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  • Student-Athlete Unionization Efforts Withdrawn Prior to Second Trump Administration

    Student-Athlete Unionization Efforts Withdrawn Prior to Second Trump Administration

    by CUPA-HR | January 21, 2025

    Two efforts to extend collective bargaining rights to college athletes have been withdrawn in recent weeks in anticipation of the Trump administration taking control of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

    On December 31, 2024, the Dartmouth men’s basketball team withdrew their petition to unionize. Members of the team overwhelmingly voted in March 2024 to join the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The vote came one month after an NLRB regional director ruled that the players were employees of the college and were thus eligible to unionize.

    Additionally, on January 10, 2025, the National College Players Association (NCPA) withdrew its case against the University of Southern California, the Pac-12 Conference and the NCAA. In the original complaint, the NCPA claimed the three plaintiffs violated the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by misclassifying the student-athletes as non-employees. They also argued all three plaintiffs were joint employers of the student-athletes.

    Both of these efforts were pursued after NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued a memorandum arguing that student-athletes are employees under the NLRA and are therefore afforded all statutory protections as prescribed under the law. The incoming administration will likely rescind the memorandum, halting or at least hindering unionization efforts among student-athletes.

    The decision to withdraw both petitions is likely meant to avoid an unfavorable outcome and precedent from a soon-to-be Republican-controlled NLRB. The SEIU explained in a statement following their withdrawal request that they sought “to preserve the precedent set by this exceptional group of young people on the men’s varsity basketball team.”

    CUPA-HR will keep members apprised of any updates related to student-athlete employment classification and unionization.



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  • FIRE to University of Texas at Dallas: Stop censoring the student press

    FIRE to University of Texas at Dallas: Stop censoring the student press

    The University of Texas at Dallas has a troubling history of trying to silence students. Now those students are fighting back.

    Today, the editors of The Retrograde published their first print edition, marking a triumphant return for journalism on campus in the face of administrative efforts to quash student press.

    Headlines above the fold of the first issue of The Retrograde, a new independent student newspaper at UT Dallas.

    Why call the newspaper The Retrograde? Because it’s replacing the former student newspaper, The Mercury, which ran into trouble when it covered the pro-Palestinian encampments on campus and shed light on UT Dallas’s use of state troopers (the same force that broke up UT Austin’s encampment just one week prior) and other efforts to quash even peaceful protest. As student journalists reported, their relationship with the administration subsequently deteriorated. University officials demoted the newspaper’s advisor and even removed copies of the paper from newsstands. At the center of this interference were Lydia Lum, director of student media, and Jenni Huffenberger, senior director of marketing and student media, whose titles reflect the university’s resistance to editorial freedom.

    The conflict between the paper and the administration came to a head when Lum called for a meeting of the Student Media Oversight Board, a university body which has the power to remove student leaders, accusing The Mercury’s editor-in-chief, Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, of violating student media bylaws by having another form of employment, exceeding printing costs, and “bypassing advisor involvement.” Yet rather than follow those same bylaws, which offer detailed instructions for removing a student editor, Lum told board members from other student media outlets not to attend the meeting. A short-handed board then voted to oust Gutierrez. Adding insult to injury, Huffenberger unilaterally denied Gutierrez’s appeal, again ignoring the bylaws, which require the full board to consider any termination appeals.

    The student journalists of The Retrograde have shown incredible spirit. With your help, we can ensure their efforts — and the rights of all student journalists — are respected.

    In response, The Mercury’s staff went on strike, demanding Gutierrez’s reinstatement. To help in that effort, FIRE and the Student Press Law Center joined forces to pen a Nov. 12, 2024 letter calling for UT Dallas to honor the rights of the student journalists. We also asked them to pay the students the money they earned for the time they worked prior to the strike.

    UT Dallas refused to listen. Instead of embracing freedom of the press, the administration doubled down on censorship, ignoring both the students’ and our calls for justice.

    FIRE's advertisement in the first issue of the Retrograde student newspaper at UT Dallas. The headline reads: "FIRE Supports Student Journalism"

    FIRE took out a full page ad in support of The Retrograde at UT Dallas.

    In our letter, we argued that the university’s firing of Gutierrez was in retaliation for The Mercury’s unflattering coverage of the way administrators had handled the encampments. This is not even the first time UT Dallas has chosen censorship as the “best solution;” look no further than in late 2023 when they removed the “Spirit Rocks” students used to express themselves. Unfortunately, the university ignored both the students’ exhortations and FIRE’s demands, leaving UT Dallas without its newspaper. 

    But FIRE’s Student Press Freedom Initiative is here to make sure censorship never gets the last word.

