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  • ED Calls Civil Rights Workers It’s Trying to Ax Back to Work

    ED Calls Civil Rights Workers It’s Trying to Ax Back to Work

    The OCR employees were fired in March as part of a broader reduction in force at the Education Department.

    Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

    The Education Department is calling Office for Civil Rights employees who were fired earlier this year back to work.

    The Trump administration tried to ax half of the Education Department’s OCR staff in March, but it has been paying them not to work since then while it continues to fight litigation contesting its plan. The department says it hasn’t given up on defending that move, but now says it’s “important to refocus OCR’s work and utilize all OCR staff to prioritize OCR’s existing complaint caseload.”

    “In order for OCR to pursue its mission with all available resources, all those individuals currently being compensated by the Department need to meet their employee performance expectations and contribute to the enforcement of existing civil rights complaints,” the department said in Friday emails obtained by Inside Higher Ed. “Utilizing all OCR employees, including those currently on administrative leave, will bolster and refocus efforts on enforcement activities in a way that serves and benefits parents, students, and families.”

    One email gave an employee a Dec. 15 return date, while another said Dec. 29. It’s unclear how many workers will return. Bloomberg reported that the order went out to “more than 260,” while USA Today cited the department as saying “roughly 250,” but the Associated Press said “dozens.” Inside Higher Ed is awaiting clarification from the department.

    Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents department employees, said her union hasn’t been told how many workers in its bargaining unit received the email. She said in a statement Monday that “while we are relieved these public servants are finally being allowed to return to work, Education Secretary Linda McMahon has made clear that she would rather play politics than uphold her responsibility to protect students’ rights.”

    “For more than nine months, hundreds of employees at the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) have been sidelined from the critical work of protecting our nation’s most vulnerable students and families,” Gittleman said. She said the administration’s actions keeping these employees out of work and on leave “wasted more than $40 million in taxpayer funds.”

    “By blocking OCR staff from doing their jobs, Department leadership allowed a massive backlog of civil rights complaints to grow, and now expects these same employees to clean up a crisis entirely of the Department’s own making,” she added.

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  • Opinion | The Future of Work Depends on Choices Made in Childhood

    Opinion | The Future of Work Depends on Choices Made in Childhood

    Written by William Canty

    Public debate often treats the future of work as if it were an external force. In reality it is shaped by decisions made early in life. Human capital is formed long before individuals enter the labor market. Once those foundations are set, later interventions have limited effect.

    Foundations matter more than we admit

    International evidence is consistent. Children who reach secondary school without secure literacy and numeracy face reduced prospects in every dimension. They are less likely to complete higher education, less likely to shift between sectors and less likely to command wage growth. Early mastery is not a marginal advantage. It sets the trajectory of adult life.

    Such mastery seldom emerges on its own. It is often supported by a tutor or advisor who brings structure, continuity and interpretation. Their role is not to supply more content but to make learning coherent.

    Context now outweighs content

    Young people confront an abundance of information yet little clarity. They choose subjects without understanding how sectors are evolving. A student who enjoys mathematics might pursue data science, finance, engineering or modelling for the energy transition. One drawn to design might fit in product development, user experience, digital media or creative technology. The link between classroom and career is rarely obvious.

    Guidance from someone with lived experience can close this gap. It helps students recognise how technology alters professional practice and how new industries emerge from the convergence of skills.

    Hybrid skills have become the baseline

    Employers now prioritise a combination of analytical reasoning, creative problem solving, communication and digital fluency. These attributes underpin mobility in an economy shaped by automation and AI. They cannot be taught within a single discipline. They must be developed deliberately, ideally from early adolescence and strengthened through work exposure.

    Failure to cultivate such skills leaves individuals vulnerable to technological change. Success creates resilience across multiple career cycles.

    Families are preparing for uncertainty, not a single profession

    Parents increasingly recognise that traditional assurances are weakening. Admission to a reputable university no longer guarantees a durable career. Degrees hold value, but only when paired with adaptability. The prudent response is to plan for volatility.

    Every student should finish school with a clear framework for the decade ahead. This should include a strengths profile, an understanding of key industries, a realistic view of AI’s impact and a route into early professional experience. Such preparation is not aspirational. It is necessary.

    The policy implication

    Societies that wish to remain competitive must invest in human capital from the earliest years. Schools and universities cannot meet this need alone. Young people require advisors who understand both how learning develops and how labor markets shift. Treating this guidance as optional will leave nations and individuals exposed.

    Those who act early will shape their own economic future. Those who delay will face outcomes shaped by others.

