We looked a few weeks ago at Philip Stott College; this week we’ll go to the Bonar Law Memorial College, its rival and successor, and see what happened there.
Earlier in my career, when I worked at what is now City St George’s, I was obliged to visit Ashridge in my official capacity. A magnificent stone building, with wonderful medieval fireplaces and mullioned windows; the childhood home of Elizabeth I, rich in history.
Except, of course, that Ashridge House was built in the early nineteenth century. All of that history took place at Ashridge Priory, which stood on the same site but was demolished in 1803. And Ashridge House is now grade I listed, with its grounds grade 2 listed. It’s a fake, but it’s a glorious fake.
It was built under the auspices of John Egerton, 7th Earl of Bridgewater. He was a descendent of Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and Lord Chancellor of Elizabeth I and James VI and I, and also of Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater and a canal magnate. And when complete it eventually passed into the Brownlow family, who in 1921 sold the house and the grounds to the National Trust.
It was bought by Urban H Broughton. Broughton was a civil engineer, who in 1884 went to the USA to promote a hydro-pneumatic sewerage system. He clearly did well there, promoting the system at the 1893 World Fair in Chicago, and in 1895 being hired by oil tycoon Henry Rogers to instal the system in his home community. And there he met Cara Leland Duff, Rogers’ widowed daughter. Sparks flew; they married. And, years later, he returned to Britain with his family, a rich man. He became a personage in society, a Conservative MP, and he was just about to be ennobled when he died.
Before he did this, however, he gave Ashridge House to the Conservative Party to be used as a staff college.
And so the Bonar Law Memorial College was born. Its original trustees were a roll-call of the Conservative party’s great and good: Stanley Baldwin MP, John Colin Campbell Davidson MP, Baron Fairhaven, John William Beaumont Pease, Viscount Hailsham, Neville Chamberlain MP, Viscount Astor, Col. John Buchan (he of The Thirty-Nine Steps), Viscountess Bridgeman, and Lady Greenwood, amongst others. The Leader and Chaiman [sic] of the Conservative and Unionist Party were trustees ex officio. It was named for Andrew Bonar Law, Prime Minister from 1922 to 1923.
The Bonar Law Memorial College opened in 1929; it became known as a college of citizenship. During WW2 it was used as a field hospital. And it seems that its time as a Conservative college was not without tensions between the Conservative party and the college. Which is probably inevitable: the periodicity of vicissitudes in politics is, I claim, shorter than the periodicity of change in ideas and curricula.
By 1954 the political nature of the college was coming to an end. By an Act of Parliament – the Ashridge (Bonar Law Memorial) Trust Act 1954 – the college became non-partisan, and known as the Ashridge Management College. It seems that the charitable aims were focused on the UK and the Commonwealth, meaning that the Ashridge (Bonar Law Memorial) Trust Act 1983 was necessary to enable the college to recruit students from countries outside the Commonwealth.
In the 1990s Ashridge was validated by City University – which was how I got to go there – but then gained its own degree awarding powers. And rightly so. In 2015 it became part of Hult International Business School and now hosts executive education.
The card is undated and unposted but judging by the cars parks out front I would guess stems from the 1950s, after it had become Ashridge. Here’s a jigsaw of the card – it’s a really tricky one this week!
First Amendment advocates are condemning Indiana University’s decision this week to suspend print publication of the Indiana Daily Student, a move that comes after administrators fired its adviser for allegedly rejecting demands to censor the student newspaper.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression called the decision “outrageous,” while officials at the Student Press Law Center cast the move as a classic case of censorship. Editors at the newspaper say they want to work with the university to address the issue but pledged “to resist as long as the university disregards the law.”
“Any other means than court would be preferred,” wrote IDS editors Mia Hilowitz and Andrew Miller in an op-ed Wednesday.
The decision is the latest flare-up between student journalists and institutions. Earlier this year, Purdue University ended its partnership with the student paper, citing “institutional neutrality.” The move also echoes Texas A&M University’s unilateral decision in 2022 to end its student newspaper’s print edition.
The IDS editors first brought attention to the firing of Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush in a Tuesday op-ed. They accused IU of ousting Rodenbush after he refused to follow directions from administrators to censor a homecoming edition of the newspaper. Administrators reportedly told Rodenbush the newspaper was only to contain information about homecoming and “no traditional front page news coverage.” But when he resisted, and editors at the Indiana Daily Student pressed Media School administrators for clarity, Rodenbush was fired.