    Students established The Retrograde, a fully independent newspaper. Without university resources, they have had to crowdfund and source their own equipment, working spaces, a new website, and everything else necessary to provide quality student-led journalism to the UT Dallas community. They succeeded, and FIRE is proud to support their efforts, placing a full-page ad in this week’s inaugural issue of The Retrograde.

    The fight for press freedom at UT Dallas is far from over — but we need your help to make a difference.

    Demand accountability from UT Dallas. The student journalists of The Retrograde have shown incredible spirit. With your help, we can ensure their efforts — and the rights of all student journalists — are respected.

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  • Building and Sustaining an AI-informed Institution

    Building and Sustaining an AI-informed Institution

    Title: Navigating Artificial Intelligence in Postsecondary Education: Building Capacity for the Road Ahead

    Source: Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education

    As a response to the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence, the Department of Education’s new brief, Navigating Artificial Intelligence in Postsecondary Education, provides recommendations for leaders at higher education institutions. The brief is divided into two main parts: one with policy recommendations and one reviewing literature and research.

    The report outlines five recommendations:

    Develop clear policies for the use of AI in postsecondary settings. The use of AI can be vast, from admissions to enrollment to other decision-making processes. It is important, though, to ensure that AI is not reifying bias. Stakeholders should consider the potential utility of an AI Bill of Rights or the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Risk Management Framework in shaping policies for their campuses. They should also consider affirmative consent and disclosure policies as they relate to AI, as well as inscribing characteristics that make AI trustworthy.

    Generate infrastructure that supports the use of AI in pedagogy, student support, and data tracking. Incentivizing cross-department collaboration and faculty involvement in the development of AI tools is key. It is also important to integrate social and behavioral science research into evaluation of AI.

    Continually assess AI tools. This includes testing equity and accounting for any bias. AI should continuously go through a feedback loop. Institutions need to strategize in ensuring a balance of human supervision. Additionally, evaluations should be comprehensive and from diverse stakeholders.

    Collaborate with partners for the development and testing of AI across different educational uses. Leaders are tasked with finding and building relationships with partners. These partnerships should aim to ensure best practices and promote equitable AI.

    Programs should grow and develop alongside the job market’s increased demand for AI. Leaders must consider how to keep up with the evolving demand for AI, as well as how to integrate across all disciplines.

    Click here for the full report.

    —Kara Seidel

    If you have any questions or comments about this blog post, please contact us.

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  • New Might Not Always Mean Improved: The Benefits and Drawbacks of the New FAFSA

    New Might Not Always Mean Improved: The Benefits and Drawbacks of the New FAFSA

    Title: Chutes and Ladders: Falling Behind and Getting Ahead with the Simplified FAFSA

    Authors: Jonathan S. Lewis and Alyssa Stefanese Yates

    Source: uAspire

    Prior to the 2024-25 academic year, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) underwent significant changes, mandated by Congress through the FAFSA Simplification Act. A recent uAspire survey of 274 students, parents, counselors, and financial aid administrators found the changes to the FAFSA entailed a number of “chutes,” or drawbacks, and several “ladders” that allowed for a more streamlined financial aid filing process.

    Key survey findings regarding the simplified FAFSA’s benefits and challenges include:

    Benefits:

    • Students appreciated the reduced number of questions within the new FAFSA form.
    • The office of Federal Student Aid improved help text and resources, which aided those accessing the form in answering common questions.
    • Some populations had easier experiences with FAFSA, such as those with relatively straightforward finances, and individuals without overwhelming extenuating circumstances.
    • Those with previous FAFSA experience noted a generally easier experience with the changes.
    • Students with access to high school or college counselors often found greater success with the changes, demonstrating the importance of accessibility to help during the process.

    Challenges:

    • More than half of those surveyed reported experiencing technical problems.
    • The delayed FAFSA timeline heightened stress among students and counselors.
    • Insufficient communication and customer service left approximately 4 million calls to the Department of Education’s call center between Jan. 1 and May 31 unanswered.
    • The issues above often compounded, forming intersecting challenges for students and counselors.
    • Individuals without a Social Security number and English language learners felt the challenges with FAFSA more severely, struggling in particular with technical problems and communication barriers, demonstrating that some populations had more difficult experiences than others.

    The authors conclude by recommending several additional changes to the FAFSA. To minimize the compounding negative effects of the chutes, financial aid processing should be completed faster; technical glitches should be fixed; and communication, wording, and form accessibility should be improved. The authors also recommend fortifying the ladders by finding additional opportunities to reduce the time spent and frustration felt by those filing.

    Overall, the survey highlights how the FAFSA changes produced diverse and polarizing effects. Many students found the process to be simple, securing their financial aid with just a few clicks; other students felt extreme stress caused by technical roadblocks and delays, which left them uncertain about how to pay for school.

