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  • Northwestern President Michael Schill Resigns Amid Federal Funding Freeze

    Northwestern President Michael Schill Resigns Amid Federal Funding Freeze

    Northwestern University President Michael Schill announced his resignation Thursday, concluding a three-year tenure that brought record achievements alongside unprecedented federal challenges, including an ongoing $790 million funding freeze imposed by the Trump administration.

    Schill, who became Northwestern’s 17th president in September 2022, cited the need for “new leadership to guide Northwestern into its next chapter” in his message to the campus community. His departure adds to a growing list of university presidents who have stepped down amid tensions with the federal government and campus controversies.

    The resignation comes as Northwestern grapples with a federal funding freeze that began approximately four months ago, when the Trump administration halted $790 million in federal support. The action was reportedly connected to Title VI investigations, which examine discrimination in federally funded programs.

    The frozen funds support what Northwestern describes as “innovative and life-saving research,” including development of the world’s smallest pacemaker and Alzheimer’s disease research. University officials warned that “this type of research is now at jeopardy” due to the funding suspension.

    Northwestern joins other elite institutions facing similar federal actions, with universities like Cornell, Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Virginia experiencing funding freezes or leadership changes amid disputes over diversity programs and responses to Gaza-related campus protests.

    During Schill’s tenure, Northwestern reached notable milestones while navigating significant challenges. Schill oversaw major academic initiatives, including the establishment of research centers like the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago and the NSF-Simons AI Institute for the Sky. He also championed free expression initiatives, launching the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement and establishing the President’s Advisory Committee on Free Expression and Institutional Speech.

    However, his presidency was marked by significant controversies. Shortly after arriving on campus, Schill inherited a hazing scandal involving student-athletes, leading to new protective policies. More recently, he navigated campus tensions following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent protests.

    Republican lawmakers, including House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, had criticized Schill’s handling of campus antisemitism. Stefanik called his resignation “long overdue,” claiming he “failed to protect Jewish students” and “caved to the demands of the antisemitic, pro-Hamas mob.”

    Northwestern officials counter that they have “fully cooperated with investigations by both the Department of Education and Congress” and implemented policy updates that resulted in a “dramatic decrease” in reported antisemitic incidents.

    White House spokesperson Liz Huston said the Trump administration “looks forward to working with the new leadership, and we hope they seize this opportunity to Make Northwestern Great Again.”

    The Northwestern Board of Trustees will name an interim president soon, with Schill continuing in his role until the transition is complete. Board Chair Peter Barris praised Schill’s leadership through “unparalleled challenges” and credited him with “lasting achievements that contribute robustly to Northwestern’s continued advancement.”

    After stepping down, Schill plans to take a sabbatical before returning to teach and conduct research as a faculty member at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. 

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  • Massive Wealth Built on Soul-Crushing Student Loan Debt

    Massive Wealth Built on Soul-Crushing Student Loan Debt

    Todd S. Nelson rose from academic beginnings—a B.S. from Brigham Young University and an MBA from the University of Nevada, Reno—to dominate the for-profit higher education space. Over nearly four decades, Nelson has amassed vast personal wealth leading University of Phoenix, Education Management Corporation (EDMC), and Perdoceo Education, even as each institution left embattled students and regulatory fallout in its wake.

    Under Nelson’s leadership, Apollo Group (parent of University of Phoenix) mountains of revenue—$2.2 billion and over 300,000 students by 2006—coincided with a $41 million payday in that year alone. He resigned amid pressure over deceptive admissions practices.

    Nelson’s move to EDMC in 2007 triggered another enrollment explosion—from 82,000 to over 160,000 students by 2011—propelled by federal student aid. Annual revenues reached nearly $2.8 billion, even as employees were alleged to be encouraged to enroll “anyone and everyone” to meet quotas. This aggressive focus on recruitment came with enormous personal compensation—approximately $13.1 million annually—while students endured mounting debt and dwindling outcomes.

    A 2015 landmark settlement exposed EDMC’s alleged violations under the False Claims Act. The Justice Department accused the company of operating as a “recruitment mill,” illegally funneling federal funds through false certifications. EDMC agreed to pay $95.5 million in damages and forgive more than $102 million in student loans, affecting about 80,000 former students—averaging around $1,370 per student.Internal documents and court filings paint a grim picture: incentive-based pay for recruiters, breach of fiduciary duties, and a business model the trustee called “fundamentally fraudulent.”

    Nelson’s chapter at Career Education Corporation (later Perdoceo) echoed the same script. Campuses shuttered, including Le Cordon Bleu and Sanford-Brown, left students stranded with untransferable credits—and yet Nelson’s compensation remained soaring. In 2019, he earned $7.4 million and held about $12 million in equity.

    Whistleblower accounts from inside Perdoceo’s operations are damning. One former recruiter described pressure to enroll students “by any means necessary,” including coercive calls and emotional manipulation—often targeting vulnerable applicants with low income or lacking basic readiness. Despite those practices, Perdoceo reaped profits, with Nelson publicly touting revenue growth even as the Department of Education issued a formal notice in May 2021: thousands of borrower defense claims were pending against the company, alleging misrepresentations on credits, employment prospects, and accreditation.