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  • Top Hat Graded 2025: Empowering Teaching, Inspiring Learning

    Top Hat Graded 2025: Empowering Teaching, Inspiring Learning

    In 2025, educators and students didn’t just adapt to AI—they elevated it. With Ace, Top Hat’s AI-powered assistant, classrooms became more interactive, practice became more purposeful and great teaching scaled farther than ever before. The data we collected as part of Top Hat Graded 2025 tells a powerful story: when instructors lead with curiosity and students learn with confidence, technology becomes a catalyst for deeper engagement. We’re thrilled to share the results of our annual report below.

    → Free Template: Simplify course evaluations this term

    AI offered a powerful way to enhance your teaching

    Instructors used Ace to lighten the load without lowering the bar. Whether generating draft assessment questions, designing in-class activities, or creating practice prompts aligned with their course materials, educators treated Ace as an assistant—never a substitute—for their own judgment.

    Students, in turn, benefitted from more timely feedback, more consistent practice opportunities and more engaging learning experiences overall. Case in point: more than 107,000 students used Ace this year—a 114 percent increase compared to last year.

    From ideation to instruction, Ace helped educators focus on what they do best: teaching with creativity, clarity and care.

    Students loved generating practice quizzes 

    Ace’s practice engine became a cornerstone of student learning in 2025. Powered by course content—lecture slides, readings, assessments and more—Ace generated on-demand practice sessions that helped students study continuously, not just cram before exams.

    These sessions supported retrieval practice, concept reinforcement and self-paced review, all while giving students instant feedback designed to build confidence and mastery. The convenience mattered too: students could launch a personalized practice session in just one click from any content page. Practice became proactive, not reactive—and students embraced the shift.

    Faculty saved time on course preparation

    Ace’s question-generation tools made it faster and easier for instructors to build high-quality assessments, polls, discussion prompts and in-class activities. By analyzing uploaded content, Ace drafted questions tailored to course learning goals, while always giving instructors full control to edit, refine or regenerate. This translated into more interactive class time, more frequent knowledge checks and richer opportunities for active learning across every discipline.

    Educators and students embraced interactive learning tools

    This year, instructors leaned into Top Hat’s interactive quiz tools more than ever—using AI to spark engagement, check understanding and create meaningful moments of active learning. Across every discipline, educators built richer assessments, more dynamic in-class activities and countless opportunities for students to think critically.

    In total, 14,312,874 questions were created on Top Hat in 2025. Multiple choice questions topped the charts, with instructors generating 9,085,213 of them—the most widely used format for pulse checks, polls and final exams. Long answer prompts also saw impressive growth, with 1,746,370 questions created to encourage explanation, reflection and deeper reasoning.

    Looking ahead

    Top Hat Graded 2025 is more than a collection of numbers—it’s a testament to how educators and students reimagined what learning can look like with the right tools. Ace helped accelerate course preparation, scale personalized practice and enrich classroom interactivity, but the inspiration behind every improvement came from you.

    Here’s to another year of bold teaching, engaged learning and innovation—together.

    → Get a FREE template for collecting end-of-term student feedback

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  • Towards an educational gain approach to TEF

    Towards an educational gain approach to TEF

    This blog was kindly authored by Johnny Rich, Chief Executive of Push and Chief Executive of the Engineering Professors’ Council.

    You can read HEPI’s other blog on the current OfS consultation here.

    The Office for Students is currently consulting on plans to use the Teaching Excellence Framework to regulate fees and student numbers. There are two problems with this. Firstly, the TEF is a poor measure of what deserves to be rewarded. Secondly, even if it weren’t, using fees as rewards will damage the higher education sector.

    Paul Ashwin has already dismantled the notion that TEF has the heft for such heavy-lifting. He correctly criticises its broad institution-wide sweep, its data time lags, its susceptibility to gaming and so on. At its heart, the TEF is largely dependent on metrics that are, at best, questionable proxies of how effectively universities perform their core educational purpose. These are then reflected in four cliff-edged, unnuanced ratings.

    Hanging fees on this hook is a weighty burden, and it’s a hook that’s stuck to a wall with Blu-Tack. 

    But before we dismiss the idea faster than a toddler being offered broccoli, it’s worth considering what it would take to make it easier to swallow. Palatable, even.

    To this end, it’s worth taking a step back. The purpose of teaching – especially excellent teaching – is surely to see that learning is achieved. And, given that the current framework relies so heavily on outcomes as the indicators of teaching excellence, surely what TEF is really trying to appraise is how well universities support learning gain.

    In the early days of TEF, until 2019, HEFCE explicitly led a hunt for a holy grail metric or algorithm for ‘learning gain’. The quest concluded that learning gain was not a simple one-dimensional thing. Rather than being an attribute of a course (let alone a whole university), it was inherently a measure of a relationship between a student and the education they receive. A function rather than a point on a graph.