    To read the full report from uAspire, click here. For additional information and to read about the Jan. 16 webinar with the authors of the report, click here.

    —Julia Napier

    If you have any questions or comments about this blog post, please contact us.

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  • Maximize Your Winter Break: College Class Benefits

    Maximize Your Winter Break: College Class Benefits



    Maximize Your Winter Break: College Class Benefits






















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  • Colleges were quiet after the Nov. election. Students don’t mind

    Colleges were quiet after the Nov. election. Students don’t mind

    Colleges can be hot spots for debate, inquiry and disagreement, particularly on political topics. Sometimes institutional leaders weigh in on the debate, issuing public statements or sharing resources internally among students, staff and faculty.

    This past fall, following the 2024 presidential election, college administrators were notably silent. A November Student Voice survey found a majority (63 percent) of student respondents (n=1,031) said their college did not do or say anything after the election, and only 17 percent released a statement to students about the election.

    A more recent survey from Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found this aligns with students’ preferences for institutional response.

    Over half (54 percent) of respondents (n=1,034) to a December Student Voice survey said colleges and universities should not make statements about political events, such as the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. One-quarter of students said they weren’t sure if institutions should make statements, and fewer than a quarter of learners said colleges should publish a statement.

    Across demographics—including institution size and classification, student race, political identification, income level or age—the greatest share of students indicated that colleges shouldn’t make statements. The only group that differed was nonbinary students (n=32), of whom 47 percent said they weren’t sure and 30 percent said no.

    Experts weigh in on the value of institutional neutrality and how college leaders can demonstrate care for learners without sharing statements.

    What’s the sitch: In the past, college administrators have issued statements, either personally or on behalf of the institution, to demonstrate care and concern for students who are impacted by world events, says Heterodox Academy president John Tomasi.

    “There’s also an element, a little more cynically, of trying to get ahead of certain political issues so they [administrators] couldn’t be criticized for having said nothing or not caring,” Tomasi says.

    Students Say

    Even with a majority of colleges and universities not speaking out after the 2024 election, some students think colleges are still being supportive.

    The November Student Voice survey found 35 percent of respondents believed their institution was offering the right amount of support to students after the election results, but 31 percent weren’t sure.

    The events of Oct. 7, 2023, proved complicated for statement-issuing presidents, with almost half of institutions that published statements releasing an additional response after the campus community or others pushed back. Initial statements, according to one analysis, often lacked caring elements, such as the impact to students or health and well-being of university community members in the region.

    A growing number of colleges and universities are choosing to opt out of public political conversations at the executive level, instead selecting to be institutionally neutral. Heterodox Academy, which tracks colleges’ commitments to neutrality, saw numbers rise from a dozen in 2023 to over 100 in 2024.

    Some students are experiencing political fatigue in general, says Vanderbilt University chancellor Daniel Diermeier, particularly relating to the war in Gaza. “This dynamic of ‘which side are you on, and if you’re not with me, you’re against me’ was troubling to many students and was exhausting and had a detrimental impact on the culture of learning, exploration and discussion.”

    Vanderbilt University has held a position of neutrality for many years, part of a free expression policy, which it defines as a “commitment to refrain from taking public positions on controversial issues unless the issue is materially related to the core mission and functioning of the university.”

    College students aren’t the only group that want fewer organizations to talk politics; a November survey by Morning Consult found two-thirds of Americans believe companies should stay out of politics entirely after the 2024 presidential election and 59 percent want companies to comment neutrally on the results.

    However, an earlier survey by Morning Consult found, across Americans, 56 percent believe higher education institutions are at least somewhat responsible for speaking out on political, societal or cultural issues, compared to 31 percent of respondents who say colleges and universities are not too or not at all responsible.

    Allowing students to speak: Proponents of institutional neutrality say the practice allows discourse to flourish on campus. Taking a position can create a chilling effect, in which people are afraid to speak out in opposition to the prevailing point of view, Diermeier says.

    Recent polls have shown today’s college students are hesitant to share their political opinions, often electing to self-censor due to fears of negative repercussions. Since 2015, this concern has grown, with 33 percent of respondents sharing that they feel uncomfortable discussing their political views on campus, compared to 13 percent a decade ago.

    Part of this hesitancy among students could be an overstepping on behalf of administrators that affirms the institution’s perspective on issues one way or another.

    “I hear from students that they want to be the ones making the statements themselves … and if a president makes a statement first, that kind of cuts off the conversation,” says Tomasi, who is a faculty member at Brown University.

    A majority of campus community members want to pursue learning and research, Diermeier says, and “the politicization that has taken hold on many university campuses … that is not what most students and faculty want.”

    Institutional neutrality allows a university to step back and empower students to be political agents, Tomasi says. “The students should be platformed, the professors should be platformed, but the university itself should be a neutral framework for students to do all those things.”

