Category: News

  • Outbound Indian university enrolments fall after three-year rise

    Outbound Indian university enrolments fall after three-year rise

    Of the 1.882 million Indian students studying abroad, over 1.254 million are pursuing higher education at international universities and tertiary institutions, while 628,305 are enrolled at the school level.

    While overall 2025 numbers hit an all-time high due to the inclusion of school-level students, higher education enrolments fell by 76,000 this year, ending a three-year surge. Over 750,000 Indian students studied at international universities in 2022, rising to 930,000 in 2023 and peaking at 1.33 million in 2024.

    Despite Canada’s clampdown on international students, with 74% of Indian study permit applications rejected in August 2025, up from 32% in the same month in 2023, the North American country still hosts the largest number of Indian students in universities and tertiary institutions globally, at 427,085 students.

    In the US, despite a 44% drop in study visas for Indian students in August 2025 compared to last year, India remains the largest source country, accounting for over 31% of all international students, with over 255,000 Indian students, according to MEA data.

    MEA data also showed that the number of Indian higher education students in key countries, as of 2025: the UK (173,190), Australia (138,579), Germany (59,000), Russia (27,000), Kyrgyzstan (16,500), and Georgia (16,000).

    Policy changes in major study destinations are impacting Indian students’ decisions. While Canada plans to cut international study permits by over 50% in 2026, the US continues a hostile stance against international students with nine in 10 students fearing for their visas, and postgraduate enrolments are falling across UK universities, with English institutions facing a potential losses under the new £925-per-international student levy.

    Other destinations show mixed trends: Australia has seen a rise in Indian students but remains cautious about fraud and agent misuse, with the recent education reforms bill aiming to address these concerns, while New Zealand has recorded increasing number of study visa applications from India as of October 2025.

    “The growth in mobility patterns in the years following the pandemic were driven by the pent-up demand and welcoming post-graduation work and immigration pathways and policies in destinations such as Canada,” Rahul Choudaha, professor and COO at the University of Aberdeen, Mumbai campus told The PIE News.

    “However, in 2025, the immigration policies became restrictive in all key destinations starting with the US.”

    The decline in Indian students pursuing higher education abroad also follows a sharp fall in study abroad remittances from India between April and August 2025, lowest in eight years, the peak period for such transfers.

    Moreover, according to a recent analysis highlighted by Choudaha, the annual cost of studying in the US has risen by Rs 10 lakh (GDP £8,200-£8,300) for Indian students over the past five years, with currency devaluation and tuition hikes pushing the overall cost of studying abroad up 10–12% in 2025.

    Higher investment outlay along with dimmer chances of recovering that investment has made Indian students nervous and cautious about studying abroad in 2025
    Rahul Choudaha, University of Aberdeen Mumbai campus

    “Higher investment outlay along with dimmer chances of recovering that investment has made Indian students nervous and cautious about studying abroad in 2025,” stated Choudaha.

    “Universities also need to do more in terms of providing career success and scholarships to students to make ease the barrier of upfront costs and its recovery through employability.”

    The rise of destinations such as Germany, Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia signals a shift towards lower-cost, quality STEM and medical education beyond the “big four”, including Indian private and public universities which are serving over 46.5 million higher education students as of 2025.

    “Indian universities are more active than ever before in stepping up their recruitment efforts from the home market,” stated Jasminder Khanna, co-founder, Gresham Global.

    “Be it recruitments fairs, conferences or even retreats for local feeders, prominent Indian universities are quite at par with the foreign universities in upping their visibility.”

    With branch campuses of over 15 international universities, mainly from the US and UK, expected to open in India by the end of 2026, and the system projected to serve over 560,000 Indian students by 2040, Choudaha sees the next three years as crucial for these campuses in absorbing inbound demand amid increasingly restrictive policies.

    “The aspirations to gain global learning remain strong while affordability has become a big challenge,” stated Choudaha.

    “With over fifteen campuses offering degrees in fall 2026 intake means that a segment of Indian students will consider these options and over time not only the number of campuses will increase but also the program portfolios offered by these campuses.”

    Moreover, with 97% of Indian students seeking education that leads directly to jobs, according to research commissioned by City St George’s, University of London and conducted by Arlington Research, crackdowns on post-study work options across major destinations are raising concerns, as lobbying to end Optional Practical Training (OPT) in the US heats up and the UK is already set to cut its Graduate Route visa from two years to 18 months from January 2027.

    With “shrinking entry-level jobs and unstable economies marginally slowing the outflow” of students, stakeholders need to think of solutions that address both the study-abroad process and outcomes, Khanna said, to ensure Indian and international students continue to pursue education abroad in huge numbers.

    “Reassuring feeders and stakeholders on economic stabilities, local safety, access to meaningful jobs and multi-cultural environments on campuses will bring back some of the lost confidence since the pandemic,” stated Khanna.

    “Students and parents also need to understand that recent student visa policy changes worldwide are intended to make traditional study destinations more meaningful, with a stronger focus on quality — and these changes should be welcomed.”

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  • What we lose when AI replaces teachers

    What we lose when AI replaces teachers

    eSchool News is counting down the 10 most-read stories of 2025. Story #8 focuses on the debate around teachers vs. AI.

    Key points:

    A colleague of ours recently attended an AI training where the opening slide featured a list of all the ways AI can revolutionize our classrooms. Grading was listed at the top. Sure, AI can grade papers in mere seconds, but should it?

    As one of our students, Jane, stated: “It has a rubric and can quantify it. It has benchmarks. But that is not what actually goes into writing.” Our students recognize that AI cannot replace the empathy and deep understanding that recognizes the growth, effort, and development of their voice. What concerns us most about grading our students’ written work with AI is the transformation of their audience from human to robot.

