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  • Students feel “spammed” by “overload” of university emails

    Students feel “spammed” by “overload” of university emails

    Students feel that they receive “too many emails” from their universities, and they find their institution’s communications “inconsistent, inauthentic and rather annoying,” according to researchers.

    A new paper says that an “overload” of emails sent from universities to students means important emails are getting “buried” and that students simply disengage from their inboxes.

    The article, based on interviews with students, senior academics and professional staff who typically distribute emails, found that students were more likely to read emails sent by course tutors, whereas they were likely to ignore mass emails sent from unknown senders.

    “Students spoke positively about the messages that related to modules they were studying but were critical of the ‘dear student’ mass communications, which most described as ‘irrelevant’ and some described as ‘spam’,” says the paper published in Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education.

    It found students were “remarkably consistent” when filtering their emails, explaining, “They read all the emails relating to their modules, then prioritized the rest using the name of the generator and the subject line. Messages from teaching staff were welcomed, but students rarely read messages from unknown generators, messages sent to all students or newsletters.”

    Student services staff said they felt “uncomfortable [and] even guilty” about some of the messages they were asked to distribute, and one student told the researchers, “In my first year, like, there were so many emails being sent out that I basically just gave up.”

    However, report co-author Judith Simpson, lecturer in material culture at the University of Leeds, told Times Higher Education that while institutions were “a long way away from optimal communication,” it was “important to note that we measured student perception of email.”

    “Some students definitely feel as if they are being spammed, but we don’t actually know how many emails it takes to create that effect. A small number of emails asking you to do life admin might feel like a horrible burden if you haven’t done life admin before,” she said.

    The article concedes that “universities are in a difficult situation” and that “students expect to be provided with necessary information but seem unprepared to read it.”

    It argues that while this is an “eternal problem” and students failed to read paper handbooks in the pre-email era, “‘overload’ does seem to have been accentuated by the pandemic,” when universities “compensated” for the lack of in-person communication by “reaching out” to students via email. This often included important news, as well as information about “all the good things the university was doing” during this period to support students.

    “Staff and students are less likely to meet on campus now that hybrid working is the norm, and the ‘email habits’ developed in the pandemic are still in operation,” the article says.

    It suggests that to improve student engagement, universities should consider re-routing well-being messages through personal tutors, and that administrative staff should be introduced to students—virtually or in-person—to increase trust in communications.

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  • California colleges confront loss as Los Angeles burns

    California colleges confront loss as Los Angeles burns

    The past week has been a blur for Fred Farina, the California Institute of Technology’s chief innovation officer, who lost his home in the fires still tearing through Los Angeles.

    “Things turned on a dime. One evening we were sitting in our living room and within 10 minutes we had to evacuate,” said Farina, who lived in Altadena, one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by the Eaton fire. “The loss of everything you have is hard to deal with.”

    Farina is one of hundreds of faculty, staff and students from colleges and universities across Los Angeles who have been displaced by the wildfires.

    While most institutions were spared burn damage to their physical plants, many spent the last week entrenched in immediate recovery efforts. Numerous colleges are raising money to help students and staff secure housing and other basic needs.

    Others are opening shelters and food pantries. Pepperdine University’s law school is hosting free remote legal clinics to educate homeowners and lawyers about federal emergency assistance and related issues such as insurance, leases and mortgages. And the University of California, Los Angeles, opened space at its research park for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to use as a disaster recovery center for fire victims living on the city’s Westside.

    Flexibility and Compassion

    But beyond efforts to meet their communities’ most pressing needs, colleges in Los Angeles are also figuring out how to move forward and get through a semester already scarred by more than one of the most destructive fires in California history. The priority emerging for most college leaders is moving forward with flexibility and compassion.

    “Words seem inadequate to capture the scale of the devastation,” said Thomas F. Rosenbaum, president of Caltech in Pasadena, near where the Eaton fire destroyed 1,400 homes. “The Caltech community has responded with compassion and generosity, seeking to help each other and working heroically to permit Caltech and [the Jet Propulsion Laboratory] to resume their fundamental missions of learning and discovery. We are in this for the long term, and the closeness of our community gives us hope for the future.”

    The blaze didn’t reach the Caltech campus itself, but the institute estimates that more than 1,000 students and employees live in an evacuation zone. Of those, more than 90 employees have lost their homes, along with at least 200 employees—many of whom live in the decimated nearby enclave of Altadena—of the Caltech-managed Jet Propulsion Lab.

    Caltech was one of the many colleges in Southern California that closed down last week—in addition to Santa Monica College, Pasadena City College and Glendale Community College—as strong winds accelerated the Palisades and Eaton fires and displaced scores of people affiliated with those campuses.

    Caltech resumed in-person classes Monday, and most other local colleges have done the same or are planning to in the coming days as the air quality continues to improve. But hundreds of students, staff and faculty are far from resuming life as it was before the fire.

    “It’s pretty overwhelming, the things that have to be done to get back to a good situation,” said Farina, who is in the throes of dealing with insurance and disaster relief logistics after losing his home. “There’s so many decisions that have to be made so quickly.”

    Although Farina is uncertain about when he’ll find permanent new housing for his family—apartments are scarce and rents have skyrocketed in the past week—Caltech helped him and many other employees secure a temporary place to live. So far, the Caltech and JPL Disaster Relief Fund has raised about $2 million, and the fund is giving that money to help displaced people meet their basic needs in the aftermath of the fires.