    Neutral, not silent: One distinction Tomasi and Diermeier make about institutional neutrality is that the commitment is not one of silence, but rather selective vocalization to affirm the university’s mission.

    “Neutrality can’t just be the neutrality of convenience,” Tomasi says. “It should be a neutrality of a principle that’ll endure beyond the particular conflict that’s dividing the campus, because it celebrates and stands for and flows from that high ideal of university life as a community of imperfect learners that does value intellectual pluralism.”

    Another area in which universities are obligated to speak up is if the issue challenges the core mission of an institution. Examples of this could include a travel ban against immigration from certain countries, a tax on endowments, a ban on divisive topics or scrutiny of admissions practices.

    “On issues that are core to the academic mission, we’re going to be vocal, we’re going to be engaged and we’re going to be advocates,” Diermeier says, and establishing what is involved in the core mission is key to each institution. “Inside the core doesn’t mean it’s not controversial—it just means it’s inside the core.”

    So what? For colleges and university leaders considering how to move forward, Diermeier and Tomasi offer some advice.

    • Start with the mission in mind. When working with learners, practitioners should strive to advance the mission of seeking knowledge and providing a transformative education, Diermeier says. For faculty in particular, it’s important to give students “room to breathe” and to be exposed to both sides of an argument, because there’s power in understanding another position, even if it’s not shared.
    • Create space for discourse. “It’s expected that the groups that are organized and vocal, they’re more in the conversation and claiming more of the space,” Diermeier says. “It’s our responsibility as leaders of universities to make sure that we are not being unduly influenced by that.” Students should be given the opportunity to engage in free speech, whether that’s protesting or counterprotesting, but that cannot dictate administrative decisions. Vanderbilt student organizations hosted debates and spaces for constructive dialogue prior to the election, which were well attended and respectful.
    • Lean into the discomfort. Advancing free speech and scholarship can be complicated and feel “unnatural,” Tomasi says, because humans prefer to find like-minded people and others who agree with their views, “but there’s something pretty elevated about it that’s attractive, too,” to students. Colleges and universities should consider how promoting discourse can help students feel they belong.
    • Provide targeted outreach. For some issues, such as natural disasters, colleges and universities can provide direct support and messaging to impacted students. “It’s just so much more effective and it can be targeted, and then the messages are also more authentic,” Diermeier says.

    Not yet a subscriber to our Student Success newsletter? Sign up for free here and you’ll receive practical tips and ideas for supporting students every weekday.

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  • Why small talk is a skill worth developing (opinion)

    Why small talk is a skill worth developing (opinion)

    You walk into the conference networking event, feeling alone, aware of the steady chatter throughout the room. You look to find someone you might know, you sense your breath growing faster and you experience that all-too-familiar pit in your stomach. You walk deeper into the room, taking a few grounding breaths, and notice others standing alone. You approach another conference attendee, feeling as if you are stepping outside of your body, and in your friendliest tone you introduce yourself and ask, “Where did you travel in from?”

    You did it! You initiated small talk with a stranger.

    Small talk is a mode of communication that occurs throughout the world, but not every culture engages in small talk to the same degree. In some cultures, it is expected, and in other cultures it can be perceived as inappropriate or rude. In addition to cultural context, one’s perception of small talk and propensity for engaging in it can be influenced by factors including, but not limited to, personality traits, degree of social comfort, mental health and wellness, past experiences, and the setting of the conversation. Small talk can also present specific challenges to language learners, neurodivergent individuals, people who are unaccustomed to talking with strangers and many others.

    Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines small talk as “light or casual conversation: chitchat.” (Seeing the word “chitchat” immediately brought me back to kindergarten, when my teacher, Mrs. Barker, would frequently say, “Kay, stop your chitchat.”) Cambridge Dictionary defines small talk as, “conversation about things that are not important, often between people who do not know each other well.” The emphasis on “not important” can give the impression that small talk is useless, however, within the U.S cultural context, small talk holds great importance in connecting individuals and laying the foundation for more substantial communication. Think of small talk as the gateway to more meaningful conversations.

    When done well, small talk relies on improvisation and adaptability, allowing for a flow of information and often uncovering unexpected insights and mutual interests. When I think of small talk I think of it as jazz, with each person riffing off the other to create a connection and to also make meaning in the moment. Effectively engaging in small talk by establishing commonalities can open a door for a future collaboration, expand your professional network, build rapport leading to a career or academic opportunity, enhance confidence and ease tension in an interview.