A termination letter shared with Inside Higher Ed and signed by Media School dean David Tolchinsky accused Rodenbush of a “lack of leadership” and inability “to work in alignment with the University’s direction for the Student Media Plan,” which he called “unacceptable.” Tolchinsky added that Rodenbush “will not be eligible for rehire at Indiana University.”
The termination letter sent to Jim Rodenbush.
After Rodenbush was ousted, administrators canceled publication of the newspaper, citing a plan adopted last year that outlined a shift for the student newspaper from print to digital platforms.
“In support of the Action Plan, the campus has decided to make this shift effective this week, aligning IU with industry trends and offering experiential opportunities more consistent with digital-first media careers of the future,” Tolchinsky wrote in an email to student editors obtained by Inside Higher Ed.
Indiana administrators deny that the university censored the paper, despite telling the student publication not to publish news. IU officials say that the newspaper retains full editorial control.
Accelerating a Shift
In a statement shared with Inside Higher Ed and attributed only to an IU spokesperson, officials wrote, “Indiana University Bloomington is committed to a vibrant and independent student media ecosystem.” The statement added that the shift from print to digital is geared toward “prioritizing student experiences that are more consistent with today’s digital-first media environment while also addressing a longstanding structural deficit at the Indiana Daily Student.”
Chancellor David Reingold also pointed to the action plan in his statement, noting that “the campus is completing the shift from print to digital effective this week.” He added that the decision “concerns the medium of distribution, not editorial content,” and IU upholds “the right of student journalists to pursue stories freely and without interference.”
Tolchinsky, President Pamela Whitten and members of the Board of Trustees did not respond to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed. IU did not answer specific questions sent by email.
Although Indiana officials have denied censoring the student newspaper, some officials were concerned about the optics of shutting down coverage, according to the Indiana Daily Student.
When Rodenbush pushed back on the directive to censor the newspaper in a Sept. 25 meeting, Ron McFall, assistant dean of strategy and administration at the Media School, reportedly asked, “How do we frame that, you know, in a way that’s not seen as censorship?”
McFall did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.
‘Textbook Case of Censorship’
Rodenbush told Inside Higher Ed in a phone interview that he was surprised by his firing and open to exploring all legal options. He also cast the happenings at IU not as a business decision but pure censorship.
“This is a textbook case of censorship,” Rodenbush said.
He also disputed the notion that what happened was part of a shift to a digital product. In fact, Rodenbush argued, that shift largely already happened when university administrators decided last year to scale back the publication of the print edition from weekly to seven editions across the spring semester. Those seven printings were special editions, Rodenbush said, given that those “are generally our biggest revenue generators.” Special editions this year have been printed as supplemental sections, or essentially inserts into the regular editions of the paper.
Prior to the fall semester, Rodenbush said, he never heard concerns from administrators about that practice until they objected to publishing the homecoming edition as an insert in the regular newspaper in September. When asked to ban news coverage from the homecoming edition, Rodenbush told Media School administrators, including Tolchinsky, he “wasn’t going to participate in censoring the paper,” which he said led to his firing.
Hilowitz and Miller, the IDS editors, also disputed the notion that the cancellation of the print publication, which was communicated to them by Tolchinsky, was anything but censorship.
“IU decided to fire Jim Rodenbush after he did the right thing by refusing to censor our print edition. That was a deliberate scare tactic toward student journalists and faculty. The same day, the Media School decided to fully cut our physical paper, fully ensuring we couldn’t print news. We’re losing revenue because of that decision,” they wrote in a joint emailed statement.
The duo accused IU of trying to “irrationally justify” censorship as a “business decision.”
Mike Hiestrand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, told Inside Higher Ed that IU’s actions amount to content-based censorship and are “a clear violation of the First Amendment.”
Asked to weigh in on IU’s response, Hiestrand commented, “No censor wants to be called a censor,” but “that’s clearly the case.” He added that being told not to publish certain information is “as content-based an action of censorship as you can get.” In an interview at a media conference in Washington, D.C., with hundreds of student journalists and advisers in attendance, Hiestrand said that there has been a sense of shock and outrage from attendees over the situation.
“I think there’s shock that this happened here. We have strong laws that protect against this,” Hiestrand said.
Free Speech Under Fire
The censorship flap comes amid broad criticism of the state of free expression at IU, which FIRE ranked as one of the nation’s worst institutions on campus speech. Of 257 universities, FIRE ranked IU at 255 in its free speech rankings.