    If we teach our students throughout their writing lives that what the grading robot says matters most, then we are teaching them that their audience doesn’t matter. As Wyatt, another student, put it: “If you can use AI to grade me, I can use AI to write.” NCTE, in its position statements for Generative AI, reminds us that writing is a human act, not a mechanical one. Reducing it to automated scores undermines its value and teaches students, like Wyatt and Jane, that the only time we write is for a grade. That is a future of teaching writing we hope to never see.

    We need to pause when tech companies tout AI as the grader of student writing. This isn’t a question of capability. AI can score essays. It can be calibrated to rubrics. It can, as Jane said, provide students with encouragement and feedback specific to their developing skills. And we have no doubt it has the potential to make a teacher’s grading life easier. But just because we can outsource some educational functions to technology doesn’t mean we should.

    It is bad enough how many students already see their teacher as their only audience. Or worse, when students are writing for teachers who see their written work strictly through the lens of a rubric, their audience is limited to the rubric. Even those options are better than writing for a bot. Instead, let’s question how often our students write to a broader audience of their peers, parents, community, or a panel of judges for a writing contest. We need to reengage with writing as a process and implement AI as a guide or aide rather than a judge with the last word on an essay score.

    Our best foot forward is to put AI in its place. The use of AI in the writing process is better served in the developing stages of writing. AI is excellent as a guide for brainstorming. It can help in a variety of ways when a student is struggling and looking for five alternatives to their current ending or an idea for a metaphor. And if you or your students like AI’s grading feature, they can paste their work into a bot for feedback prior to handing it in as a final draft.

    We need to recognize that there are grave consequences if we let a bot do all the grading. As teachers, we should recognize bot grading for what it is: automated education. We can and should leave the promises of hundreds of essays graded in an hour for the standardized test providers. Our classrooms are alive with people who have stories to tell, arguments to make, and research to conduct. We see our students beyond the raw data of their work. We recognize that the poem our student has written for their sick grandparent might be a little flawed, but it matters a whole lot to the person writing it and to the person they are writing it for. We see the excitement or determination in our students’ eyes when they’ve chosen a research topic that is important to them. They want their cause to be known and understood by others, not processed and graded by a bot.

    The adoption of AI into education should be conducted with caution. Many educators are experimenting with using AI tools in thoughtful and student-centered ways. In a recent article, David Cutler describes his experience using an AI-assisted platform to provide feedback on his students’ essays. While Cutler found the tool surprisingly accurate and helpful, the true value lies in the feedback being used as part of the revision process. As this article reinforces, the role of a teacher is not just to grade, but to support and guide learning. When used intentionally (and we emphasize, as in-process feedback) AI can enhance that learning, but the final word, and the relationship behind it, must still come from a human being.

    When we hand over grading to AI, we risk handing over something much bigger–our students’ belief that their words matter and deserve an audience. Our students don’t write to impress a rubric, they write to be heard. And when we replace the reader with a robot, we risk teaching our students that their voices only matter to the machine. We need to let AI support the writing process, not define the product. Let it offer ideas, not deliver grades. When we use it at the right moments and for the right reasons, it can make us better teachers and help our students grow. But let’s never confuse efficiency with empathy. Or algorithms with understanding.

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  • 10 stories that shaped international education in Australia

    10 stories that shaped international education in Australia

    1. Election result brings continuity – and questions – for the sector

    Anthony Albanese secured a second term for the Labor government in Australia’s federal election. While the outcome removed uncertainty around a change of government – particularly given the Coalition’s proposed international student caps and higher visa fees – it also left many in the sector assessing what continuity would mean in practice. The result sparked renewed discussion about policy direction, including commentary on whether stability would translate into greater certainty or restraint for international education.

    2. Julian Hill steps into the international education brief

    In July, Julian Hill was appointed assistant minister for international education, giving the sector a dedicated political lead. Since taking on the brief, Hill has repeatedly emphasised the need to protect the “integrity” of the sector, particularly in relation to visa settings and compliance. Hill has spent a lot of time at out and about at industry events and liaising with the sector, including in an exclusive webinar with The PIE News.

    3. Perth International College of English shuts its doors

    Perth International College of English was not the only provider to close its doors in 2025. But its decision to shut down became a clear illustration of how rising visa fees and tightening settings were landing on the ground. For many in the ELICOS sector, it underscored the vulnerability of smaller providers operating with thin margins in a rapidly changing policy environment.

    4. Student visa fees jump to AUD$2,000

    One of the most talked-about changes of 2025 came when Australia lifted the cost of a student visa to AUD$2,000 – making it the most expensive in the world. The hike sparked debate across the sector about competitiveness and particular concerns came from the ELICOS sector with stakeholders arguing that yet another price hike would put off short-term students.

    5. Australia moves toward a new tertiary education watchdog

    This year saw the Australian government introduce legislation to establish the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC). The ATEC began interim operations in July 2025, with plans to become fully operational by 2026. This new body is set to centralise the planning and regulation of post-school education, including international education, marking a significant shift in how the sector will be governed in the years to come.

    6. International student enrolment limit lifted to 295,000

    Australia raised its de facto international student enrolment cap to 295,000 places. The decision provided some breathing room for universities and providers, even as questions remained about how limits would be managed long term and who would benefit most.

    7. The PIE Live Asia Pacific 2025 puts the spotlight on sector leaders

    The PIE Live Asia Pacific 2025 offered a moment for the sector to come together – to unpack policy and trends, hear from across the industry, and recognise the people driving international education forward. Lifetime Impact Awards recognised long-standing leaders whose work has shaped international education across decades – a reminder of the human side of an industry often discussed in numbers.

    8. Can Australia thrive in a “managed” era?

    One of the year’s most widely read opinion pieces asked a question many were already grappling with: can Australia remain globally competitive while tightly managing international student numbers? The piece captured a growing tension between regulation, reputation, and market reality.