    Further regulatory investigations deepened through early 2022, focusing on recruiting, marketing, and financial aid practices—yet no executive accountability has followed.

    The narrative that emerges is stark: Todd S. Nelson repeatedly led institutions to profit-fueled expansion using students’ federal dollars, while suppressing outcomes and exposing students to debilitating debt. Lawsuits, settlements, and investigative reports expose deceptive enrollment practices, false claims, and regulatory violations—but the executives—including Nelson—walk away with wealth and are rarely held personally responsible.

    Sources

    • Wikipedia: Todd S. Nelson—compensation figures and resignation amid scrutiny.

    • TribLIVE: Allegations of “anyone and everyone” being enrolled to meet quotas under Nelson’s reign at EDMC.

    • Career Education Review: Insights on quality decline amid enrollment growth at EDMC and Perdoceo.

    • Department of Justice and NASFAA: 2015 EDMC settlement—$95.5 million damages, $102 million in loan forgiveness for hundreds of thousands.

    • Bankruptcy court filings: Allegations of fraudulent business model and incentive-driven recruitment.

    • Republic Report & USA Today: Whistleblower testimony on Perdoceo’s predatory recruiting tactics.

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  • Now Is the Time to Overhaul Federal Regulations

    Now Is the Time to Overhaul Federal Regulations

    Researchers spend more than 40 percent of their research time complying with regulations.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | kyoshino/iStock/Getty Images

    The rise of generative artificial intelligence and the Trump administration’s deregulation push make now the right time to streamline and reduce federal scientific research regulations, argues a report the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine published Wednesday.

    “At a time when the scientific enterprise is under a lot of pressure—we don’t want to pretend that’s not true—this is also a wonderful opportunity to streamline the workload not only of researchers, but of institutions and other individuals,” Alan Leshner, chair of the NASEM committee that produced the report, said at a public briefing. “We would be foolish not to take advantage of the policy climate that favors deregulation and unburdening our scientific enterprise from unnecessary, duplicative and uncoordinated rules and regulations.”

    The 125-page report, entitled “Simplifying Research Regulations and Policies: Optimizing American Science,” lays out a three-pronged framework to guide a cohesive national strategy toward implementing more economical regulations. Those prongs include harmonizing regulations and requirements across federal and state agencies and research institutions, ensuring that regulatory requirements match the risk related to the project, and using technology to make regulation-compliance processes more efficient.

    From there, the report offers a menu of 53 potential options across all aspects of research compliance, including research security, misconduct and grant management, designed for interagency adoption.

    It’s all part of an effort by the National Academies to seize this political moment and accomplish their long-standing goal of freeing scientists from the weight of often redundant, expensive and excessive regulations.

    Currently, researchers whose work is supported by grants from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense spend more than 40 percent of their research time complying with each agency’s varying administrative and regulatory requirements, “wasting intellectual capacity and taxpayer dollars,” according to Federal Demonstration Partnership data cited in the report.

    “There’s no question that regulation is necessary to ensure that the science we produce is of the best quality, the highest integrity and is conducted with full accountability and transparency to the American public,” said Leshner, who has previously held leadership positions at the NIH and the NSF. “Having said that, the current regulatory environment has grown to a point that it’s actually hampering innovation.”

    Despite previous calls by the NASEM and other groups to reduce regulatory burdens on researchers, few of those plans have come to fruition. Instead, data from the Council on Government Relations (COGR) shows that 62 percent of the regulations and policies federal agencies adopted or changed since 1991 were issued from 2014 to 2024.

    For example, both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare regulate animal research, but in some cases, their requirements conflict.

    When a research project is subject to both agencies’ requirements, it can create “confusion, redundancy, and extra work,” the report says. “The natural result is for academic institutions to create additional requirements of their own to manage the complexity and risk of noncompliance stemming from regulatory complexity.”

    ‘An Urgency to This’

    Complying with inconsistent or redundant regulations also costs a lot for universities, which are now facing significant cuts to federal research funding. In 2022, COGR estimated that institutions receiving more than $100 million in federal research funds spent an estimated $1.4 million a year to comply with the NIH’s Data Sharing and Management Policy while smaller institutions spend just over $1 million a year.

    The burden of regulatory compliance can also further exacerbate research inequities.

    “Typically, the more underresourced institutions—regional state institutions, minority-serving institutions, HBCUs and tribal colleges—may not have as large of a research infrastructure or staff to handle some of the regulations that filter down from the federal level,” said Emanuel Waddell, committee member and chair of the nanoengineering department at North Carolina A&T State University. “When the infrastructure isn’t there to answer questions, that burden falls on the researchers themselves to seek out answers, and it takes away time from pursuing intellectual curiosity.”

    And with looming cuts to federal research budgets, including mass layoffs at the federal agencies that oversee research, members of the committee believe now is the time to reduce the cost of regulatory compliance if the United States wants to remain a competitive producer of scientific innovation.

    “There’s an urgency to this. We really have to get this done. Think about how constrained budgets are—we have $37 trillion debt in this country and it continues to grow,” said Kelvin Droegemeier, a member of the committee and a professor and special adviser to the chancellor for science and policy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “With relatively little cost, we can unlock a lot of money that is now being directed toward things which are not helpful and put that money toward doing research.”