IU has seen a flurry of campus speech controversies since Whitten became president in 2021.
“Censoring a student publication after it reported on a university’s dismal record on free speech isn’t just a stunning display of lack of self-awareness, it’s a violation of the First Amendment,” FIRE student press program officer Dominic Coletti said in a statement. “If Indiana University is embarrassed about its terrible showing in the College Free Speech Rankings, it should put down the shovel and start caring more about its students’ constitutional rights than its own image.”
The university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors urged administrators to reconsider their decisions to fire the adviser and cut the print edition, saying the situation further deteriorates IU’s commitment to free speech.
“In refusing to be cowed by demands to voluntarily abrogate constitutionally protected rights, Director Rodenbush and the Indiana Daily Student have indeed shown themselves out of alignment with a University Administration that has consistently silenced dissenting voices with a seeming disregard for First Amendment protections,” the chapter said in a statement.
This latest controversy is also gaining national attention from big-name donors such as Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur and IU alum. Cuban, who previously donated money to support the Indiana Daily Student, called out administrators in a post on X.
“Not happy. Censorship isn’t the way,” Cuban wrote Wednesday. “I gave money to [the] IU general fund for the IDS last year, so they could pay everyone and not run a deficit. I gave more than they asked for. I told them I’m happy to help because the IDS is important to kids at IU.”
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On Wednesday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to immediately stop the mass firing of federal employees during the government shutdown.
The Trump administration cannot issue any additional reduction-in-force notices, and it cannot enforce the notices already issued, according to the ruling from Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The temporary block follows a Sept. 30 lawsuit filed by two unions — the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — against the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for violating the law when OMB Director Russ Vought threatened a mass firing of federal workers during a shutdown.
For the second time this year, the Trump administration on Oct. 10 laid off a significant number of staff in the U.S. Department of Education, as part of President Donald Trump’s broader effort to abolish the agency.
The first round of RIF notices at the Education Department came in March, leading the agency to get entangled in multiple lawsuits that challenged the legality of those firings.
Before Trump took office on Jan. 20, the department had 4,133 employees. In March, that dwindled to 2,183. The number of staff then dipped further to an estimated 2,000 after the Oct. 10 firings, which also impacted other federal agencies nearly two weeks after a federal shutdown began after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement on the federal budget.
Meanwhile, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a X post on Wednesday that schools are operating as normal despite the government shutdown, which confirms that the U.S. Department of Education is “unnecessary.”
“The Department has taken additional steps to better reach American students and families and root out the education bureaucracy that has burdened states and educators with unnecessary oversight,” McMahon wrote. “No education funding is impacted by the RIF, including funding for special education, and the clean CR [continuing resolution] supported by the Trump Administration will provide states and schools the funding they need to support all students.”
Here’s a timeline of events leading up to the agency’s latest round of RIFs and the continued downsizing of the federal education footprint.
March 11, 2025
The Education Department announced a massive reduction in force, with plans to slash nearly half of its workforce, impacting all divisions within the federal agency — some “requiring significant reorganization,” according to McMahon.
The cuts, along with previously accepted employee “buyouts,” reduced the department’s headcount from 4,133 when Trump was inaugurated Jan. 20 to approximately 2,183 — affecting over 1,900 employees.
March 12, 2025
As part of the Education Department’s mass downsizing of its staff, the agency also shuttered seven of its 12 civil rights enforcement offices. The seven closed offices of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights oversaw half of the nation’s states, impacting nearly 60,000 public schools and over 30 million K-12 students.
The Trump administration also informed all seven Office of Educational Technology employees in an email that their positions and office were being “abolished” as the Education Department announced massive layoffs across the agency the day prior.
March 20, 2025
President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling on McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education,” marking the boldest push from the president to shut down the agency since its establishment under the Carter administration over four decades ago.
April 14, 2025
A lawsuit was filed against the Trump administration over its significant downsizing of the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences in March. The lawsuit from the American Educational Research Association and the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness said the layoffs made it impossible for IES to carry out education research.
A similar lawsuit disputing the IES cuts was filed by the Association for Education Finance and Policy and the Institute for Higher Education Policy on April 4 in federal court.
April 17, 2025
Despite massive layoffs that left the Education Department with a skeleton crew in charge of administering and analyzing the Nation’s Report Card, the agency said the assessment will continue as planned in 2026.
