Professor Steven Jones on behalf of the Council for the Defence of British Universitie
Published:
HEPI’s new Policy Note finds striking consensus across the higher education community for more ethical, transparent and balanced university governance.
Summarising responses to the draft Code of Ethical University Governance from the Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU), this Policy Note finds that 81% of the 129 submissions received endorse the principle of a new ethical code. This signals a widespread recognition that governance structures must better reflect the educational and public missions that universities serve.
The revised CDBU Code directly responds to the concerns raised in the consultation and offers practical ways to reduce power imbalances, avoid insular decision-making and bring greater transparency to governor recruitment.
The author of this report, and the author of a second report HEPI is publishing on governance in the run-up to Christmas will be at a free webinar on governance issues running on Thursday, 11 December 2025 from 10am to 11am. Sign up now to hear our speakers explore the key issues.
The Education Department and its Office of Federal Student Aid typically hold a conference the first week of December each year.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Caiaimage/Chris Ryan/iStock/Getty Images
Each year during the first week of December, the Department of Education has historically hosted the Federal Student Aid Training Conference to provide university administrators with updated education on regulations and technical systems. That hasn’t happened this year.
Now, many financial aid experts are expressing their frustrations on social media, attributing the lapse to the Trump administration’s majorreductions in force and calling it a shortsighted mistake.
“There is no conference. That’s what happens when you fire many of the staff who organized and conducted the training,” Byron Scott, a retired FSA staff member, wrote on LinkedIn. “Perhaps in ‘returning’ this Department of Education function to the states—where [it] never was—the Department forgot to tell the states about this new responsibility.”
Department officials have neither announced the event’s cancellation nor clarified whether and when it might take place. The conference website, where logistical information is traditionally posted, only says, “Information coming soon.”
One senior department official who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on the condition of anonymity said the conference is slated to occur in person in March.
“The announcement was queued up but the shutdown got in the way,” the source wrote in a text message. “I think the plan [will be released] in the coming days.”
An Education Department spokesperson did not respond to questions about the March date but blamed any delay on the government shutdown.
“The Democrats shut down the government for 43 days, and as you can imagine, planning a conference is not an exempted activity,” the spokesperson said. “We’ll have more updates on this in the coming weeks.”
If the conference is eventually held in person, it would be the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020.
The senior department official said they hope that “returning the conference to in-person will make the wait worth it.”
But Heidi Kovalick, director of financial aid at Rowan University, responded to Scott’s LinkedIn post saying that right now is “a critical time.”
Financial aid officers have a lot to adapt to; the One Big Beautiful Bill Act mandated major changes to the student loan system, and the department issued regulations outlining new standards for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, among other significant shifts since Trump took office.
“Fin[ancial] aid administrators really need to hear from the experts,” Kovalick wrote. “Of course as others have mentioned, [it’s] kind of hard when they have been forced out. We miss you all.”
Regardless of whether staffing shortages or the government shutdown played a role in the delay, Melanie Storey, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said one of her greatest concerns is the tight timeline financial aid officers will face if the department does reschedule the conference for spring.
“Truthfully, March is pretty soon—three months away. Institutional budgets are tight. People are going to have to book flights and hotels, and you know that that can be expensive,” she said. Still, the NASFAA president applauded the department for its effort to return the conference to an in-person event.
“The last few were virtual, which had mixed reviews. The sessions had to be prerecorded. They weren’t always as timely. And there wasn’t an opportunity for interaction. But those are all the things that financial aid professionals prioritize,” she said. “If March is when they can do it, well, we’ll be happy to see it in March.”
When it comes to digital student recruitment, many institutions feel they need to choose between Paid Search vs Paid Social. Budgets are tight. Teams are often siloed; admissions handles one, marketing handles the other. And with so many moving parts, it’s tempting to simplify: pick one channel and double down.
But that’s a false choice. Here’s the reality: today’s prospective students don’t live in a single marketing lane. They might first discover your school on Instagram, then Google you weeks later to check deadlines, read reviews, or submit an application. Search and social are part of the same decision journey, and schools that favour one while ignoring the other are leaving attention, applications, and enrollments on the table.
At Higher Education Marketing (HEM), the right approach isn’t to choose between Paid Search and Paid Social. Instead, the most effective strategy is to combine both channels to engage and optimize the entire enrollment funnel fully. Social media excels at generating awareness and early interest. Search converts when intent is high. Together, they create a powerful synergy, reinforcing your message, capturing more leads, and moving students smoothly from first click to enrollment. In this article, we’ll break down how both channels work, where each shines, and how schools can maximize performance by aligning them strategically.
Changing Search Behaviours in 2025
Student search behaviour is fragmented, fast, and heavily value-driven. Today’s prospective students, especially from Gen Z and Gen Alpha, don’t wait to be told what to think. They research across platforms long before filling out an inquiry form.
This is the Zero Moment of Truth: when students validate a school by triangulating across ads, websites, reviews, and social content. Credibility must show up everywhere, because trust is built before contact is ever made. Zero-click searches, like featured snippets and Google answer boxes, are also reshaping the landscape. Being cited here or placing targeted ads can influence decisions without ever earning a click.
The numbers speak volumes: 41% of Gen Z use social media to search, while only 32% use traditional engines, and 11% use chatbots. Gen Alpha takes it further. Their research is values-first. They’re looking for sustainability, inclusion, and innovation. And they’re starting earlier than ever.
The Power of Paid Social
One of the biggest misconceptions in education marketing is that paid social is only good for brand awareness. While it’s true that platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are excellent for reaching new audiences, their real power extends far beyond the top of the funnel.
Paid social can drive leads, retarget warm prospects, and support conversions when used strategically. It allows schools to engage students emotionally through storytelling and keep them in the conversation through personalized messaging and real-time interactions.