    No single metric would work for different courses, different institutions and different students.

    Having one overall TEF rating per institution with little room for context creates a driver that creates risk for universities that might want to try anything new.

    Instead of universities asking themselves how their educational experience might be improved for their students, the safer question is What gets gold? Let’s copy that or Let’s stick with that.

    And instead of thinking about how they could diversify to offer something innovative to students who have been traditionally underserved by higher education, it’s less risky to try to recruit whatever students are historically most likely to succeed.

    That has a cooling effect on innovation and diversity in the sector, especially when coupled with the effect of rankings, which drive institutions to emulate the so-called ‘best’ and to count what’s measured rather than measure what counts, as Prof Billy Wong brilliantly explained in his recent HEPI blog. It is ironic that one effect of the marketisation of higher education has been to increase homogeneity across the sector, rather than competition driving universities to seek out niches.

    We need to return to the quest for a multi-dimensional measure of learning gain – or, as it is now being called, ‘educational gain’ – the distance travelled by the student in partnership with their institution. Prof Wong’s blog accompanied the publication of a paper outlining just such a new approach. This – or something similar – could give the OfS the load-bearing hook it wants.

    In the spirit of offering solutions, not just criticisms of the OfS’s plans, I propose that, instead of a TEF with stakes stacked high like a poker chips, the OfS could define a ‘suite’ of metrics (most of which already exist and some of which are already used by the TEF) that it would regard as valid measures of different dimensions of educational gain. These would be benchmarked by socio-economic background, region, discipline mix – or whatever is relevant to the metric in question.

    Each institution regulated by the OfS would need to state which measures from the suite it thinks should be used to judge its educational gain. Some would veer towards employment metrics, others would champion access and value-added, and others would aim for progression to further study as a goal. Most, I suspect, would pursue their own multi-faceted mix.

    Whatever selection they make would be based on the institution’s mission and they would not only have to say which measures should be used, but what targets they believe they should achieve.

    The OfS’s role would be, in the first instance, to assess these educational gain ‘missions’ and decide whether they are sufficiently ambitious to deserve access to fee funding and, subsequently, to assess over time whether each institution is making satisfactory progress towards its targets.

    This is not as radical it may sound. The OfS already operates a similar approach in inviting universities to define goals from a preset list in their Access and Participation Plans, although in that instance the list is made up of risks rather than targets.

    If the OfS feels the bronze/silver/gold signalling of the TEF is still important, it could still give awards based on level of achievement according to the institutions’ own sufficiently ambitious terms of success.

    This would encourage, rather than dampen, diversity. It would be forward-looking rather than relying on lagged data. And it would measure success according to a sophisticated assessment of the distance travelled both by institutions and by their students.

    If this were the hook from which OfS wanted to dangle funding carrots, it would drive excellence through each autonomous institution being encouraged to consider how to improve the education it individually offers and to chase that, instead of palely imitating familiar models.

    However, even with this educational gain-driven version of TEF, that still leaves the second problem I mentioned at the start.

    How would using the TEF to regulate fees damage the sector?

    On the one hand, ‘gold’ universities would win higher fees (relative to other institutions at least). Given they are succeeding on the fees they’re already receiving, it would seem an inefficient use of public funding to channel any more money in their direction, as apparently they don’t need it to deliver their already excellent teaching.

    On the other hand, for those universities that are struggling, a lack of financial resource may be a significant factor either in their lower assessment or in gaining ground in future. Denying funding to those that need it most would condemn them to a spiral of decline.

    The effect would be to bifurcate the system into the gold ‘haves’ and the bronze ‘have-nots’ with the distance between the two camps growing ever more distant, and the silvers walking a tightrope in between, trying to ensure they can fall on the side with the safety net.

    An education gain-based approach to TEF wouldn’t solve this problem, but – as I’ve outlined – it could provide a system to incentivise and regulate excellence that would mean the OfS doesn’t have to resort to creating a binary divide through a well-intentioned, but inefficient and unfair allocation of limited resources.

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  • A track meet that pushes girls to greatness

    A track meet that pushes girls to greatness

    The crowd is electric. The starting gun goes off to begin a race, and you can hear and feel the passion of the crowd as they cheer. The announcer feeds the excitement, commentating every stride over the sound system, urging athletes to “pump those arms” and “keep moving.” It’s difficult not to get swept.

    These are the Colgate Women’s Games, the largest amateur track and field series in the United States, which kick off its 50th iteration this year with preliminary meets 28 December. 

    Watching the youngest athletes compete is witnessing sports in its purest form. There’s no pretense, calculated strategies or alternative agendas. It’s just grit, unbridled joy and the thrill of pushing their bodies to the limit. 

