, but has not received a response. The Education Department said it does not comment to the public on its personnel actions.
Packing via Zoom
Two days later, Carr returned to pick up other belongings. Via Zoom, Carr’s staff had gone through her office with her — 35 years worth of papers and memorabilia — and packed up so many boxes that Carr had to bring a second car, an SUV.
When Carr and her husband arrived, she said, “there were all these people waiting in the front of the building cheering me on. The men helped me put the things in my husband’s car and my car. It was a real tearjerker. And that was before they would be dismissed. They didn’t know they would be next.”
Less than two weeks later, on March 11, most of Carr’s staff — more than 90 NCES staffers — was fired. Only three remained. “I thought maybe they just made a mistake, that it was going to be a ‘whoops moment’ like with the bird flu scientists or the people overseeing the weapons arsenal,” Carr said.
The fate of NCES remains uncertain. The Education Department says that it is restarting and reassessing some of the data collections that DOGE terminated, but the scope of the work might be much smaller. Carr says it will take years to understand the full extent of the damage. Carr was slated to issue a statement about her thoughts on NCES on July 14.
The damage
The immediate problem is that there aren’t enough personnel to do the work that Congress mandates. So far, NCES has missed an annual deadline for delivering a statistical report to Congress — a deadline NCES had “never, ever missed” in its history, Carr said — and failed to release the 2024 NAEP science test scores in June because there was no commissioner to sign off on them. But the department managed to calculate the Title I allocations to high-poverty schools “in the nick of time,” Carr said.
In addition to the collection of fresh data, Carr is concerned about the maintenance of historical datasets. When DOGE canceled the contracts, Carr counted that NCES had 550 datasets scattered in different locations. NCES doesn’t have its own data warehouse and Carr was trying to corral and store the datasets. She’s worried about protecting privacy and student confidentiality.
An Education Department official said that this data is safe and will soon be transferred to IES’s secure servers.
Peggy Carr holds artwork made by a former colleague at the National Center for Education Statistics. NAEP stands for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which Carr helped build into the influential barometer of how American students are faring. Credit: Valerie Plesch for The Hechinger Report
In the meantime, Carr says she plans to stay involved in education statistics — but from the outside. “With this administration wanting to push education down to the states, there are opportunities that I see in my next chapter,” Carr said. She said she’s been talking with states and school districts about calculating where they rank on an international yardstick.
Carr is in close touch with her former team. In May, 50 of them gathered at a church in Virginia to commiserate. A senior statistician gave Carr a homespun plaque of glued blue buttons spelling the letters NAEP with a shiny gold star above it. It was a fitting gift. NAEP is regarded as the best designed test in the country, the gold standard. Carr built that reputation, and now it has gone home with her.
This story about Peggy Carr was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Restrooms don’t have to be showpieces — but they also shouldn’t be an afterthought.
Across campuses, every space tells a story. The student center. The admissions office. The lecture hall. Each one reflects the institution’s priorities, personality and pride. But too often, the restroom is left out of that story — treated as a utility rather than a touchpoint.
That’s starting to change.
Forward-thinking colleges and universities are reimagining what restrooms can contribute to the campus experience. Whether they blend quietly into the background or become a branded statement — they’re being designed with intention.
To reinforce school spirit. To align with campus standards. To simplify operations across varied facilities. And most of all, to support a seamless experience for students, staff and guests.
Because the restroom may not be the centerpiece of campus life — but it still reflects the care behind it.
A Daily Experience That Deserves Design
Restrooms are among the most frequently visited and most visibly judged spaces on campus by prospective students, visiting families, faculty, alumni, donors and staff. Their condition, look and functionality can either reinforce the university’s values…or quietly undermine them.
In fact, nearly 60% of people say a poorly maintained restroom negatively affects their perception of an organization.¹ And while universities don’t compete on toilet paper, they do compete on experience, reputation and pride.
That makes restrooms more than a maintenance checklist — they’re part of the brand.
One Standard. Many Spaces.
From dorms to arenas to academic halls, no two campus buildings are exactly alike. But consistency still matters for both the brand and the teams behind it.
A welcome center might feature subtle brand cues or custom faceplates. A student union might highlight school spirit or student accomplishments. An admin wing may favor quieter design that blends in. The point isn’t sameness; it’s cohesion.
So how do universities achieve that without adding complexity?
They’re working from a flexible foundation — systems that adapt to each building’s needs while maintaining a cohesive experience across campus.
That might mean:
High-capacity towel systems in athletic centers to reduce servicing during peak hours
Touchless, ADA-compliant dispensers in classrooms and libraries to support accessibility
Customizable faceplates in front-facing spaces to reflect branding or student life
Smart technology that tracks supply levels and helps janitorial staff focus where it’s needed most
By choosing tools that support both visual customization and operational ease, campuses are creating restrooms that feel thoughtful, consistent and easy to maintain — no matter the setting.
It’s not one-size-fits-all. It’s one strategy applied intentionally.
Built to Work — and Work Hard
Restrooms can look great — but if they’re hard to service, the system breaks down fast. On a busy campus with lean facility teams, every efficiency matters.
Elevated doesn’t mean complex. In fact, the best elevated solutions simplify operations with:
Refill systems designed to reduce changeouts and user error
Configurations that match space and capacity without overloading custodial teams
Soft-close and touchless features that create quieter, more seamless experiences
The result: less downtime, fewer complaints, smoother campus operations. And all of it happening behind the scenes — just as it should.
A restroom shouldn’t steal the spotlight. But it should reflect your standards.
