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HEPI found cost increases for colleges outpaced those tracked by the Consumer Price Index, which showed inflation for the general public rising 2.6% in fiscal year 2025. HEPI’s inflation rate has been higher than the CPI’s in nine out of the past 11 years.
The cost increases are putting immense pressure on many colleges. Some institutions that have closed in recent years have even cited inflation as one of the reasons they’re shutting down.
For others, the price hikes mean shrinking margins and the need for budget cuts. All three major credit rating agencies issued a gloomy 2026 outlook for either nonprofit colleges or the entire higher education sector, with each citing rising costs as a factor.
Out of eight cost categories that the HEPI tracks, administrative salaries grew the most in fiscal 2025, increasing by 4.8%.
Similarly, faculty salaries rose 4.3%, the highest rate recorded since HEPI began tracking inflation in the category in 1998. Inflation in faculty salaries has only reached 4% or higher two other times — a 4% increase in 2023 and a 4.1% increase in 2008. Faculty salaries have the most impact on the index.
Increases for the other categories were:
Only supplies and materials saw deflation, with a 0.2% decline in costs.
Across institutions, two-year public colleges saw the highest overall cost increases at 4.6%. No other institution type had inflation above 4%. Part of this was due to inflation in faculty salaries at those institutions reaching 8.7% in fiscal 2025 — by far the highest out of any institution type.
Overall, public institutions had higher increases in faculty salaries than public colleges, 4.7% versus 3.6%. This breaks with the trend of private institutions more often seeing higher annual inflation in faculty costs, according to the Commonfund Institute report.
Key points:
The academic landscape has evolved dramatically, especially when it comes to summers. More students are embracing year-round learning to build strong study habits and develop the critical thinking, application, and retention skills they need for success in higher education and the workplace. They’re treating AP®, SAT®, and ACT® practice and preparation as long-term investments rather than temporary obligations where they are last-minute cramming for these high-stakes exams.
Trends and research support this approach. The Pew Research Center found that 36.6 percent of U.S. teens had a paying job during the summer of 2021–the highest rate since 2008. According to their research, 86 percent of U.S. teens say having a job or career they enjoy is extremely or very important, and 58 percent say having a lot of money is highly important. Their drive for meaningful, financially secure careers is reshaping how they spend their time, especially during the summer.
Beyond earning money, today’s teens are using their summers for skill development through jobs, internships, and academic prep. This dual focus on work and learning shows maturity and foresight. Students are preparing not just for the next school year but for the professional expectations they’ll face later in life.
What the Surge Says About Student Ambition
This rising engagement in AP coursework aligns with a broader cultural shift toward early academic specialization. Students see AP coursework as more than a way to earn college credit. It’s the first step into their intended career path.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that six in 10 teens say graduating from college is extremely or very important to getting a good job. Many recognize that advanced coursework in high school can make college more manageable and scholarships to their dream schools more attainable.
The rise in AP participation isn’t just academic enthusiasm. It’s strategic planning. Students are approaching high school as a career laboratory where they can test their interests, gauge their strengths, and start aligning their goals with future opportunities.
Summer as the new launchpad
For this generation, the summer is a launchpad, not a pause. Teens are blending part-time work with academic enrichment, community involvement, and skill-building activities that align with their future ambitions. Many see the summer as the perfect window to study at their own pace, without the pressure of a full course load or extracurricular overload.
More students are using summer break strategically to strengthen their understanding and prepare for challenging AP and SAT content. This behavior echoes findings from Pew’s 2025 survey: Teens are more focused on professional and financial success than on traditional milestones such as marriage and family life. They’re motivated by the pursuit of independence, stability, and purpose, values that translate directly into how they approach school and learning.
When I talk to students, what stands out is how intentional they are. They want to be prepared, and they want options. They see every AP class and every practice question as one step closer to a career that excites them, and a future they can control.
From short-term learning to lifelong skills
This trend toward early preparation also reflects a shift in how students define success. They understand that knowledge alone isn’t enough; the ability to apply, adapt, and persist will carry them through college and into their careers.
With the research in mind, educators and edtech tools must prioritize active learning over memorization. By helping students understand the why behind each step, not just the correct answer, we build the problem-solving and analytical reasoning skills that mirror the expectations in fields more students are pursuing, including medicine, law, engineering, and business.
The Future Belongs to the Prepared
The surge in AP course engagement this summer isn’t an anomaly. It’s a glimpse into the future of learning, and we see that as a positive sign. Students are no longer waiting for senior year or college to take their goals seriously. They’re taking ownership of their learning, developing study skills that extend far beyond exams, and connecting their academic effort to real-world ambition. They’re not just preparing for tests; they’re preparing for life.
High school may be where lifelong learning begins, but for this generation, it’s also where futures are built.