    Some triumph and some falter, but they all cross the finish line giving it their all, and that authenticity is what makes the Games special.

    The venue is packed wall-to-wall. Not an empty seat in sight. The athletes fill in every inch of space — so many that you can hardly see the floor beneath them. The girls wrap around what’s known at Colgate as “The Wall,” lining every side of the facility. 

    More than just a track meet

    The line of competitors is so long, it will snake around the entire facility in a sea of athletes waiting for their moment to shine.

    The fierce competitive spirit of the competitors and the crowd’s near proximity to the action combine to generate an almost tangible atmosphere. The energy doesn’t just fuel the competition, it elevates it, pushing performances to another level.

    The Colgate Women’s Games are more than just track meets. They are a gateway to opportunity that transforms lives, with more than 5,000 scholarships awarded, lifelong friendships cultivated and the start of Olympic and professional dreams, athletic and non-athletic.

    “It was some of the best memories I had at that time,” said Dalilah Muhammad, Olympic gold medalist and former 400-meter hurdles world record holder. “Just being a kid, nervous and excited at the same time, while being able to do it with your friends. For me, that was the most important aspect of it. It made me feel like I had a place that I belonged to with friends, that all wanted to be there and do the same thing.”

    The goal is to foster a robust sense of personal accomplishment and self-worth while supporting the coaches who serve as role models and mentors for the girls.

    Ideas sketched out on a napkin

    Alumni include 29 Olympians, countless national champions and current and former world and national record holders at the senior, junior and youth levels. Former competitors now work as teachers, judges, lawyers, executives and ESPN anchors. One of the most recognizable is ESPN SportsCenter anchor Amina Smith.

    The Colgate Women’s Games were the brainchild of Fred Thompson, a New York attorney and founder of a Brooklyn girls’ track club who was frustrated with the state of women’s athletics in the mid-1970s.

    Thompson was an ABC network sportscaster, and was invited to an event hosted by the Colgate-Palmolive Company — a corporate giant known for soap and toothpaste — for the unveiling of a video presentation titled “Colgate’s Women in Sports,” to air on ABC’s telecast of the newly-launched Dinah Shore golf tournament. 

    The video included a segment on Thompson’s Atoms Track Club, where girl athletes trained. In the video they talked about training as well as school, why they enjoyed running and their aspirations on and off the track. It caught the eye of Colgate President David Foster. He saw that Thompson had found a way to instill in women a drive for excellence that would carry over to college and careers. 

    Foster wanted his company to replicate in communities around the country what Thompson had done in his community. 

    “[They were talking] for a long time, scribbling some stuff on a napkin and I’m sitting there wondering what is going on?” said Cheryl Toussaint, an alum of the Atoms Track Club. Toussaint had won a silver medal in the women’s 4 × 400 meters relay at the 1972 Olympics. She is now the Meet Director of the Colgate Women’s Games, having taken over the position from Thompson.

    Getting girls to plan for their future

    But back then, the Games were just rough ideas. Thompson and the Colgate execs wanted to bolster the sport for women, give them more opportunities and provide scholarships that could be applied to any level of education.

    A pilot program at a local college gym drew a massive turnout. Colgate-Palmolive saw that with awards and scholarship opportunities, it could be something that would resonate.

    Now, the Games consist of eight events — six track distances plus shot put and high jump — in six divisions for the women to compete in.

    Competitors collect points for results in preliminary rounds, and those with the highest numbers move on to the semi-finals and the grand finale on 7 February 2026, which will be available livestream on ArmoryTrack.org. 

    The top six finishers in each event will receive a trophy and the top three finishers will be rewarded an additional educational scholarship in denominations of $2,000, $1,000 and $500. Special awards are also given for most outstanding and improved performances as well as most promising performance from a newcomer.

    From local to national

    All girls and women from elementary school grades 1 and up are eligible to participate in the Colgate Women’s Games. No prior experience in track and field is necessary, but all girls of school-age must be enrolled and attending school in order to participate.

    As the years continued, the Games began to grow from a local meet, to a regional meet and even a national meet where girls from states such as Georgia, Arizona and Texas would travel to New York to compete.

    But it’s the finals that set the Games apart. The finals aren’t just the last series of races; it’s a celebration, a ceremony marking the culmination of the preliminary and semifinal rounds.

    Muhammad and many other Olympians such as Nia Ali, Ajee Wilson, Natasha Hastings, Kim Thomas Barnes (Carter), Diane Dixon and Athing Mu got their start here. The Olympians produced by the Games would represent multiple nations, demonstrating their international reach.