Whether you’re reimagining a flagship student space or refreshing legacy buildings, intentional restroom design can help bring your brand and your operations into better alignment — and create a more consistent experience, one space at a time.
Because small details send big signals — to students, staff and everyone who walks your halls.
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The Trump administration is tapping agencies other than the U.S. Department of Education to implement its agenda in schools, sometimes circumventing typical rulemaking procedures that would allow districts months to give feedback on and prepare for policy changes before they roll out.
The use of other agencies to set or enforce education policy marks a significant shift from typical K-12 policymaking, some education policy experts say.
“This is a paradigm shift on the part of how the federal government articulates and connects some of these tools to their education priorities,” said Kenneth Wong, a professor of education policy at Brown University. “So I think going forward, we might be seeing broader use of this wider range of policy tools in the area of education policy changes.”
This month, for example, a policy change from the U.S. Department of Energy could take effect that would undo some students’ protections related to sex discrimination under Title IX, disability discrimination under Section 504 and racial discrimination under Title VI.
The changes would only apply to schools receiving Energy Department funds, as opposed to public schools nationwide — which would have been the case had the rules come from the Education Department. The Energy Department distributed just over $160 million to 28 schools in fiscal year 2025, according to department spokesperson Ben Dietderich. The agency also provides over $2.5 billion annually to more than 300 colleges and universities to fund research.
As a result of the quietly proposed policy changes schools receiving Energy Department grants would no longer, among other things:
Be required to facilitate noncontact sports team tryouts for girls if there is no equivalent girls’ team. For example, if a school had a boys’ baseball team but no girls’ softball team, girls would no longer be guaranteed the opportunity to try out for a spot on the boys’ baseball team.
Be permitted to proactively “overcome the effects of conditions that resulted in limited participation therein by persons of a particular sex.” This would remove protections that allow schools to have gender-conscious after-school or college programs to provide women and girls opportunities they have historically been denied, such as in STEM fields and technical training, according to Shiwali Patel, senior director of Safe and Inclusive Schools at National Women’s Law Center and a Title IX attorney.
Be required to prevent systemic racial discrimination that may result from seemingly neutral policies, as a result of the department rescinding guardrails protecting against policies that cause a “disparate impact” on underserved students. Disparate impact investigations have previously addressed issues such as Black students being disciplined at higher rates than students of other races.
The policy changes were issued through a process called direct final rulemaking, which allows an agency to issue a rule without going through the rulemaking process twice to incorporate changes based on public feedback and publish a final version. The expedited process is usually used for noncontroversial changes and when an agency does not expect significant pushback.
The rules are to take effect July 15 as long as no “significant adverse comments” were received by June 16. Dietderich did not respond as to whether the agency received significant adverse comments.
However, a review of some publicly available comments show that the direct final rules — posted May 16 — have been controversial, with multiple civil rights organizations explicitly telling the Energy Department they are submitting “significant, adverse” comments for its review.
Other agencies launch civil rights investigations and enforcement
The Energy Department situation isn’t the first time the Trump administration has deployed agencies beyond the Education Department to set or enforce education policy. In fact, the administration has used the departments of Justice, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services over the past few months to investigate sex and race discrimination at schools and enforce compliance.
The administration notably used these agencies in an unprecedented investigation into the Maine Department of Education, spurred by a public disagreement between President Donald Trump and Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, over the state’s athletic policy allowing transgender athletes on girls’ and women’s sports teams.
That dispute kicked off a string of Title IX investigations by several federal agencies that provide funds to Maine.
They included a four-day probe launched by HHS. And because HHS rather than the Education Department conducted the probe, it didn’t have to follow the standards spelled out in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights case processing manual. That manual ensures the Education Department conducts investigations according to certain timelines, for example, allowing up to 90 calendar days for negotiations to take place and 10 days for schools or states to sign onto a resolution agreement.
In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture froze funds to some of the state’s schools over the Maine Department of Education’s alleged Title IX violations.
“USDA, alongside other federal agencies, will continue to pause and, where appropriate, terminate categories of education programming in Maine if these Title IX violations are not resolved to the satisfaction of the Federal Government,” said an April 2 letter from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to Mills.
A court order eventually overturned the USDA funding freeze as part of an agreement struck in May between Maine and the USDA.
These Title IX enforcement actions through HHS, USDA and the Education Department culminated in the Trump administration referring the cases to the Department of Justice, which announced a civil lawsuit against Maine over Title IX compliance in April.
Since then, the administration has used these agencies to initiate and enforce other investigations into schools and states — including over antisemitism under Title VI, — in states like California and Minnesota.
Sonja Trainor, executive director of the National School Attorneys Association, acknowledged that federal agencies have been setting and enforcing education policy outside of formal legal channels for many years.
But “what’s different now is the speed with which policy priorities are materializing into funding terminations and direct enforcement,” Trainor said in an email. “Of particular concern, of course, is funding and the prospect of being sued from many possible angles when policy shifts quickly.”
Wong said the Energy Department policy changes potentially taking effect next week could serve as a test case, as the Maine case did for civil rights investigations.
That means if the Energy Department’s changes went uncontested by districts concerning significant adverse effects, and thus go through in about 60 days as is usual for direct final rules, other agencies will also try setting education policy this way, Wong said.
“Basically every single school, in practically every single school district, has some grants from one of the many agencies in the federal government,” said Wong.
So while the immediate impact of the Energy Department changes would be limited to those that receive its funding, ultimately many more schools could be affected.
Policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion and Title IX are particularly susceptible here, said Wong. “I think there’s a whole bunch of standards that the current secretary of education is redefining, and so these other agencies are likely to provide a vehicle to kind of challenge the practice in the local school systems.”‘
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A large majority of U.S. adults say the cost of attaining a college degree is more expensive than it actually is — a perception that may cause some to forgo education beyond high school, according to a May report from Strada.
Among adults , 77% say college is unaffordable, according to Strada’s November 2024 survey of over 2,000 people. And 65% somewhat or strongly agreed that college is prohibitively expensive, regardless of how motivated the student is. But most people significantly overestimated the cost of attending both two- and four- year public institutions, the report found.
According to Strada’s latest report, 1 in 5 people “substantially overestimate” the cost of attending community college — reporting that the cost is more than $20,000 annually. A majority estimated that it costs more than $10,000 a year. In actuality, the average student pays about $6,000 annually, the report said, citing College Board data.
For public four-year institutions, just 22% of the survey’s respondents correctly identified that it costs the average student between $20,000 and $30,000 annually to attend, with about 35% believing it costs $40,000 or more.
These misperceptions are often fueled by the complex financial aid process and a lack of transparency surrounding the true cost of attending college, as many students are unaware that the price of attendance is often much less than the sticker price, the report added. That’s an issue that many colleges have tried to address in recent years.
“When students and families believe that college is out of reach financially, it can influence key decisions that shape college-going behavior, from which classes they choose in high school to whether they begin saving for college,” said Justin Draeger, senior vice president of affordability at Strada and a co-author of the report.
Strada’s findings follow a host of other research papers and surveys indicating that a growing number of adults say the value of a college degree is not worth the cost. However, research has shown that college graduates often have better financial outcomes than those who did not receive a diploma beyond high school.
The cost of price misconceptions
The cost of attending college is expensive and can be challenging for many students and families to afford, said Draeger. But when factoring in financial aid, the cost is more affordable than people realize, he said.
Overall, 37% of adults said the cost of college was not affordable at all, and 40% said it was not very affordable. Just 18% thought it was somewhat affordable and 5% indicated it was either extremely or very affordable.
A whopping 85% of adults said the cost of attending public four-year institutions is too high. And while community colleges are generally viewed as more affordable, two-thirds of adults said the cost of attending them was too expensive.
Misperceptions abound the cost of community college undercuts one of the strongest value propositions it has: affordability, said Draeger. For four-year schools, those perceptions can compound a range of existing issues, such as declining public trust in the value of a four-year degree and public backlash that exacerbates enrollment declines, he said.
They could also veer some adults from higher education altogether. About 40% of people do not enroll in college immediately after graduating high school, and just 54% of U.S. adults ages 25 to 64 have a postsecondary credential, the report said.
It also points to “a systemic failure in the way we price and market college,” said Draeger. Financial aid and financing systems are “complex, multistep and opaque, and filled with unfamiliar terminology and jargon,” he said.
A growing number of colleges have sought to counter sticker price misconceptions by resetting their cost of attendance to better reflect the amount students typically pay after factoring in institutional scholarships.
Institutions can also help address the issue by standardizing financial aid terminology, said Draeger. As of June, over 700 institutions have done exactly that through the College Cost Transparency Initiative.
Colleges should also embed price transparency and predictability into their enrollment strategies, Draeger said. That would make “it easier for students to understand what they’ll pay and why, and what sort of return they can expect from their degrees,” he added.
In late June, House Republicans aired a promotional video about their budget reconciliation bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, claiming it will “make the American dream accessible to all Americans again.” That dream—that anyone in this country can achieve prosperity and success through hard work and determination—is what leads people to come to America and stay. It’s no wonder that politicians invoke this promise as part of the reason for needed change.
Higher education has long been seen as one of the surest paths to economic security in America—it is one foundation that dream rests on. It feels consequential, therefore, that President Trump and congressional Republicans are looking to undercut this vision of the American dream. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act will reshape federal student aid in ways that transform access to higher education and shut everyday Americans out.
Forthcoming nationally representative survey data from New America, a nonpartisan think tank, shows Americans are clear-eyed about what it really takes to keep the dream alive: an affordable higher education. But they see college falling further out of reach. Nearly nine out of 10 believe college cost is the biggest factor that prevents families from attending college. And three-quarters of Americans agree that the federal government should spend more tax dollars on educational opportunities after high school to make them more affordable, including majorities of both Republicans and Democrats.
Americans also believe in accountability for this investment. They want a system that rewards effort, responsibility and outcomes—basic values that align with the American dream. Majorities from both parties say colleges and universities should lose access to taxpayer support if their students don’t earn more than a typical high school graduate or if they struggle to pay down their student loan debt.
Once enacted, the new law will trim the Pell Grant program, making some middle-income families ineligible who used to qualify for small amounts of the Pell Grant. Federal student loans will look vastly different, with big cuts to graduate, parent and lifetime borrowing limits and less generous repayment options for borrowers who fall on hard times. These changes will close one door for many low- and moderate-income Americans, the one that leads to an affordable associate or bachelor’s degree. At the same time, by expanding Pell Grants to short-term job training programs, the law opens another door to very short credentials as few as eight weeks long with little oversight and consumer protection. Our research has showntimeandagain that these very short credentials will not deliver economic stability nor improve employment prospects.
And while the law will take meaningful steps toward accountability and will cut off from federal loans associate, bachelor’s and graduate programs that fail to give students an earning boost, those measures exclude all undergraduate short-term certificate programs, which tend to have the worst outcomes. It will also allow programs to continue to operate, even if most of their students struggle to repay their loans.