This is not simply a matter of past investments. It is part of an ongoing and highly influential political economy in which wealthy Democratic donors, private-equity executives, and education “reformers” operate as a unified class. Central to that class formation is The Vistria Group, a Chicago-based private-equity firm founded by Marty Nesbitt, a close friend of Barack Obama. Vistria stands at the intersection of Democratic power and education profiteering. After the collapse of scandal-ridden chains like Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech, Vistria did not step in to dismantle the exploitative for-profit model. Instead, it strategically acquired distressed educational assets and reconstructed them into a new generation of institutions that presented themselves as “nonprofits” while maintaining tuition-driven, debt-laden business models. Former Obama administration officials moved seamlessly into Vistria and related firms, raising serious questions about regulatory capture and revolving-door governance.
Pritzker moves within this same Chicago-centered network. His political donors, associates, and advisers overlap significantly with the circles that built Vistria’s ascent. The structural relationships matter more than any single investment. A Pritzker administration would not exist outside this ecosystem; it would be shaped by it. The question, therefore, is not whether Pritzker personally signed a for-profit acquisition deal but whether the political world that produced him can be trusted to regulate higher education fairly and aggressively. The answer, based on the last twenty years of policy and practice, is no.
This is especially troubling because presidents play a decisive role in higher-education oversight. Through the Department of Education, a president can strengthen or weaken borrower protections, set standards for nonprofit conversions, determine enforcement priorities, and decide whether private-equity extraction will be challenged or quietly accommodated. Millions of borrowers harmed by predatory institutions are currently awaiting relief through borrower defense, income-driven repayment audits, and Gainful Employment rules. The integrity of these processes depends on political leadership that is independent from the private-equity interests that helped create the crisis.
Pritzker’s political style—managerial, technocratic, deeply rooted in elite networks—suggests continuity rather than challenge. The neoliberal framework he embodies does not confront structural inequalities; it manages them. It does not dismantle extractive systems; it attempts to regulate their excesses while leaving their core intact. In higher education, this approach has already failed. It is the reason the for-profit sector was allowed to expand dramatically under both Republican and Democratic administrations. It is why private-equity firms continue to control large segments of the educational marketplace through complex ownership structures and shadow nonprofits. And it is why millions of borrowers remain trapped in debts for degrees that offered little or no economic return.
The Pritzker Paradox is therefore not a story about one wealthy governor. It is a story about the consolidation of political and economic power within a narrow elite that has profited handsomely from the financialization of education while promising, cycle after cycle, to reform the very problems it helped create. Vistria exemplifies this dynamic. The Pritzker family’s history echoes it. And a Pritzker presidency would likely entrench it further.
America needs leadership willing to challenge private-equity influence in higher education, not leadership bound to it. The country needs a president who understands education as a public good, not a marketplace. For borrowers, students, and communities harmed by decades of predatory practices, the stakes could not be higher. The choice before the nation is not simply whether Pritzker is preferable to Trump. It is whether the country will continue to entrust its public institutions to elites who speak the language of equity while advancing the interests of the very networks that undermined educational opportunity in the first place.
Sources
Public reporting on Pritzker family investments in for-profit and education-related sectors; investigations by the Senate HELP Committee, GAO, and CFPB; reporting on The Vistria Group’s acquisitions and nonprofit conversions; analyses of private-equity influence in U.S. higher education; academic literature on neoliberalism and elite capture.
Junior Eurovision has given me and my ten year-old an excuse to visit Tbilisi in Georgia this year – and he’s been thrilled to learn that it just so happens to have been a dramatic week in higher education policy news.
If you click around on the ruling party’s Facebook page, you’ll find the face of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the party’s billionaire founder and honorary chairman, proudly proclaiming one of the headlines from his party’s reforms:
Georgian Dream – the first government in Georgia’s history to make higher education free!
There’s a lot more to it than that. The government has pushed through sweeping reforms to the Law on Higher Education that include an outright ban on state universities recruiting international students – all with what critics argue has been extraordinary speed and minimal consultation.
The current system, which has operated since the mid-2000s, allows students to take state grants based on their national exam performance to any accredited university – public or private.
In 2025, 7,320 students received grants totalling 11 million lari (about £3m), with 66 per cent going to public universities and 34 per cent to private institutions, like the University of Buckingham accredited “British University Georgia”.
Under the new model, the entire grant architecture will be abolished. State universities will instead receive direct government funding to provide “free” education to all admitted students at both bachelor’s and master’s levels, whilst private universities will lose all access to state support.
The government presents it all as democratising access, but critics note that with strict quotas, “free” education may actually mean fewer available places overall. That’s a story that sounds familiar.
The reforms go far beyond funding though. A “one city, one faculty” model means that within any given city, only one state university will be allowed to offer each academic discipline. In Tbilisi, for instance, where law faculties currently exist at Tbilisi State University, Ilia State University, and Georgian Technical University, these would be consolidated into a single faculty at one institution.