June 18, 2025
A federal judge ordered the Education Department to reinstate all laid-off Office for Civil Rights employees for the time being, saying the layoffs and shuttering of seven regional offices had rendered the remaining staff “incapable of addressing the vast majority of OCR complaints.”
July 14, 2025
The U.S. Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to carry on with its efforts to lay off nearly half the Education Department’s staff as lower courts weigh in on the layoffs’ legality in New York v. McMahon.
July 15, 2025
Management of key federal workforce development programs began shifting from the Education Department to the U.S. Department of Labor under an interagency agreement signed in May, both agencies announced.
Aug. 19, 2025
Following a federal judge’s order directing that the Education Department be restored to “the status quo,” the agency said it plans to bring back more than 260 Office for Civil Rights staff who were cut as part of the March reduction in force, and it will be returning groups of employees to the civil rights enforcement arm in waves every two weeks from Sept. 8 through Nov. 3.
Sept. 29, 2025
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court’s order requiring the Education Department to restore the Office for Civil Rights to the “status quo,” which also allowed the department to move forward with plans to cut half of its OCR staff as litigation proceeds.
Oct. 1, 2025
The federal government enters the first day of its shutdown as Congress remains at a funding impasse for fiscal year 2026. During the shutdown, the Education Department planned to furlough about 95% of its non-Federal Student Aid staff for the first week, according to a Sept. 28 memo from U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
The Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo a week before that threatened mass firings of federal employees if a government shutdown occurs, according to a Sept. 30 lawsuit filed by labor unions against OMB.
Oct. 10, 2025
The Trump administration issued reduction-in-force notices throughout the federal government, including at the Education Department where court filings show 466 Education Department employees were impacted by the layoffs. Most of the employees at the Office of Special Education Programs — where staffing had remained fairly stable — were laid off as part of the department’s second wave of RIF notices this year, according to several special education professional organizations.
The latest RIFs also reached Education Department offices that oversee civil rights, student achievement supports, budgeting services, school safety, postsecondary education and more, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing more than 2,700 Education Department employees.
Oct. 15, 2025
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to cease any mass firings of federal employees initiated during the government shutdown. The temporary block came in response to a lawsuit filed by two federal employee unions against OMB over the office’s threats to initiate mass firings ahead of the Oct. 1 shutdown.
Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said the administration’s issuance of reduction-in-force notices to over 4,000 employees throughout the federal government during the shutdown is illegal, exceeds the administration’s authority and is arbitrary and capricious.
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The University of Pennsylvania on Thursday became the third institution to publicly reject the Trump administration’s sweeping higher education compact that promises priority for federal research funding in exchange for policy changes.
In an online message, Penn President J. Larry Jameson said he informed the U.S. Department of Education that the university “respectfully declines” to sign the compact.
“At Penn, we are committed to merit-based achievement and accountability. The long-standing partnership between American higher education and the federal government has greatly benefited society and our nation. Shared goals and investment in talent and ideas will turn possibility into progress,” he said.
Jameson also provided the agency feedback, as requested by the Trump administration, “highlighting areas of existing alignment as well as substantive concerns.” But he did not expand on why the university rejected the compact in his message. Penn did not provide more information about the concerns he mentioned in responding to a request for comment Thursday.
The Ivy League institution follows the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brown University in rejecting the administration’s offer. Those institutions raised concerns that the proposed compact would infringe on their independence and freedom.
The compact’s wide-ranging terms include freezing tuition for five years, placing caps on international enrollment, changing or eliminating campus units that “purposefully punish” and “belittle” conservative viewpoints, and requiring undergraduate applicants to take standardized tests.
Although federal officials initially invited nine high-profile institutions to sign the compact, President Donald Trump appeared to extend that invitation to all colleges in a recent social media post. Neither the White House nor the U.S. Education Department immediately responded to a request for comment Thursday.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro praised Penn’s move in a statement Thursday, saying the university “made the right decision to maintain its full academic independence and integrity.”
“The Trump Administration’s dangerous demands would limit freedom of speech, the freedom to learn, and the freedom to engage in constructive debate and dialogue on campuses across the country,” Shapiro said.
As governor, Shapiro is a nonvoting member of Penn’s board, but he has wielded that influence at the private university as few of his predecessors have, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
He said Thursday that he had “engaged closely with university leaders” on the Trump administration’s compact.