While the president and congressional Republicans say these cuts are necessary under the auspices of extending tax cuts, improving fiscal responsibility and reforming higher education, the truth is this law will achieve none of this. It will add at least $3 trillion to our deficit by expanding tax cuts to wealthy Americans, all while stripping funding from critical programs everyday Americans rely on like Medicaid, SNAP and student aid. It does nothing to fix the underlying problems that drive college costs. It ignores targeted solutions that would promote affordability and expand accountability. That type of thoughtful reform would require bipartisan reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which is more than a decade overdue.
Despite what Republicans in Washington say about making the American dream accessible again, this law will only put it further out of reach. The changes will fall hard on all students trying to obtain education after high school—from welders to electricians, nurses, teachers and medical doctors. These are not “elites,” but core constituents. They are working adults, veterans and parents looking to make a better life for their children, hoping that the American dream is still achievable. Instead, they will find that their own government has abandoned them.
In his inaugural address in January, President Trump said, “The American dream will soon be back and thriving like never before.” But, in truth, it is being suffocated. It’s too late to change this new law, but moving forward Congress and the Trump administration must center everyday Americans and act cautiously before making such seismic cuts. This is not a partisan issue, but a matter of national interest and prosperity. Failing to think about future legislation that makes meaningful student-centered reform to higher education will have political and generational consequences for years to come. It sends a message to future students that only familial wealth will bring college opportunities, and it won’t matter how much hard work they put in or determination they have.
Rachel Fishman is the director of the higher education program at New America.
It’s never too early, but it can be too late. This simple phrase has transformed our advising sessions with graduate students and postdocs, resonating deeply with those navigating the uncertain waters of career transitions. As career advising experts who have guided countless individuals through this journey, we have seen firsthand the power of early career planning and the pitfalls of procrastination.
Today’s graduate students and postdocs are navigating more than just personal uncertainty. They are facing a rapidly shifting professional landscape influenced by political and societal forces beyond their control. The value of advanced degrees is being questioned in public discourse; funding cuts, hiring freezes and massive layoffs are affecting job prospects; and visa restrictions continue to impact international scholars. These trends are unsettling, but they underscore the same truth: Proactive, flexible career planning is necessary.
The path from graduate school or a postdoctoral position to a fulfilling career is rarely a straight line. We understand; we both hold Ph.D.s and were postdocs ourselves. Yet, many students and early-career researchers delay thinking about their next steps, often until the pressure of impending graduation or the end of an appointment looms large. This delay can turn the exciting question of “What’s next?” into the anxiety-inducing “What now?”
One common fear we encounter in our advising sessions is the fear of the unknown, and now more than ever, our best advice remains the same: Start sooner rather than later. When harnessed properly, this fear can become a powerful motivator for early career planning. If you build in time to explore your options, test possibilities and develop a flexible plan, you will be far better equipped to navigate unforeseen changes.
Crucially, starting early does not mean locking yourself into one path. It means giving yourself enough time to adapt, explore and build a more informed and confident future, even if that future changes along the way.
Your Hidden Advantage
As graduate students or postdocs, you are in a unique position: You are essentially being paid to learn and become experts in your field. Beyond your specific area of study, you also have access to a wealth of resources at your research institutions designed to support your professional development. These resources include:
Career services: Do not wait until your final year to visit the career office. Start early and make regular appointments to discuss your evolving career goals and strategies. Career service professionals can help you save precious time and effort and remain advocates for you in your career-exploration journey. Many of us know exactly how you are feeling because we have been there, too!
Workshops and seminars: Attend professional and career-development workshops offered by your institution. These often cover crucial topics like résumé writing, interview preparation or networking strategies.
Alumni networks: Leverage your institution’s alumni network. Alumni can provide valuable insights into various career paths, and many are eager to help current graduate students and postdocs navigate the job search process.
Professional associations: Join relevant professional associations in your field. Many offer graduate students and postdocs memberships at reduced rates and provide access to job boards, conferences, networking events and leadership opportunities.
International student and scholar services: If you are on a visa, connect early with your institution’s international center. These offices can offer critical guidance on work authorization options, strategies for transitioning from an academic-sponsored visa to another type of professional visa (such as the H-1B visa) and long-term planning toward permanent residency. They can also connect you with immigration attorneys and employer resources to help you advocate for yourself throughout the process.
Now is the time to take action. This month, schedule an appointment with your institution’s career services office (trust us, we are excited to meet and help you) and/or attend a networking event or workshop outside your immediate field of study.
If your plan involves stepping beyond the academic landscape, do not underestimate the power of building your professional network, as referrals and recommendations play a growing role in hiring decisions. The relationships you build now, through informational interviews, mentorship and community engagement, can become invaluable sources of insight, opportunity and support throughout your career.
The Perils of Procrastination
Waiting until the final months of your program or position to begin your job search is a recipe for stress and missed opportunities. Early preparation not only reduces anxiety but also allows you to explore multiple career paths, build necessary skills and make meaningful connections.
As career professionals, we see the impact of procrastination all the time: rushed applications, unclear goals, missed deadlines and tremendous stress. In our own career-exploration journey, we have been fortunate to experience the opposite. Our approach to prepare early opened doors to valuable opportunities and reduced the pressure to find just any job at the end of our postdoc. That contrast is a big reason why we now advocate so strongly for starting career planning before urgency sets in, even if you are still figuring out where you want to go.