    But making it happen will be up to the federal government.

    Matt Owens, president of COGR, urged federal policymakers in a statement Wednesday afternoon “to act this fall on the most actionable and timely of the options.”

    “If the administration and Congress are rightly interested in reducing regulatory burden and to promote scientific advancements, then they now have a clear roadmap for doing so efficiently and effectively,” he wrote. “What remains to be seen is whether federal policymakers will get behind the wheel, step on the gas, and accelerate through the finish line to fully deliver.”

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  • College Students With Kids More Likely to Lack Basic Needs

    College Students With Kids More Likely to Lack Basic Needs

    An estimated one in five college students is a parent, juggling coursework with caring for a dependent and, often, holding down a paid job. The competing priorities of working and caregiving students can put them at heightened risk for stopping out or quitting higher education, requiring additional investment from colleges and universities to help them succeed.

    A recent report from Trellis Strategies, using data from its Fall Financial Wellness Survey, identifies key trends among student caregivers, the role that time poverty can play in their academic pursuits and recommendations for additional supports.

    Who are caregiving students? Eighteen percent of respondents indicated they were a parent or guardian of a child, or approximately 9,500 of the survey’s 53,000-plus respondents. Seven percent of respondents said they were a caregiver to another individual, not a dependent, and 6 percent said they provided care for a child and another individual, identifying them as a double caregiver.

    Women were more likely to say they were caregivers (73 percent) than non-caregivers (55 percent), and more than twice as many Black students indicated they had caregiver (27 percent) or double-caregiver (34 percent) responsibilities, compared to non-caregivers (12 percent). Two-year students were more likely to report being a caregiver (25 percent) than their four-year peers (13 percent).

    A majority of non-caregivers in Trellis’s study were under 24 years old (84 percent), but caregivers were more evenly represented across age brackets from 18 to 45, representing a variety of identities and priorities. For example, younger caregivers were more likely to say they spent less than 20 hours per week providing care for their dependents, compared to their peers aged 25 to 40, but young parents were also more likely to say they missed at least one day of class due to a lack of childcare (32 percent), versus their peers in their early 30s (27 percent).

    Competing priorities: A high percentage of caregiving students are also employed; 71 percent worked while enrolled and 85 percent agreed it was important for them to support their family financially while in college. In addition to supporting themselves, caregiving students said they offered financial support to their spouse (34 percent), parents or guardians (24 percent), or other family members (22 percent).

    Affordability is a top barrier to student persistence nationally, but the cost of higher education can be an even greater burden for students with dependents. A 2014 report by EdTrust found that a student parent working a minimum-wage job would have to work 52 hours per week to afford both childcare and net tuition at a public four-year institution in the U.S.

    Caregiving students were also more likely to consider themselves a “worker that goes to school” (63 percent) than “a student who works” (37 percent)—the direct inverse of non-caregiving students, a majority of whom said they were a student who works (72 percent). Sixty-eight percent of student parents who were employed reported working more than 40 hours per week.

    “The time poverty caused by work and caregiving commitments can have a substantial impact on the student experience,” according to the report.

    The financial and personal pressures of being a caregiver can also impact a student’s academic performance; 24 percent of parenting students said they missed at least one day of class in the past semester due to a lack of childcare.

    Parenting students are more likely to report financial insecurity; 70 percent indicated they would have difficulty securing $500 in cash for an emergency expense. More than four in five caregivers said they’d run out of money at least once in the past year, and nearly 40 percent ran out of money eight or more times in the past year.

    Seventy-two percent of caregivers reported experiencing some level of basic needs insecurity, including food insecurity, housing insecurity or homelessness. Research from New America and the Princeton Eviction Lab published earlier this year found that student parents who faced eviction were 23 percent less likely to complete a bachelor’s degree and more likely to experience a lower quality of life.

    ED Cuts CCAMPIS for Some Colleges

    The Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program aims to provide campus-based childcare services for low-income student parents, but President Trump’s proposed 2026 budget would eliminate program funding.

    The Department of Education this week said it discontinued some grants for CCAMPIS because “they would have taught children about gender identity and racial justice and didn’t hire staff based on merit,” according to The Washington Post.

    Supporting success: Based on their findings, Trellis researchers believe institutional investment in caregivers could improve retention, academic success and degree completion for parenting students. They suggest collecting and disaggregating data on student enrollment to identify caregivers, including dependent-care expenses in students’ cost of attendance and providing priority registration for caregivers.

    Childcare remains a critical need, but institutions can help bridge the gap through on-campus facilities, sharing information about community childcare resources and referral services, and partnering with community organizations for support resources.

    We bet your colleague would like this article, too. Send them this link to subscribe to our newsletter on Student Success.

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  • The Transfer Credit Myth: How Everything We Know About Excess Credits May Be Wrong

    The Transfer Credit Myth: How Everything We Know About Excess Credits May Be Wrong

    The Transfer Credit Myth: How Everything We Know About Excess Credits May Be Wrong

    quintina.barne…

    Thu, 09/04/2025 – 03:00 AM

    Part One: Through the lens of records and registration.