    Numerous other L.A.-area colleges are also helping their students and employees get access to cash and safe housing, which have emerged as two of the most needed resources more than a week after the fires started.

     At California State University at Los Angeles, at least 60 faculty, staff and students lost their homes, and college officials expects that number to grow. The university is raising money and offering basic needs support for those most affected, which includes grants for housing and food as well as adjustments to teaching and learning, as needed. Cal State LA President Berenecea Johnson Eanes said in a memo Wednesday that the institution “will continue to harness the healing power of our university for the long road to recovery.” (This paragraph was updated with information provided after publication.)

    The L.A. Foundation for Los Angeles Community Colleges launched the L.A. Strong: Disaster Response Fund, which is raising money to give people financial assistance for housing, transportation, clothing, food and other basic needs.

    “What’s most important right now is financial support,” said Alberto J. Román, chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District, who expected the first round of assistance to be distributed by the end of the week. “We consider these really unprecedented times with an impact, and that’s why we are compassionate and empathetic of individual situations.”

    None of LACCD’s nine campuses sustained fire damage, and Román said he doesn’t believe any of the district’s more than 200,000 students and 9,000 employees were injured as a result of the disaster, either.

    “The impact that we’ve had has been on folks who’ve been evacuated or lost their homes, road closures preventing people from coming to work or power outages and being without internet,” he said, noting that the colleges transitioned to remote work last week.

    Although LACCD resumed in-person operations this week, Román said the district wants to be flexible with students and staff whose lives have been upended by the fires.

    “It is important for us to continue instruction,” he said. “It’s a balance between health and safety and ensuring that students can finish their courses.”

    Glendale Community College reopened for in-person classes Wednesday, though at least a dozen employees and 20 students lost their homes and dozens more had to evacuate. While officials continue to try and make contact with the 600 students who live in evacuation ZIP codes, the college is also offering extra paid leave for some employees, raising money, supplying students with laptops and helping people connect with other resources.

    Smoke and fire could be seen from the Glendale Community College’s Verdugo campus last week.

    Glendale Community College

    Tzoler Oukayan, dean of student affairs at Glendale CC, said the college is allowing students to withdraw from their classes without facing a penalty.

    “The challenge is that a lot of our students in these areas didn’t—and some still don’t—have power. Access to the internet and their classes has been very challenging,” she said. “It was important for us to open up campus and give people a place to just be.”

    Empathy and compassion will also be a priority for Mount St. Mary’s University president Ann McElaney-Johnson when her campus reopens. As of Thursday, the university’s Chalon campus—which is about three miles from the burn path of the Palisades fire—was still under evacuation orders and four faculty members so far have lost their homes.

    “The impact of the fire—once we’ve ascertained what it is—is going to be tremendous. So, we really want to make sure we’re caring for our community as we move forward,” McElaney-Johnson said, adding that the university is using money from its operations budget to provide staff and students with financial assistance. “We’ll pick up where we need to, but there will be special attention. Some of the plans for different projects can get put on hold. Right now, the only thing that really matters is the safety and well-being of this community.”

    ‘Healing More Than Academics’

    That’s the approach California State University, Chico, took in 2018, when it reopened two weeks after the Camp fire destroyed the homes of more than 300 faculty, staff and students.

    “We made sure that we had all of the exceptions and support systems in place to prioritize the people who were part of our community, to make sure our eye was on their long-term success,” said Ashley Gebb, executive director of communications at Chico State. “We were focused on healing more than academics. It was about how we could get students to the end of semester with their well-being as a priority.”

    While Gebb said Chico State was “one of the first to have a community leveled by a fire like this,” the fires in Southern California this month have proven that catastrophes of this scale are becoming more common.

    Meredith Leigh, climate programs manager for Second Nature, a nonprofit focused on higher education’s role in climate action, said it’s a signal that higher education institutions across the country should be prepared to navigate increasingly drastic events.

    “While campuses across our network have taken steps to increase climate resilience and adaptation, the scale and impact of the current fires (as well as recent floods in the East) is novel in its intensity,” she said. “In this way, the biggest lesson for campuses across the nation is to shift the mental model for resiliency and emergency management—away from planning and implementation based on what has happened in the past, toward what are certain to be more frequent and intense events that previously seemed ‘unimaginable.’”

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  • Indiana governor issues executive order eliminating DEI

    Indiana governor issues executive order eliminating DEI

    Indiana governor Mike Braun signed an executive order Wednesday eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion in all state agencies and replacing it with what he’s calling “MEI”—merit, excellence and innovation.

    The order requires all executive branch state agencies to uphold the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard, which prohibited the consideration of race in college admissions, noting that “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it” and that equal protection applies “without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality.”

    Under the order, government offices cannot use state funds, property or resources to support DEI initiatives, require job candidates to issue DEI statements or “mandate any person to disclose their pronouns.” State agencies must review their individual programs and policies for compliance by April 30 and provide a written report to the governor by July 1.

    The order also closes the government’s Office of the Chief Equity, Opportunity and Inclusion Officer, which was created in 2020 under Braun’s predecessor, Governor Eric Holcomb.

    This makes Indiana the second state this year to eliminate DEI by executive order, following West Virginia.

    Among the other executive orders Braun signed during his first week as governor was one requiring the state personnel office to review all job postings and eliminate degree requirements for positions where they’re not necessary.

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  • Prof. says he was fired for email calling U.S. racist, fascist

    Prof. says he was fired for email calling U.S. racist, fascist

    After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, some faculty canceled classes to allow themselves and students time to process a result that shocked the media and academe.