    9. A new visa processing directive replaces MD 111

    Later in the year, Australia confirmed that Ministerial Direction 111 would be replaced with a new student visa processing directive. While intended to improve integrity and efficiency, the new settings under Ministerial Direction 115 largely mirror its predecessor, with a handful of key changes – including the introduction of a third priority category for providers that exceed their new overseas student commencement (NOSC) allocations by more than 15%.

    10. Education reforms are locked in after clearing parliament

    Rounding out the year, Australia’s education reforms moved from proposal to reality in 2025 after clearing parliament in the nick of time. The changes include a broader legal definition of an education agent and expanded ministerial powers. While the measures were designed to improve integrity, parts of the sector raised concerns during consultation, with attention now turning to how the reforms will be applied in practice.

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  • California students with disabilities face ‘terrifying’ special ed cuts after Trump changes – The 74

    California students with disabilities face ‘terrifying’ special ed cuts after Trump changes – The 74


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    This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

    Sleep is a rare commodity at Lindsay Crain’s house. Most nights, she and her husband are up dozens of times, tending to their daughter’s seizures. The 16-year-old flails her arms, thrashes and kicks — sometimes for hours.

    But these days, that’s not the only thing keeping Crain awake. The Culver City mother worries about how President Donald Trump’s myriad budget cuts could strip their daughter of services she needs to go to school, live at home and enjoy a degree of independence that would have been impossible a generation ago.

    “Every family I know is terrified right now,” Crain said. “We still have to live our everyday lives, which are challenging enough, but now it feels like our kids’ futures are at stake.”

    Trump’s budget includes nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, which funds a wide swath of services to disabled children, including speech, occupational and physical therapy, wheelchairs, in-home aides and medical care. All children with physical, developmental or cognitive disabilities – in California, nearly 1 million – receive at least some services through Medicaid.

    Meanwhile, at the U.S. Department of Education, Trump has gutted the Office of Civil Rights, which is among the agencies that enforce the 50-year-old law granting students with disabilities the right to attend school and receive an education appropriate to their needs. Before that law was enacted, students with disabilities often didn’t attend school at all.

    “We have a delicate web of services that, combined, support a whole child, a whole family,” said Kristin Wright, executive director of inclusive practices and systems at the Sacramento County Office of Education and the former California state director of special education. “So when the basic foundational structure is upended, like Medicaid, for example, it’s not just one cut from a knife. It’s multiple.”

    Republicans have also suggested moving the office of special education out of the Department of Education altogether and moving it to the Department of Health and Human Services. Disability rights advocates say that would bring a medical – rather than a social – lens to special education, which they described as a major reversal of progress.

    Trump has chipped away at other rights protecting people with disabilities, as well. In September, the U.S. Department of Transportation said it would not enforce a rule that requires airlines to reimburse passengers for damaged or lost wheelchairs. Trump has also repeatedly used the word “retarded,” widely considered a slur, alarming advocates who say it shows a lack of respect and understanding of the historical discrimination against people with disabilities. It’s all left some wondering if the administration plans more cuts to hard-fought rights protecting people with disabilities.

    Fewer therapists, less equipment

    The Medicaid cuts may have the most immediate effect. People with developmental disabilities typically receive therapy, home visits from aides, equipment and other services through regional centers, a network of 21 mostly government-funded nonprofits in California that coordinate services for people with disabilities. The goal of regional centers is to help people with disabilities live as independently as possible.

    More than a third of regional centers’ funding comes from Medicaid, which is facing deep cuts under Trump’s budget. The money runs out at the end of January, and it’s unclear what services will be cut.

    Schools also rely on Medicaid to pay for therapists, equipment, vision and hearing tests and other services that benefit all students, not just those with disabilities. In light of state budget uncertainty, it’s not likely the state could backfill the loss of Medicaid funding, and schools would have to pare down their services. 

    Uncertain futures

    For Lelah Coppedge, whose teenage son has cerebral palsy, the worst part is the uncertainty. She knows cuts are coming, but she doesn’t know when or what they’ll include.

    “I go down this rabbit hole of worst-case scenarios,” said Coppedge, who lives in the Canoga Park neighborhood in Los Angeles. “Before this happened, I felt there was a clear path for my son. Now that path is going away, and it’s terrifying.”

    Coppedge’s son, Jack, is a 16-year-old high school student who excels at algebra and physics. He loves video games and has a wide circle of friends at school. He uses a wheelchair and struggles with speech, communicating mostly through eye movements. He’ll look at his mom’s right hand to indicate “yes,” her left hand for “no.”

    Coppedge and her husband rely on a nurse who comes four days a week to help Jack get dressed, get ready for bed and do other basic activities. Medicaid pays for the nurse, as well as other services like physical therapy. Even though Coppedge and her husband both work and have high-quality private health insurance, they could not afford Jack’s care without help from the government.

    They also rely on the local regional center, which they assumed would help Jack after he graduates from high school, so he can remain at home, continue to hone his skills and generally live as independently as possible. If that funding vanishes, Coppedage worries Jack will someday end up in a facility where people don’t know him, don’t know how to communicate with him and don’t care about him.

    “It feels like we’re going backward,” Coppedge said. “Half the time, I put my head in the sand because I’m just trying to manage the day-to-day. The rest of the time I worry that (the federal government) is looking at people like Jack as medical problems, not as unique people who want to have full, happy lives. It feels like that’s getting lost.”

    The current uncertainty is stressful, but it’s even harder for families who are immigrants, Wright said. Those families are less likely to stand up for services they’re entitled to and are facing the extra fear of deportation. English learners, as well as low-income children, are disproportionately represented among students in special education, according to state data.