    Byline(s)
    Wendy Kilgore

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  • DOJ Sues Illinois Over In-State Tuition for Noncitizens

    DOJ Sues Illinois Over In-State Tuition for Noncitizens

    The U.S. Department of Justice sued Illinois on Tuesday over its policy to allow in-state tuition rates for undocumented students. Illinois is the fifth state targeted by such a lawsuit.

    The DOJ filed a complaint in the Southern District of Illinois against the state, Gov. JB Pritzker, the state attorney general and boards of trustees of state universities. The complaint argues that it’s illegal to offer lower tuition rates to undocumented students if out-of-state citizens can’t also benefit.

    Illinois passed a law in 2003 that grants in-state tuition to undocumented students who meet certain criteria. To qualify, students need to reside and attend high school in the state for three years, graduate from an Illinois high school, and sign an affidavit promising to apply to become a permanent resident as soon as possible. Pritzker then signed a bill into law last year that would loosen these criteria, starting in July 2026. Students will be able to pay in-state tuition rates if they meet one of two sets of requirements, including attending an Illinois high school for at least two years or a combination of high school and community college in the state for at least three years.

    “Under federal law, schools cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a news release. “This Department of Justice has already filed multiple lawsuits to prevent U.S. students from being treated like second-class citizens—Illinois now joins the list of states where we are relentlessly fighting to vindicate federal law.”

    In Texas and Oklahoma, the DOJ successfully ended in-state tuition for undocumented students; attorneys general in the two red states swiftly sided with the federal government’s legal challenges. Lawsuits against Kentucky and Minnesota are still ongoing.

    This latest lawsuit will likely escalate the Trump administration’s battle with the state of Illinois. President Donald Trump has said he wants to send the National Guard to Chicago, a move that Pritzker forcefully pushed back on. Since Trump took office, Pritzker has been an outspoken critic.

    April McLaren, deputy press secretary for the Illinois attorney general’s office, said officials are reviewing the case and have “no further comment.” Representatives at Eastern Illinois University, Northeastern Illinois University and Southern Illinois University, whose boards were among those named in the lawsuit, similarly told Inside Higher Ed that they can’t comment on pending litigation.

    A spokesperson for the governor’s office defended the state’s policy and called the lawsuit “yet another blatant attempt to strip Illinoisans of resources and opportunities.” 

    “While the Trump Administration strips away federal resources from all Americans, Illinois provides consistent and inclusive educational pathways for all students—including immigrants and first-generation students—to access support and contribute to our state,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “All Illinoisans deserve a fair shot to obtain an education, and our programs and policies are consistent with federal laws.” 

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  • Predictions for Governance This Academic Year (opinion)

    Predictions for Governance This Academic Year (opinion)

    The start of the new academic year has all eyes looking ahead. As we all know, prediction is very difficult, particularly about the future, as physicist Niels Bohr cheekily put it. At the same time, the future is already here—it is just unevenly distributed, as writer William Gibson said. In other words, while predictions are difficult, we have evidence of what we might expect. This essay applies those logics to higher education governance.

    If predictions about the future are difficult, predictions about the future of governance might be outright foolish. Nevertheless, it is worth speculating and preparing.

    On the Board’s Radar

    Since higher education is in the headlines—if not the headline in the news—boards are likely to be more aware and informed of the issues and trends in higher education than they were in the past. This is particularly true because of federal action (I once would have said “policy,” but we are not seeing policy being made or even discussed) making news in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and other outlets read by trustees. Boards read about the Trump executive orders, drastic and devastating reductions in federal research funding, and attacks on institutional autonomy, as well as on specific universities: Harvard, Penn, Columbia, George Mason. The attacks on inclusion and student support for underrepresented groups (even the phrase “underrepresented groups”), DEI or its dismantling, and antisemitism are all subjects of conversations among trustees. Many are having parallel conversations in their corporate and law offices.

    The demographic cliff—the long-foretold decline in the numbers of traditional-age students—has only gotten closer. Boards are worried about enrollment. There is concern over international students who are expected to seek alternatives other than the U.S.

    For those universities with Division I athletics, there are complexities associated with name, image and likeness rights; the coaching hiring carousel; the transfer portal; and direct student athlete compensation. Boards like to be associated with winning.

    Inflation over the past few years has made costs higher and budgets tighter. This means not only that there are fewer operational resources, but fewer dollars have gone into infrastructure. Therefore, deferred maintenance is growing and worrying many.

    Then there is AI. As a Princeton University professor wrote in a recent article in The New Yorker, “The White House’s chain-jerk mugging feels, frankly, like a sideshow. The juggernaut actually barreling down the quad is A.I., coming at us with shocking speed.”

    Underlining all of this is finances. For boards, particularly those at tuition-dependent institutions as well as those at research funding–dependent institutions, financial well-being is still king. It can and will continue to dominate board conversations. And in extreme cases, it risks becoming the only thing these boards care about.