    Campus responses to Trump’s re-election in November seemed more muted. But at Millsaps College, a private Mississippi institution of roughly 600 students, James Bowley said he canceled his Abortion and Religions class meeting the day after the election.

    Bowley, a tenured religious studies professor, told Inside Higher Ed the class had only three students, and he knew they were upset about Trump’s re-election. He said he sent them an email with the subject line “no class today” and one line of text: “need time to mourn and process this racist fascist country.”

    For what he wrote in that email, Bowley said, the college swiftly barred him from campus and, on Tuesday, fired him—ending his more than 22 years of employment. He’s now fighting to get his job back and said he remains on the payroll while he appeals to the institution’s Board of Trustees.

    “This seems to me like the very definition of censorship, and of course it will make every single faculty member fearful of the administration, fearful of sharing their own opinions,” Bowley said. “There are hundreds of historians who would say that the election was a victory for fascism and racism,” he added.

    The college didn’t provide interviews Thursday and didn’t answer written questions. The situation appears to be another example of faculty members being punished for commenting on current events—but this time involving communication to a small group of students, according to Bowley. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech and academic freedom advocacy group, is pushing for Bowley’s reinstatement.

    “This is absolutely absurd,” said Haley Gluhanich, a senior program officer in FIRE’s campus rights department. She said that when Bowley was initially suspended, “he was charged with an offense that does not exist in any of the handbooks, so they completely just made up a violation of policy.”

    The Email Gets Out

    Bowley said one of the students who received the email shared it on Instagram, approvingly, but another student whom he doesn’t know reported it to administrators. Bowley said he got a call from interim provost Stephanie Rolph on Nov. 7, the day after he sent the email, saying he was being placed on leave for it and banned from campus.

    “I was shocked, I was dumbfounded, I just could not believe it,” Bowley said.

    A copy of a letter from Rolph to Bowley, obtained by Inside Higher Ed, says this leave was “pending a review of the use of your Millsaps email account to share personal opinions with your students.” In the letter, Rolph told Bowley his email account access was cut off and further told him not to “engage with students.”

    The suspension dragged on, Bowley said, and three weeks in he filed a grievance against Rolph—which led to a hearing. Then, on Dec. 27, a grievance panel composed of three faculty members ruled that Bowley should be reinstated, according to a copy of the ruling that FIRE provided.

    “We recognize that Dr. Bowley has, on multiple occasions, shown poor judgment in his use of campus email,” the committee wrote. But during the hearing, Rolph couldn’t “identify a specific policy that Dr. Bowley violated,” they said. “No policy prohibiting the use of campus email to share personal opinions with students exists in either the Faculty Handbook or the Staff Handbook.”

    The panel further recommended that “Rolph issue a formal apology to Dr. Bowley” and that Bowley “be compensated for the loss of income resulting from his removal from the winter study abroad course he had been scheduled to teach.” Bowley told Inside Higher Ed that was a course in Mexico for which he would’ve been paid more than $6,000 and would have had his travel expenses covered. 

    The panel also concluded that Bowley wasn’t “afforded due process.” It said Rolph had argued that the both the staff handbook and the faculty handbook applied to faculty. It also mentioned unresolved tension between the interim provost’s confidentiality claims and Bowley’s right to the hearing, saying the “interim provost can refuse to answer substantive questions pertaining to the grievance.” (Michael Pickard, chair of the grievance panel and vice president of the college’s Faculty Council, said he couldn’t comment Thursday. Rolph didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

    Millsaps president Frank Neville rejected the grievance panel’s report and then fired Bowley on Tuesday, according to Bowley.

    Bowley and FIRE said there was an extra twist at the end: FIRE wrote on its website that Bowley was told in a meeting Tuesday that he was also fired for “not clarifying that his views were not that of the college’s. To be clear: The college fired Bowley for an offense … of which he wasn’t accused.”

    “The FIRE article is riddled with inaccuracies,” wrote college spokesperson Joey Lee in an email to Inside Higher Ed. He did not specify what those inaccuracies were.

    “Because Millsaps does not disclose information about individual employment matters for privacy and confidentiality reasons, the article is based on incomplete information,” he wrote.

    ‘A Bit Reckless’

    Was Bowley fired for more than the email? The college won’t specify, and Bowley didn’t provide a copy of his termination letter.

    David Wood, the Faculty Council president, told Inside Higher Ed he doesn’t exactly know why Bowley was fired, but he doesn’t think he should have been. Wood said he’s disappointed in the college administration and “the extreme nature of the punishment.” But he also said he’s disappointed in Bowley.

    “This is partly on him as well,” Wood said.

    Wood doesn’t believe academic freedom is under threat at Millsaps and thinks “everything was done legally and by our own rules at the college,” he said.

    (After this article was initially published Friday, Wood added in an email that he believes the “initial suspension was unfair and unsubstantiated” and that Rolph “exercised very poor judgment in banning James without a hearing.” Wood wrote that he believes “the review continued and shifted because” Rolph “realized she was wrong and had to go fishing for other reasons to fire James. The rest of her investigation I believe was done according to the rules of the Faculty Handbook.”)

    Asked whether college leaders were upset with Bowley for previous alleged transgressions, Wood said, “There’s a history there, I’ll just put it that way.”