So what does early preparation look like?
If you already have a strong idea of your next career step, whether it is to become faculty at a R-1 institution or secure an R&D position in industry, you should begin preparing at least a year before your intended transition. This gives you time to identify target roles, network meaningfully, develop your application materials and be ready when opportunities arise.
If you are still unsure about what your next career step is, start your exploration journey as soon as possible. Identifying careers of interest, scheduling informational interviews, developing your professional network in the areas of interest and learning or building new skills take time. Remember that the earlier you begin, the more options you will be able to explore. Career planning is not just for people with a clear path—it is also how you find your path.
Another critical reason to start early? Networking. Building professional relationships is one of the most powerful tools in your career exploration and job search tool kit, but it takes time. The best networking conversations happen when you are genuinely curious and not urgently seeking a job. If you wait until you are in crisis mode, panicked, pressed for time and desperate for a position, that energy can unintentionally seep into your conversations and make them less effective. By starting to connect with people well before you are actively applying for jobs, you can ask better questions, get clearer insights and build authentic relationships that may open doors later on.
The International Perspective
International graduate students and postdocs are navigating career planning under especially difficult circumstances. The experience of working and building a life in another country already comes with challenges, what with being far from home, managing complex visa systems and building support networks from scratch. With the current increasing political scrutiny, shifting immigration policies and rising uncertainty around international education, the pressure has only grown.
We want to acknowledge that this is not just a logistical issue—it is also an emotional one. For many international scholars, the stress of career planning is compounded by fears about stability, belonging and being able to stay in the country to which you have contributed so much. These are not easy conversations, and they should not be faced alone.
That is why early, informed and strategic planning is especially important. With the right tools, guidance and support system, you can better navigate the uncertainty and advocate for your future.
Use your resources. Connect early and often with your university’s international student or scholar office. They can clarify visa timelines, regulations and documentation requirements.
Get legal support. Consult with a qualified immigration attorney who can help you understand your options and advocate for you.
Network with intention. Seek out events, professional associations and communities that are welcoming to international scholars. These relationships can lead to valuable advice, referrals or even job opportunities.
While visa policies and political rhetoric may be out of your control, the way you prepare and position yourself is not. Planning ahead can help you reduce uncertainty, take advantage of time-sensitive opportunities and build a support system to help you succeed wherever your career takes you.
Know Your Path to Success
Many students and postdocs have a clear vision of their desired career but lack understanding of how to get there. For example, many aspiring faculty underestimate how important it is to gain teaching experience or to have early conversations with their supervisor about which projects they can pursue independently for their future research statements. Similarly, those aiming for roles in industry or policy may overlook essential skills such as project management, stakeholder communication or regulatory knowledge until they begin applying and realize the gap.
Career paths are often shaped by more than just qualifications. They are influenced by relationships, timing, self-awareness and luck, but especially by the ability to recognize and act on opportunities when they arise. That is why we often reference “planned happenstance,” a career-development theory by John Krumboltz, which encourages people to remain open-minded, take action and position themselves to benefit from unexpected opportunities. It is not about having a rigid plan, but about preparing enough that you can pivot with purpose.
Here are three practical strategies to help you do just that:
Conduct informational interviews: Speak with professionals in your target roles for invaluable insights into their day-to-day realities and career paths. Ask about those hidden requirements—the transferable skills and experiences crucial for success, but not necessarily listed in job descriptions. Use this knowledge to identify and address skill gaps early in your academic journey.
Perform skill audits: Regularly assess your skills against job descriptions in your desired field and identify gaps you need to address through coursework, volunteer experiences or side projects.
Seek mentorship: A good mentor can provide guidance, open doors and help you avoid common pitfalls in your career journey. Consider building a network of mentors rather than relying on a single person; different mentors can support different aspects of your professional growth. Your career services office is a great place to start!
Early planning gives you the ability to shape your own narrative, develop key experiences intentionally and take advantage of unexpected opportunities. Do not wait to be ready to start; start now, and readiness will come.
Start Here: A Career Planning Checklist
Career planning does not have to be overwhelming. Small steps, taken consistently, can lead to powerful outcomes, whether you are in year one of a Ph.D. program or year four of a postdoc. Use this checklist to begin or re-energize your professional development journey.
This month, try to:
Schedule a career advising appointment—even if you’re “just exploring.”
Attend one workshop or seminar outside of your research area.
Reach out to someone for an informational interview (a colleague, alum or speaker whose path interests you).
Identify one skill you want to build in the coming months and one way to begin (e.g., take a course, volunteer, shadow someone).
Join or re-engage with a professional association or community.
By starting your career planning early, you are not just preparing for a job: You are laying the foundation for a fulfilling career. Small, consistent efforts can lead to significant results over time. The resources available to you as graduate students and postdocs are invaluable, but only effective if you use them. Do not wait for your future to happen; start building it today!
Ellen Dobson, G.C.D.F., is the postdoctoral and graduate program manager at the Morgridge Institute for Research, where she leads professional and career-development programming for early-career researchers. Drawing on her experience as a Ph.D., postdoc and staff scientist, she is dedicated to helping graduate students and postdocs explore fulfilling career paths through supportive, practical guidance.
Anne-Sophie Bohrer is the program manager for career and professional development in the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs at the University of Michigan. In this role, she leads the development of programs to support postdoctoral fellows from all disciplines.
I am not currently on a 12-step program of any kind, but recently I felt the need to seek forgiveness for a transgression committed 50 years ago. This summer is the 50th anniversary of the release of Jaws, the movie that redefined the definition of blockbuster and made a whole generation think twice before stepping into the ocean for a quick dip.