    Do you wish that small talk felt less awkward and more meaningful? Apply these strategies to reduce your small talk stress and to contribute to your career success:

    • Get curious. Harness your curiosity as you engage in small talk. Take the scenario we began with: Someone might ask, “Where did you travel in from?” because they are generally interested in meeting people from different parts of the country or world. Someone else might ask this question as a gateway to finding a future collaborator from a specific country or academic institution. Don’t just ask questions for the sake of chatting, but rather ask about topics in which you are genuinely interested. This approach will make engaging in small talk more enjoyable and valuable to you, and your interaction will feel authentic to the person with whom you are speaking.
    • Listen actively. As the other person responds to your question, try to refrain from planning what you will next ask, but rather focus on absorbing what they are sharing. Consider reflecting an aspect of something they mentioned. For example, if in response to “Where did you travel in from?” they say, “I flew in from Greece last night, and this is my first time in the States; I’m a Ph.D. student at the University of Crete,” you might empathize with their journey and ask how long they are visiting. After further discussion, you might feel inclined to offer to host the individual if they plan to travel around. Your one question, the one that initiated the small talk exchange, could even lead to a lifelong professional relationship.
    • Consider the context. The definition of small talk in the Cambridge Dictionary refers to a “conversation about things that are not important.” I would challenge you to not dismiss small talk as trivial but rather leverage it for more meaningful conversation. When thinking about the setting in which you are engaging in small talk, you can guide the conversation toward greater meaning. It would be odd if the individual attending the networking event at the conference opened the conversation with their name and asked, “What do you think about the weather?” This question would seem very disconnected from the event and purpose of the networking session. However, if the individual were waiting outside at an uncovered bus stop, it might be natural to strike up a conversation about the weather. Having an awareness about the context and setting will lead to an authentic conversation.
    • Have go-to questions. While you don’t want to arrive at every occasion with a script of possible questions, it can be a good exercise to reflect on the things about which you are genuinely curious. When attending a conference networking event, you may be interested in hearing about individuals’ career paths, learning about their research, gaining their advice, etc. In developing questions, focus on ones that are open-ended, where the response requires more than a yes or no. You might ask, “Which conference sessions are you most interested in attending?” Maybe that seems unimportant to you or even a bit superficial, but hearing about the other individual’s interest might inspire you to attend a session you would not have initially chosen. As the conversation unfolds, so will the opportunities to guide the conversation toward more meaningful topics, and you might next ask, “What research projects are you currently working on?”
    • Practice. It is likely that you have attended interview preparation and practice sessions but far less likely that you have attended a small talk training. This is not your fault. My plea to my fellow career development practitioners is this: If we know that many individuals approach small talk with feelings of discomfort or dread, and we also recognize that it is an important skill that leads to positive career outcomes, then we need to actively train and create opportunities for our students and postdocs to practice small talk in low-stakes settings. Consider building small talk into your interview preparation offerings, add a small talk learning module to an upcoming campus networking event, collaborate with your campus’s English language learning program to incorporate small talk activities and reinforce the many places and spaces where your students and postdocs are already engaging in small talk. An example would be when a student comes in for an appointment and asks, “How was your weekend?” By asking they might learn, for instance, that you were recently in Miami, a city on the top of their list of places to visit. In this exchange you could draw attention to how the student effectively engaged in small talk, reinforcing that it is a skill they already possess.
    • Know what topics not to lead with. In the U.S. cultural context, it is safe to say that you would not want to lead small talk with questions about politics, religion, finances, health or overly personal topics. Aspects of these topics might be categorized as sensitive or controversial and can create tension and lead to misunderstanding. Through engaging in small talk, you should be building a foundation of connection that can facilitate greater openness toward engaging in more meaningful topics. That said, maybe you are at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting—in that context, it would be common for the small talk to include politics. The setting and context can serve to guide the topics and direction of the small talk.

    In academia, where emphasis on depth and scope of knowledge is highly valued, small talk can be easily viewed as a burden and overlooked as a necessary competency. But by applying a few small talk communication strategies, you will find that it can open doors and enhance career success. If you have yet to do so, embrace small talk as a skill worth developing, and get out there and chitchat. The effects on your professional life could be both profound and long-lasting.

    Kay Gruder is the associate director of graduate student and postdoc career programs and services at the University of Connecticut. She is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium, an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.

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  • Three questions for UVA’s Anne Trumbore

    Three questions for UVA’s Anne Trumbore

    The Teacher in the Machine: A Human History of Education Technology (Princeton University Press) will be published this May. I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy. It is too early to interview the author, the University of Virginia’s Anne Trumbore, about the book, as you will not be able to get your hands on it for a few months. I can’t help myself, though.

    Like Anne, I am also a practitioner-scholar, working in and writing about the intersection of technology, learning and higher education change. While The Teacher and the Machine covers much of the same ground as my first co-authored book, Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education (JHUP, 2020), I learned much of what I didn’t know from reading Anne’s book.