    “That’s the other piece to all this — how it’s affecting immigrant families,” Wright said. “It’s a whole other level of anxiety and fear.”

    Decades of progress on the line

    Karma Quick-Panwala, an advocate at the nonprofit Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, said she worries about the rollback of decades’ worth of progress that was hard-won by the disability rights community. 

    The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the 1975 law that created special education, actually predates the federal Department of Education. In fact, Congress created the department in part to oversee special education. Removing special ed would be a devastating blow to the disability community — not just because services might be curtailed, but philosophically, as well, Quick-Panwala said. 

    In the Department of Education, special education is under the purview of education experts who promote optimal ways to educate students with disabilities, so they can learn, graduate from high school and ideally go on to productive lives. In the Department of Health and Human Services, special education would no longer be overseen by educators but by those in the medical field, where they’re more likely to “look at disability as something to be cured or segregated and set aside,” Quick-Panwala said.

    “The disability rights community has worked so hard and gave so much to make sure people with disabilities had a right to a meaningful education, so they could have gainful employment opportunities and participate in the world,” Quick-Panwala said. “The idea is that they wouldn’t just be present at school, but they would actually learn and thrive.”

    For the time being, Wright, Quick-Panwala and other advocates are reminding families that federal funding might be shrinking, but the laws remain unchanged. Students are still entitled under federal law to the services outlined in their individual education plans, regardless of whether there’s money to pay for it. The funding will have to come from somewhere, at least for now, even if that means cutting it from another program. And California is unlikely to roll back its own special education protections, regardless of what happens in Washington, D.C.

    An imperfect but successful routine

    Those reassurances are scant comfort to Crain, whose daughter Lena will rely on government support her entire life. Born seven weeks prematurely, Lena has cerebral palsy, epilepsy, a cognitive impairment and is on the deaf-blind spectrum. But she has a 100-watt smile and a relentless spirit, Crain said. Even after the whole family has been up all night, Lena insists on going to school and getting the most out of every day.

    From left, Jack Deacy, his daughter Lena Deacy, and Lindsay Crain at their home in Culver City on Dec. 1, 2025. The family fears potential Medicaid cuts because Lena, who has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and other medical conditions, relies on Medicaid-funded services for her daily care and well-being. Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for CalMatters

    Funny and assertive, she has a few close friends and, like many teenagers, plenty of opinions about her parents. She loves her English teacher and spends most of her day in regular classrooms with help from an aide. Her favorite book is about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who won a Nobel Peace Prize for fighting for girls’ right to an education.

    Between school and home visits from aides and after-school therapists, Crain feels the family has pieced together an imperfect but mostly successful routine for Lena.

    “Our entire lives are about teaching her self-advocacy, so she can have the most independent life possible,” Crain said. “Just because you need support doesn’t mean you can’t have a say in your life. There’s been so much work around the culture and the laws and the education system to make sure disabled people can make their own choices in life. We’re absolutely terrified of losing that.”

    This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.


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  • Bill Would Require More Small Businesses to Give Paid Family Leave – The 74

    Bill Would Require More Small Businesses to Give Paid Family Leave – The 74


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    A state Senate panel advanced a bill Monday that would expand New Jersey’s family leave law to businesses with at least 15 workers, a change from the current threshold of 30 employees.

    The bill has seen some changes since it passed the Assembly in February. It had initially lowered the worker threshold to five, to widespread criticism from the business community. Business groups remain opposed, saying that encompassing businesses with fewer than 30 employees would deter hiring and potentially force small businesses to close their doors.

    “New Jersey small businesses are already shouldering some of the highest operating costs in the country, including labor, insurance, property taxes, and compliance obligations,” said Amirah Hussain of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. “Imposing these mandates introduces a new layer of risk and unpredictability.”

    Yarrow Willman-Cole, with consumer advocacy group New Jersey Citizen Action, testified in favor of the bill, saying 1.7 million workers are not covered by the state’s current family leave law.

    “We passed paid family leave 17 years ago. It took us 10 years to improve it. It should not take another decade to get this right,” Willman-Cole said. “Our laws should reflect our society’s growing caregiving needs. New Jersey is, in fact, not keeping up.”

    The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Republicans and Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen), the panel’s chair, voted against advancing the bill.

    New Jersey law requires that businesses provide eligible workers with up to 12 weeks of paid leave to bond with a new child or to care for a loved one. Workers pay into the fund that pays out benefits, and the benefits are based on a worker’s earnings. Workers’ jobs are protected until their leave ends.

    The committee amended the bill Monday to include employees who have worked for a company for six months — current law says 12 months — and for 500 hours, down from 1,000 hours. The bill would take two years to phase in.

    Elizabeth Zuckerman of the state chapter of the National Employment Lawyers Association said that whatever “small burden” the bill puts on an employer is justified to keep parents from choosing between bonding with their children or keeping their job.

    “We are a pro-family country. We should support our families by allowing employers or encouraging employers to give employees time off when they need to care for a child or a family member,” Zuckerman said.

    Businesses remain concerned that the bill would put an “unsustainable burden” on small employers, said Frank Jones with Big I New Jersey, which advises independent and locally owned insurance agencies.

    Jones said he supports the goal of the bill to give more workers access to family leave, but when businesses with 15 employees lose one person, it’s difficult for the remaining workers to juggle the work. He also said it would drive up liability insurance costs. He stressed that paid benefits and job-protected reinstatement should be separate issues.

    “The mandatory reinstatement requirement, regardless of business conditions, removes the flexibility small business employers need to survive,” Jones said. “Agencies may be forced to permanently restructure or hire to maintain client service, only to face liability for not reinstating later, even if decisions were made in good faith.”

    New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: [email protected].