    Governance Crystal Ball

    What does the above mean regarding the near-term future for governance? Before answering that question, I need to acknowledge the tremendous variation in boards and their composition as well as in the mission and geographic contexts in which they are operating. Governance generally is not governance locally. At the risk of overgeneralizing:

    • Expect more anxiety and energy in the board room. Board members feel the pressure on higher education and their institutions. Some boards will amplify that pressure and others will help dissipate it. Nevertheless, expect boards to be 1) well-read on higher education because it’s in the national headlines and 2) animated about what they are reading and how they are translating that into the institutional context.
    • Anticipate activist trustees and activist boards. In some instances, activism will be instigated by individual board members. Activist trustees as well as donors will likely continue to borrow approaches from their corporate brethren, driving agendas, trying to influence board composition, leveraging philanthropy and working behind the scenes. Ten years ago, the Harvard Business Review published an article about corporate activism. While there are clearly lessons to be learned and translated, the most striking part was that one named example of a corporate activist is now a familiar name to many in higher education after playing a key role in forcing the leadership change at Harvard University.

    In other instances, the boards themselves (or at least a majority of members) may be activist. We have seen such examples in Florida, Idaho, Texas and Virginia. This is a different conversation altogether, when it is the full board as compared to individuals.

    • Increased questioning of the role if not value of faculty governance. Many more boards are likely to openly question the value of faculty governance and how it can be improved. They may have done this privately in the past, but don’t expect quiet conversations about faculty decision-making. Given the enrollment and other external pressures and the “entrenched problems” with higher education (real and perceived, thus the quotation marks), boards may increasingly ask what faculty governance has contributed and in extreme instances why it exists. Most do not have it, or anything substantially similar, in their professional lives.
    • A desire to consolidate power in the presidency. When the chips are down, corporate leaders may see their roles as being about making hard decisions, leading change and making unpopular choices to right their organizations. Captains of industry steer the ships under their charge. In higher education boardrooms, they then wonder why the college president—the institutional CEO—seems to have such comparatively little power in relation to their corporate peers. Often without realizing the differences in organizational contexts, they think that their approach to leadership, which typically works for them because they are successful (otherwise they most likely would not be trustees) should apply to colleges and universities. Presidents will be presented with corporate playbooks.
    • Increased focus on what is taught. The idea of viewpoint diversity will likely gain increased weight this year in board rooms. Boards may see it as part of their oversight role to ensure a range of ideas is being taught. This means that boards may be focusing on the curriculum and in some instances on the content of individual courses. This also means that boards may want to create new structures and centers, particularly those focused on conservative thought. This too requires much unpacking. Some boards will likely approach this issue with a genuine sense of inquiry and interest, with student learning at heart. Other boards—not so much.
    • Increased focus on how the curriculum is taught. Boards may be asking new and more pointed questions about how teaching and learning is conducted. The AI conversation may be driving some of this focus, but not all. Instructional costs, program enrollments, challenges of postgraduation employment and strained resources may also be behind their interest in curriculum.
    • More time on campus issues and on campus. I sense that all of these will mean that board members will be increasing their engagement with higher education trends and issues and also spending more time on or in close contact with the campus. I anticipate calls and texts to presidents and possibly others on campus will increase—first in response to the day’s headlines. And second because they will simply have more questions or solutions.

    Near-Term Action Agenda for Campus Leaders

    While the above are predictions, solid and careful preparation may suit presidents well. It’s best to take that umbrella rather than get caught out in the rain.

    1. Make more time for governance. We all know the complexities and demands of presidential schedules. Yet, be prepared to increase the time dedicated to the board. Board engagement is something that for the most part only presidents can do. That will mean delegating other tasks and responsibilities to the team. One might consider extending the time of board meetings and creating ways to meet with the board between meetings (briefings and updates are good strategies). There will likely be more governance work to do; don’t let old meeting structures impede good governance.
    2. Increase communication with board leaders and with the board as a whole. It’s better to shape the narrative of information rather than constantly respond. Increase regular communications; send out special messages. Be sure to spend more time helping the board understand what they need to know and appreciate.
    3. Prepare the board for crises. We don’t know what will happen this year, but one can safely assume there will be crises of some magnitude across a range of institutions. Have a clear communications plan—know who speaks for the campus and who speaks for the board. Clarify the process for the board of how messages get crafted and vetted. Be clear on who will communicate to the individual trustees. Set expectations for which trustees will know what and when. Remind trustees of the importance of confidentiality. Finally, consider conducting tabletop activities in which the board can work through a crisis before one occurs.
    4. Lay the foundation for discussions about faculty governance. Be prepared to explain and possibly defend the idea, its structures and the culture of shared decision-making. A simple point to remind the board is that making decisions and actually implementing them are two different things. While shared governance may result in slower decision-making processes, it expedites implementation and ensures a greater likelihood of success because faculty were involved and have a sense of ownership. Bring faculty into board conversations as experts and contributors. Demonstrate their value, which is more powerful than explaining their value.
    5. Invest in board education. Board members will want to engage. So it’s best to prepare them to do so from the point of knowledge and information. If boards are going to question academic freedom, for example, get ahead of the inquiries.
    6. Bolster the board chair. Chairs play exceedingly important roles in effective governance. These are volunteer roles in which they manage the board and its personalities; set governance expectations and run interference, when need be; facilitate meetings (again running interference when need be); and support the president and serve as a strategic thought partner.
    7. Ensure you have a top-notch board professional. Just as chairs play pivotal roles, so do board professionals. Good ones are worth their weight in gold, as they work mostly behind the scenes on governance, but they also engage directly with trustees. And speaking of gold, do your best to ensure they have the resources needed to do their jobs.
    8. Spend more time on the development of committee and board meeting agendas. Boards do much of their work through meetings. Make sure the president and the senior team are intentional about the content of the agendas, the anticipated outcomes of each meeting and the materials boards need to have informed discussions. This point should go without saying, but too many board agendas are rote, poorly framed and lack focus.
    9. Finally, intentionally address issues of finances—again particularly for those tuition-dependent and research funding–dependent institutions. Boards will be concerned and want action: By addressing financial well-being intentionally, you can then get the board to focus on other strategic priorities without being distracted. Attending to trustee priorities is important, but ensuring a balanced board agenda will better play the long game needed right now.