The government will determine which programs each university will be allowed to offer, and set strict enrollment quotas based on labour market research conducted with the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development. That’s another story that sounds familiar, albeit ministers and regulators in England have been more prone to nudges and kite-flying than pulling levers.
The academic structure itself is being compressed from the current 4+2 model (four-year bachelor’s, two-year master’s) to a 3+1+1 system, with three years for bachelor’s degrees in non-regulated professions, followed by one year for a master’s degree, with an optional additional year for those planning to pursue doctoral studies.
While authorities claim this aligns Georgia with the Bologna Process – the European higher education standardisation framework – critics argue the opposite, fearing these changes will make Georgian qualifications less compatible with international systems and compromise students’ ability to pursue studies abroad. The UK seems to get away with it – and it’s part of a broader trend across Europe for governments aiming to speed up students’ entry to the Labour market.
The ban on international students at state universities has generated particular confusion and concern among academic observers. Under the new legislative package, Georgia’s 19 state universities will be barred from admitting international students from next academic year, with only minimal exceptions.
That’s an extraordinary reversal for institutions that have spent years building international partnerships, recruiting foreign students as both a source of revenue and academic diversity, and positioning themselves as regional education hubs. Tbilisi State University alone hosts hundreds of international students, particularly in English-language medical programmes that have attracted students from India, Nigeria, and the Middle East.
Deputy Minister Zviad Gabisonia has defended the measure as a way to ensure state universities focus their resources on Georgian students, with the government arguing that making education “completely free” for domestic students requires concentrating limited state resources.
From Georgian Dream’s perspective, the 19 state universities should serve Georgian citizens first, whilst private institutions remain free to recruit internationally. The government also says that it’s part of their labour market-focused approach – training Georgian students for Georgia’s economy rather than providing education for students who may leave after graduation.
They’ve positioned it all alongside the broader promise of free education as evidence of prioritising ordinary Georgians over international interests – a message that resonates with some domestic audiences who’ve seen international students, particularly in medical programmes, as taking places from local applicants.
Critics argue the international student ban exposes fundamental contradictions in the government’s rhetoric about “quality improvement” and alignment with European standards, and will create a two-tier system – isolated, government-controlled state universities for most Georgians, and expensive, internationally-connected private institutions for the wealthy.
For them, the government’s claim that it will “raise quality” by ensuring only “highly qualified students with high scores are admitted” conflate exclusivity with excellence, and they warn that isolation from international academic networks may accelerate brain drain as ambitious Georgian students increasingly see their country’s higher education system as deliberately provincial.
There’s plenty of populism in here, of course. The PM’s framing for the package is that the current education system (which he blames on previous governments and Western influence) has left Georgians vulnerable to what he calls “contemporary liberal fascism” – his term for Western liberal values and influences:
An insufficiently educated public is easily subjected to manipulation, external interference; it is easy to sow hate in such a society; it is easy to spread ideologies such as were once Bolshevism, fascism, and such is today’s contemporary liberal fascism.
Meanwhile “deconcentration” in the reforms refers to the government’s plan for geographic redistribution of higher education away from Tbilisi, where 85 per cent of all university students are currently concentrated. The aim is to create a new university hub in Kutaisi in western Georgia, and along with the “one city, one faculty” model they argue it will help develop regions outside the capital and ensure more balanced development across the country.
Critics counter that geographic deconcentration, combined with the concentration of academic disciplines into single institutions, may introduce infrastructure challenges and could be used to justify selling off university buildings in Tbilisi.
The political and academic reaction has been swift and largely negative, but has all been lost a bit inside wider anti-government protests and increasing authoritarianism. Critics argue that the reforms serve multiple authoritarian purposes – centralising government control over HE, enabling purges of non-aligned academics, reducing the autonomy of institutions, and potentially decreasing overall access to higher education despite the “free” education rhetoric.
The fear of repression is palpable – academics figure that the restructuring will be used to remove academics and professional services staff who don’t align with Georgian Dream’s increasingly anti-Western stance.
The reforms have been pushed through parliament in the same week that legislators adopted new restrictions on protests, extending police powers to clear not just roadways but also pedestrian areas – a direct response to daily demonstrations that have continued outside parliament since Georgian Dream’s announcement at the end of November that Georgia would suspend its EU integration process until 2028.
For the kids coming to watch JESC, there’s been a parallel bunch of reforms to schools too. Primary schools will see mandatory uniforms for grades 1-6, mobile phone bans during classes, and state-approved single textbooks for all subjects – again, critics see a systematic effort to establish state control over all levels of education, while the government argues that a 2004 document on national education goals, adopted by the formerly ruling United National Movement (UNM), was “saturated with liberal values”, and stressed that the new version approved in 2024 is based on a “patriotic spirit”.