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  • Texas Universities Deploy AI Tools to Review How Courses Discuss Race and Gender – The 74

    Texas Universities Deploy AI Tools to Review How Courses Discuss Race and Gender – The 74


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    A senior Texas A&M University System official testing a new artificial intelligence tool this fall asked it to find how many courses discuss feminism at one of its regional universities. Each time she asked in a slightly different way, she got a different number.

    “Either the tool is learning from my previous queries,” Texas A&M system’s chief strategy officer Korry Castillo told colleagues in an email, “or we need to fine tune our requests to get the best results.”

    It was Sept. 25, and Castillo was trying to deliver on a promise Chancellor Glenn Hegar and the Board of Regents had already made: to audit courses across all of the system’s 12 universities after conservative outrage over a gender-identity lesson at the flagship campus intensified earlier that month, leading to the professor’s firing and the university president’s resignation. 

    Texas A&M officials said the controversy stemmed from the course’s content not aligning with its description in the university’s course catalog and framed the audit as a way to ensure students knew what they were signing up for. As other public universities came under similar scrutiny and began preparing to comply with a new state law that gives governor-appointed regents more authority over curricula, they, too, announced audits.

    Records obtained by The Texas Tribune offer a first look at how Texas universities are experimenting with AI to conduct those reviews. 

    At Texas A&M, internal emails show staff are using AI software to search syllabi and course descriptions for words that could raise concerns under new system policies restricting how faculty teach about race and gender. 

    At Texas State, memos show administrators are suggesting faculty use an AI writing assistant to revise course descriptions. They urged professors to drop words such as “challenging,” “dismantling” and “decolonizing” and to rename courses with titles like “Combating Racism in Healthcare” to something university officials consider more neutral like “Race and Public Health in America.”

    Read Texas State University’s guide to faculty on how to review their curriculum with AI

    While school officials describe the efforts as an innovative approach that fosters transparency and accountability, AI experts say these systems do not actually analyze or understand course content, instead generating answers that sound right based on patterns in their training data.

    That means small changes in how a question is phrased can lead to different results, they said, making the systems unreliable for deciding whether a class matches its official description. They warned that using AI this way could lead to courses being flagged over isolated words and further shift control of teaching away from faculty and toward administrators.

    “I’m not convinced this is about serving students or cleaning up syllabi,” said Chris Gilliard, co-director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute. “This looks like a project to control education and remove it from professors and put it into the hands of administrators and legislatures.”

    Setting up the tool

    During a board of regents meeting last month, Texas A&M System leaders described the new processes they were developing to audit courses as a repeatable enforcement mechanism. 

    Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs James Hallmark said the system would use “AI-assisted tools” to examine course data under “consistent, evidence-based criteria,” which would guide future board action on courses. Regent Sam Torn praised it as “real governance,” saying Texas A&M was “stepping up first, setting the model that others will follow.” 

    That same day, the board approved new rules requiring presidents to sign off on any course that could be seen as advocating for “race and gender ideology” and prohibiting professors from teaching material not on the approved syllabus for a course.

    In a statement to the Tribune, Chris Bryan, the system’s vice chancellor for marketing and communications, said Texas A&M is using OpenAI services through an existing subscription to aid the system’s course audit and that the tool is still being tested as universities finish sharing their course data. He said “any decisions about appropriateness, alignment with degree programs, or student outcomes will be made by people, not software.”

    In records obtained by the Tribune, Castillo, the system’s chief strategy officer, told colleagues to prepare for about 20 system employees to use the tool to make hundreds of queries each semester. 

    The records also show some of the concerns that arose from early tests of the tool.  

    When Castillo told colleagues about the varying results she obtained when searching for classes that discuss feminism, deputy chief information officer Mark Schultz cautioned that the tool came with “an inherent risk of inaccuracy.”

    “Some of that can be mitigated with training,” he said, “but it probably can’t be fully eliminated.”

    Schultz did not specify what kinds of inaccuracies he meant. When asked if the potential inaccuracies had been resolved, Bryan said, “We are testing baseline conversations with the AI tool to validate the accuracy, relevance and repeatability of the prompts.” He said this includes seeing how the tool responds to invalid or misleading prompts and having humans review the results.

    Experts said the different answers Castillo received when she rephrased her question reflect how these systems operate. They explained that these kinds of AI tools generate their responses by predicting patterns and generating strings of text.

    “These systems are fundamentally systems for repeatedly answering the question ‘what is the likely next word’ and that’s it,” said Emily Bender, a computational linguist at the University of Washington. “The sequence of words that comes out looks like the kind of thing you would expect in that context, but it is not based on reason or understanding or looking at information.”

    Because of that, small changes to how a question is phrased can produce different results. Experts also said users can nudge the model toward the answer they want. Gilliard said that is because these systems are also prone to what developers call “sycophancy,” meaning they try to agree with or please the user. 

    “Very often, a thing that happens when people use this technology is if you chide or correct the machine, it will say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry’ or like ‘you’re right,’ so you can often goad these systems into getting the answer you desire,” he said.

    T. Philip Nichols, a Baylor University professor who studies how technology influences teaching and learning in schools, said keyword searches also provide little insight into how a topic is actually taught. He called the tool “a blunt instrument” that isn’t capable of understanding how certain discussions that the software might flag as unrelated to the course tie into broader class themes. 

    “Those pedagogical choices of an instructor might not be present in a syllabus, so to just feed that into a chatbot and say, ‘Is this topic mentioned?’ tells you nothing about how it’s talked about or in what way,” Nichols said. 

    Castillo’s description of her experience testing the AI tool was the only time in the records reviewed by the Tribune when Texas A&M administrators discussed specific search terms being used to inspect course content. In another email, Castillo said she would share search terms with staff in person or by phone rather than email. 

    System officials did not provide the list of search terms the system plans to use in the audit.