    “James has been a bit reckless in the past, but I do not believe that being terminated was the appropriate punishment,” Wood said. “James likes to push the envelope, let me just put it that way … he’s not going to steer away from controversial issues.”

    Bowley, for his part, said that Rolph had verbally reprimanded him before for sharing with students and employees—through email—a brochure for a prayer vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza that used the term “genocide.”

    But Bowley said the postelection email was the primary reason for his firing. Regarding any other accusations, he said, “The administration spent two months trying to find other things, and they allege that there were problems in my other class.”

    One accusation leveled at him was “lack of awareness of the status of assignments and grades for a course,” he said. But he wasn’t allowed to appear before a committee to answer such charges, he said, or access his emails and other documents to defend himself.

    He also said he’s protested the death penalty and celebrated the legalization of gay marriage and has ended up on the news for such demonstrations.

    “The idea of me pushing the envelope is me being an activist,” Bowley said. “I am an activist and people know that.”

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  • HBCU leaders prepare for “delicate dance” under Trump

    HBCU leaders prepare for “delicate dance” under Trump

    Mississippi Valley State University, a historically Black institution, proudly announced last month that its marching band was invited to perform at Donald Trump’s upcoming inauguration. The university’s president, Jerryl Briggs, described the invitation as a chance to “showcase our legacy” and “celebrate our culture.” A GoFundMe campaign was started in hopes of raising enough money for the Mean Green Marching Machine Band to make its debut on the national stage.

    Then the fighting started. Social media exploded with reactions to the move from within and outside of HBCU campus communities, with alumni coming down on both sides of the issue. Some condemned the university for participating in the celebration while others argued the band should embrace its moment in the spotlight. (The band is doing that, heading to the inauguration on Monday.)

    The moment felt like déjà vu. During the first Trump administration, in 2017, a group of HBCU leaders spoke with Trump during an impromptu visit to the Oval Office after they met with other government officials. A photo of their interaction with the president went viral, prompting swift backlash and skepticism. “Is it a photo op, is it an opportunity for Trump to put himself next to Black people and smile?” Llewellyn Robinson, a Howard University sophomore at the time, asked The New York Times. “Is that the situation we’re dealing with? Or is it truly a seat at the table?”

    The controversy speaks to a tension HBCU leaders face ahead of a second Trump administration, with Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress. On the one hand, they want to foster positive relationships with the powers that be and take advantage of whatever opportunities the new administration can offer their students and institutions. On the other hand, they’re serving communities with deep misgivings about the incoming president.

    Most Black voters, 83 percent, voted for Kamala Harris, reported AP VoteCast. And while that’s fewer than the 91 percent who voted for President Biden in 2020, it’s still the vast majority at a time when many Black Americans, including HBCU students, are leery of anti-DEI rhetoric and state laws advanced by Trump supporters. Some have a more tangible worry: that Trump’s talk of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education may threaten the federal financial aid that gets many HBCU students to and through college and helps often cash-starved, tuition-dependent institutions meet their bottom lines.

    HBCU leaders and scholars find themselves, once again, thinking through how to navigate a fraught political moment.

    “It is sometimes a delicate dance,” said Walter Kimbrough, interim president of Talladega College and the former president of Philander Smith College and Dillard University. He expects some HBCU presidents will avoid “high-profile photo opportunities” with members of the new administration this time around. Even so, “we have to let our constituents know, we have to work with whoever is in the White House. That’s part of the job.”

    He also, however, believes part of the job is pushing back on policies that could hurt the sector regardless of who’s in office.

    “We need to be consistent on the things that are good for us, to be advocating,” he said, “and the things that we think are problematic, we need to be brave enough to speak up against those, too.”

    But doing so can be precarious for HBCU presidents and their institutions, said Melanye Price, a political science professor and director of the Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice at Prairie View A&M University. “The question is always: Is it better to speak out with the potential of losing whatever ability you have to tend to and care for students, or figure out ways to maneuver within the context that you’re in now and still be able to help students?” Price said.

    Efforts to partner with the new Trump administration have already begun. The Thurgood Marshall College Fund, an organization representing public HBCUs, congratulated Trump in a statement after he was elected. They also praised some of the wins HBCUs achieved under his first administration, including the FUTURE Act, which made permanent additional annual funding for minority-serving institutions, and the HBCU PARTNERS Act, which required some federal agencies to submit annual plans describing how they’d make grant programs more accessible to HBCUs.

    Michael L. Lomax, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund, which represents private HBCUs, met with Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for education secretary, in December. He said in a press release that he found her to be a “good listener” and said they had a “productive discussion” about “issues of importance to HBCUs, HBCU students, the nation’s underserved students and how to improve the avenues of learning for all students.”

    “We will continue to work with those elected, because the needs of our institutions and students are urgent,” Lomax added. “Our motto is ‘A mind is a terrible thing to waste,’ but so is an opportunity to advance our HBCU-related goals and objectives.”

    Strategies and Priorities

    Trump has often touted his support for HBCUs during his first term, arguing in a presidential debate last summer that he “got them all funded,” though HBCU leaders have pointed out that many of these successes were initially pushed forward by Congress and signed by the president. It’s also unclear whether support for HBCUs, a meaningful issue to Black voters, will be as much of an emphasis for Trump in his final term now that he’s no longer striving for re-election.

    But HBCU leaders express optimism that they can secure some legislative wins in the next four years, given that support for the institutions has historically come from both sides of the aisle. And they plan to keep it that way.