Allegations about universities fuse some of the conspiracy theories we’ve seen in the UK with some of Trump’s wilder allegations. In September pro-government TV channel Imedi reported that Georgia’s State Security Service is investigating “money laundering” linked to anti-government protests, claiming that foreign intelligence services are spending millions to orchestrate regime change through youth movements.
Georgian Dream has some form on alleging foreign-orchestrated revolutionary plots – this report accused several Georgian universities, particularly the University of Georgia, Ilia State University, and Free University, of being hubs for protest training, claiming that up to 600 students “trained by foreign intelligence services” were being paid 200-300 GEL daily to protest, with funding allegedly channeled through university-linked companies and NGOs.
More broadly, there’s a pattern to all of this both in Europe and across the West – populist governments believe that universities are too valuable to close, but too influential to leave autonomous. From Hungary’s restructuring of university governance to Poland’s attempts to control academic appointments to Turkey’s post-coup purges, the pattern is capture, don’t destroy.
These governments understand universities as sites of ideological formation that shape future elites and national narratives. Rather than rejecting higher education, they’re trying to repurpose it – maintaining prestigious institutions and even improving facilities while systematically removing international connections, critical perspectives, and institutional autonomy.
It often succeeds initially – because it’s wrapped in appealing promises of accessibility and national service. Who argues against “free” education or “raising standards”? But for people like Maia Chankseliani, Professor of Comparative and International Education at Oxford, they risk undoing much of the progress made by Georgian higher education over the past two decades:
Georgia needs a university system that is open, autonomous, and globally connected, rather than one bound by rigid rules and centralised visions of conformity. Georgia’s students and academics deserve a system that is free to think and innovate.
The thing though that’s most interesting about the debate is the extent to which those opposed seek to engage with the arguments on their own terms – will this really improve quality, will this actually improve outcomes, and so on – and those who argue that something more fundamental is being done to universities that renders constructive engagement on the detail hollow and counterproductive. That’s also a debate that’s been raging across US HE – and it’s very much coming to the UK.
Jason E. Lane is one of the founders of the Cross-Border Education Research Team, which has been monitoring the transnational education (TNE) sector since 2010. According to its data, the United States is the top player – it has 97 overseas campuses. In comparison, Canada fields just eight.
Opening a satellite location is not for the faint of heart. TNE often requires significant financial investments, which can evaporate if the school fails to attract students or runs into political trouble in the host country.
“There are a range of challenges,” Lane said. “These include maintaining the quality of teaching and offering the types of educational experiences that are available on the main campus.”
Some top American schools, including Harvard and Princeton, have declined to pursue the TNE model, instead relying on partnerships to build their international profiles.
While America remains the leader, Australia, with a population of just 27 million people, punches far above its weight, with 24 satellite campuses.
“Australia has a long history of being internationally engaged,” Lane said. “They looked at their own slowly growing population base and decided to expand overseas. It’s part of a longer term strategy of internationalisation.”
There are a range of challenges… These include maintaining the quality of teaching and offering the types of educational experiences that are available on the main campus
Jason E. Lane, Cross-Border Research Team
Recently, some universities have backtracked on their commitment to foreign campuses. Last year, Texas A&M University announced that it was closing its 20-year-old campus in Qatar to focus on its core work in the United States. Board chair Bill Mahomes said the school “did not necessarily need a campus infrastructure 8,000 miles away to support education and research collaboration”.
In August, the University of Calgary shuttered its Qatar site after providing training to local learners there for many years. It provided no reason for the decision and did not respond to a request for more information.
For David Robinson, the executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the answer is clear: “In the end, as Calgary’s experience shows, I think branch campuses have largely turned out to be a failed business model.”
Robinson said the association had “for many years” raised concerns about institutions setting up campuses in parts of the world where academic freedom might not be upheld or respected in the same way as it would in Canada.
Academic freedom worries are also prevalent in the US, Lane told The PIE News. “A lot of US campuses have gotten into establishing foreign campuses while wanting guarantees of academic freedom. But those countries may have different definitions of academic freedom.”
Overseas campuses serve a wide range of students. In some cases, especially in the Middle East, satellites enrol only local or regional learners.
Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, has had a site at a castle in England for 30 years; many of the students attending are on a semester or year abroad from the Canadian campus.
Others leverage their overseas satellites to attract attendees from across the globe. Webster University, based in St. Louis, Missouri, has operations in several locations, including Geneva.
It offers a seamless transition between taking courses there and at the US campus. The Swiss school draws students from many countries; diverse classes prepare students to work with people from a wide variety of backgrounds.
New campuses are now reflecting shifts in the global geopolitical alignment, Lane says. After Hungary tilted to the right and fell into the Russia-China orbit, Fudan University of Shanghai opened a satellite in that country.