Is paid search the same as paid social? No. Paid search displays ads based on keyword searches on platforms like Google, while paid social promotes content on social media platforms like Facebook or TikTok. They target users differently and serve distinct stages of the enrollment funnel.
Best Use Cases:
Story-Driven Awareness Campaigns: Think student testimonials, day-in-the-life content, or campus highlights. These build connection and trust.
Lead Generation Ads: Click-to-convert campaigns using forms or optimized landing pages can capture inquiries on the spot.
Event Promotions and Student Life Visibility: Showcase open houses, webinars, or vibrant campus life to entice prospective students.
Best Practices:
Awareness Ads: Use high-impact visuals and short videos that highlight a key outcome, like career success or global opportunities. Keep the message clear and focused, with an obvious CTA that invites students to learn more.
Lead Gen Ads: Avoid generic links to your homepage. Instead, use program-specific landing pages or native lead forms. Segment audiences to tailor messages, and emphasize value on different content, such as scholarships, graduate outcomes, or flexible learning options.
Messenger and WhatsApp Ads: These are ideal for live engagement. Use them to invite students to ask questions, book a meeting, or receive instant info.
The Case for Paid Search
What is the difference between search and social? While paid social excels at sparking interest and building emotional connection, paid search is unmatched when it comes to capturing high-intent prospects. These are the students actively looking for programs, comparing options, or ready to take the next step. Paid search meets them right at the decision-making moment.
This channel is especially powerful for reaching mid- and bottom-funnel audiences. When someone types “best MBA programs in Canada” or “nursing diploma with January intake,” they are already considering enrollment. Paid search allows schools to appear at the top of those results, capturing attention before competitors do.
On the flip side, what are the disadvantages of paid search vs paid social? Paid search can be costly due to high competition for keywords, especially in education. It also depends on users already showing intent, which limits brand-building. Without complementary channels, it may not generate enough awareness or early-stage interest.
Ideal Use Cases:
Branded and Program-Specific Searches: Ensure your school shows up when a student searches your name or flagship program.
High-Converting Keywords: Focus on queries like “apply now,” “tuition fees,” or “open house registration.”
Deadline-Driven Campaigns: Push applications during key moments, like the final days before a semester starts.
Recommended Tactics:
Responsive Search Ads (RSAs): Automatically test combinations of headlines and descriptions to maximize performance.
Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs): Let Google fill in the gaps by matching relevant queries to your website content.
Intent Segmentation: Use different ad groups and copy for high, medium, and low-intent keywords. This improves quality scores and keeps your messaging relevant.
One of the benefits of paid search is that it enables clarity, timing, and precision to come together to convert interest into action.
Building a Full-Funnel Strategy: Social + Search Together
Many schools fall into the trap of treating paid search and paid social as separate silos. But in 2025’s student journey, they’re two halves of the same enrollment engine. When integrated properly, they guide prospects from first glance to final decision, boosting visibility, engagement, and conversions along the way.
Funnel Roles: How Each Channel Contributes
Let’s break down how these platforms complement each other throughout the marketing funnel:
Awareness: Paid social leads the charge. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are perfect for storytelling, aspirational videos, and brand introductions. These top-of-funnel ads help your school get noticed by students who may not yet be actively searching.
Consideration: As interest deepens, both channels play a role. Paid search catches students researching specific programs or comparing schools, while social reinforces your value with student testimonials, video tours, and real-time answers to FAQs.
Decision: This is where paid search shines. When students start typing in branded or program-specific queries, they’re ready to act. Paid social can add fuel here with urgency messaging, think deadline countdowns, financial aid reminders, or last-chance open house invites.
Enrollment: Now it’s about closing the loop. Use search ads to reinforce time-sensitive messaging, while Meta and WhatsApp retargeting keep your brand top of mind and prompt final steps like booking a call or submitting an application.
Matching Platforms to Funnel Stages
To maximize impact, align your platforms with the right funnel phase:
TikTok & Instagram: Best for awareness and early engagement. Use these channels to build emotional resonance and plant seeds of interest.
Google & Bing: Ideal for high-intent actions. When students are actively searching for answers, programs, or deadlines, your ads need to show up.
Meta & WhatsApp: Great for nurturing leads mid-funnel. Messenger CTAs and remarketing help bring students back into the conversation.
LinkedIn: A go-to for graduate and professional programs, especially among career switchers and upskillers.
Niche Channels: Want to reach Gen Z authentically? Explore Reddit threads, Snapchat lenses, or user-generated TikToks that mimic how real students talk and share.
What Does This Look Like in Practice?
Here’s how a real-world campaign could unfold:
Week 1–3: Launch TikTok videos to raise awareness: spotlight student stories, “day in the life” clips, or big-picture program benefits.
Week 2–3: Add Instagram ads to deepen interest with engaging visuals and strong CTAs.
Week 3–6: Deploy Google Search ads targeting keywords like “apply to [Program Name]” or “college deadlines 2025.”
Week 6–8: Use Meta retargeting to reconnect with visitors who didn’t convert, offering application checklists or counselor consult invites.
This layered strategy ensures your message is reinforced across platforms, leading to more informed, confident applicants.
Sample Budget Breakdown
TikTok Ads: $500
Instagram Ads: $500
Google Search Ads: $2,000
Meta Retargeting Ads: $300
By diversifying spend across the funnel and choosing the right tools for each stage, schools move from guesswork to strategy and from isolated clicks to full-funnel enrollment growth.
Common Mistakes Schools Make
Despite investing in digital ads, many schools fall into avoidable traps that limit performance. One of the most common mistakes is relying entirely on paid search. While it excels at capturing high-intent prospects, paid search often reaches students too late in their decision process. Without early-stage awareness from paid social, those leads may never warm up enough to convert.