Shapiro isn’t the only Democratic lawmaker in Pennsylvania who has raised concerns about the compact. Two state representatives have also moved to bar colleges that receive state funding from signing the proposed agreement.
Penn’s rejection of the compact comes after the university cut a deal with the Trump administration earlier this year to restore some $175 million in suspended research funding. Federal officials had cut off the funding over Penn’s prior policies allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports.
Under that deal, struck in July, Penn agreed to adopt the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX, the civil rights law barring federally funded institutions from discriminating on the basis of sex.
The university also agreed to award athletic titles to cisgender women on Penn’s swimming team who had lost to transgender women, according to the Education Department. And the university said it would send personal apology letters to affected cisgender women.
On Oct. 14, Indiana University abruptly fired Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush after he refused to enforce unconstitutional content restrictions on the student paper the Indiana Daily Student. The very next day, IU ordered IDS to halt print publication.
This illustrates why IU ranked dead last among public universities — and third-to-last overall — in FIRE’s 2026 College Free Speech Rankings. Firing a student media adviser for refusing to censor a student newspaper, then banning print editions of that paper, sends a message that would chill even the most courageous young journalist: Cover stories we don’t like, and you’ll lose your ability to print — and your faculty support.
What did the Indiana Daily Student do to provoke this reaction?
They used their front page to attack IU’s track record on free speech, citing IU’s suspension of the Palestine Solidarity Committee and IU’s ranking as the worst public university in the nation for free speech. In the wake of these stories hitting newsstands, administrators summoned Rodenbush to a meeting to discuss “expectations” for what belongs in the paper.
IU’s Media School instructed the student paper to publish an edition exclusively devoted to homecoming flattery with “no other news at all.” When Rodenbush stood his ground, administrators then said they “lost trust” in his leadership — and immediately fired him.
But public universities can’t order students to publish puff pieces. They can’t shut down newspapers for coverage that makes administrators uncomfortable. And they can’t fire advisers who refuse to play the censorship game.
Firing Rodenbush and banning the paper are textbook First Amendment violations that IU claims are part of a digital-first media strategy. But that’s a smokescreen. Cutting the print edition and removing a longtime adviser after critical coverage isn’t a strategy. It’s retaliation. And it’s illegal.
IU is failing its students, its faculty, and the Constitution it is bound to uphold. FIRE is demanding that IU reverse the print ban, offer Rodensbush reinstatement, and make a public commitment to restore student press freedom on campus.
Stand with us and tell IU President Pamela Whitten to end this censorship crusade.
On October 14, Indiana University abruptly fired Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush after he refused to enforce unconstitutional content restrictions on the student paper the Indiana Daily Student. The very next day, IU ordered IDS to halt print publication.
This illustrates why IU ranked dead last among public universities — and third-to-last overall — in FIRE’s 2026 College Free Speech Rankings. Firing a student media adviser for refusing to censor a student newspaper, then banning print editions of that paper, sends a message that would chill even the most courageous young journalist: Cover stories we don’t like, and you’ll lose your ability to print — and your faculty support.
What did the Indiana Daily Student do to provoke this reaction?
They used their front page to attack IU’s track record on free speech, citing IU’s suspension of the Palestine Solidarity Committee and IU’s ranking as the worst public university in the nation for free speech. In the wake of these stories hitting newsstands, administrators summoned Rodenbush to a meeting to discuss “expectations” for what belongs in the paper.
IU’s Media School instructed the student paper to publish an edition exclusively devoted to homecoming flattery with “no other news at all.” When Rodenbush stood his ground, administrators then said they “lost trust” in his leadership — and immediately fired him.
But public universities can’t order students to publish puff pieces. They can’t shut down newspapers for coverage that makes administrators uncomfortable. And they can’t fire advisers who refuse to play the censorship game.
Firing Rodenbush and banning the paper are textbook First Amendment violations that IU claims are part of a digital-first media strategy. But that’s a smokescreen. Cutting the print edition and removing a longtime adviser after critical coverage isn’t a strategy. It’s retaliation. And it’s illegal.
IU is failing its students, its faculty, and the Constitution it is bound to uphold. FIRE is demanding that IU reverse the print ban, offer Rodensbush reinstatement, and make a public commitment to restore student press freedom on campus.
Stand with us and tell IU President Pamela Whitten to end this censorship crusade.
Every year, tens of thousands of infants are born prematurely, at a low birthweight, or with other conditions that would make them automatically eligible for therapeutic services that could help them thrive.