    As the publication of The Teacher in the Machine approaches, I’ll share a full (highly positive) review. Until then, to help build anticipation about the book’s launch and also get to know its author better, I thought the best place to start is a Q&A.

    Q: Tell us about your current role at Darden (UVA) and the education and career path that you have followed.

    A: I’m currently the chief digital learning officer, where I lead a team that designs, develops and delivers education that enables career mobility for learners at all ages and stages. I arrived at this stage through a pretty circuitous path that included time as a journalist and obituary writer, a copywriter for motion picture advertising, a writing teacher at SFSU and Stanford, and then a lateral hop into ed tech. My education path was somewhat more straightforward: straight to undergrad from high school. But my graduate degrees were driven by career aspirations and occurred decades apart. (I resemble a lot of the learners we are helping now in that regard.)

    Oddly enough, my “unmarketable” undergrad degree in semiotics and my graduate work in writing and teaching writing got me hired full-time at Stanford, working on an adaptive grammar program that provided asynchronous personalized instruction and creating curriculum for and teaching at Stanford Online High School. That led to a role on the early team at Coursera, with a focus on working with university professors using (and developing) online peer review, which morphed into a role on the founding team at NovoEd, developing designs for social and project-based learning at scale. Then I pivoted back to higher ed with a role at Wharton, where I established Wharton Online.

    The questions I was trying to answer there, most of which revolved around maximizing the effectiveness of, and revenue for, online education in business topics, led me to UVA. Its Darden School of Business had just received a transformational gift to establish the Sands Institute for Lifelong Learning, which is where I saw the puck going at the intersection of higher education and technology. I earned an education doctorate at Penn GSE during my time at Wharton because the questions I began asking about what we were doing and why were not easily answered within the confines of the business school.

    Q: In The Teacher and the Machine, you tell the story of the birth and evolution of massive open online courses within the context of the history of educational technology. What are the lessons from the history of ed tech that we in higher education should absorb as we make decisions about the future of online education and AI for teaching and learning?

    A: The main takeaway is that innovation in ed tech is particularly reliant upon ignorance of its history for a couple of main reasons: Innovation drives adoption (no one wants to invest in an “old” idea), and the idea of using technology to make education both more efficient and democratic consolidates power in the hands of the disrupters, who are almost always businessmen and scientists educated at the most elite universities in the world.

    I believe that once you understand the history of ed tech and its intertwined beginnings with artificial intelligence, universities can be more clear-eyed about their business partnerships with ed-tech companies and their purchasing decisions, which are usually not driven by evidence-backed research. We also have the opportunity to be more thoughtful about our motives in distributing education “to the masses” and ask ourselves who this strategy benefits and why it is attractive to venture capital.

    Finally—and this is a point you and a few others have made extremely well—it’s incumbent upon higher ed institutions to be informed about the innovation narrative that gets circulated, which enriches the same set of people and institutions over and over again. I have to believe that if we have a greater understanding of the history and the motives of the major players in ed tech, we can also ask better questions of our ed-tech providers and partners so that we can create educational experiences that provide more returns to learners than ed-tech investors.

    Q: You are not only a student of higher education and digital learning, you are also a practitioner. How did your role throughout your career as a participant in the creation and development of MOOCs and other online learning initiatives impact how you write about that history in The Teacher in the Machine?

    A: The closest metaphor I can think of is that it felt like putting together a 2,000-piece puzzle of a photograph I was in: I knew what it would look like, but I had to break down and examine all the pieces and then reassemble. The questions I asked of the events were less about what happened and more about why did it happen that particular way? What were the conditions that produced our actions? Living the history also provided opportunities to fill in the gaps that some more traditional records leave out.

    I’m thinking especially of the daily minor decisions that were made under pressure that drove the history in unplanned directions, as well as the personalities of the main players. Experiencing these elements of the story and being able to report firsthand is one of the benefits to being in the circus ring instead of in the seats. Another is that you can directly see the audience, which provides a different lens than a more traditional history. Hopefully, the narrative benefited from the inside-out point of view.

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  • A short college course for students’ life, academic skills

    A short college course for students’ life, academic skills

    While many students experience growing pains in the transition from high school to college, today’s learners face an extra challenge emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. Many students experienced learning loss in K-12 as a result of distance learning, which has stunted their readiness to engage fully in academia.

    Three faculty members in the communications division at DePaul University noticed a disconnect in their own classrooms as they sought to connect with students. They decided to create their own intervention to address learners’ lack of communication and self-efficacy skills.

    Since 2022, DePaul has offered a two-credit communication course that assists students midway through the term and encourages reflection and goal setting for future success. Over the past four terms, faculty members have seen demonstrated change in students’ self-perceptions and commitment to engage in long-term success strategies.