Another issue is the widespread misunderstanding of paid social’s role. Some marketers dismiss it as a brand play with no immediate ROI. In reality, paid social plays a crucial role in shaping perception, building familiarity, and generating qualified leads over time. When schools skip this step, they weaken their funnel.
Disjointed campaigns also create problems. Running separate social and search efforts without coordination means you miss opportunities for synergy and message consistency.
Additionally, many schools neglect retargeting. If a prospective student browses your program page but leaves, that should trigger follow-up ads to reignite interest. Failing to retarget leaves valuable leads on the table.
Finally, default settings on ad platforms can be misleading. Relying on them often results in wasted impressions and mismatched audiences. Custom targeting and exclusions are essential to reaching the right students with the right message at the right time.
Search Trends & Emerging Platforms
The digital landscape is evolving rapidly, and student search behaviour is shifting along with it. One major trend is the rising cost and competitiveness of Google Ads. As more advertisers bid on the same education-related keywords, prices continue to climb, making it harder for schools with modest budgets to compete effectively.
At the same time, prospective students are changing how they search. Many now prefer visual, snackable results and quick answers over scrolling through text-heavy webpages. This shift is fueling the rise of social platforms as search engines in their own right.
TikTok is a clear standout. Its new Search Ads feature allows schools to place short, captioned videos directly within search results, reaching students who are actively exploring options.
To stay visible, schools must also optimize their organic content for discovery. Think FAQ-style posts, hashtag strategy, and short videos that answer common questions in the formats students prefer.
Measurement: How to Track Campaign Impact
Running great campaigns is only half the battle; measuring their true impact is where the real insight lies. To understand which channel is delivering results, schools must go beyond surface-level metrics like clicks or impressions.
Start by tracking key funnel metrics: Cost per Inquiry (CPI), Cost per Lead (CPL), Cost per Application (CPA), and Cost per Enrollment (CPE). These figures help quantify the effectiveness of your campaigns at every stage of the recruitment journey.
To gather this data, use platforms that support full-funnel tracking. CRMs like HubSpot or Mautic are ideal for managing contact progression, while Google Analytics 4 provides visibility into multi-touch user journeys across platforms.
Most importantly, ensure that all campaigns are tagged with UTM codes and that your CRM accurately records lead sources. This lets you attribute not just the first click, but the entire path to enrollment, helping you optimize future budget allocation with confidence.
Real-World Examples of Integrated Paid Search & Social in Education
Story-Driven Awareness Campaign: The Rivers School (a private high school in Massachusetts) regularly hosts Instagram student takeovers, where current students share a day in their life via the school’s official Instagram Stories. These takeovers give prospective families an authentic glimpse of campus life. Such story-driven content humanizes the school experience and builds trust with audiences in the awareness stage.
Event Promotions & Student Life Visibility: Concord University (West Virginia) ran a Fall Open House campaign on Facebook, urging students to “REGISTER NOW for Fall Open House”. The official post emphasized that whether you’re just starting your college search or already set on Concord, you should “come experience what being at Concord is like”. This call-to-action, boosted to target local high schoolers, drove sign-ups by promising an immersive campus visit.
Messenger and WhatsApp Engagement: The University at Buffalo (SUNY) launched an official WhatsApp channel for prospective international students. By opting in, students receive personalized updates – announcements, event invites, deadline reminders – right in WhatsApp, a platform they use daily. This allows UB’s admissions team to handle inquiries and nurture leads through quick chats and broadcasts on a familiar channel.
Branded and Program-Specific Search Campaigns: A real example is Assiniboine Community College in Canada, which runs search ads for terms such as “January intake Nursing diploma” – ensuring that students searching for nursing programs with upcoming start dates find Assiniboine’s program page first. By focusing on branded queries (school name, flagship programs) and niche program keywords, schools across the board make sure they capture students who are already intent on a particular school or offering.
High-Converting Keyword Campaigns: Educational marketers also bid on bottom-funnel keywords that signal immediate intent – like “apply now,” “admissions deadline,” or “tuition fees [School].” University of Louisville business school promoted its online MBA program with an urgent message: “Don’t miss out – this is your last chance to apply before the application deadline on 12/1! Start your application here.” By targeting such high-converting phrases in ads and search (and using urgency-laden copy), schools push motivated prospects to take action.
Recap: Why You Need Both Paid Search and Paid Social
Schools that depend on just one marketing channel risk falling behind. Students don’t stick to a single path when researching their options. Instead, they move fluidly between search engines and social platforms, using both to gather information, compare schools, and make decisions.
This is why a dual-channel strategy matters. Paid Social helps schools introduce themselves, tell a compelling story, and spark curiosity early in the decision journey. It creates awareness and builds emotional connection. Paid Search, on the other hand, reaches students who are actively looking for specific programs, deadlines, and next steps. It captures intent and drives action.
When both channels are aligned, schools gain full-funnel coverage. Retargeting efforts become more strategic, and nurture campaigns stay relevant from the first interaction to enrollment. As a result, conversions improve and return on investment increases.
But to unlock the full value, schools must track every touchpoint, not just the final click. Integrating CRM data with UTM tags and analytics tools ensures you’re seeing the full picture and making smarter marketing decisions moving forward.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Is paid search the same as paid social? Answer: No. Paid search displays ads based on keyword searches on platforms like Google, while paid social promotes content on social media platforms like Facebook or TikTok. They target users differently and serve distinct stages of the enrollment funnel.
Question: What is the difference between search and social? Answer: While paid social excels at sparking interest and building emotional connection, paid search is unmatched when it comes to capturing high-intent prospects. These are the students actively looking for programs, comparing options, or ready to take the next step. Paid search meets them right at the decision-making moment.
Question: What are the disadvantages of Paid Search? Answer: Paid search can be costly due to high competition for keywords, especially in education. It also depends on users already showing intent, which limits brand-building. Without complementary channels, it may not generate enough awareness or early-stage interest.