    The Games’ impact extends beyond the track; the skills and confidence built from competing has led to careers in education, medicine, business, law, media and beyond. Some Games alumni, like basketball star Lorin Dixon, went on to excel in other sports.

    Scholarships get girls thinking about college.

    Colgate Women’s Games gives the competitors the chance to earn scholarships to college as early as Grade 1, around the age of 6 or 7, which gets parents and guardians planning that early for a college path for their daughters. If they continue competing, the scholarships accumulate.  

    If the scholarship earners opt out of college, they can apply that scholarship to career training.

    For the women who would go on to run track at the high school and collegiate level, the Games introduced them to the scoring system. The girls learn at an early age how their performance affects their score and overall placement in the meet, along with race strategies to earn the maximum number of points possible. 

    This knowledge helps when competing at the next level where point scoring is a crucial aspect to high school and collegiate track.

    Empowering women through sports

    Numerous alumni have embraced the Colgate Women’s Games’ mission of empowering young girls and women.

    Consider Olicia Williams, Games’ alum and three-time All-American at Baylor University, who after years of mentoring youth and serving the community through The Armory Foundation, along with coaching her high school and college alma mater, created Lili’s Lionesses Track Club, a program focused on enabling young women to thrive in academics, sports and personal development.

    Impact alone doesn’t ensure survival. The Games continue to thrive after 50 years because their model is built on values that extend beyond any single season or generation.

    Foremost, it’s a developmental series. Because it’s not a one-off competition, girls with no experience can come to each competition and learn as they compete. They learn they don’t need expensive equipment to participate in the sport.

    Toussaint pointed out that the series not only develops competitors from a physical standpoint; it develops them mentally. 

    “When younger girls fall down, come in last or get bumped out of competition and feel dejected, we help them understand that it’s just one day,” Toussaint said. “We tell them and their parents, this is a place to learn what you’re made of, develop your skills and improve on what you did before.”

    Eliminating barriers

    The Games are free for the competitors. This makes it different from the many track meets and running events that are surprisingly expensive. 

    Muhammad said that everyone is there for the right reasons. “No one’s there doing it for any type of money and that’s what makes Colgate so great,” she said. “You have great people doing it for a cause that’s bigger than themselves and it’s inspiring.”

    Thompson died in 2019 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. But his legacy lives on through all the lives he’s helped, and he would be thrilled to see the Games’ 50th anniversary, says Toussaint. “He would cry tears of joy,” she said. 

    Women’s sports have finally surged into the mainstream. There’s WNBA stars A’ja Wilson and Sabrina Ionescu launching signature shoes that are high performing in sales, and women headlining Ultimate Fighting Championship events and selling out arenas. There’s Serena Williams transcending sport to become a global icon. But it’s important to remember that this success didn’t emerge spontaneously. It was built by pioneers who invested in women athletes long before it was profitable or popular.

    The Colgate Women’s Games belong in that conversation as a cornerstone of women’s sports.

    Questions to consider:

    1. What is one thing about the Colgate Women’s Games that makes it different from other track and field competitions for women?

    2. How can sports help girls off the field?

    3. In what ways can competition be both good and bad?



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  • Teaching might be synchronous, but learning is always happening asynchronously

    Teaching might be synchronous, but learning is always happening asynchronously

    Key points:

    The bell rings at 10:00 a.m. A teacher begins explaining quadratic equations. Some students lean forward, pencils ready. Others stare at the clock. A few are still turning yesterday’s lesson over in their minds. On the surface, it’s a standard, well‑planned class period. But here’s the catch: Learning doesn’t always happen on schedule.

    Think about your own class last week. Did every student learn exactly what you were teaching? Or did some of them circle back a day or two later with new questions, fresh insights, or sudden understanding?

    Across the country, laws and regulations attempt to define and balance synchronous and asynchronous instruction. Some states fund schools based on seat time, measuring how long students sit in classrooms or log into live online sessions. Here in Indiana, recent legislation even limits the number of e‑learning days that can be asynchronous, as if too many days without live teaching would somehow shortchange students. These rules were written with the best of intentions–ensuring students are engaged, teachers are available, and learning doesn’t slip through the cracks.

    Over time, “asynchronous instruction” has picked up a troubling reputation, often equated with the idea of no teaching at all–just kids simply poking through a computer on their own. But the truth is far more nuanced. The work of teaching is so difficult precisely because all learning is, at its core, asynchronous. The best teachers understand the enormous variance in readiness within any group of students. They know some learners grasp a concept immediately while others need more time, multiple exposures, or a completely different entry point. Giving them space beyond the live moment is often exactly what allows learning to take hold.