With its growing population and improving economic development, Africa is increasingly viewed as a potential market. Currently, universities from the United States, United Kingdom, France and Netherlands have satellites on the African continent.
The post Is North America’s scramble for TNE over? appeared first on The PIE News.
Purdue University is allegedly rejecting large numbers of Chinese graduate student applicants.
wanderluster/iStock/Getty Images
Current and prospective Purdue University graduate students say the institution rejected a slew of Chinese applicants from its grad programs for this academic year. Also, one grad student says the university told grad admissions committees in the past couple of months that it’s highly unlikely to accept students from any “adversary nation” for next year.
Faculty were told those countries are China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela, said Kieran Hilmer, a teaching assistant on the leadership committee of Graduate Rights and Our Wellbeing (GROW), a group trying to unionize Purdue grad workers. That list broadly matches the commerce secretary’s catalog of foreign adversaries.
Hilmer said the university conveyed this prohibition verbally. “They didn’t write any of this down,” he said.
Purdue isn’t commenting on the allegations. The university has faced scrutiny from members of Congress about its ties to China. In May, the Trump administration briefly said it would revoke Chinese students’ visas nationwide. The president has since changed his tune and said he would welcome more students from China.
A Chinese student who wished to remain anonymous because he’s still trying to get into Purdue told Inside Higher Ed he received an offer to be a research assistant last February, meaning his funding was secure to become a Purdue grad student this academic year. But, in April or May, he said, the Office of Graduate Admissions told him that his application was denied.
The redacted two-paragraph letter that he provided to Inside Higher Ed said admission “is competitive and many factors are carefully considered,” but “we are not able to provide specific feedback.”
The student, who said he got his master’s degree in the U.S. and wishes to remain here, said he had already moved to West Lafayette, where Purdue’s flagship campus is, signed a lease and turned down other institutions’ offers. He said the rejection could impact his visa.
“I may get deported,” he said.
He said he learned through social media that at least 100 other Chinese students were similarly rejected.
Purdue spokespeople also didn’t provide a response to the Lafayette Journal & Courier and the Exponent student newspaper when asked about this issue. The Journal & Courier, which first reported the story, cited four faculty members from “a wide range of departments” who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the university.
Multiple heads of graduate admissions committees didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Thursday; one who answered the phone referred a reporter to the press office, which didn’t respond. Emails sent to Office of Graduate Admissions employees went unanswered.
While Purdue won’t explain what actions it’s taking or why, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said in a September report that it’s been investigating Purdue and five other universities—Stanford and Carnegie Mellon Universities and the Universities of Maryland, Southern California and Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—all year “regarding the presence and research activities of Chinese national students on their campuses.”
Hilmer said Purdue is rejecting Chinese applicants in “a specific attempt to comply with the U.S. Select Committee.” (The committee didn’t comment Thursday on whether it pressured Purdue to go as far as it allegedly has.) But Hilmer also said the “hostility and malice” the university is showing these students goes further than what the committee requested.
“As Purdue said in its response to the House Select Committee, international students are fully vetted by the United States government when they apply for their visas,” Hilmer said. “And, on top of that, in order to work on projects related to national security, they need to get further security clearance. So there’s no reason for Purdue to make this unilateral extralegal decision to ban all of these students.”
He said many of these students were already in the U.S.
“This policy is obviously discriminatory and immoral, and, on top of that, it violates Purdue’s policy on nondiscrimination,” he said. The Chinese student told Inside Higher Ed that he doesn’t accept the committee pressure rationale, because Purdue wasn’t the only university under investigation.
If Purdue is responding to the committee’s pressure, it’s another example of a selective American institution bending to the federal government’s efforts to reduce international enrollment and to particularly target Chinese students and scholars. During President Trump’s first term in office, the Justice Department launched the controversial China Initiative, which investigated faculty ties to China.
Republicans said the initiative sought to counter espionage, but Democrats, education lobbyists and Asian American advocates argued it was ineffective and instead justified racial profiling and discrimination. A study suggested the initiative’s investigations may have caused valuable researchers of Chinese descent to leave the U.S. for China.
Hilmer said Purdue’s rejection of Chinese students will harm its reputation and ability to recruit the best students and workers.
“Even if they’re not international students, they’re going to say, ‘Why would I ever accept an offer from Purdue if there’s no guarantee that it’s actually an offer?’” he said. “Why would they ever feel comfortable accepting an offer from Purdue if they could go anywhere else?”
Peyrin Kao, a University of California, Berkeley, computer science lecturer, was suspended from teaching for a semester after UC Berkeley decreed that Kao’s criticism of Israel had violated campus bans on “political advocacy” in class. There are two significant problems with this action: Kao didn’t engage in advocacy in his class, and Berkeley’s rules don’t restrict political advocacy.
The suspension of Kao reflects two alarming possibilities: Either Kao is being targeted for his criticism of Israel and there is selective persecution of faculty for leftist political beliefs, or Kao’s suspension shows a new, broader ban on all political speech in the classroom.