    Martin Peterson, a Texas A&M philosophy professor who studies the ethics of technology, said faculty have not been asked to weigh in on the tool, including members of the university’s AI council. He noted that the council’s ethics and governance committee is charged with helping set standards for responsible AI use.

    While Peterson generally opposes the push to audit the university system’s courses, he said he is “a little more open to the idea that some such tool could perhaps be used.”

    “It is just that we have to do our homework before we start using the tool,” Peterson said.

    AI-assisted revisions

    At Texas State University, officials ordered faculty to rewrite their syllabi and suggested they use AI to do it.

    In October, administrators flagged 280 courses for review and told faculty to revise titles, descriptions and learning outcomes to remove wording the university said was not neutral. Records indicate that dozens of courses set to be offered by the College of Liberal Arts in the Spring 2026 semester were singled out for neutrality concerns. They included courses such as Intro to Diversity, Social Inequality, Freedom in America, Southwest in Film and Chinese-English Translation.

    Faculty were given until Dec. 10 to complete the rewrites, with a second-level review scheduled in January and the entire catalog to be evaluated by June. 

    Administrators shared with faculty a guide outlining wording they said signaled advocacy. It discouraged learning outcomes that describe students “measure or require belief, attitude or activism (e.g., value diversity, embrace activism, commit to change).”

    Administrators also provided a prompt for faculty to paste into an AI writing assistant alongside their materials. The prompt instructs the chatbot to “identify any language that signals advocacy, prescriptive conclusions, affective outcomes or ideological commitments” and generate three alternative versions that remove those elements. 

    Jayme Blaschke, assistant director of media relations at Texas State, described the internal review as “thorough” and “deliberative,” but would not say whether any classes have already been revised or removed, only that “measures are in place to guide students through any adjustments and keep their academic progress on track.” He also declined to explain how courses were initially flagged and who wrote the neutrality expectations.

    Faculty say the changes have reshaped how curriculum decisions are made on campus.

    Aimee Villarreal, an assistant professor of anthropology and president of Texas State’s American Association of University Professors chapter, said the process is usually faculty-driven and unfolds over a longer period of time. She believes the structure of this audit allows administrators to more closely monitor how faculty describe their disciplines and steer how that material must be presented.

    She said the requirement to revise courses quickly or risk having them removed from the spring schedule has created pressure to comply, which may have pushed some faculty toward using the AI writing assistant.

    Villarreal said the process reflects a lack of trust in faculty and their field expertise when deciding what to teach.

    “I love what I do,” Villarreal said, “and it’s very sad to see the core of what I do being undermined in this way.”

    Nichols warned the trend of using AI in this way represents a larger threat. 

    “This is a kind of de-professionalizing of what we do in classrooms, where we’re narrowing the horizon of what’s possible,” he said. “And I think once we give that up, that’s like giving up the whole game. That’s the whole purpose of why universities exist.”

    The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

    Disclosure: Baylor University, Texas A&M University and Texas A&M University System have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

    This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.


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  • Whitmer Calls Literacy Her ‘Number One Priority’ for Final Year as Governor – The 74

    Whitmer Calls Literacy Her ‘Number One Priority’ for Final Year as Governor – The 74


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    In a keynote speech at the Michigan Literacy Summit, held Tuesday at the Michigan Science Center, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said that improving literacy rates would remain her top priority in her final year as governor.

    “Helping every child read is tough. It’s a worthwhile goal,” she said. “It’s a long term project that will pay off in decades, not days. It’s a team effort that requires buy-in from students, parents, teachers and policy makers.”

    She referenced the increased implementation of the “science of reading” law, which she signed in October 2024, as part of this priority. That law standardized literacy teaching methods across the state and implemented regular dyslexia testing for students up to third grade. She also touted the free school breakfast and lunch program, a key piece of the state’s education budget, and funding to reduce class sizes.

    Michigan currently ranks 44th in the nation for 4th grade reading skills, Whitmer said, calling it a “crisis.”

    “The vast majority of people in our state agree this isn’t the fault of any one person or any one policy or any one political party,” she continued. “I know how hard every one of our educators works every day, but we’re all feeling the impact of our literacy crisis.”

    Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and State Superintendent Glenn Maleyko pose for a photograph before her speech at the Michigan Literacy Summit. Dec. 16, 2025. | Photo by Katherine Dailey/Michigan Advance.

    State Superintendent Dr. Glenn Maleyko, who officially took over the role leading the state’s department of education on Dec. 8, introduced Whitmer to a crowd of educators and advocates, who had gathered in Detroit for the day-long event that included panels with teachers and school leadership.

    “What stood out to me the most was the governor’s genuine commitment to partnership,” Maleyko said. “She understands that improving outcomes for students is not about politics, it’s about listening, working together and staying focused on what matters most.”

    This was Whitmer’s first public appearance since Michigan House Republicans canceled nearly $650 million in spending for departmental projects, a move heavily criticized by Democrats as “untransparent” and “cruel”. While Whitmer’s press secretary shared similar criticism from the governor’s office, Whitmer herself has yet to make a statement on the cuts, and left the summit before speaking to the press.

    Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jon King for questions: [email protected].


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  • Charters Gain Power in New Indianapolis Plan – The 74

    Charters Gain Power in New Indianapolis Plan – The 74

    In a move called historic by charter advocates and shameful by opponents, Indianapolis officials reached agreement on a plan to provide all charter students with buses and close struggling schools.   

    The proposal, recommended to the state legislature by a panel of leaders from around the city calls for creating a powerful new government agency, the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation, handing charters a measure of control over citywide education decisions they have never had. 

    The corporation — Indiana’s legal term for a school district — would oversee a unified transportation system for all schools; along with the ability to decide which schools are not serving students. The agency would also oversee a single enrollment system. 