    Devoting resources to well-designed asynchronous learning, such as recorded lectures available for rewatch, self-paced learning modules, project-based activities, and educational games, allows students to immerse themselves in instructional materials and gain a better understanding of content on their terms. Instead of helping students catch up during class time, teachers can focus on whole-group instruction and a deeper analysis of curriculum content.

    When we’re measuring butts in seats or time in front of a screen with an instructor on the other end, live, we’re measuring what’s easy to measure, not what’s important. Real student engagement happens in the head of the learner, and that is far harder to quantify.

    That’s why I can’t help but wonder if some of these mandates, while well‑intentioned, actually get in the way of real learning, pushing schools to comply with a regulation rather than focus on the conditions that actually help students grow.

    What if, instead of focusing so much on the ratio of synchronous to asynchronous minutes, we asked a better question: Are students being given the time, space, and support to truly learn? Are we creating systems that allow them to circle back and show growth when they’re ready, not just when the bell rings? As an administrator, I know our district is still figuring out the complexities of putting these goals into practice.

    Instead of tying funding and accountability to time in a seat, imagine tying it to evidence of growth. Imagine policies that encourage schools to document when and how students show understanding, no matter when it happens. Imagine giving educators the freedom to design opportunities for students to revisit, rethink, and re‑engage until the learning truly sticks.

    The teaching might be synchronous. But the learning is always happening asynchronously, and if we can shift our policies, practices, and mindsets to honor that truth, we can move beyond compliance and toward classrooms where students have every chance to succeed.

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  • Higher Education and the Culture of Silence

    Higher Education and the Culture of Silence

    American higher education presents itself as a beacon of truth, courage, and critical inquiry. Yet behind the marketing gloss lies a pervasive culture of silence—one that extends far beyond colleges and universities themselves. The same forces that suppress dissent on campus operate through a larger ecosystem of nonprofits, contractors, ed-tech companies, and “public-private partnerships” that orbit higher ed. Together, they form a network of institutional interests that reward secrecy, punish whistleblowers, and prioritize reputation and revenue over honesty and accountability.

    At the center of this system are nondisclosure agreements. NDAs are now standard tools not only in universities, but in the foundations that support them, the think tanks that shape education policy, and the ed-tech corporations that extract profit from student data and public subsidies. Whether a case involves workplace retaliation, fraudulent recruitment, financial misconduct, algorithmic harm, or student exploitation, NDAs are used to hide patterns of abuse and protect organizations from scrutiny. What gets buried is not just information—it is the possibility of reform.

    The threat of litigation is part of the same architecture. Universities, nonprofits, and ed-tech companies routinely rely on aggressive legal strategies to silence critics. Workers attempting to expose unethical contracts, deceptive marketing, or discrimination face cease-and-desist letters. Researchers who publish unflattering findings are pressured to retract or soften their conclusions. Students raising alarms about data privacy or predatory practices encounter legal intimidation disguised as “professional communication.” These organizations—flush with donor money, investor capital, or public funds—use lawsuits and threats of lawsuits as shields and weapons.

    Leadership across this broader ecosystem is often weak, conflicted, or corrupt. University presidents beholden to trustees are mirrored by nonprofit executives beholden to major donors, and by ed-tech CEOs beholden to venture capital. Many leaders prioritize political favor, philanthropic relationships, and corporate growth over the public interest. They outsource accountability to law firms, PR agencies, and consulting outfits whose job is not to fix problems but to bury them.

    And circulating through this system is the same cast of characters: politicians chasing influence, lawyers crafting airtight silence, consultants selling risk-mitigation strategies, bean counters manipulating data, and conmen repackaging failed ideas as “innovation.” The lines between nonprofit, corporate, and educational interests have blurred to the point of erasure. Trustees who shape campus policy sit on nonprofit boards. Ed-tech companies hire former university officials and then market themselves back to campuses. Donors direct funds through philanthropic intermediaries that simultaneously pressure institutions for access and silence.

    The victims of this system—faculty, staff, gig workers in tech and nonprofit roles, graduate students, undergraduates, and even the communities surrounding campuses—are pressured to comply. They face retaliation in the form of job loss, non-renewal, demotion, academic penalties, professional blacklisting, or immigration vulnerabilities. Whistleblowers are isolated. Critics are surveilled. And when the fallout becomes too public to contain, institutions rely on payouts—quiet settlements, buyouts, and confidential agreements that allow perpetrators to move seamlessly to their next institution or company.

    This culture of silence is not a collection of isolated incidents. It is a structural feature of modern higher education and the industries built around it.

    But it is not unbreakable.