The fact that this repression is happening at UC Berkeley—a top university in a blue state legendary for the Free Speech Movement and liberal politics—indicates how widespread censorship is across the country today.
As Kao noted, “The university loves to talk about how they are ‘the free speech university,’ ‘the home of the free speech movement’ … but when it comes to Palestine: ‘Sorry, we’re drawing the line, your free speech does not apply.’”
In October, UC Berkeley executive vice chancellor and provost Benjamin Hermalin wrote a letter determining that Kao was guilty of violating Regents Policy 2301 in two incidents.
In 2023, Kao, after dismissing class, spoke for four minutes about ethics and technology, and expressed criticism of the Israeli government. In 2024, Kao informed students that he was on a hunger strike (without explaining why).
It’s shocking that such trivial examples of advocacy could ever justify such a severe punishment. In the first case, Hermalin makes a ridiculous argument that what happens after a class is over is in fact part of the class.
He writes, “Nothing in Regents Policy 2301 can be read to indicate it doesn’t apply when a course goes into ‘overtime.’” While it’s true that the rules about behavior during classes apply when instructors extend a class beyond the normal time (“overtime”), those limits end when the class is over. The Provost even quotes Kao’s words: “It is 2pm so class is officially over.” Once Kao says that, there is no overtime. There is only after-class time, and that time is not regulated by the Policy 2301 for course content. Of course, Kao’s brief comments on ethics in technology should be fully protected during a computer science class, but the fact that they happened outside of class means they cannot be regulated by these rules about classroom speech.
The second alleged violation is even more ridiculous. Kao is accused of breaking the rules by uttering 20 words: “I’m currently undergoing a starvation diet for a cause that I believe in. If that sounds interesting, there’s a link.”
The provost concluded, “I find Mr. Kao to have misused the classroom for the purpose of political advocacy, an action that constitutes a violation of Regents Policy 2301.”
No, he didn’t, and no, it isn’t. Telling students that you’re on a starvation diet isn’t “political advocacy”; if Kao was ill or dieting for health reasons, he would be fully entitled to warn students of this fact in case it affected him, and nothing about these words is “political advocacy.” The same logic applies to a medical condition induced for political reasons.
But the provost is also wrong on a much deeper level: There is no prohibition on “political advocacy” in Policy 2301. The word “advocacy” never appears in Policy 2301. Yet the provost proceeds to wonder “whether the instructor’s intent is to advocate” and frequently quotes his interviews rather than focusing on what he said in class and what Policy 2301 says. Political advocacy in the classroom is fundamentally protected by academic freedom.
Astonishingly, the provost even asked, “To what extent is a hunger strike an in-class advocacy activity precluded by Regents Policy 2301?” In what bizarro world could a hunger strike ever be deemed “in-class advocacy”? Refusing to eat during class is not “advocacy” at all. The suggestion that Regents Policy 2301 could be interpreted to require teachers to eat outside the classroom is insane.
The provost noted, “His actions are no different from those of an instructor who repeatedly wore a t-shirt when teaching that had on it a very visible political symbol or a picture of a political candidate.” Wait, does the provost actually think that professors are banned from wearing T-shirts with symbols on them? Will a professor with a peace symbol T-shirt be hauled before the provost for dress code violations? Wait until the provost finds out that some professors wear crosses while teaching—I’m sure that will be quickly prohibited by any fair-minded ban on advocacy.
Perhaps UC Berkeley professors need to start wearing T-shirts with the First Amendment on them to remind the provost why we must not allow political commissars to dictate what teachers wear, say or think.
Zach Greenberg of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression argued, “If you’re going on tangents during class or expressing a political advocacy to students during class as a professor, you’re on company time.” But the whole concept of academic freedom is a rejection of “company time.” Academic freedom in the classroom means that the instructor, not the company, decides what is taught. The classroom is “professional time” where instructors must meet professional standards. But professional standards allow for wide leeway to go on tangents, discuss broader issues and even chat with students about nonprofessional topics. If there is a professor who has never uttered any words in any class unrelated to the course topic, I would love to meet that weirdo.
If a professor is wasting half of every class on a tangent unrelated to the course, then that professor should be disciplined. But the reason for the discipline must be politically neutral and disconnected from any viewpoint discrimination. A professor who expresses political views in class is no different from a professor who expresses views about the football team or a professor who discusses the weather (in a class unrelated to it). All of them are engaging in speech not germane to the class.
But no one can seriously argue that a four-minute statement after class about ethics in technology or a 20-word comment about being on a hunger strike could possibly describe an instructor who is failing to teach the content of the class by going on constant tangents.