    “While I can’t say what the future may hold, I can say that our most recent interactions with the secretary-designate seemed as if we have reason to be positive about the next steps,” said Lodriguez Murray, UNCF’s vice president of public policy and government affairs.

    HBCUs achieved some of their goals in partnership with the first Trump administration, Murray noted, including some loan forgiveness for institutions that received federal disaster relief loans as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

    Harry Williams, president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, noted another reason for optimism heading into the new Trump term: Most HBCUs are located in red states, so they’ve always developed and relied on positive relationships with Republican lawmakers.

    State-level challenges to DEI programming from Republican lawmakers have ramped up anxieties on HBCU campuses about the state and federal political climate for their institutions in the years ahead, Williams said. But “what we have seen, and we’re hoping to continue” is that those same states are still investing in HBCUs. For example, Tennessee recently coughed up funds to keep Tennessee State University afloat, and Florida has made some sizable investments in HBCUs in recent years, he added.

    Williams hopes the incoming administration and Congress will echo those state lawmakers in their treatment of HBCUs. “Our strategy is to continue to partner with both sides and continue to forge relationships and create opportunities for our member schools to come and visit” government officials, he said.

    Kimbrough said those visits from HBCU representatives are going to be particularly important in the years ahead. Trump had an HBCU graduate and advocate among the ranks of his first administration, he noted—his former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman. But “right now, he doesn’t have anybody who really knows HBCUs at a close [level],” he said, “so we’ve got to do a lot of teaching and educating them about what we do, what our value is to the country.”

    With those ties reinforced, HBCU leaders plan to advocate for a long-held policy wish list: higher annual funding, improvements to campuses’ infrastructure, relief for institutions in debt and increases to the Pell Grant, federal financial aid for low-income students that helps the majority of HBCU students pay for college. HBCU leaders also want federal money for campus safety and security measures after a slew of bomb threats against HBCUs in 2022, which some campus leaders contend was inadequately handled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

    “We don’t believe that a single student needs to have in their mind that something is happening to their institution simply because of what the institution is and who they are,” Murray said.

    Murray noted one more priority: increased funding for the Education Department’s Strengthening Historically Black Colleges and Universities program, from about $400 million per year to at least $500 million, to keep pace with inflation.

    Student Fears, Faculty Concerns

    The day after the election, students in Price’s class on voting rights at Prairie View A&M discussed the results. The same worry came up over and over again: How will they pay for college if Trump abolishes the Department of Education?

    According to data from TMCF, more than 75 percent of HBCU students rely on Pell Grants, federal financial aid for low-income students. Price said it’s natural that students are worried about any policy plans that could destabilize financial aid. “There is a palpable fear about what this new administration will bring and that there’s no one to stop them,” she said.

    The students’ often tuition-dependent institutions are also vulnerable if changes in financial aid make it difficult for students to pay; most HBCUs don’t have large endowments or megadonors as a safety net.

    University of the District of Columbia professors, worried themselves, described a particular kind of pall hanging over their students ahead of Inauguration Day as they prepare for the Trump administration and new members of Congress to settle into the deep-blue district. To acknowledge and address some of students’ fears and worries, two faculty members organized a pre-inauguration teach-in today. It will begin with mindfulness practices, followed by panel discussions and speakers on Washington, D.C., history and politics and how the transition of power could affect the district.

    “Students are concerned about what the city will feel like in terms of its receptivity [and] tolerance around diversity,” said Michelle Chatman, associate professor of crime, justice and security studies and the founding director of the Mindful and Courageous Action Lab at UDC. Since Congress has more sway over D.C. than elsewhere, students also worry about programming and curriculum at the HBCU given restrictions on African American studies pushed by Republican lawmakers in other parts of the country. “We want them to feel empowered, and we want to normalize their feelings of concern.”

    Amanda Huron, a professor of interdisciplinary social sciences and political science and the director of the D.C. History Lab at UDC, said a teach-in felt like the obvious move in this tense political moment.

    “When we think, ‘well, what can we do in this moment, what can we as a university community do’—what we do is teach,” Huron said.

    She acknowledged that HBCUs have a difficult balance to strike right now. “HBCUs in the country, we want to thrive, regardless of what’s going on politically, and we need to, because we need to serve our students,” Huron said. At the same time, “we need to make sure that we are always providing spaces for critical and honest and fact-based conversation, so I think it’s important that we’re able to do both things.”

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  • Despite being global leader, UK cannot afford to rest on its laurels in digital, AI and green skills

    Despite being global leader, UK cannot afford to rest on its laurels in digital, AI and green skills

    By Matteo Quacquarelli, Vice President of Strategy and Analytics at QS Quacquarelli Symonds.

    Across the globe, economies are grappling with skills and talent challenges. From talent saturation to workforce reskilling, each country is facing its own unique issues as it prepares for the evolution of the digital age.

    The QS World Future Skills Index, just launched, offers a detailed breakdown of the globe’s higher education systems, their links with industries and how countries are preparing for the next industrial evolution. Using exclusive QS data, it identifies where economies and countries need to align their higher education outcomes with the needs of industry in three key areas – green, AI and digital.

    The analysis delves into 81 economies and finds that UK higher education is currently one of the world’s best for cultivating students with the future skills business and industry are calling out for.

    It measures four indicators linked to skills like AI proficiency, digital literacy and environmental sustainability that will form the bedrock of the industries of tomorrow.