Latin America—a region of thirty-three countries stretching from Mexico through Central and South America and across the Caribbean—has spent more than a century fighting against foreign exploitation. Its universities, which should anchor local prosperity, cultural autonomy, and democratic life, have instead been repeatedly reshaped by foreign corporations, U.S. government interests, global lenders, and now crypto speculators. Yet the region’s history is also defined by persistent, courageous resistance, led overwhelmingly by students, faculty, and Indigenous communities.
Understanding today’s educational crisis in Latin America requires tracing this long arc of exploitation—and the struggle to build systems rooted in equity rather than extraction.
1900s–1930s: Bananas, Oil, and the Rise of the “Banana Republics”
Early in the 20th century, American corporations established vast profit-making empires in Latin America. United Fruit Company—today’s Chiquita Banana—dominated land, labor, and politics across Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica. Standard Oil and Texaco secured petroleum concessions in Venezuela and Ecuador, laying foundations for decades of foreign control that extracted immense wealth while leaving behind environmental devastation, as seen in Texaco’s toxic legacy in the Ecuadorian Amazon between 1964 and 1992.
Universities were bent toward these foreign interests. Agricultural programs were geared toward serving plantation economies, not local farmers. Engineering and geological research aligned with extractive industries, not community development.
Resistance did emerge. Student groups in Guatemala and Costa Rica formed part of early anti-oligarchic movements, linking national sovereignty to university reform. Their demands echoed global currents of democratization. Evidence of these early student-led struggles appears in archival materials and Latin American scholarship on university reform, and culminates in the influential 1918 Córdoba Manifesto in Argentina—a radical declaration that attacked oligarchic, colonial universities and demanded autonomy, co-governance, and public responsibility.
1940s–1980s: Coups, Cold War Interventions, and the Deepening of U.S. Oil Interests
During the Cold War, exploitation intensified. In Guatemala, the CIA-backed overthrow of democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 protected United Fruit’s land holdings. Universities were purged or militarized, and critical scholars were exiled or killed.
In Chile, the 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende—supported by American corporate giants such as ITT and Anaconda Copper—ushered in a brutal dictatorship. Under Augusto Pinochet, thousands were murdered, tortured, or disappeared, while the Chicago Boys imported radical neoliberal reforms that privatized everything, including the higher education system.
Throughout the region, oil deals disproportionately favored American companies. Mexico and Venezuela saw petroleum wealth siphoned off through arrangements that benefited foreign investors while leaving universities underfunded and politically surveilled. Scholarship critical of foreign intervention was marginalized, while programs feeding engineers and economists to multinational firms were expanded.
Student resistance reached historic proportions. Chilean students and faculty formed the core of the anti-dictatorship movement. Mexico’s students rose in 1968, demanding democracy and university autonomy before being massacred in Tlatelolco. CIA declassified documents reveal that student uprisings across Latin America in the early 1970s were so widespread that U.S. intelligence considered them a regional threat.
1990s–2000s: Neoliberalism, Privatization, and the Americanization of Higher Education
In the 1990s, neoliberalism swept the region under pressure from Washington, the IMF, and the World Bank. After NAFTA, Mexico’s universities became increasingly aligned with corporate labor pipelines. In Brazil, Petrobras’ partnerships with American firms helped reshape engineering curricula. Private universities and for-profit models proliferated across the region, echoing U.S. higher ed corporatization.
Hugo Chávez captured the broader sentiment of resistance when he declared that public services—including education—cannot be privatized without violating fundamental rights.
Students fought back across Latin America. In Argentina and Brazil they contested tuition hikes and privatization. In Venezuela, the debate shifted toward whether oil revenue should fund tuition-free universities.
Indigenous Exclusion, Racism, and the Colonial Foundations of Inequality
One of the greatest challenges in understanding Latin American education is acknowledging the deep racial and ethnic stratification that predates U.S. exploitation but has been exacerbated by it. Countries like Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, and Guatemala have large Indigenous populations that, to this day, receive the worst education—much like Native American communities relegated to underfunded reservation schools in the United States.
Racism remains powerful. Whiter populations enjoy greater economic and educational access. University admission is shaped by class and color. These divisions are not accidental; they are a machinery of control.
There have been important exceptions. Under President Rafael Correa, Ecuador built hundreds of new schools, including Siglo XXI and Millennium Schools, and expanded public education access. In Mexico, the 2019 constitutional reform strengthened Indigenous rights, including commitments to culturally relevant education. Bolivia—whose population is majority Indigenous—has promoted Indigenous languages, judicial systems, and education structures.
But progress is fragile. Austerity, IMF conditionalities, and elite resistance have led to cutbacks, school closures, and renewed privatization across the region. The study you provided on Ecuador documents Indigenous ambivalence, even hostility, toward Correa’s universal education plan—revealing how colonial wounds, cultural erasure, and distrust of state power complicate reform and provide openings for divide-and-conquer strategies long exploited by ruling classes.
These contradictions deepen when Indigenous movements—rightfully demanding no mining, no oil extraction, and protection of ancestral lands—collide with leftist governments reliant on resource extraction to fund public services. This tension is especially acute in Ecuador and Bolivia.
2010s–Present: Crypto Colonialism and a New Frontier of Exploitation
Cryptocurrency has opened a new chapter in Latin America’s long history of foreign-driven experimentation. El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin in 2021, promoted by President Nayib Bukele, transformed the country into a speculative test lab. Bukele has now spent more than $660 million in U.S. dollars on crypto, according to investigative reporting from InSight Crime. Universities rushed to create blockchain programs that primarily serve international investors rather than Salvadoran students.