I took my little sister to see Jaws that summer, having already seen it. As big brothers do, I waited until the exact moment when the shark leaps out of the water while Roy Scheider is casually ladling chum into the ocean behind the boat and either grabbed or pinched her. All to make the movie-watching experience more realistic, of course.
A recent article in The Washington Post explored why, despite three sequels, Jaws never became a money-making franchise in the way that Star Wars or the Marvel movies have. The obvious reason is that Steven Spielberg elected not to be involved after the original movie. Thus, while I find myself humming John Williams’s simple but ominous theme music every time I read the latest news, the only thing I remember from any of the other three movies is the tagline for Jaws 2: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.”
I thought about that tagline from a college admission perspective last week when I learned that Cornell College (the one in Iowa, not the Ivy) has launched what is either an innovative financial aid initiative or a gimmick.
As detailed by severalotherpublications, Cornell College emailed 16,000 soon-to-be high school seniors in its inquiry pool. Nothing unusual about that. What was different about this email was that it included a link to a personalized estimated financial aid package. Sending out financial aid offers/estimates to students who haven’t applied for financial aid or admission is the new twist in what Cornell calls its “Save Your Seat” initiative.
If you are wondering how Cornell was able to send an estimated aid package to students who haven’t completed a FAFSA, the college started by mining ZIP code data for its inquiry pool. The nine-digit ZIP+4 code in student addresses provides precise information about where they live and allows Cornell to guesstimate a family’s economic circumstances. It might therefore be more accurate to say that the estimated financial aid package is individualized rather than personalized, because there is an element of geographic or ZIP code profiling taking place. The ZIP+4 information is supplemented by aggregated data provided by College Raptor, the consulting firm engaged by Cornell, along with historical internal data on financial aid packages.
There are some kinks to work out and questions to be considered, of course. How will Cornell factor in Pell Grants and other governmental financial aid? Will the college make up the difference if the student’s Student Aid Index turns out to be higher than Cornell’s estimate? Apparently Cornell did some testing using applicants from last year and found that the estimates were reliable in the vast majority of cases.
The Save Your Seat financial aid package for every student includes a $33,000 National Academic Scholarship covering nearly half of Cornell’s list price. To guarantee access to the aid, Cornell is asking students to apply by the end of this month and submit an enrollment deposit by Sept. 1. As The Chronicle of Higher Education explains, “students who apply by the end of July and submit a deposit by September 1 are guaranteed to receive the $33,000 scholarship, plus any institutional need-based grants for which they might qualify, based on their estimate. They will also get first dibs on housing and first-year seminars. (Those who deposit by November 8 will get the same deal, minus the guaranteed need-based grants and priority registration for the seminars.)”
So what should we make of Save Your Seat? Is Cornell College on to something, or is this another marketing gimmick intended to differentiate Cornell from the mass of small liberal arts colleges? (Its one-course-at-a-time curriculum already distinguishes it.)
I applaud Cornell for trying to introduce some transparency about cost up front. We know that affordability is both a major concern and a major impediment for many families in considering colleges, and particularly private colleges. Having a way to estimate cost early in the college search rather than at the very end is potentially a huge step forward for college admission. Cornell’s initiative might be thought of as an updated version of the net price calculator, with someone else doing the calculations for you. Save Your Seat might also be seen as the next iteration in the direct admission movement.
But let us stop for a moment to acknowledge that Cornell’s new initiative, while more transparent, isn’t truly transparent. It does nothing to illuminate the high-cost, high-discount model that higher education relies on.
There are good reasons for that. There have been several colleges that have tried to lead a movement to reset tuition, substantially reducing their sticker price but also substantially reducing discounts. They learned two things. The first was that they were willing to lead, but other colleges were not willing to follow.
The bigger issue is that they learned that families are more than happy to pay lower tuition but are not happy to lose their “merit” scholarships. As it turns out, merit scholarships are among the least transparent and most misunderstood contrivances in college admission—perhaps deliberately so.
Just last week, I spoke with someone who was surprised that a nephew had been admitted to college and then shocked when he received a merit scholarship. That conversation brought to mind a phone call I had with the mother of one of my students years ago. The son was a good kid but not a strong student, and he had just received merit scholarships to two different colleges. I finally figured out that the point of her call was to ask what was wrong with the two colleges that were awarding her son merit scholarships.
The $33,000 National Academic Scholarships offered to every Save Your Seat email recipient might be thought of as the higher education equivalent of Oprah’s “You get a merit scholarship! You get a merit scholarship!” Cornell is far from alone in giving a discount to most or all students, but the potential pickle in which it finds itself is a situation where it tells students they are not admitted after already telling them they have won a merit scholarship.
That is far from the biggest ethical issue raised by the new plan. If the move toward greater financial aid transparency, at least in theory, is a positive step, asking students to apply by the end of July and deposit by September is anything but.
When the National Association for College Admission Counseling was forced to abandon key aspects of its code of ethics as part of a consent decree with the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice, there were fears that college admission might deteriorate into a lawless Wild West, with colleges coming up with new strategies and incentives to coerce vulnerable students into decisions they weren’t ready to make. Thankfully that hasn’t happened to the degree predicted.
Cornell’s decision to tie the Save Your Seat financial offers to an earlier application and enrollment deadline represents another leap forward in the acceleration of the college admission process. Who thinks that’s a good idea for students? It ignores the fact that many high school counseling offices are closed during the summer and won’t be able to send transcripts (perhaps Cornell will use self-reported grades). It is also significantly earlier than the provision in the now-defunct NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice prohibiting an application deadline before Oct. 15. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.