    The plan, which still needs approval by the state legislature, is a big win, in some ways, for charter schools that have grown rapidly in recent years and now educate more than half of Indianapolis’ students. 

    Along with gaining transportation for students, charters will have representatives on the new board with equal standing to district officials for the first time in shaping Indianapolis school policy.

    That power, though, is taken from the Indianapolis Public Schools district, whose schools could be closed by the corporation and which already saw the state legislature shift property taxes away from the district to charters earlier this year. 

    Robert Enlow, CEO of the national charter advocacy group EdChoice, based in Indianapolis, called the recommendation “historic” in its support of charters.

    “It is a bold and courageous direction that represents a groundbreaking pathway,” Enlow said after the vote on Wednesday.

    But the proposal has tradeoffs for all sides, which have already sparked howls of opposition from voters and other charter advocates, as well as worry from the district about how the legislature could change the plan. 

    That more power could go to charters has enraged some residents since leaders started discussing the new plan this summer. Right before the vote, Rev. Clyde Posley, president of the General Missionary Baptist State Convention of Indiana, spoke on behalf of several clergy calling the entire effort a “heavy-handed public overreach” in support of “private agendas.”

    “(It) not only invites scavengers and investors to pillage off the plight of a broken school system,” Posley said. “It is not only wrong, it is vicious.”

    Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Aleesia Johnson, who worked on the plan for several months, urged residents to keep fighting as the plan goes to the legislature, but said change is necessary.

    “The proposal tonight is an imperfect solution for a challenging set of realities,” Johnson said before voting in favor of it..

    Those realities include growing pains from the rapid rise of charters in a city with a stagnant population. Many charter schools don’t offer buses, forcing students to use public transport or be driven by parents who have pleaded for buses for their children.

    The city also has about 50,000 school seats for 41,000 students, leaving 9,000 open, while the Indianapolis Public Schools faces a budget deficit that will require a tax increase from voters.

    Whether the plan will pass as is by the Republican-dominated, pro-charter legislature is unclear. State Sen. Jeff Raatz, chairman of the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development, had no immediate comment. 

    Bob Behning, the chairman of the House Education Committee who wrote the bill forcing Indianapolis officials to work out a partnership, said he was “pleased with the decision.” He did not elaborate on details of the plan, some of which he has opposed. 

    The new corporation would move toward mayoral control of schools, which cities across the U.S. have tried with varying success. It would have an executive director and a nine-member board  appointed by the mayor – three chosen from the Indianapolis Public Schools board, three charter school leaders and three others.

    That proposal for a mostly-unelected board immediately drew protest from residents, many with the Central Indiana Democratic Socialists of America. After constant shouts of “Unelected!” and “This is a sham!” residents called for the city’s voters, not the legislature, to approve the new corporation. One climbed onto the platform where the panel was seated and was removed by security. And audience members chanted “Shame!” as the panel ended its meeting.

    Charter schools are also raising opposition, including the recommendation that every charter must share money and participate in the new busing system, even as the overall recommendation would give them more power. 

    One charter school advocacy group, the Indiana Charter Innovation Center, called that an “unfunded mandate.”

    “The proposals put forward would place significant burdens on charter schools without providing funding, would reverse major legislative progress, and would create a structure that pulls decision-making farther from the schools and families most affected,” the center said in a social media post.

    The center also objected to the recommendation to limit charter authorizers — organizations that oversee charters and decide which can open — just to the mayor’s office, the state charter board and, as a recent development, the Indianapolis Public Schools board. 

    Andrew Neal, a member of the panel making the recommendation, said requiring all schools to be part of the plan is “a significant equity issue.”

    “I know there are some individuals out there who fear how that will impact their schools, or how that will impact their systems,” Neal said just before the vote. “But I am telling you, this is an opportunity for students…the ones that because of a fragmented system, continue to fall through the cracks.”

    Stand for Children, an education advocacy group that has led the push for busing, said parents will appreciate the new system.

    One parent, Christa Salgado, has repeatedly asked state and local officials for help with transportation after driving her son to school every day took a toll on her and her son had to move to live with his father.

    “I had to drive across the city about 30 minutes back and forth in the morning, and then in the afternoon to pick him up, as a single mother,” she told the panel just before Wednesday’s vote. “This was unsustainable, and unfortunately, I could only do this for a year.”

    The district still isn’t sure, with the final result still up to the legislature, what impact it will have on its authority and budgets. But superintendent Johnson voted in favor of the recommendations, while urging residents to put pressure on the state legislature to make sure the district doesn’t lose too much to charters.

     “If we continue to have an elected board with just the same oversight as they do today…,” she conceded, “the challenges of incoherence and thinning resources will remain.”


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  • How One California School Came Together to Pack 20,000 Meals for the Holidays – The 74

    How One California School Came Together to Pack 20,000 Meals for the Holidays – The 74

    When Vevian Nguyen heard the strike of a gong echo for the 10th time, signaling that 10,000 meals had been made, her school cafeteria erupted in applause, and she knew her gloves and hairnet were staying on.

    “Every time we hit the gong, it felt like a little pat on the back, like, ‘Oh, you did something good,’” Vevian said. “Now you can keep doing it.” 

    Within an hour, Vevian and more than 200 students at Laguna Creek High School, a school in the Elk Grove Unified School District in Sacramento County, packed more than 10,000 meals to be donated during the holidays, exceeding their goal for the night. But Vevian, who is a junior and president of Laguna Creek High’s service-oriented Interact Club, said she wasn’t there to simply check off her service hour requirements. 

    “We want to be involved in our community, which is having to be able to know that you’ve helped a family or at least just one person out there,” the 16-year-old said. “And, I feel like that helps your character, it builds who you are and where you stand within your school and your community.”