    Conclusion

    This calendar year has been one like no other. A safe bet is to predict that this academic year will be no different. The ideas above may be alarmist. Many boards will continue to govern effectively and do so in ways consistent with past practices. For that be thankful. Other boards may take it upon themselves to look in the mirror and move forward in new, positive and more constructive ways. Be even more thankful for that. As one experienced general counsel said to me, “If trustees truly want to guide their institutions and make sure that their problem-solving and future planning decisions are the best they can be, they need to keep their governance blades sharp.”

    Peter Eckel is a senior fellow and director of the Global Higher Education Management program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. He thanks two humans, a ChatGPT-generated novice board chair and a long-serving president for their feedback on the essay. The humans offered better insights, which could be due to the prompt writing or the caliber of the humans.

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  • More Essential Than Ever: A Review

    More Essential Than Ever: A Review

    About 10 years ago, the guided pathways movement got its user’s manual.  Redesigning America’s Community Colleges, by Thomas Bailey, Shanna Smith Jaggars and Davis Jenkins of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College, was a sustained and well-received brief in favor of community colleges moving away from a “cafeteria” or “food court” model and toward a “guided pathways” model.

    The idea was that the quasi-libertarian view that more choice is invariably good didn’t match the reality of most students’ lives; in fact, most students crave direction. Without clear direction, the argument went, students often flounder. They take credits that won’t transfer, get lost in remediation or drop out because they don’t see the point. Colleges should streamline their offerings—especially in remediation—and ensure that students get on pathways quickly and stay on them.

    The book resonated. It picked up on the “completion agenda,” as it was known, and offered a series of steps that colleges could take to improve retention and graduation rates. It popularized “meta-majors,” subjected remedial courses to severe scrutiny and offered a unifying theme (and a brand name) to what could have looked like a disparate set of reforms.

    To its considerable credit, the CCRC has subjected its own recommendations to empirical study. Now, with the benefit of 10 years’ worth of data, it has issued a follow-up. More Essential Than Ever, by Davis Jenkins, Hana Lahr, John Fink, Serena Klempin and Maggie Fay, looks closely at what happened as colleges implemented the recommendations of the earlier book. (Jenkins co-authored both the original and the follow-up.) The new book also takes stock of developments in the field in the last 10 years that weren’t focuses of the first book, including dual enrollment, short semesters and support for student basic needs.

    Conceptually, the major innovation in the new book is the expansion of the goals of the guided pathways movement to include postgraduation outcomes. It looks primarily at labor market outcomes, though transfer also gets some attention. Instead of defining the task as getting students to graduation, the new book defines the task as getting students credentials that will lead to salaries that can sustain families. Where a social work graduate and a nursing graduate may show up interchangeably in a graduation rate, the latter is much more likely to make a living wage.

    Liberal arts/transfer degrees come in for considerable skepticism, on the grounds that they only help if students actually transfer. That struck me as a bit unfair—nursing degrees only help if students pass the NCLEX, too. Degrees have intended outcomes; using them off-label is taking a risk. That’s not unique to the liberal arts. As the book correctly notes, most of the jobs that pay family-sustaining wages require a bachelor’s degree or higher; in that light, seamless and effective transfer is very much a workforce initiative. Transfer degrees, used as intended, can open doors to those jobs.

    The new book is a follow-up, and it reads like one. Although there’s a helpful synopsis of earlier recommendations in the beginning, the book likely makes the most sense if the reader is familiar with both the earlier work and the world of community colleges generally. This one is very much for practitioners. That makes it somewhat less fun to read, but probably more useful.

    I read it with a pen and dog-eared too many pages. It makes compelling arguments for embedding academic advisers in specific majors, helping students identify career goals early, adopting a case-management model of advising, ensuring that students get at least one identifiably goal-relevant or exciting class in the first semester, assessing academic programs’ labor market outcomes and supporting contextualized teaching, among other possibilities. I was particularly struck at the observation that changing the culture of an institution takes steady leadership and that it’s reasonable to expect full-scale change to take five to 10 years. In a time of rapid presidential and cabinet turnover, that’s a big ask. Having seen the damage that rapid turnover can do, though, I think they’re right.