When everything goes smoothly, early intervention provides those services, required by federal law for children ages birth to 3. Funding sources for the program can vary, but it’s often paid for by a mix of federal, state, local, and private insurance dollars.
But far too few of the youngest children actually receive that help. (It’s an issue I wrote about earlier this year.) One particular gap is in services provided to infants from birth to 1. Only about 1.3 percent of babies that age receive early intervention services, compared to 7.5 percent of 2- to 3-year-olds, according to a new report from the think tank New America.
Kayla Khan, a long-time speech therapist, has experienced that gap herself.
When her infant daughter was released after a month and a half in neonatal intensive care, she asked the discharge team about early intervention services. Because of her background, she knew about the therapies.
At the time, the family lived in the Washington D.C. area, and no one at the hospital was helpful. “They said, ‘You don’t want that,’ or, ‘It’s not going to help you,’” Khan recalled.
After moving to Seattle a few months later, Khan finally connected with early intervention services that provided physical and feeding therapy to her daughter. She now helps lead a decade-old effort in Seattle to provide care and support specifically to families of “tiny babies” who are transitioning from the hospital to home.
The program relies on building trust and communication with hospital staff to ensure eligible babies get referred to early intervention and speeding up the evaluation timeline so babies get seen within three days of a referral — “really, really, really fast” for a system where the requirement for referral is 45 days, Khan said. Her program also connects families with therapists who are skilled and trained in the specific needs of newborns.
“We’re making this process that was designed for all children, birth to 3, work for the tiniest babies,” Khan said.
This kind of targeted attention for the youngest is desperately needed, according to the New America report and another that focused on Illinois, from early nonprofit advocacy group Start Early. (I recently completed a reporting fellowship with New America which supported some of my writing on early intervention, among other topics.)
Among the two reports’ recommendations:
Make the list of conditions that automatically qualify a baby for early intervention easy to understand and find. States have identified scores of different qualifying conditions that make a child more likely to develop a delay, including extreme prematurity, low birthweight, a parent with a substance use disorder, and child welfare involvement. But, as the New America report points out, finding a user-friendly list of the conditions can be a challenge. “The eligibility criteria and the way things work varies so much from one state to the next,” said report co-author Carrie Gillispie, the Early Development & Disability project director at New America.
The Start Early report noted that in a related study, two families were judged ineligible for early intervention despite their children having medical conditions that should have made them automatically eligible.
Consider co-locating early intervention staff in the NICU to make the transition as smooth as possible. Coordinators would be physically present in NICUs to build relationships, participate in medical rounds, and lead the process to enroll children in early intervention programs, the Start Early authors wrote. Both reports stress the importance of providing the family with a personal connection to early intervention before a baby gets discharged from the hospital.
Improve coordination and communication with the early intervention system, hospitals and pediatricians. Pediatricians are not always notified when doctors in the hospital refer a child to early intervention services. And well-child visits are often so short that physicians miss the full developmental picture. Too often, referrals come after a child is already starting to struggle, said Sarah Gilliland, a senior policy analyst in the New Practice Lab at New America, who co-wrote the report.
Bridge cultural and language barriers with families by hiring more multilingual hospital and early intervention staff. Cultural divides are pervasive throughout the early intervention system, where the overwhelming majority of the therapists and other providers in many communities are white, English-speaking women. But even simple forms often go untranslated: One survey found that nearly three-quarters of state early intervention referral forms are only available in English, the New America report noted. The report also stressed that families should be reassured that early intervention services are meant to be support, not surveillance. “Hesitant families might benefit from a connection with families within their own communities who can explain what to expect from early intervention,” the authors wrote.
Strengthen electronic referral systems and centralize enrollmentin early intervention programs. When I reported on the too-often broken path from the NICU to early intervention in Chicago, I heard stories of a system that relied heavily on faxing paper forms. NICU physicians often had no idea what happened with referrals they made. Indeed, surveys have found that only a fraction of early intervention coordinators have access to technology that links children’s electronic health records to the referral system.
Some states and communities are introducing technological advances which could be implemented more widely, the New America report noted. For instance, one state is trying to address the problem using “e-referrals,” which share an infant’s medical records directly with the early intervention system.
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Four of the nine universities initially asked to sign have rejected the document.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Jumping Rocks/Universal Images Group/Getty Images | Mario Tama/Getty Images
The Universities of Pennsylvania and Southern California have now refused to sign the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” making them the third and fourth of the nine initial institutions that were presented the deal to publicly turn it down. No institution has agreed to sign so far.