    Skills Fit measures how well countries are equipping graduates with the skills employers desire. In this, no country is currently better than the UK. Using data from both our own largest-of-its-kind QS Global Employer Survey and the World Bank Group, we identified that UK employers have the highest satisfaction rates with the skills graduates bring with them, anywhere in the world – but perhaps only for the time being.

    Additionally, the UK received top marks in the Academic Readiness dimension, measuring the preparedness of a country in regard to the future of work. The UK’s success in the QS World University Rankings by Subject allowed it to flourish here.

    However, the UK must not rest on its laurels. Higher education in other markets globally is innovating at a far more rapid rate than in the UK. The reputational strength of the UK – built on its history and tradition of delivering excellent teaching and learning – is unlikely to be the key driver of satisfaction going forward.

    The UK was slightly less successful than its closest rivals in the areas of Future of Work and Economic Transformation.

    Future of Work measures how well the job market is prepared to meet the growing demand for digital, AI and green skills, using 1Mentor data of over 280m job postings worldwide.

    Economic Transformation analyzes whether a country has the infrastructure, investment power, and talent available to transition to industries driven by AI, digital transformation, green technologies and high-skilled work. This indicator used data from the World Bank Group, UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the Education Policy Institute.

    This lower score is reflective of the slow-to-no economic growth seen in the UK over the past decade and the tightening of the public purse strings strangling investment in R&D and new business innovation (evidenced by decline not only in public but also private sector funding in the UK).

    The latest economic forecasts signal a further period of stagnation for the UK economy might be on the horizon.

    Just as the importance of investment in future skills cannot be understated, nor can the importance of higher education in AI breakthroughs and innovation.

    Funnelling research innovation down the value chain into industry has been the bedrock of economic innovation worldwide. Without Stanford University, there would be no Silicon Valley. In Germany, the universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen are key in the country’s Cyber Valley initiative. If Melbourne didn’t have its outstanding higher education institutions, the city would not hold the crown of tech capital of Australia.

    The QS Future World Skills Index highlights the example of South Korea, where there is a correlation between increasing numbers of young adults attaining tertiary education and GDP growth.

    The UK government’s new AI Opportunities Action Plan, announced earlier this week sets out a clear ambition strategy to maintain Britain’s position as one of the world’s AI superpowers and has been widely welcomed by industry.

    The prime minister says his government will make it easier for experts to come to the UK via its talent visas and for future leaders to learn here. Tens of thousands of additional AI professionals will be needed by 2030, he has said.

    The Government also wants to ‘increase its share of the world’s top 1,000 AI researchers’ and will launch an AI scholarship scheme to support 100 students to study in the UK.

    While the UK was also top in Europe for talent creation, with 46,000 students graduating from an AI-relevant higher education program ahead of Germany in terms of absolute numbers with 32,000, the UK is still behind Finland on a per capita basis. Without specific policy and commitment, the UK risks losing its leading position.

    The UK is missing ‘frontier conceptual, cutting-edge companies‘. DeepMind, the AI research laboratory, was one such company that was founded in the UK before being acquired by Google in 2014. But where was it established? The three co-founders meet while studying at University College London.

    The new AI Growth Zones the government has announced, with the first starting in Culham, will need to engage universities up and down the country. Higher education must also be closely involved in the Digital and Technology Sector Plan, which is set to be published in the coming months.

    The government has also previously pledged to become a green energy superpower. The QS Future World Skills Index suggests that both the UK’s job market and its higher education system is well set up to capitalise on that opportunity.

    To succeed, government policy, the needs of industry and higher education curricula must all align to create an environment where the country can succeed and be future-ready.

    Economies and higher education systems that invest in high-quality academic programmes in AI, digital and sustainability are setting themselves up for long-term success.

    For the full QS World Future Skills Index: https://www.qs.com/reports-whitepapers/world-future-skills-index

    The UK Spotlight is available here: https://www.qs.com/reports-whitepapers/uk-spotlight-qs-world-future-skills-index

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  • Being Genuine in the Classroom  – Faculty Focus

    Being Genuine in the Classroom  – Faculty Focus

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  • Diversity in the First-year Class at the Ivy Plus Institutions

    Diversity in the First-year Class at the Ivy Plus Institutions

     I’m not sure where to begin on this one, so let’s veer off topic a bit.  

    I’ve decided I’ll likely be phasing out Higher Ed Data Stories in the near future as I go into retirement and start my new venture, which is soft launched but not officially open for business.  When I do, I’ll be posting regularly on my blog over there, but won’t be putting everything out on the web for free, as I’ve been doing on this site.  I do appreciate the contributions people made on the Buy Me Coffee site, but the hosting, software, and labor costs never balanced with the revenue, and while there was a lot of good will that came from my work, I was still in a deficit situation (especially on the time part) and I’ll need to dedicate that to the business side of things.  Medicare Parts B and D ain’t free, you know.

    But this is some unfinished business, and it might be a good place to end.  You know I’ve been personally opposed to the very idea of the SAT and ACT for some time, while being professionally neutral: If colleges find value in it, I don’t care if they use one, the other, or both.

    But I do care about the truth.  On that note, two issues: The headlines suggesting that lots of colleges are returning to standardized tests for first-year admissions are just not true, of course, and everyone in the business knows this.  The testing agencies are curiously silent on the misinterpretation of this information, of course.

    The larger issue of “truth” is the justification put forth by the universities that are returning to the SAT or ACT.  They are all suggesting that they need the tests to find qualified students of color, or low-income students.  Is that true?  If it is, does it mean they denied admission to other, more highly qualified students of color with test scores? You can look at the data below, and while it’s not absolutely definitive, it is interesting.