    The specific measures are, for me, the highlights of the book. They’re the reason I plan to keep my copy near my desk. True to the CCRC’s mission as a research center, the authors back up their recommendations with ample citations, as well as narrative case studies. It’s dense in the best way: The ratio of useful ideas per page is off the charts. It looks like a trade paperback, but I’d file it under reference.

    Of course, no book is perfect. I would have liked to see a deeper discussion of internal resistance, for example, as well as the impact of high turnover and low pay among adjuncts on aspirations for more adventurous teaching.

    Those are questions of emphasis. The one substantive flaw I couldn’t write off as a stylistic choice is its chapter on dual enrollment. In arguing for more career-focused dual enrollment, the book neglects the key role of dual credit in ensuring that students graduate high school on time. It underplays questions of funding—in a parent-pay state like my own, the absence of financial aid effectively prices dual enrollment out of possibility for many students—and treats questions of faculty credentials much more blithely than they deserve. In a largely flattering profile of the dual-enrollment program at Lee College in Texas, they note approvingly that the college addressed concerns about ninth graders making career choices by urging them to just “pick something to try out,” which comes dangerously close to the “random acts of dual enrolment” they otherwise advise against (p. 144). And they ignore the reality of credit loss upon transfer after dual enrollment when students decide to change majors upon arrival to college. I’ve seen it myself; the disappointment is real.

    Still, this is likely to be one of the most referred-to, useful, practical books for improving student success for a long time. It stands as a testimony to what a funded community college research center can do; although it wasn’t conceived this way, it makes for a hell of a counterargument to the claim that research funds aren’t necessary. In this political moment, the CCRC’s work is more essential than ever; the book’s title couldn’t have been better chosen.

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  • Trump Hijacks American Science and Scholarship (opinion)

    Trump Hijacks American Science and Scholarship (opinion)

    In a nearly daily barrage, President Trump and his MAGA forces heave fireballs at science and higher education. In the last weeks alone, the administration has been busy hurling a demand for a billion dollars from the University of California, Los Angeles; axing proven mRNA vaccine research; and demanding colleges submit expanded sex and race data from student applications, among other startling detonations. Amid the onslaught of these unsettling developments, it would be easy to miss the decisive change in conventional scientific and scholarly practice, one so vast that it threatens to overturn our revered American research achievements.

    On Aug. 7, Trump issued an executive order that uproots more than a half century of peer review, the standard practice for funding federal scientific grants. Taking approval out of the hands of experts, the new rule makes grant approval contingent upon the assent of political puppets who will approve only those awards the president finds acceptable.

    When I first came upon the order, I was immediately struck by how closely it resembles the unquestioned authority granted to senior political appointees in Soviet Russia and Communist China. As if dictated by commissars, the new rule requires officials to fund only those proposals that advance presidential priorities. Cast aside, peer review is now merely advisory.

    It took my breath away, suddenly realizing how completely threatening the new order is to the very foundations of the democratic practice of research and scholarship. As Victor Ambros, Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of microRNA, aptly put it, the order constitutes a “a shameless, full-bore Soviet-style politicization of American science that will smother what until now has been the world’s pre-eminent scientific enterprise.”

    Decades ago, long before I entered higher ed, I worked at a small publishing company in New York that translated Russian scientific and technical books and journals into English. As head of translations, I’d travel once or twice a year over many years to Moscow and Leningrad (now, once again, St. Petersburg) to negotiate with Soviet publishers to obtain rights to our English translations.

    One evening in the late ’60s, I invited a distinguished physicist to join me for dinner at a Ukrainian restaurant not far from my hotel in Moscow. We talked for some time openly over a bottle of vodka about new trends in physics, among other themes. As dinner drew to a close, he let his guard down and whispered a confidence. Mournfully, he told me he’d just received an invitation to deliver the keynote address at a scientific conference in England, but the Party official at his institution wouldn’t permit him to travel. I still remember the sense of being privy to a deep and troubling secret, reflected in the silence that followed and the palpable unease at the table. Shame enveloped him.

    Over a couple of dozen years of frequent trips to the Soviet Union and Communist China, I never met a single Party official. My day-to-day interactions were with administrators, editors, researchers and faculty who managed scientific publishing or were involved in teaching, research or other routine matters. The Party secretary remained hidden behind a curtain of power as in The Wizard of Oz.

    On one rare occasion in the 2010s, at a graduation ceremony at a local technical university in Beijing where I ran a couple of online master’s degrees in partnership with Stevens Institute of Technology, a student seated next to me in the audience drew near and identified a well-dressed official several rows ahead of us up front. “The Party secretary,” he revealed in hushed tones. I saw the officer later at the reception, standing by himself with a dour expression, as faculty, students and family members bustled about at a distance.

    One afternoon at that university in Beijing, I came upon a huddle of faculty in a corner office. As they chatted quietly among themselves in Mandarin, I took a seat at the far end of the room to give them privacy. But I could make out that a man in the group was disturbed, his face flushed and his eyes close to tears. Later, I approached one of the faculty members in the group with whom I’d grown close and asked what had troubled his colleague.