Both announcements came Thursday, a few days before the Oct. 20 deadline to provide feedback on the proposal. Beong-Soo Kim, interim president of the University of Southern California, shared his message to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, which outlined how USC already seems to adhere to the compact.
“Notwithstanding these areas of alignment, we are concerned that even though the Compact would be voluntary, tying research benefits to it would, over time, undermine the same values of free inquiry and academic excellence that the Compact seeks to promote,” Kim wrote. “Other countries whose governments lack America’s commitment to freedom and democracy have shown how academic excellence can suffer when shifting external priorities tilt the research playing field away from free, meritocratic competition.”
Kim added that the compact does raise issues “worthy of a broader national conversation to which USC would be eager to contribute its insights and expertise.”
California governor Gavin Newsom, a possible Democratic presidential contender in 2028, had threatened that any university in his state that signed the compact would “instantly” lose billions of state dollars.
Over at Penn, President J. Larry Jameson wrote in a message to his community Thursday that his university “respectfully declines to sign the proposed Compact.” He added that his university did provide feedback to the department on the proposal.
Penn spokespeople didn’t say Thursday whether the university would sign any possible amended version of the compact that addressed the university’s concerns, nor did they provide Inside Higher Ed a copy of the feedback provided to the Trump administration. (Penn is the only university of the four that didn’t provide its response to McMahon.)
The White House also didn’t provide a copy of Penn’s feedback, but it emailed a statement apparently threatening funding cuts for universities that don’t sign the compact.
“Merit should be the primary criteria for federal grant funding. Yet too many universities have abandoned academic excellence in favor of divisive and destructive efforts such as ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’” spokesperson Liz Huston said in the statement. “The Compact for Academic Excellence embraces universities that reform their institutions to elevate common sense once again, ushering a new era of American innovation. Any higher education institution unwilling to assume accountability and confront these overdue and necessary reforms will find itself without future government and taxpayers support.”
Brown University announced it had rejected the compact Wednesday, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did the same last Friday. Following MIT’s rejection, the Trump administration said the compact was open to all colleges and universities that want to sign it.
The compact is a boilerplate contract asking colleges to voluntarily agree to overhaul or abolish departments “that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” without further defining what those terms mean. It also asks universities to, among other things, commit to not considering transgender women to be women, to reject foreign applicants “who demonstrate hostility to the United States, its allies, or its values” and to freeze “effective tuition rates charged to American students for the next five years.”
In exchange for these agreements, the White House has said signatories would “be given [funding] priority when possible as well as invitations to collaborate with the White House.” But the White House hasn’t revealed how much extra funding universities would be eligible for, and the nine-page compact doesn’t detail the potential benefits. The compact, and the Thursday statement from the White House, can also be read as threatening colleges’ current federal funding if they don’t sign. Multiple higher ed organizations have allied in calling on universities to reject the compact.
Jameson said in his statement that “at Penn, we are committed to merit-based achievement and accountability.”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration said that Penn violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 when it allowed a transgender woman to swim on the women’s team in 2022, and officials issued several demands to the university. Penn ultimately conceded to those demands over the summer, a decision that the administration said restored about $175 million in frozen federal funds.
Marc Rowan, a Penn graduate with two degrees from its Wharton School of Business who’s now chief executive officer and board chair for Apollo Global Management, wrote in The New York Times that he “played a part in the compact’s initial formulation, working alongside an administration working group.” Rowan argued that the compact doesn’t threaten free speech or academic freedom.
Apollo has funded the online, for-profit University of Phoenix. AP VIII Queso Holdings LP—the previous name for majority owner of the University of Phoenix—was the successor of Apollo Education Group, which went private in 2017 in a $1.1 billion deal backed by Apollo Global Management Inc. and the Vistria Group.
AP VIII Queso Holdings LP was recently renamed Phoenix Education Partners as part of a new deal to take the company public once again. Phoenix Education Partners, now owner of the University of Phoenix and backed by both Apollo and Vistria, started trading on the stock market last week and was valued at about $1.35 billion after the first day.
Four of the nine universities initially asked to sign have rejected the document.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Jumping Rocks/Universal Images Group/Getty Images | Mario Tama/Getty Images
The Universities of Pennsylvania and Southern California have now refused to sign the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” making them the third and fourth of the nine initial institutions that were presented the deal to publicly turn it down. No institution has agreed to sign so far.