    If you have experienced or witnessed this culture—whether in a university, a higher-ed nonprofit, or the ed-tech world—the Higher Education Inquirer invites you to share your story. You may do so publicly or anonymously. We understand the risks. We know many people cannot speak openly without jeopardizing their jobs, degrees, or health. Anonymous accounts are welcome, valued, and protected.

    Your story, no matter how brief, can help illuminate the patterns that institutions spend billions to obscure. Silence is what sustains the system. Truth—shared safely and collectively—is what can dismantle it.

    Sources

    • Elisabeth Rosenthal, An American Sickness

    • Alondra Nelson, Body and Soul

    • Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid

    • Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

    • Reporting from the Higher Education Inquirer on university corruption, NDAs, donor influence, and ed-tech abuses

    • Investigations into nonprofit and ed-tech misconduct published in public records, court filings, and independent journalism

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  • Conservative Think Tank AEI Names Ben Sasse Senior Fellow

    Conservative Think Tank AEI Names Ben Sasse Senior Fellow

    Former University of Florida president Ben Sasse is now an American Enterprise Institute fellow.

    The American Enterprise Institute, a prominent conservative-leaning think tank, has named former U.S. senator and university president Ben Sasse a nonresident senior fellow, AEI announced Friday. Its website says his work there will focus on “higher education, innovation, technology, American history and culture, and national security.”

    Sasse’s AEI post and his continuing voice at other major conservative institutions—The Wall Street Journal has run at least three op-eds by him this year, including one calling on university board members across the country to stand up to faculty “radicals” and “encourage greater intellectual diversity”—shows he’s not persona non grata after his abrupt exit from the University of Florida last year.

    Sasse attributed his resignation from UF to his wife’s health, though the student newspaper, The Independent Florida Alligator, has reported the board may have forced him out. During the first year of his roughly 18-month presidency, his office spent more than $17 million. Sasse denied wrongdoing and argued that driving new initiatives at UF required major investments.

    Sasse, a Republican who represented Nebraska in the Senate, remains a professor in UF’s Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education. He previously was president of Midland University.

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  • Coach Buyouts Boom to Record Highs

    Coach Buyouts Boom to Record Highs

    Earlier this year, Pennsylvania State University announced it would close seven campuses due to financial constraints, while Louisiana State University implemented a hiring freeze and other cost-cutting measures.

    Months later both institutions fired their head football coaches—for a price. Despite Penn State’s financial challenges, administrators were willing to pay more than $45 million to make head coach James Franklin go away after the Nittany Lions posted a 6-3 record. LSU fired Brian Kelly after a 5-3 start and gave him a buyout of $54 million.

    Franklin’s total buyout was ultimately reduced to $9 million when he landed the head coaching job at Virginia Tech, and Kelly’s exit package will also shrink should he find another position. But the eye-popping compensation numbers are adding up—and setting new records at a time when many colleges and universities are cutting costs.

    Record Buyouts

    Recent data compiled by the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics shows that failing is a lucrative business for college football coaches. Fifteen fired football coaches have already racked up collective buyouts of nearly $228 million from public universities, compared to $120 million in fiscal year 2024. (Those totals are for Football Bowl Subdivision coaches only, formerly known as Division I-A, and only include public universities, since private institutions don’t release such contract details.)

    Former LSU coach Brian Kelly landed one of the largest buyouts in the history of college sports.

    Gus Stark/LSU/University Images/Getty Images

    The Knight Commission noted that individual coaching buyouts this year “are the second, third, fourth, and fifth highest severance pay obligations in history.” The top slot still belongs to Texas A&M University, which fired Jimbo Fisher in 2023 with an exit package of more than $75 million.

    Looking across a longer timeline, the commission estimates that universities shelled out a total of $852 million in severance pay for football coaches, including assistants, between 2012 and 2024.

    University Responses

    Universities often stress that coaching buyouts are paid with donor funds, not public money. Even so, some experts argue that paying vast sums of money to fire coaches is problematic and damages faculty and staff morale, especially at universities that are slashing jobs and budgets.

    Penn State defended its recent buyout to Inside Higher Ed by emphasizing that its athletic program is among the few in the nation “that is self-sustaining and therefore does not use any tuition or taxpayer dollars.” In addition, the university said, it has a major economic impact on the surrounding area.

    “Decisions regarding budgets and operations of the academic enterprise are separate and distinct,” a spokesperson wrote in an emailed response to a question about closing rural campuses across Pennsylvania. “As noted, no tuition or tax dollars are used for athletics. The difficult but necessary decisions Penn State has made impacting campuses and unit budgets, have been made with a core focus on setting our students up with the best opportunities for success.”

    LSU did not provide a statement to emailed questions prior to publication.