    The background: Upon returning to in-person instruction after the pandemic, associate professor Jay Baglia noticed students still behaved as though their classes were one-directional Zoom calls, staring blankly or demonstrating learned helplessness from a lack of deadlines and loose attendance policies.

    “We were seeing a greater proportion of students who were not prepared for the college experience,” says Elissa Foster, professor and faculty fellow of the DePaul Humanities Center.

    Previous research showed that strategies to increase students’ collaboration and participation in class positively impacted engagement, helping students take a more active role in their learning and classroom environment.

    The faculty members decided to create their own workshop to equip students with practical tools they can use in their academics and their lives beyond.

    How it works: Offered for the first time in fall 2022, the Communication Fundamentals for College Success course is a two-credit, five-week course that meets for two 90-minute sessions a week, for a total of 10 meetings. The class is housed in the College of Communication but available to all undergraduate students.

    The course is co-taught and was developed by Foster and Kendra Knight, associate professor in the college of communication and an assessment consultant for the center for teaching and learning. Guest speakers from advising and the Office of Health Promotion and Wellness provide additional perspective.

    (from left to right) Jay Baglia, Elissa Foster and Kendra Knight developed a short-form course to support students’ capabilities in higher education and give them tools for future success.

    Aubreonna Chamberlain/DePaul University

    Course content includes skills and behaviors taught in the context of communication for success: asking for help, using university resources, engaging in class with peers and professors, and learning academic software. It also touches on more general behaviors like personal awareness, mindfulness, coping practices, a growth mindset, goal setting and project management.

    The demographics of students enrolled in the course vary; some are transfers looking for support as they navigate a university for the first time. Others are A students who wanted an extra course in their schedule. Others are juniors or seniors hoping to gain longer-term life skills to apply to their internships or their lives as professionals and find work-life balance.

    Throughout the course, students turned in regular reflection exercises for assessment and the final assignment was a writing assignment to identify three tools that they will take with them beyond this course.

    What’s different: One of the challenges in launching the course was distinguishing its goals from DePaul’s Chicago Quarter, which is the first-year precollege experience. Baglia compares the college experience to taking an international vacation: While you might have a guidebook and plan well for the experience beforehand, once you’re in country, you face challenges you didn’t anticipate or may be overwhelmed.

    Orientation is the guidebook students receive before going abroad, and the Communication for Success Class is their tour guide along the way.

    “I think across the country, universities and college professors are recognizing that scaffolding is really the way to go, particularly with first-generation college students,” Baglia says. “They don’t always have the language or the tools or the support or the conversations at home that prepare them for the strangeness of living on their own [and navigating higher education].”

    A unique facet of the course is that it’s offered between weeks three and seven in the semester, starting immediately after the add-drop period concludes and continuing until midterms. This delayed-start structure means the students enrolled in the course are often looking for additional credits to keep their full-time enrollment status, sometimes after dropping a different course.

    The timing of the course also requires a little time and trust, because most students register for it later, not during the course registration period. Baglia will be teaching the spring 2025 term and, as of Jan. 10, he only has two students registered.

    “It has not been easy convincing the administrators in our college to give it some time … Students have to register for this class [later],” Baglia says.

    The results: Foster, Knight and Baglia used a small grant to study the effects of the intervention and found, through the data, a majority of students identified time management and developing a growth mindset as the tools they want to keep working on, with just under half indicating self-care and 40 percent writing about classroom engagement.

    In their essays, students talked about mapping out their deadlines for the semester or using a digital calendar to stay on top of their schedules. Students also said they were more likely to view challenges as opportunities for growth or consider their own capabilities as underdeveloped, rather than stagnant or insufficient.

    The intervention has already spurred similar innovation within the university, with the College of Science and Health offering a similar life skills development course.

    Course organizers don’t have plans to scale the course at present, but they are considering ways to collect more data from participants after they finish the course and compare that to the more general university population.

    Get more content like this directly to your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe to the Student Success newsletter here.

    This article has been updated to clarify the course is housed in the College of Communication.

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  • College costs have grown, but so has the return (opinion)

    College costs have grown, but so has the return (opinion)

    FG Trade Latin/E+/Getty Images

    What’s the biggest problem facing college students today? Cost is a big concern, of course, for good reason. But many would point to something equally troubling—misperceptions about the value of college degrees. That’s no surprise when reasonable questions are raised about whether graduates are job-ready—and if too many jobs unnecessarily require diplomas.

    There has long been a paper ceiling that penalizes applicants who lack degrees. And more companies are now taking a closer look at so-called STARs—people Skilled Through Alternative Routes.

    The group Tear the Paper Ceiling says that 61 percent of Black workers, 55 percent of Hispanic workers, 66 percent of rural workers and 62 percent of veterans are considered STARs. They have learned valuable work skills through military service, certificate programs, on-the-job training and boot camps. But too often, they’ve been shut out unfairly.