In Venezuela, crypto became a survival tool amid hyperinflation and economic collapse. Yet foreign speculators profited while universities starved. Student groups warned that crypto research was being weaponized to normalize economic chaos and distract from public-sector deterioration.
Resistance has grown. Salvadoran students have protested the Bitcoin law, demanding that public resources focus on infrastructure, health, and education. Venezuelan students call for rebuilding social programs rather than chasing speculative financial technologies.
Contemporary Student Resistance: 2010s–2020s
Across the region, student movements remain powerful. The Chilean Winter of 2011–2013 demanded free, quality public education and challenged Pinochet’s neoliberal legacy. The movement culminated in the 2019 uprising, where education reform was central.
Mexico’s UNAM students continue to resist corruption, tuition hikes, gender violence, and the encroachment of corporate and foreign interests. The 1999–2000 UNAM strike remains one of the longest in modern higher education.
Colombian students have forced governments to negotiate and invest billions in public universities, framing their struggle as resistance to neoliberal austerity shaped by U.S. policy.
Argentina continues to face massive austerity-driven cuts, sparking protests in 2024–2025 reminiscent of earlier waves of resistance. Uruguay’s Tupamaros movement—largely student-led—remains a historical touchstone.
Every country in Latin America has experienced student uprisings. They reflect a truth that Paulo Freire, exiled from Brazil for teaching critical pedagogy, understood deeply: education can either liberate or oppress. Authoritarians, privatizers, and foreign capital prefer the latter, and they act accordingly.
Today’s Regional Education Crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the system into further crisis. Children in Latin America and the Caribbean lost one out of every two in-person school days between 2020 and 2022. Learning poverty now exceeds 50 percent. Entire generations risk permanent economic loss and civic disenfranchisement.
Infrastructure is collapsing. Rural and Indigenous communities suffer the worst conditions. Public investment is chronically insufficient because governments are trapped in cycles of debt repayment to international lenders. Ecuador has not seen a major public-investment program in a decade, as austerity and IMF repayments dominate national budgets.
The result is a system starved of resources and increasingly vulnerable to privatization schemes—including U.S.-style online coursework, ideological “instruction kits,” and for-profit degree mills.
Latin American Universities as Battlegrounds for Sovereignty
Latin America’s universities are shaped by the same forces that have dominated the region’s history: oil extraction, agribusiness, foreign capital, neoliberalism, structural racism, debt, and now crypto speculation. Yet universities have also been homes to transformation, rebellion, cultural resurgence, and hope.
Across more than a century, students—Indigenous, Afro-descendant, mestizo, working-class—have been the region’s fiercest defenders of public education and national sovereignty. Their resistance continues today, from Quito to Buenos Aires, from Mexico City to Santiago.
For readers of the Higher Education Inquirer, the lesson is clear: the struggle for higher education in Latin America is inseparable from the struggle for democracy, racial justice, Indigenous autonomy, and freedom from foreign domination. The region’s ruling elites and international lenders understand that an educated public is dangerous, which is why they starve, privatize, and discipline public schools. Students understand the opposite: that education is power, and that power must be reclaimed.
The next chapter—especially in countries like Ecuador—will depend on whether students, teachers, and communities can defend public education against the dual forces that have undermined it for more than a century: privatizers and fascists.
Sources (Selection)
National Security Archive, CIA Declassified Documents (1971) InSight Crime reporting on El Salvador Bitcoin expenditures Luciani, Laura. “Latin American Student Movements in the 1960s.” Historia y Memoria (2019) The Córdoba Manifesto (1918) UNESCO, World Bank data on learning poverty (2024) Latin American studies on United Fruit, Standard Oil, Texaco/Chevron in Ecuador LASA Forum: Analysis of Indigenous responses to Correa’s education reforms Periodico UNAL: “The Student Rebellion: Córdoba and Latin America” Multiple regional news sources on Argentina’s 2024–2025 education protests
The University of Alabama has ended two student magazines, citing “legal obligations.”
Carmen K Sisson/iStock/Getty Images
The University of Alabama has ended publication of two student-run magazines, one focused on women and the other on Black students, in order to comply with legal obligations, officials say.
Local and student media reported that Steven Hood, the university’s vice president for student life, said that because the magazines target specific groups, they’re what the Department of Justice considers “unlawful proxies” for discrimination. Both publications received university funding.
The women’s magazine, [Alice], just celebrated its 10th anniversary last month, while Nineteen Fifty-Six, named after the year the first Black student enrolled in the university, says it was created in 2020. [Alice] managing editor Leslie Klein told Inside Higher Ed that university officials told her magazine’s editor in chief Monday that the magazines were being canceled because they’re identity-based.
“I think it is ridiculous,” Klein said. She said it seems like a decade of history is being “put down the drain.”
The university pointed to a July memo from Pam Bondi, in which the U.S. attorney general provided “non-binding best practices” to avoid “significant legal risks.” She wrote that “facially neutral criteria” that “function as proxies for protected characteristics” are illegal “if designed or applied” to intentionally advantage or disadvantage people based on race or sex.
But Bondi’s memo didn’t specifically say that a media outlet focusing on an audience it defines by race or sex is illegal. DOJ spokespeople didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s questions Tuesday about whether the department considers the Alabama magazines unlawful.
Marie McMullan, student press counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said in an email that the university’s “unlawful proxy” claim is “nonsense.”
“These publications have the First Amendment right to be free of viewpoint-based discrimination, but UA is explicitly citing their viewpoints to justify killing their publications,” McMullan said. “No federal antidiscrimination law authorizes the university to silence student media it dislikes.”
Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel for the Student Press Law Center, said he knows of no other university that has used the memo to target a student publication. He said anyone is allowed to write for these magazines.
“A student publication is not a DEI program,” Hiestand said. He said the memo says “absolutely nothing about denying students the right to talk about topics that are important to them” and “I don’t know what the university is thinking here.”