    Before diving in, however, some caveats:

    • IPEDS reporting recognizes “two or more” as an ethnic category, but does not allow breakouts.  So many colleges will report some percentage of students in every category they check, and of course, there is good reason to do so.  There is no reason, however, to increase the numerator and not the denominator in the equation, as some of them do.  So you may notice that the numbers here don’t line up with what colleges have published.
    • IPEDS data on income or financial need is far less clear, as it only breaks out by Pell/Non-Pell.  Perhaps the researchers who have access to the unit record data can dive in more deeply.
    • We don’t have a lot data (at least not published as supporting evidence for the claim) that says there is a problem with performance among the students admitted without tests.  If that comes to light later, it might change your perception of this data, as it should.  What I have seen shows only minor differences, and given COVID and its disproportionate effects on students, I’m not sure the SAT would survive other testing.
    • Some of these charts show Simpson’s diversity, which is a different way of thinking about diversity.  It’s not the percentage of minority students; it is essentially the chance that two randomly selected members of a group will be different.  If your population was 100 and all 100 in the group were different, you’d have perfect diversity (a value of 1).  If all 100 were the same, you’d have a value of 0.  Higher numbers indicate greater diversity.

    OK.  Got it?

    There are four views in the visualization.  The first shows just Hispanic and Black/African-American enrollment in the first-year classes at the “Ivy Plus” institutions (The Ivy League institutions plus Duke, MIT, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.)  You can see the trend (in both numbers and percentage of the class) over time.  The denominator is the entire class. The blue bars show data up until 2020, and the purple bars show test optional years.

    The second shows the entire ethnic composition of the domestic students in the class.  Look at them collectively to start, then look at individual institutions using the control at right. 

    The last two views show the Simpson’s Index of Diversity for each institution over time.  The first is for domestic students, and the second is for everyone, including international students counted as an ethnicity.  Use the highlight control to focus on one institution.

    So, what do you think?  Do highly rejectives need the SAT to find students of color?  Let me know.

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  • Why Personalization in College Planning Matters More Than Ever

    Why Personalization in College Planning Matters More Than Ever

    College planning has become far more complex than filling out forms and writing essays. RNL’s research reveals a striking truth: Today’s students are overwhelmed, skeptical, and craving personalized guidance more than ever before.

    The modern student’s dilemma

    Picture this: Seven out of ten high school students find navigating the college application process challenging. They’re not just intimidated by the paperwork—they’re questioning the entire value proposition of higher education. Half believe they can build a successful career without a college degree, while 60 percent wrestle with whether college is worth their time and money.

    These aren’t just statistics. They represent real students sitting at kitchen tables across the country, staring at their laptops, trying to make one of the most significant decisions of their lives.

    The financial reality check

    Money talks, and it’s speaking louder than ever in college planning. The numbers tell a sobering story: over 90 percent of high school juniors and seniors find financing their education somewhere between “somewhat difficult” and “very difficult.” Even more telling, 60 percent of juniors and 65 percent of seniors will immediately cross a college off their list based on the sticker price alone.

    But here’s where it gets interesting: Financial aid and scholarships have become the primary hook for attracting students, with 81 percent of juniors and 78 percent of seniors ranking them as crucial factors in college choice. This isn’t just about affordability—it’s about perceived value and accessibility.

    The shifting sands of student priority

    What catches a student’s attention these days? The research shows a clear hierarchy:

    • Financial aid and scholarships (63%)
    • Athletic programs (47%) if they are interested in playing sports at the college level
    • Academic programs (43%)
    • Career placement (38%)

    But getting students interested is only half the battle. Our study reveals a fascinating pattern of why initial interest fades. Cost remains the primary deal-breaker, with 57 percent of students citing it as why they lose interest in a school. However, other factors like program availability (37%) and admission concerns (24%) play significant roles, too.

    The power of late-stage decisions

    The most surprising finding is this: 66 percent of students discover and become interested in new colleges during their senior year, and 89 percent apply to these late-discovered schools. This challenges the conventional wisdom about early outreach being the only path to enrollment success.

    The personalization imperative

    Today’s students aren’t just looking for information—they’re looking for recognition. They expect colleges to:

    • Provide program-specific details tailored to their interests
    • Deliver accurate, personalized responses to their questions
    • Acknowledge their unique situations and backgrounds
    • Communicate in culturally relevant ways
    • Use their names (yes, it matters)
    • Recognize and respect their diverse identities

    Making it personal: The path forward

    For colleges and universities, the message is clear: Generic, one-size-fits-all recruitment approaches no longer cut it. The future lies in personalized admissions counseling, tailored communication campaigns, and customized campus experiences. But most importantly, institutions need to address students’ financial concerns head-on with transparent, customized information about costs, aid, and scholarships.

    The bottom line

    The college planning landscape has evolved beyond recognition. Today’s students are savvier, more skeptical, and more demanding than ever. They’re not just looking for a college—they’re looking for one that understands them, values them, and can demonstrate why their investment will pay off.

    The opportunity is enormous for institutions willing to embrace this new reality and invest in personalization. After all, in a world where 72 percent of students find applying to college difficult, being the institution that makes it easier, more precise, and more personal isn’t just good service—it’s a competitive advantage.

    The future of college recruitment isn’t about reaching more students; it’s about reaching each student in the way that matters most to them.