It’s not clear to me why the earlier deadlines are necessary for the program to work. It’s clear that there are benefits for Cornell, but students should be allowed to choose where to go to college thoughtfully and freely, without coercion or manipulation. Whose seat is being saved here?
Jim Jump recently retired after 33 years as the academic dean and director of college counseling at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Va. He previously served as an admissions officer, philosophy instructor and women’s basketball coach at the college level and is a past president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. He is the 2024 recipient of NACAC’s John B. Muir Excellence in Media Award.
By Derfel Owen, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Janice Kay, Higher Futures.
Generative AI and other new technologies create unprecedented challenges to some of the deepest and longest-held assumptions about how we educate and support students. We start from a position that rejects a defensive stance, attempting to protect current practice from the perceived threat of AI. Bans, restrictions and policies to limit AI use have emerged in an effort to uphold existing norms. Such approaches risk isolating and alienating students who are using AI anyway and will fail to address its broader implications. The point is that AI forces us to reconsider and recapitulate current ways of how we teach, how we help students to learn, how we assess and how we engage and support. Four areas of how we educate require a greater focus:
Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving: Teaching students to evaluate, analyse, and synthesise information while questioning AI-generated outputs.
Creativity and Innovation: Focusing on nurturing original ideas, divergent thinking, and the ability to combine concepts in novel ways.
Emotional Intelligence: Prioritising skills like empathy, communication, and collaboration, essential for leadership, teamwork, and human connection.
Ethical Reasoning: Training students to navigate ethical dilemmas and critically evaluate the ethical implications of AI use in society.
Here we set out some practical steps that can be taken to shift us in that direction.
1. Emphasise Lifelong Learning and Entrepreneurialism
Education should equip students with the ability to adapt throughout their lives to rapidly evolving technologies, professions and industries. Fostering the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn quickly in response to changing demands is essential. A well-rounded education will combine new and established knowledge across subjects and disciplines, building in an assumption that progress is made through interdisciplinary connections and creating space to explore the unknown, what we might not know yet and how we go about finding it.
The transformation of traditional work through AI and automation necessitates that students are fully equipped to thrive in flexible and diverse job markets. Entrepreneurial thinking should be nurtured by teaching students to identify problems, design innovative solutions, and create value in ways that AI can support but not replicate. Leadership development should focus on fostering decision-making, adaptability, and team-building skills, emphasising the inherently human aspects of leadership.
We should be aware that jobs and job skills in an AI world are evolving faster than our curricula. As McKinsey estimates, AI will transform or replace up to 800 million jobs globally, and the stakes are too high for incremental change.
2. Promote Originality and Rigour though Collaboration
AI’s strength lies in the processing speed and the sheer breadth of existing data and knowledge that it can access. It can tell you at exceptional pace what might have taken hours, days or weeks to discover. This should be viewed as a way to augment human capabilities and not as a crutch. Incorporating project-based, collaborative learning with AI will empower students to collaborate to create, solve problems, and innovate while reinforcing their roles as innovators and decision-makers. Working together should be a means of fostering communication skills, but can also be strengthened to encourage, promote and reward creativity and divergent thinking that goes further than conventional knowledge. Students should be encouraged to pursue discovery through critical thinking and verification, exploring unique, self-designed research questions or projects that demand deep thought and personal engagement. These steps will build digital confidence, ensuring students can use AI with confidence and assuredness, are able to test and understand its limitations and can leverage it as a tool to accelerate and underpin their innovation. Examples include generating content for campaigns or portfolio outputs, using AI to synthesise original data, demonstrating Socratic dialogue with AI and its outputs, challenging and critiquing prompts.
3. Redesign Assessments
Traditional assessments, such as essays and multiple-choice tests, are increasingly vulnerable to AI interference, and the value they add is increasingly questionable. To counter this, education should focus on performance-based assessments, such as presentations, debates, and real-time problem-solving, which showcase students’ ability to think critically and adapt quickly. Educators have moved away from such assessment methods in recent years because evidence suggests that biases creep into oral examinations. This needs reevaluating to judge the balance of risk in light of AI advancements. Stereotyping and halo biases can be mitigated and can increase student engagement with the assessment and subject matter. What is the greater risk? Biases in oral assessment? Or generating cohorts of graduates with skills to complete unseen, closed-book exams that are likely to be of limited value in a world in which deep and complex information and instruction can be accessed in a fraction of the time through AI? We must revisit these norms and assumptions.
Collaborative assessments should also be prioritised, using group projects that emphasise teamwork, negotiation, and interpersonal skills. Furthermore, process-oriented evaluation methods should be implemented to assess the learning process itself, including drafts, reflections, and iterative improvements, rather than solely the final outputs. Authenticity in learning outputs can be assured through reflective practices such as journals, portfolios, and presentations that require self-expression and cannot be easily replicated by AI, especially when accompanied by opportunities for students to explain their journey and how their knowledge and approach to a topic have evolved as they learn.
Achieving such radical change will require a dramatic scaling back of the arms race in assessment, dramatic reductions in multiple, modularised snapshot assessments. Shifting the assessment workload for staff and students is required, toward formative and more authentic assessments with in-built points of reflection. Mitigating more labour-intensive assessments, programme-wide assessment should be considered.