    I applaud the work of this national group and their partners. The equity barriers to jobs are real. Only half of working-age people have a quality degree or other credential beyond high school, even as millions of jobs go unfilled in part because applicants lack the required background or credentials. It only makes sense to make sure we’re not leaving behind talented but uncredentialed neighbors.

    But to take a deeper look is to understand this isn’t only about expanding opportunity and filling today’s open jobs, but the jobs that an increasingly tech-driven, interconnected world will demand in coming years. Skills-based hiring is a good idea, but it won’t on its own come close to solving the nation’s human talent crisis. Increasing higher educational attainment by making sure many more people get better credentials—credentials of value—is the key.

    Foundation of Growth

    Higher education has always been about producing graduates who are ready to start careers, not just jobs. This matters because a person who is a good applicant for a position now could face challenges moving to better and higher-paying positions because they lack the foundation for career growth fostered in postsecondary programs.

    The American Association of Colleges and Universities has surveyed executives and hiring managers eight times since 2006. The most recent survey, from 2023, found that 80 percent of employers strongly or somewhat agree that college prepares people for success in the workforce. Getting a degree is certainly worth the time and money, respondents suggested, as the survey “found a strong correlation between the outcomes of a liberal education and the knowledge and skills employers view as essential for success in entry-level jobs and for advancement in their companies.”

    There will always be conflicting data points in times of change. For example, the push for skills-based hiring, including at the federal level, is opening doors to a broader array of good jobs that historically required a college degree. However, research by Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute shows that college graduates still have an advantage when it comes to getting jobs with higher salaries and better benefits.

    It turns out that employers aren’t committing to skills-based hiring at the level that recent headlines might suggest. The Harvard–Burning Glass report tracked more than 11,000 jobs where a bachelor’s degree was no longer required in the job description. It found only a 3.5-percentage-point increase in the share of non-degree-holders hired into those roles—a decidedly underwhelming number suggesting the buzz about skills-based hiring may be more hype than trend.

    The Lifelong Payoff

    This and other signs reinforce the enduring value of degrees: A recent report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce found that 72 percent of jobs in the United States will require post–high school education or training by the year 2031. The center also found:

    • People with bachelor’s degrees earn, on average, $1.2 million more over their lifetime than those with only a high school education.
    • Of the 18.5 million annual job openings we expect in the coming years, more than two-thirds will require at least some college education.
    • Earnings for people without degrees have been growing over the past decade, but so has pay for degree holders. Even as people without degrees earn more, they are still not catching up with those with diplomas.

    Durable Skills Matter

    Employers often say they’re looking for “durable” skills, such as critical thinking, communication and problem-solving.

    Someone looking to hire an entry-level software developer might consider a candidate with skills in Python or other programming languages developed through informal learning. Many gifted techies are self-taught or developed skills through coding boot camps or working at start-ups, for example.

    But a college graduate with similar skills might stand out because of their experience working in groups to complete projects, their communication and presentation skills, analytical thinking, and other traits fostered in college classes.

    The catch: Across the board, we need better definitions of what our credentials mean. What defines a credential of value, exactly, and how do we make sure that the people obtaining credentials can do the work of the future?

    Certainly, our fast-moving, tech-driven economy increasingly rewards nimble problem-solvers. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs report, employers estimate that 44 percent of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years.

    “Cognitive skills are reported to be growing in importance most quickly, reflecting the increasing importance of complex problem-solving in the workplace,” the report said. “Surveyed businesses report creative thinking to be growing in importance slightly more rapidly than analytical thinking.”

    There are many implications to this change. Embedded in the education pay premium is a fairness issue when it comes to who goes to college and how we support them. The Georgetown center has long reported on the value of a college degree and the persistent opportunity gaps for women and people of color.

    The Change-Ready Nation

    Whatever the impact of skills-based hiring on the nation’s labor shortage, we shouldn’t stop there. Addressing the long-standing inequities in higher education and the workforce means ensuring that these skills-based pathways include opportunities for all workers, especially when it comes to pursuing further education and training even after they enter the workforce.

    Skills-based hiring and the push for increasing attainment aren’t countervailing forces. They’re aimed at ensuring that the nation grows and applies the talent it needs to be prepared for the human work of the 21st century, and to achieve the civic and economic benefits that people with good-paying jobs bring to their communities.

    In the end, this is about more than the job readiness of our students. We’re talking about the change readiness of our entire nation in a rapidly evolving economy. It makes sense to revamp job requirements to meet workforce demands, but there’s no denying we’ll need the best-educated country we can build if we’re going to deliver opportunity and economic prosperity fairly for everyone.

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