The fact that Kao’s words were repeatedly described as “political” is not evidence of Kao’s guilt, but proof of the administration’s guilt. By targeting Kao purely for his political speech, and applying standards that would never be used for similar noncontroversial speech, the Berkeley administration is confessing to its violation of the First Amendment and standards of academic freedom that protect faculty from retaliation for their views.
Policy 2301 is a terrible policy, enacted in 1970 by the regents to suppress free speech, and it violates standards of academic freedom and the First Amendment by targeting “political indoctrination” (rather than all “indoctrination”) and therefore engages in viewpoint discrimination against disfavored political views.
But even Policy 2301 does not allow the kind of repression demanded by the provost, which is why he doesn’t quote any of its specific provisions in claiming Kao’s alleged violation of it.
The provost repeatedly accuses Kao of being “at odds with the spirit of Regents Policy 2301” but fails to quote anything in the policy he actually violated. Suspensions cannot be justified by “spirits”; they can only be legitimate if there is a clear violation of the rule.
The provost’s report is so grossly incompetent—fabricating clauses about “advocacy” that don’t exist in a policy he apparently hasn’t read—that it shows how arbitrary this act of political retaliation was.
Writing that the punishment was “up to you,” the provost gave his subordinates an implicit order to suspend Kao with only one other option: “I would have no objection if you wished to impose a more severe disciplinary action than the one I proposed.” Obviously, he would object to anything less than a suspension, and the resulting suspension is not surprising to anyone. It is highly unprofessional for a top administrator to personally intervene in a discipline case in order to manipulate the outcome and decree what punishment must be given.
The repressive administrative overreaction at Berkeley is precisely why we must give enormous freedom to instructors to do things that we think are wrong. Unless you protect the right of faculty to say dumb and inappropriate things in their classes, people driven mad by the possession of administrative power will seek to fire professors for what they say and do outside of class.
We should want professors who feel free to express their values and their ideas openly, even when it offends some people. We should reject a world where every professor must fear saying a disapproved word in a classroom where every utterance is monitored for wrongthink.
I don’t agree with Kao’s goals of campus divestment from Israel. I don’t agree with Kao’s tactics of engaging in a hunger strike. And I don’t agree with Kao’s methods of discussing his views in or after his classes.
But Kao did not violate any university rules, and it is fundamentally unjust to suspend him for purely political reasons. People are free to criticize him for his ideas, but not to censor him or punish him for expressing them.
UC Berkeley administrators have violated Kao’s academic freedom and the First Amendment in their shameful punishment of him for his free speech, and they deserve condemnation not only for this unjust act against Kao but also for the much larger chilling effect this repression will cause across the University of California.
With the imminent arrival of early-decision results comes a new round of hand-wringing about the admissions practice, which affords students a better chance of getting accepted to their top institution but requires them to commit if admitted.
Critics argue that the practice disadvantages low- and middle-income students, who fear being locked into attending a college before they know if they can afford it—although many colleges with an early-decision option allow students to back out over financial constraints. It also prevents applicants from comparing financial aid offers across multiple institutions.
“Because there is so much uncertainty, families with high incomes are more likely to choose early decision and therefore benefit from its more favorable odds. It’s the perfect tool for maximizing revenues at schools positioned as luxury products, with price tags to match,” wrote Daniel Currell, a former deputy under secretary and senior adviser at the Department of Education from 2018 to 2021, in a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday that argued for the end of early decision. Indeed, Common App data about the fall 2021 freshman class showed that students from the wealthiest ZIP codes were twice as likely to apply early decision.
But despite the criticisms, some institutions are aiming to make the practice more equitable. A handful of small liberal arts colleges have introduced initiatives in recent years to allow students to preview their financial aid offers before they decide whether or not to apply early, which admissions leaders say they hope will make lower-income students feel more comfortable taking the leap.
Reed College, a selective liberal arts college in Oregon, began offering early-decision aid reviews this year, which allow early-decision applicants to request and view their full financial aid packages before they receive an actual decision from the university. Just like an official aid offer, the preview is calculated by financial aid staff using the College Scholarship Service profile.
If they aren’t entirely comfortable with the amount of aid they’re set to receive—or they’d rather compare offers from other institutions—they can drop their application down into the early-action pool.
“I just think that this anxiety that people have over not getting the best financial deal for their family has been a barrier for people saying, ‘This is my first-choice school and I want to do everything I can to increase my chances for admission,’” said Milyon Trulove, vice president and dean of admission and financial aid at Reed.
Early financial aid offers are among the various steps institutions have taken in recent years to improve cost transparency and, in many cases, show students that their institutions are affordable. Others include improved cost estimators and campaigns offering free tuition for families under a particular income limit. Institutions hope that such innovations will help prevent students from writing off their institutions—particularly selective institutions that offer significant aid—due to their sticker prices.