“That looks a lot like viewpoint discrimination to me, which the Supreme Court has said repeatedly is off-limits,” he said.
The university didn’t provide Inside Higher Ed an interview Tuesday or answer multiple written questions. In an emailed statement, the university said the magazines’ editors and contributors “were informed of the decision to suspend the magazines effective immediately, with the Fall 2025 issue as the final issue.” It added that “staff hope to work with students to develop a new publication that features a variety of voices and perspectives to debut in the next academic year.”
“The University remains committed to supporting every member of our community and advancing our goals to welcome, serve, and help all succeed,” the university said. “In doing so, we must also comply with our legal obligations. This requires us to ensure all members of our community feel welcome to participate in programs that receive University funding from the Office of Student Media.”
This was Klein’s fourth year with [Alice]. “It really just breaks my heart,” she said.
Tionna Taite, who founded Nineteen Fifty-Six, said in a statement to The Alabama Reflector that both magazines are pivotal to the minority experience at the university.
“I am beyond disappointed in the regression UA has made since I created 1956 Magazine,” Taite said. “In 2020, UA made promises to be more diverse, inclusive and equitable. Five years later, I do not see any progress and their decision regarding both magazines confirms this.”
These magazines aren’t the first university student publications that administrators have curtailed in 2025. Purdue University said it would no longer distribute papers for The Purdue Exponent, an independent student newspaper, or allow it to use the word “Purdue” for commercial purposes. The university said it’s inconsistent with “freedom of expression, institutional neutrality and fairness to provide the services and accommodations” to “one media organization but not others.”
Indiana University also fired Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush and canceled printing of the Indiana Daily Student newspaper before relenting and again allowing a print edition. Rodenbush remains separated from the university.
Multiple public and private universities announced job and program cuts, as well as other money-saving measures, last month in response to financial challenges driven by a range of factors.
Some institutions noted the loss of federal research funding, while others cited declining international enrollment amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students. Still others pointed to sectorwide challenges, including the worsening public perception of higher education. And some colleges cut low-demand programs to comply with state laws such as Ohio’s Senate Bill 1.
Here is a look at job and program cuts as well as other moves announced last month.
The center has been the state’s designated energy research institute since 1975.
UCF officials told the news outlet in a statement that the university “made the difficult but necessary decision to reduce staffing at the Florida Solar Energy Center to ensure responsible stewardship of university and state resources,” noting that the center was not financially sustainable.
University officials also cited a decline in external funding, which hampered research activities, as well as “recent shifts in federal funding priorities in energy research, including reductions and cancellations of key programs that historically supported the center’s research activities.”
In addition to cuts at the Florida Solar Energy Center, UCF also laid off six employees in its technology department and two workers at the UCF Arboretum, The Orlando Sentinel reported.
Lewis University
Citing a significant decline in international students, the private university in Illinois is cutting 10 percent of its workforce through a combination of layoffs and buyouts, Shaw Local reported.
Altogether, 63 people are on the way out.
The university reportedly laid off 17 staff members and 16 professors and eliminated some vacant roles. Some eligible employees opted into early retirement programs offered by the university.
Lewis officials told the news outlet that international enrollment has collapsed, dropping from a peak of 1,417 students to just 847 this fall. That decline comes amid a flurry of action at the federal level, where the Trump administration has sought to limit international enrollment and increased scrutiny of foreign college applicants as it takes a hard line on immigration policy over all.
Calvin University
The private Christian university in Michigan is shedding jobs and programs as part of a restructuring that will see multiple faculty members laid off over two years, MLive reported.
Calvin is cutting 12.5 percent of the faculty. While the university did not specify a precise head count, it employed 363 faculty members last fall, 197 of whom were full-time, according to its Common Data Set. Based on those numbers, Calvin appears poised to cut as many as 45 professors.
University officials declined to provide the exact number of jobs cut to Inside Higher Ed.
“Most of these departures are voluntary (e.g., retirements, voluntary exit incentive packages, etc.), and many were identified during budget planning that occurred within the academic division last year,” President Greg Elzinga wrote in an email to the campus community last month announcing the changes. “Involuntary departures will amount to approximately 3% of our current full-time faculty workforce, and those impacted have already been notified.”
Elzinga also told MLive that Calvin’s finances remain strong and it is on track for a balanced budget for the current academic year, despite sectorwide challenges such as diminishing public confidence in higher education and international enrollment declines stemming from federal policy changes. Visa processing delays reportedly cost Calvin 65 international students who were unable to make it to campus.
Rider University
The private university in New Jersey announced last month that officials plan to lay off 35 to 40 full-time faculty members, cut salaries by 14 percent and enact other cost-cutting measures as it navigates financial challenges.
President John R. Loyack wrote in a letter to the campus community that the university was taking steps to address “the financial risks that have grown increasingly serious in recent years and have intensified in severity in recent months.” He noted that the university faces “a significant cash shortfall” due to “new and unforeseen developments” and could run out of money “to meet its payroll and other obligations before the end of the current fiscal year.”
Rider also plans to indefinitely suspend retirement contributions, increase faculty workloads, end faculty tuition remission benefits and cut some senior administrative roles, among other moves.
The university was placed on probation by its accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, in late October due to compliance concerns related to financial standards.
Keene State College
Grappling with a $4 million budget deficit, the public college in New Hampshire is cutting 25 staff positions and offering voluntary separation agreements to faculty, The Keene Sentinel reported.
Of the 25 staff positions cut last month, eight were reportedly vacant.
So far, 12 faculty members have accepted buyouts, reportedly in line with the goal of 12 to 15; eight of those professors will exit after the fall semester and four will leave in the spring.
Roger Williams University
The private university in Rhode Island is mandating unpaid furloughs for up to half of its full-time workforce in an effort to shrink a projected $3.5 million budget gap, The Boston Globe reported.