Both announcements came Thursday, a few days before the Oct. 20 deadline to provide feedback on the proposal. Beong-Soo Kim, interim president of the University of Southern California, shared his message to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, which outlined how USC already seems to adhere to the compact.
“Notwithstanding these areas of alignment, we are concerned that even though the Compact would be voluntary, tying research benefits to it would, over time, undermine the same values of free inquiry and academic excellence that the Compact seeks to promote,” Kim wrote. “Other countries whose governments lack America’s commitment to freedom and democracy have shown how academic excellence can suffer when shifting external priorities tilt the research playing field away from free, meritocratic competition.”
Kim added that the compact does raise issues “worthy of a broader national conversation to which USC would be eager to contribute its insights and expertise.”
California governor Gavin Newsom, a possible Democratic presidential contender in 2028, had threatened that any university in his state that signed the compact would “instantly” lose billions of state dollars.
Over at Penn, President J. Larry Jameson wrote in a message to his community Thursday that his university “respectfully declines to sign the proposed Compact.” He added that his university did provide feedback to the department on the proposal.
Penn spokespeople didn’t say Thursday whether the university would sign any possible amended version of the compact that addressed the university’s concerns, nor did they provide Inside Higher Ed a copy of the feedback provided to the Trump administration. (Penn is the only university of the four that didn’t provide its response to McMahon.)
The White House also didn’t provide a copy of Penn’s feedback, but it emailed a statement apparently threatening funding cuts for universities that don’t sign the compact.
“Merit should be the primary criteria for federal grant funding. Yet too many universities have abandoned academic excellence in favor of divisive and destructive efforts such as ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’” spokesperson Liz Huston said in the statement. “The Compact for Academic Excellence embraces universities that reform their institutions to elevate common sense once again, ushering a new era of American innovation. Any higher education institution unwilling to assume accountability and confront these overdue and necessary reforms will find itself without future government and taxpayers support.”
Brown University announced it had rejected the compact Wednesday, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did the same last Friday. Following MIT’s rejection, the Trump administration said the compact was open to all colleges and universities that want to sign it.
The compact is a boilerplate contract asking colleges to voluntarily agree to overhaul or abolish departments “that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” without further defining what those terms mean. It also asks universities to, among other things, commit to not considering transgender women to be women, to reject foreign applicants “who demonstrate hostility to the United States, its allies, or its values” and to freeze “effective tuition rates charged to American students for the next five years.”
In exchange for these agreements, the White House has said signatories would “be given [funding] priority when possible as well as invitations to collaborate with the White House.” But the White House hasn’t revealed how much extra funding universities would be eligible for, and the nine-page compact doesn’t detail the potential benefits. The compact, and the Thursday statement from the White House, can also be read as threatening colleges’ current federal funding if they don’t sign. Multiple higher ed organizations have allied in calling on universities to reject the compact.
Jameson said in his statement that “at Penn, we are committed to merit-based achievement and accountability.”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration said that Penn violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 when it allowed a transgender woman to swim on the women’s team in 2022, and officials issued several demands to the university. Penn ultimately conceded to those demands over the summer, a decision that the administration said restored about $175 million in frozen federal funds.
Marc Rowan, a Penn graduate with two degrees from its Wharton School of Business who’s now chief executive officer and board chair for Apollo Global Management, wrote in The New York Times that he “played a part in the compact’s initial formulation, working alongside an administration working group.” Rowan argued that the compact doesn’t threaten free speech or academic freedom.
Apollo has funded the online, for-profit University of Phoenix. AP VIII Queso Holdings LP—the previous name for majority owner of the University of Phoenix—was the successor of Apollo Education Group, which went private in 2017 in a $1.1 billion deal backed by Apollo Global Management Inc. and the Vistria Group.
AP VIII Queso Holdings LP was recently renamed Phoenix Education Partners as part of a new deal to take the company public once again. Phoenix Education Partners, now owner of the University of Phoenix and backed by both Apollo and Vistria, started trading on the stock market last week and was valued at about $1.35 billion after the first day.
ACE and the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) have reaffirmed our long-standing collaboration to continue driving transformative change in faculty development and elevate teaching excellence across higher education. For more information about the updates to this nearly decade-long alliance, click here.
To learn more and register for an Oct. 29 webinar that will feature ACE President Ted Mitchell and ACUE Chairman and CEO Andrew Hermalyn, click here.
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