So far, Reed’s reviews appear to be doing a good job of enticing applicants who otherwise might not have applied early; the number of early-decision applicants this year increased 60 percent compared to last admissions cycle. Only one student has opted to switch to early action, which is nonbinding, after receiving their estimated offer.
Similar programs at other institutions have also proven successful. Whitman College in Washington began offering early financial aid guarantees in 2020 to any prospective student who had filled out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The initiative wasn’t created specifically to promote early decision, said Adam Miller, vice president for admission and financial aid. But he said he hoped that making it clear to families that Whitman is affordable would also open doors for students interested in applying early decision but nervous about costs.
Early-decision applications haven’t increased at Whitman like they did this year at Reed. But Miller noted that the college’s early-decision applicants are as socioeconomically diverse as the institution’s overall applicant pool, rather than skewing wealthier.
“As we think about these nationwide conversations and the very valid criticism of early decision, we think that our approach allows us to have kind of a win-win,” he said. “We still get the benefit of students who are applying early, [so] that we can start to build our incoming class with some confidence,” while also eliminating financial uncertainty for families.
Last year, the university’s four-person financial aid staff handled 546 requests for early aid guarantees. It’s an extra lift for the tiny office, but, Miller said, 410 of those students ended up applying—“so it’s not like we were doing a lot of extra work for students that we weren’t going to be doing it for anyway.”
Macalester College also launched such a program in 2021. The institution, which typically admits between 35 and 40 percent of its incoming class from early decision, implemented aid previews in conjunction with a number of other steps aimed at improving access, including going test-optional and eliminating its application fee.
“If we have an opportunity to do something that we think might be helpful to an individual student or family, I guess I feel as responsibility as an enrollment manager to try to initiate a new practice or new policy,” said Jeff Allen, vice president for admissions and financial aid at Macalester.
Financial aid experts said they see early financial aid calculations as a good option for institutions hoping to make the early-decision process—and college costs over all—more transparent.
Students should be able to “apply early decision to a school where they know it’s the place for them and they don’t need to be saying, ‘But I need the financial aid so maybe this isn’t a good choice,’” said Jill Desjean, director of policy analysis at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. “That option should be available to anyone that finds the school where they really feel like they belong via early decision without having to factor in their finances, so any kind of early estimates, accurate early estimates—anything like that is a positive thing.”
She noted that such programs might be too heavy of a lift for institutions receiving massive numbers of applications every year, but also that larger institutions have more resources and staffing to accommodate such requests.
James Murphy, a senior fellow at Class Action, an advocacy organization focused on “reimagining elite higher education,” said that while he sees early aid previews as a positive step toward transparency, they don’t address some of his key concerns about early decision. At many expensive private high schools, he said, nearly every student applies early decision, whereas public high school students often aren’t even aware of the option.
“There’s kind of a culture thing. If you go to Georgetown Prep … everybody’s applying early decision, or most students are applying early decision, unless they’re applying to Harvard or Stanford that don’t have it … When you look at public schools, that’s not nearly as common,” he said. “I think raising awareness of early decision as a viable option for more students is one step that higher education could take to make it a little bit more equitable.”
He also noted that some institutions admit over half of their incoming classes from early-decision applicants, which dramatically lowers the chances for regular-admission applicants to be admitted.
“The New York Times had that op-ed about banning it. That’s not going to happen. Colleges will fight so hard to make that not happen,” he said. But, he said, “what I would love to see is caps” on the percentage of students that can be admitted early decision.
Officials also announced that the center will hone its primary focus to children’s health.
John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
The director of Harvard University’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights will step down in January after seven years at the helm, dean of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health Andrea Baccarelli announced Tuesday. News of her departure follows months of criticism of the center’s Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights.
Mary Bassett’s last day as director will be Jan. 9, 2026, after which she will remain a professor of practice in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department. Kari Nadeau, a professor of climate and population studies at Harvard, will serve as interim director. Bassett did not respond to a request for an interview Thursday. A Harvard spokesperson did not answer Inside Higher Ed’s questions about Bassett’s departure, including whether she was asked to step down, and instead pointed to Baccarelli’s message.
Baccarelli also announced that the center will shift its primary focus to children’s health.
“Over the past years, FXB has worked on a wide range of programs within the context of human rights, extending across varied projects, including those related to oppression, poverty, and stigma around the world,” he wrote. “We believe we can accomplish more, and have greater impact, if we go deeper in a primary area of focus.”
The center’s Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights drew increased scrutiny after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel, including from former Harvard president Larry Summers and New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik. In previous years, the program partnered with Birzeit University in the West Bank, but Harvard declined to renew that partnership in the spring. In their April report on antisemitism on campus, Harvard officials detailed complaints from students about the program’s webinars, in which speakers allegedly “presented a demonizing view of Israel and Israelis.”
“One student told us that the FXB programming created the impression that ‘Israel exists solely to oppress Palestinians, and nothing else,’” the report stated.