    Congressional Scrutiny

    While Congress has deliberated capping pay for college athletes—whom institutions can now pay directly, as of earlier this year—Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics CEO Amy Privette Perko has encouraged lawmakers to rein in coaching salaries.

    “As Congress debates the merits of federal legislation to place limits and guardrails on college athlete compensation, it should also examine the conditions that allow for the continued growth of excessive compensation and severance for football coaches at non-profit universities,” she said in a statement accompanying the organization’s report on buyouts.

    Some members of Congress appear interested in taking on runaway salaries and buyouts.

    In October, Representative Michael Baumgartner, a Washington Republican, introduced the Correcting Opportunity and Accountability in Collegiate Hiring Act, a proposal that would cap annual pay for all athletics department employees. Baumgartner’s proposed bill would limit annual pay to no more than 10 times the cost of in-state tuition for undergraduate students.

    While new LSU coach Lane Kiffin is set to make $13 million a year, his annual salary would be dramatically lower—about $280,000—under the pay scheme proposed by Baumgartner.

    Multiple state attorneys general have already voiced opposition to the proposal.

    Lane Kiffin speaks at a press conference as he is introduced as the new head football coach of the LSU Tigers. He is a white man with short brown hair, wearing a blue suit with a purple tie and patterned shirt.

    New LSU coach Lane Kiffin is poised to make $13 million a year.

    Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images

    Some lawmakers have also questioned whether college sports should remain tax-exempt. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat representing Washington, wrote a letter to the Joint Committee on Taxation earlier this year, seeking an analysis of the implications of stripping the NCAA, member institutions and athletic conferences of their ability to continue as tax-exempt organizations.

    “Given the evolving market dynamics of college sports coupled with changes in the legal framework affecting college athletes, legitimate questions have been raised about whether it is time to rethink the tax-exempt regime under which college sports currently operates,” she wrote.

    But so far, legislation to alter the college sports landscape has proven difficult to pass. The latest effort to overhaul athletics—which would have limited student transfer eligibility and how much universities can spend on name, image and likeness deals—collapsed short of the end zone last week when House members balked on the GOP-backed bill and sponsors pulled it from a vote.

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  • Harvard Prof to Leave U.S. After Immigration Arrest

    Harvard Prof to Leave U.S. After Immigration Arrest

    At the time of his initial arrest, Gouvea said he was hunting rats.

    APCortizasJr/iStock/Getty Images

    Immigration authorities arrested Carlos Portugal Gouvea, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, on Wednesday after his J-1 visa was revoked for shooting a BB gun outside of a Boston-area synagogue Oct. 2, the day of Yom Kippur. Gouvea agreed to voluntarily leave the United States rather than be deported. 

    The Department of State revoked Gouvea’s visa Oct. 16, and a month later, Gouvea accepted a plea deal “on the charge of illegal use of the air rifle while his other charges for disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and vandalizing property were dismissed,” the Department of Homeland Security wrote in a news release. 

    Gouvea shot the pellet gun outside Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, Mass., just a few miles south of the Harvard campus, The New York Times reported. Private security guards for the synagogue heard a loud noise outside, and the temple was put in a lockdown. When a guard saw Gouvea behind a tree and attempted to arrest him, they engaged in a brief physical struggle and then Gouvea fled, the Times reported. He was later arrested by Brookline police. Gouvea fired two total shots, one of which police later discovered had shattered a car window. Harvard officials put Gouvea on administrative leave shortly after his October arrest.

    In its news release, the Department of Homeland Security called the act an “anti-Semitic shooting incident,” a characterization federal officials have maintained since the incident. 

    “It is a privilege to work and study in the United States, not a right. There is no room in the United States for brazen, violent acts of anti-Semitism like this. They are an affront to our core principals as a country and an unacceptable threat against law-abiding American citizens,” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, said in a statement. “We are under zero obligation to admit foreigners who commit these inexplicably reprehensible acts or to let them stay here. Secretary Noem has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and commit anti-American and anti-Semitic violence and terrorism should think again. You are not welcome here.” 

    At the time of his initial arrest, Gouvea said he was “hunting rats.” He was not charged with a hate crime by local police, and leaders from Temple Beth Zion told the Times they did not believe the shooting was motivated by bias. 

    “From what we were initially told by police, the individual was unaware that he lived next to, and was shooting his BB gun next to, a synagogue, or that it was a religious holiday,” Benjamin Maron, the synagogue’s executive director, and Larry Kraus, its president, wrote in the statement to the Times. “It is potentially dangerous to use a BB gun in such a populated spot, but it does not appear to have been fueled by antisemitism.”

    A lawyer for Gouvea also told the Times in October that the matter was “a total misunderstanding of an entirely innocent situation.”

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