4. Encourage understanding of the impact of AI on society, resilience and adaptability
AI will accentuate the societal impact of and concerns about issues such as bias, privacy, and accountability. Utilising AI in teaching and assessment must build an expectation that students and graduates have an enquiring and sceptical mindsets, ready to seek further validation and assurance about facts as they are presented and how they were reached, what data was accessed and how; students need to be prepared and ready to unlearn and rebuild. This will require resilience and the ability to cope with failure, uncertainty, and ambiguity. A growth mindset, valuing continuous learning over static achievement, will help by enhancing their ability to adapt to evolving circumstances. Simulated scenario planning for real-world application of learning will help equip students with the skills to navigate AI-disrupted workplaces and industries successfully.
The new kid on the block, DeepSeek, has the important feature that it is an open-source reasoning model, low cost (appearing to beat OpenAI o1 that is neither open-source nor free) with the benefit that it sets out its ‘thinking’ step-by-step, helpful for learning and demonstrating learning. It is not, however, able to access external reports critical of the Chinese state, de facto showing that Gen AI models are wholly dependent on the large language data on which they are trained. Students need fully to understand this and its implications.
Navigating these wide-ranging challenges demands robust support for those shaping the student experience—educators, mentors, and assessors. They remain the heart of higher learning, guiding students through an era of unprecedented change. Yet, bridging the gap between established and emerging practices requires more than just adaptation; it calls for a transformation in how we approach learning itself. To thrive in an AI-integrated future, educators must not only enhance their own AI literacy but also foster open, critical dialogues about its ethical and practical dimensions. In this evolving landscape, everyone—students and educators alike—must embrace a shared journey of learning. The traditional role of the academic as the sole expert must give way to a more collaborative, inquiry-driven model. Only by reimagining the way we teach and learn can we ensure that AI serves as a tool for empowerment rather than a force for division.
In the nearly two years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions, there have been repeatedcalls for universities to address the resulting decline in diversity by recruiting from community colleges.
On the surface, encouraging students to transfer from two-year colleges sounds like a terrific idea. Community colleges enroll large numbers of students who are low-income or whose parents did not attend college. Black and Latino students disproportionately start college at these institutions, whose mission for more than 50 years has been to expand access to higher education.
But while community colleges should be an avenue into high-value STEM degrees for students from low-income backgrounds and minoritized students, the reality is sobering: Just 2 percent of students who begin at a community college earn a STEM bachelor’s degree within six years, our recent study of transfer experiences in California found.
There are too many roadblocks in their way, leaving the path to STEM degrees for community college students incredibly narrow. A key barrier is the complexity of the process of transferring from a community college to a four-year institution.
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Many community college students who want to transfer and major in a STEM field must contend with three major obstacles in the transfer process:
1. A maze of inconsistent and often opaque math requirements. We found that a student considering three or four prospective university campuses might have to take three or four different math classes just to meet a single math requirement in a given major. One campus might expect a transfer student majoring in business to take calculus, while another might ask for business calculus. Still another might strongly recommend a “calculus for life sciences” course. And sometimes an institution’s website might list different requirements than a statewide transfer site. Such inconsistencies can lengthen students’ times to degrees — especially in STEM majors, which may require five- or six-course math sequences before transfer.
2. Underlying math anxiety. Many students interviewed for the study told us that they had internalized negative comments from teachers, advisers and peers about their academic ability, particularly in math. This uncertainty contributed to feelings of anxiety about completing their math courses. Their predicament is especially troubling given concerns that required courses may not contribute to success in specific fields.
3. Course scheduling conflicts that slow students’ progress. Two required courses may meet on the same day and time, for example, or a required course could be scheduled at a time that conflicts with a student’s work schedule. In interviews, we also heard that course enrollment caps and sequential pathways in which certain courses are offered only once a year too often lengthen the time to degree for students.
To help, rather than hinder, STEM students’ progress toward their college and professional goals, the transfer process needs to change significantly. First and foremost, universities need to send clear and consistent signals about what hoops community college students should be jumping through in order to transfer.
A student applying to three prospective campuses, for example, should not have to meet separate sets of requirements for each.
Community colleges and universities should also prioritize active learning strategies and proven supports to combat math anxiety. These may include providing professional learning for instructors to help them make math courses more engaging and to foster a sense of belonging. Training for counselors to advise students on requirements for STEM pathways is also important.
Community colleges must make their course schedules more student-centered, by offering evening and weekend courses and ensuring that courses required for specific degrees are not scheduled at overlapping times. They should also help students with unavoidable scheduling conflicts take comparable required courses at other colleges.
At the state level, it’s critical to adopt goals for transfer participation and completion (including STEM-specific goals) as well as comprehensive and transparent statewide agreements for math requirements by major.
States should also provide transfer planning tools that provide accurate and up-to-date information. For example, the AI Transfer and Articulation Infrastructure Network, led by University of California, Berkeley researchers, is using artificial intelligence technology to help institutions more efficiently identify which community college courses meet university requirements. More effective tools will increase transparency without requiring students and counselors to navigate complex and varied transfer requirements on their own. As it stands, complex, confusing and opaque math requirements limit transfer opportunities for community college students seeking STEM degrees, instead of expanding them.
We must untangle the transfer process, smooth pathways to high-value degrees and ensure that every student has a clear, unobstructed opportunity to pursue an education that will set them up for success.
Pamela Burdman is executive director of Just Equations, a California-based policy institute focused on reconceptualizing the role of math in education equity. Alexis Robin Hale is a research fellow at Just Equations and a graduate student at UCLA in Social Sciences and Comparative Education.
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