    Learn more about what research says about personalization

    The Importance of Personalization in College Planning: From Interest to Application

    Join me and presenters from our partners Halda for our webinar, The Importance of Personalization in College Planning: From Interest to Application. We will cover trends that may surprise you, insights that can help you increase engagement with students, and actionable strategies you can use.

    Register now to hear more about what the latest research tells us about personalization with students.

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  • Asking students about the challenges they face

    Asking students about the challenges they face

    Increasing numbers of undergraduate students are either neurodivergent or living with a mental health condition, and in some cases both – but their voices aren’t being heard.

    Departments know that these students face particular challenges in their academic studies, but struggle with how to best support them, especially given pressures to do more with fewer resources. University lecturers are also growing more familiar with these conditions, either because of their own personal experience, or because of greater cultural awareness and openness around neurodivergence and mental illness. All of us in the MINOTAUR team have lived experience ourselves or loved ones living with neurodivergence and mental illness, which has informed our approach to this work.

    One way universities have tried to adapt to this change in their student populations has been by issuing support agreements through their disability services team, but these are often very general and don’t always address the actual challenges individual students are facing. We know that this lack of support is having a negative impact on student experiences and academic outcomes.

    Student voice

    The MINOTAUR project (Mental Illness and NeurOdiversiTy Academic sUppoRt), run out of the classics department at Royal Holloway, University of London, grew out of an EDI survey which identified a significant population of students in the department who were neurodivergent and/or living with mental illness. We then ran a series of student focus groups in summer 2023 to identify issues facing these students and solutions the department could implement in order to improve their experience as learners.

    As far as we know, it is the first time that focus groups have been used to ask this diverse community of students about their experiences during their degrees – within Royal Holloway, within our discipline, and quite possibly within HE. Certainly there are no easily visible parallel initiatives in the sector. The recommendations we made following these discussions have been simple and easy to implement, and we know they’ve made a great deal of difference to our student cohort.

    So, in an age where the student voice has become a critical part of university life, why do these students often go unheard?

    A literature review carried out this summer with the support of the RHUL School of Humanities Scholarship and Innovation Fund confirmed our suspicion that interventions for students with neurodivergence and mental illness are typically being done to students rather than shaped by them. This review sampled a wide range of work and resources aimed at supporting university and school students with ADHD, autism, other forms of neurodivergence and mental illness. These studies largely took the form of designing an intervention, implementing it, and considering its effectiveness. There seemed to be few attempts at co-creation, co-design, or co-production.

    However, our experience with the first stage of MINOTAUR suggests that not asking students to identify the challenges they are facing and how these might be addressed means we are missing some simple, low-effort, high-effect interventions that can offer immediate support. In the longer term, it also means that those who design interventions address the problems that they can see, not the problems that students are experiencing.

    Simplicity is a virtue

    Studies indicate that increasing self-knowledge and self-advocacy skills among neurodivergent students can contribute to positive academic outcomes. Through applying principles of co-design, we can empower students to take ownership of their learning while ensuring that any interventions address their real needs. This may be particularly impactful for students without a formal diagnosis, who may not be eligible for support within existing university systems. Co-design can also increase community buy-in to projects and interventions, which is essential as part of supporting a cohort of students who are more likely to become disengaged and isolated when facing challenges.

    One great example of this for MINOTAUR has been an intervention so simple that we wouldn’t have thought of it without talking to our students. As a department, we have a reputation for being supportive and understanding for students living with neurodivergence and mental illness, but as staff we had taken it as a given that our new students would automatically realise this. Last year, we introduced a simple slide titled “Neurodiversity in Classics”, to be shown at the start of each new module.

    It emphasises that we want students to be able to learn, and uses three bullet points designed to lower the barriers to our students’ learning. “Better late than absent” reduces the anxiety of being five or ten minutes late to a class session, which can throw off attendance for a whole term. “Tell us about the room” gives students permission to tell us about sensory disruptors; having to concentrate on processing an overwhelming physical stimulus, like a flickering light, that can distract focus from teaching. “We understand about stimming,” referring to repetitive physical actions often made by people with autism, makes it explicit that students can fidget and move in ways which help them concentrate rather than struggling to repress those habits for an hour.

    We simply hadn’t realised how much work our students were putting in to trying to meet expectations we didn’t have of them. Without consultation, we wouldn’t have known how effective this simple intervention could be – and it has made a huge difference to our students, especially first years joining the department.

    It’s all about participation

    Low-impact adjustments designed for neurodivergent students and students living with mental health issues can often be valuable in supporting the learning of neurotypical students too. Following the focus groups’ recommendations, many of us more systematically introduced a break in lectures to avoid students’ cognitive overload, and to allow them to refresh their minds around halfway through the lecture. Even if the evidence is only anecdotal at this stage, this small change seems to have positive effects on the entire cohort, fostering a more collaborative and open teaching environment, and reinforcing the class as a space of collective learning and teaching.

    Recognising that neurodivergent students, disabled students, and those with mental health conditions are experts because of their experience is critical to work against assumptions which, however unintentionally, disempower these groups. In line with trends around developing ethical practice as part of community-based participatory research, recent movements within disability studies seek to redress the imbalance within scholarship which has cast disabled people as subjects of research, rather than active participants with agency to engage in discussion and innovation: no research about us without us.

    Through proactively working with students, MINOTAUR recognises that higher education cannot meet the needs of this cohort without working with them collaboratively to produce interventions that are grounded in their student experience.

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