According to the newspaper, layoffs are not currently being considered.
A university statement described the mandatory, unpaid one-week furloughs as a “temporary measure that will allow the university to preserve positions, wage increases, and healthcare benefits for our dedicated staff and faculty, while maintaining the student experience.”
University of Providence
A split from the Providence Health System has prompted officials at the private Catholic university in Great Falls, Mont., to ask its Board of Trustees to declare financial exigency, NBC Montana reported.
While Providence Health has provided financial support, that arrangement is reportedly set to end in December 2027 and the university must become financially independent, which means plugging an $8 million budget shortfall. University officials told NBC Montana that it previously relied on $8 million or more in health system support to balance its budget.
Layoffs and program cuts are expected to be part of the financial recovery plan.
Cornell College
Multiple programs are set to be eliminated at the private liberal arts college in Iowa, a process that officials said in a statement last month was driven by student enrollment data and interest.
Majors being cut include classical studies, French and Francophone studies, German studies, religion, Spanish, and multiple music programs. Students enrolled in those majors will be able to complete their degrees through teach-out plans, according to the announcement.
An unspecified number of job cuts will accompany the program eliminations.
The New School
The private university in New York City announced last month that it is offering faculty buyouts, freezing hiring for certain positions, cutting pay for some employees and pausing retirement contributions for up to 18 months, among other changes, in an effort to balance its budget.
Further, the New School plans to pause admission to most doctorate programs for next year. Program closures are also expected.
President Joel Towers wrote last month, “The New School continues to face serious and persistent financial deficits that require immediate decisive action.” Now the university is offering early retirement packages to professors and voluntary separation packages to employees, as well as cutting top salaries by 5 to 10 percent. Still, he wrote that job cuts “will very likely be necessary” depending on “participation in voluntary programs” and “progress toward our budget goals.”
University of Lynchburg
Faculty buyouts are on the table at the private liberal arts college in Virginia as it seeks to reduce a persistent budget deficit it has been whittling down for the past three years, Cardinal News reported.
That deficit has reportedly dropped from $12 million in late 2022 to about $2.7 million currently.
Programs on the chopping block, all at the undergraduate level, include an integrated major in math and English, medieval and Renaissance studies, music theory, and musicology, among others. Students currently enrolled will be able to complete those programs before they are terminated.
Signed into law earlier this year, SB1 bans diversity efforts in higher education and requires colleges to drop undergraduate programs that yield fewer than five degrees annually, averaged over a three-year period. However, colleges can ask the Ohio Department of Education for waivers to keep such programs, which Ohio State has done for a dozen offerings.
High tuition rates and cost-of-living expenses can make it difficult for students to make ends meet in the present, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worried about future financial burdens. A 2025 Student Voice survey found that one in five respondents say their biggest source of stress when considering their post-college future is “affording life after graduation.”
A 2024 survey by Handshake found that more than 40 percent of students have thought at least “a fair amount” about planning for retirement; 15 percent say it’s a major focus area. However, a majority of young people are not saving for retirement (61 percent), according to a 2024 survey by CNBC and Generation Lab.
By the numbers: Nationally, about three in five adults have a retirement savings plan, with more college graduates (81 percent) likely to have a retirement plan than those with some college (58 percent) or those without a college education (39 percent), according to 2025 Gallup data. Young adults between 18 and 29 were less likely to be planning for retirement in general. However, many Gen Zers have aspirations to retire by age 65, 2024 Morning Consult data showed.
Preparing students for financial stability beyond college also has implications for their families; over half of students told Handshake they plan to provide financial support for older family members during their career.
Previous research shows that some graduates who take on large amounts of debt to attend college may be less likely to reach adequate retirement wealth. One study found that graduates in 60 percent of majors analyzed—including education, political science, journalism, biology and general business—were unable to reach $290,000 in retirement savings by age 65. For students who held $40,000 in debt, “80 percent of all majors will not reach a sufficient level of financial wealth to have a 50/50 chance of not outliving their money at retirement,” according to the report.
Future planning: To help students prepare for the future, some colleges and universities offer financial planning support or supply resources on financial education.
Many institutions partner with iGrad, which provides financial literacy training. iGrad offers courses for students to help them plan for retirement, with content including understanding tax implications, identifying Social Security benefits and navigating common retirement pitfalls. The platform also has a retirement analyzer tool to help students understand the gap between their retirement savings and their goals.
Kansas State University’s Powercat Financial division offers peer counselors and staff who can answer questions about retirement planning and help students navigate various accounts that might be available to them. The university has also created blog posts that detail how to evaluate employee benefits.
Two-thirds of undergraduates surveyed by Handshake said they wouldn’t accept a job that didn’t include retirement benefits, and an additional 32 percent said retirement benefits aren’t essential, but they are important.
Trinity College’s website features a Retirement 101 guide, which helps students understand when they might decide to retire, how to calculate comfortable retirement savings and how investing can factor into retirement income.
Wellesley College encourages students both to save for their own sake and also to consider how they can give back to the college through a charitable remainder trust or by deeding their residence to the college.
How does your college or university encourage students to practice wise money habits? Tell us about it.
Every college and university president I know has on their faculty the Angry Eight. Or the Furious Five. Sometimes just the Irked Individual. One president told me about an initiative that was resisted but finally passed with all but one vote in favor. That lone no was a victory: If the person had voted yes, it would have signaled compromise of values.
When I ask whether the Angry Eight are still producing scholarship or doing good work in the classroom, you can guess the answer. After one president at a fancy-pants institution got a vote of no confidence, I read the many pages of materials filed against him. Then I googled each faculty name to check their research activity. Looks like these folks sure had a lot of free time.