    The October food-preparing night was part of an international initiative called Rise Against Hunger, which is run by a coalition of student groups such as the National Honor Society and the Rotary International Club. This was Laguna Creek’s second Rise Against Hunger. During the holidays, their 20,000 meals will reach families in Vietnam that were affected by major floods and landslides this year. 

    Sandi Peterson, a positive behavior intervention support administrator and adviser for the National Honor Society, had helped Vevian prepare for the event throughout the school year. At weekly club meetings, students created infographics and posters, spread the word on social media, and promoted their goal of packing 10,000 meals to every classroom on campus. It was a student-led collaboration and a clear, ambitious objective, Peterson said, that drove hundreds of students to sign up, show up, and lock in. 

    “Not one student was on their phone; they were all talking to each other, chatting, laughing. Once we heard the 10,000 gong, it was this huge celebration, and then it started moving so fast,” Peterson said. “We were having to hit the gong for 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 (more) all at the same time. These kids, in less than two hours, assembled 20,000 meals.” 

    Like most schools in California, Laguna Creek has struggled to recover from high rates of chronic absenteeism after the pandemic’s school closures. Many of those students across the state also report a persistent feeling of loneliness and detachment from their school communities. For Cynthia Dettner, an instructor and supervising teacher for the Interact Club at Laguna Creek High, the night of meal-packing also showcased a rare school connectedness among students. 

    “After the Covid years, where students were often isolated, watching all of these students laugh and smile and build their own character by reaching out to help others, it’s a gift,” Dettner said. “It’s a joy to see them come together and befriend each other.” 

    On each side of a cafeteria table, students sporting red hairnets and plastic gloves measured and assembled nutritionally balanced portions of dried rice, vegetable protein, vitamin packets, dried tofu and protein additives into pre-labeled bags. They then rotated each bag to teams of students who stapled, heat-sealed, and counted each package to be ready for distribution worldwide. 

    “It looks almost like a Hallmark movie where you see the cookie factory in progress,” Dettner said. “It’s all kinds of hands and smiles working together, they’re all engaged and involved, and that lifts the community.”

    Students plan to pack more than 40,000 meals next year for families in need. (Sandi Peterson)

    Although Peterson had spent the year raising sponsorship funds for the event, she said the students who packed the meals soon took ownership of the initiative. 

    “Within two weeks, I had students come up to me and say, ‘Ms. Peterson, maybe if we go around and start collecting money on our own, we could do another one in a couple months,’” Peterson said. “So, now they’re trying to tag-team and do 40,000 meals in our next school year. The ticket to longevity is I know that the kids will always show up.”

    Vevian grew up in a low-income family, and after watching friends and family members struggle financially in recent months, she said she’s felt more compelled to help others. Laguna Creek’s new holiday ritual has further motivated her year-round commitment to community service. 

    “To contain the attributes of a leader, I learned that you have to actually step up and use your voice and really hold yourself accountable,” Vevian said. “If you just make one impact, it can slowly build that momentum for the rest of everyone else to stand behind you.”


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  • New Bill Would Allow Professors, TAs to Open Carry on Campus – The 74

    New Bill Would Allow Professors, TAs to Open Carry on Campus – The 74


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    Florida professors, university faculty, and teaching assistants could soon be able to openly carry firearms on campus, thanks to a sweeping new measure filed by a Republican lawmaker.

    Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Crestview, is sponsoring the legislation, entitled “School Safety,” to address security concerns in higher education. If passed, the bill would remove college campuses as gun-free zones — marking a significant shift in how Florida handles gun issues.

    It would become one of the few Second Amendment expansion bills adopted in Florida since the Parkland massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, which prompted a higher gun-purchasing age and red flag laws.

    In an interview with the Phoenix, Gaetz called his legislation “sadly timed,” adding that he “never wanted” to file a bill like this.

    He referred to a slate of violent incidents in the past few months, including a shooting spree at Florida State University in April, the assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University in September, a shooting at Brown University over the weekend, and, most recently, an anti-Jewish shooting in Australia that left 15 dead.

    “We’re living in a world where our institutions are being threatened,” Gaetz said, adding that he’s already filed another bill aimed at increasing protection outside of churches, mosques, and synagogues. “I’m sorry that I’m having to do this, but it just seems as though places in our society that we thought were safe, even sacrosanct, are now becoming targets.”

    Although he anticipates objections that teachers may abuse the ability to bring a gun to school, Gaetz pointed out that there have been no instances of a school shooting sprouting from an unwell volunteer in the guardian program. This school safety initiative allows trained and vetted school employees to carry concealed weapons on K-12 campuses.

    “None of the parade of terribles have happened that the opponents to the guardian program tried to advance,” he said. “While none of that has happened, people have been killed.”

    What else is in the bill?

    Gaetz isn’t this first Florida lawmaker to try to promote campus carry. At the start of the 2025 legislative session, then-Sen. Randy Fine brought his all-encompassing campus carry bill to its first committee — unlike Gaetz’s, Fine’s bill would have allowed all students to carry — but it was voted down. Fine later left to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

    Gaetz said that the heart of his bill is hardening Florida’s state colleges and universities by requiring better threat assessments, better responses to threats, and better communications between first responders and faculty in emergencies.

    SB 896 would allow university employees, faculty, and students who are also working for a college to either openly carry or carry conceal weapons on campus. It also would expand the school guardian program to the university level and create an offense of discharging a firearm within 1,000 feet of school.

    Gaetz said his measure also would require universities to ensure all classroom doors lock during an emergency — especially after FSU students discovered during the April school shooting that their doors could not lock. He estimates that around $60 million will end up being appropriated for the effort, in line with what Gov. Ron DeSantis requested in his budget proposal last week.

    An identical bill has been filed in the House by Rep. Michelle Salzman.

    Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: [email protected].


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