    “Oh,” he replied. “He often gets upset when the Party secretary objects to something we’re doing. He worries that our joint program is in jeopardy.”

    These personal reflections, based on my limited encounters with scientists and faculty, do not reveal the full extent of the control over scientific research exerted by Party functionaries. But if you compare the president’s new order with that of the Party’s authority in Soviet Russia and Communist China, you’ll find they’re all out of the same playbook.

    The order’s demand for political appointee approval takes decisions out of the hands of apolitical, merit-based peer-review panels. In the Soviet Union and China, adherence to the Party line and loyalty to the regime was (or is) paramount, with grant funds being used to advance ideological or state power. Similarly, the president’s order establishes a party line, stating that federal money cannot be used to support racial preferences, “denial … of the sex binary in humans,” illegal immigration or initiatives deemed “anti-American.”

    Relegating peer review is no small matter. It is at the center of modern science, distributing responsibility for evaluating scholarly work among experts, rather than holding this responsibility in the fist of authority. Even though peer review is under criticism today for its anonymity and potential biases, among other perplexing features, when researchers referee proposals, they nevertheless participate in a stirring example of collaborative democracy, maintaining the quality and integrity of scholarship—characteristics anathema to far-right ideologues.

    Of all the blasts shattering American science and higher education since the president assumed office in January, this executive order may be the most devastating. It is not one of Trump’s random shots at research and scholarship, but an assault on democracy itself.

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  • How the manufactured narrative of “failure” is distracting us from resolving the systemic problems holding back the study of Modern Languages – Part One.

    How the manufactured narrative of “failure” is distracting us from resolving the systemic problems holding back the study of Modern Languages – Part One.

    Author:
    Vincent Everett

    Published:

    This post was kindly written by Vincent Everett, who is head of languages in a comprehensive school and sixth form in Norfolk. He blogs as The Nice Man Who Teaches Languages at https://whoteacheslanguages.blogspot.com.

    We have to bring an end to the Culture Wars in “Modern Foreign Languages” in England. Since 2019 we have been convulsed in an internecine political fight over whether our subject is about Communication or Intellectual Conceptualisation. Of course, it’s both. The same goes for Literature, Linguistics, Content Integrated Language Learning (CLIL), and Culture. Likewise, we can encompass transactional travel language, personal expression, professional proficiency, creative or academic language. Teachers have all of these on their radar, and make decisions on how to select and integrate them on a daily basis.

    Our subject benefits from the richness of all these ingredients, and to privilege one or to exclude others, is to make us all the poorer. Teachers work in the rich and messy overlap between Grammar and Communication, engaging with pupils at every stage through their encounters with and progression through another language.

    Meanwhile, we have allowed the culture wars to allow us to be distracted from the very real problems facing our subject. The first is unfair grading at GCSE. The allocation of grades in languages is harsher than in their other subjects. Above a grade 3, this widens to a whole grade’s difference compared to a subject like History.

    The narrative that it is harder to succeed in languages is accurate. Not because of the difficulty of the course content or the exams, but because of the determination of the allocation of grades. It’s not accurate to say that this is a reflection of pupils’ progress or the quality of teaching compared to other subjects. That calibration has not been made. In fact, grades are not calibrated one subject to another. The only calibration that is made, is to perpetuate grading within the subject year on year.

    This was most famously set up in advance when we moved to a new GCSE in 2018. The unfair grading of the old GCSE was carefully and deliberately transferred across to the new GCSE. So pupils taking the new course and the new exam, even though it was proposed to be a better course and a better exam, had no chance of showing they could get better grades. Furthermore, where under the old A-G grading system, the difference between languages and other subjects had been around half a grade, the new 9-1 grading meant that the difference in the key area of grades 4 and above, was now stretched to a whole grade, because of the way the old grades were mapped onto the new ones.

    The lower grades given out in languages are a strong disincentive for take up at GCSE. There is the accurate narrative that pupils will score a lower grade if they pick languages, which acts as a deterrent not only for pupils, but also for schools. One way to score higher in league tables is to have fewer pupils taking MFL. There is also the inaccurate narrative that this is a reflection of the pupils’ own ability, the nation’s ability, or the quality of teaching. The allocation of grades is a historical anomaly perpetuated year-on-year, not a reflection of actual achievement.

    This is the biggest issue facing modern languages. It would also be the easiest to fix. Grade boundaries in other subjects are used in order to bring standards in to line. If an exam is too easy  or too hard, and many pupils score a high mark or a low mark, the grade boundaries are used to make sure the correct number of pupils get the grade. Except, that is, in modern languages, where the thresholds are used to make sure that grades are out of line with other subjects. Imagine if languages grades were allocated in line with other subjects, would there be a clamour of voices insisting they should be made more difficult?

    There is a very real danger of misinterpreting this manufactured narrative of “failure” in languages. It features in every report or proposal, but often instead of identifying it as an artificial anomaly, it is used to diagnose a deficit and prescribe a solution. Often this is a solution taken from the culture wars, ignoring the fact that schools and teachers are already expertly blending and balancing the elements of our subject.

    Unfair grading at GCSE is the greatest of our problems, and the easiest to sort out. In Part 2, I shall look at the trickier question of what happens post-16.

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