What’s most troubling to presidents, they say, is when the Angry Eight take the floor to rant and everyone else in the room starts looking at their phones or nails. No one stands up to the bullies. It’s hard for faculty to argue for decisions they know their colleagues won’t like; most of us remember being not picked for middle school teams. Plus, we know our peers will be evaluating us when it comes to tenure and promotion. Even when they’re not angry, it still always seems to be the same people doing all the talking. Not a great example of classroom management or collaborative decision-making.
To be clear, the presidents and chancellors I know respect and admire their faculty. They say that the vast majority take their jobs seriously. They are devoted teachers, they publish, they shoulder the massive workload of helping run a university. This is also my experience. I am grateful to have colleagues willing to staff all the necessary committees. I’ve done enough service to know I’m generally more useful in the classroom and am smarter, nicer and more temperate on the page than I ever was when I served in Faculty Senate.
As an assistant professor, I kept my big fat mouth shut in Senate. Before I had tenure, I knew I needed to learn the culture of the professoriate. But after a few years sitting silently through meetings wondering why so much time was devoted to copyediting policies and procedures and also hearing colleagues rant about how the administration was doing wrong and terrible things, I thought, Oh! This is how we were supposed to behave. Distrust and don’t bother to verify! Accuse and rant! So I learned to speak out. And never shut up.
I wish I could blame my previous bad behavior to youthful arrogance or on a life spent in school without exposure to professional work, where you have supervisors and are expected to deliver. But nope. I came to a faculty role in my early 40s with plenty of “real world” experience. When I was staff as a university press editor and in an admissions office, I knew if I didn’t do my job, I could and should be fired. Post-tenure? Party time!
Over time I was enculturated into an attitude of you’re not the boss of me. When administrators asked for reports, colleagues shrugged: We’re not going to do that. The reasoning? They always ask; nothing happens; it’s a waste of effort. Forget it.
I’ve seen faculty members who, once promoted, stopped even pretending to do the scholarly work that had earned them promotion and just spent time on committees doing the “whatever it is, I’m against it’ dance.
Which brings me back to shared governance, the thing that makes academe both fascinating and baffling to outsiders. Curriculum must be controlled by subject matter experts, otherwise you end up with, say, a health official who believes long-effective vaccines are harmful. Expertise matters. No physicist should decide which books writers read and no writer should be teaching organic chemistry.
But neither should I be telling the basketball coach who needs more playing time (though I think I know) or the CFO which budget model to use. Sure, I worked in admissions a long time ago, but the enrollment VP knows more than I ever did.
And yet, we faculty members often think we know more than we do about, well, everything and feel like we can express that in Faculty Senate.
It would be an interesting experiment to ask everyone on a campus for a definition of “shared governance.” Like “Foucauldian,” it gets tossed around with more bravado than clarity. One former president told her faculty, “Shared governance is not the same as co-management.” Too often the Angry Eight are up in arms about things that are clearly outside their lane.
And too often, free speech and academic freedom get conflated (though both may be a thing of the past, as we’ve been seeing in recent weeks). Faculty must have control over what goes on in the classroom. And we need leaders who will fight against legislators who’d prefer we include in our syllabi things like phrenology and pastafarianism.
Here’s what scares me: That threat may not be as crazy as it seems. While most presidents are swept up tracking the deluge of doo-doo coming out of D.C. (and the states), faculty members tend not to keep up with general higher ed news and don’t realize how dire things are beyond their campus walls.
Why? Because faculty are focused on doing their jobs (and doing them well, even as all of us are being asked to do more with less). Most don’t have the time, bandwidth or interest to track higher ed policy shifts, public distrust or enrollment crises. Most have not paid attention to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its evil policy spawn. Many don’t even know how their own budgets work, clinging to the naïve belief that cutting football would rain millions down on academic affairs. Every campus has its magic-money-tree myth.
And those who have been around a few blocks feel like they’ve heard this song before. Administrators come and go but we’ve been here and we’ll outlast you. The last guy who came in said we were broke. So did the guy before him. Whatev.
Um. No. Right now things are pretty freaking dire.
Presidents’ hardest task may be educating their campuses on these realities without scaring the bejesus out of everyone. How to convince people who have never really had to worry about job security that the sky is in fact falling? That the world has changed and we’re no longer respected? That not everyone thinks college is worth it and they’re showing that by not showing up? That AI has already changed everything?
Our roles as teachers and scholars are more essential than ever, and we need to protect and defend higher ed to keep doing what we do best. It’s not the time to be fighting in Faculty Senate meetings about where the recycling bins should be placed on campus or if there are dust bunnies in offices or which departments, with four tenured faculty and three students, need to be preserved.
Shared governance is an important way of keeping each other accountable. Yes, there are presidents who do hinky things. There are careerist and craven provosts. Some deans operate out of self-interest or play favorites. Many administrators never learned to be good managers. A system of checks and balances used to be built into our nation’s government is essential.
The average tenure of a president has gone down from six years to about 60 days. When a president “resigns abruptly,” it’s not usually because they were embezzling or sleeping with students, but because they are caught between boards who want change and faculty who do not. They are faced with a number of seemingly insurmountable challenges from the outside. Before we take votes of no confidence or dig in for a fight about dust bunnies, it might be helpful to remember we can’t keep going through leaders like Kleenex during flu season if we want our institutions to survive.
Given how many institutions are closing, merging or getting rid of faculty, I’m grateful there are still a few people who are willing to step up in higher education so I can just focus on my students and feel fortunate to still have a job.
Though really, if I’m being honest, I still think that little point guard deserves more minutes.
Rachel Toor is a contributing editor at Inside Higher Ed and the co-founder of The Sandbox, a weekly newsletter that allows presidents and chancellors to write anonymously. She is also a professor of creative writing and the author of books on weirdly diverse subjects. Reach her here with questions, comments and complaints compliments.
