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U.S. Department of Justice attorneys asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to temporarily suspend the Labor Department’s appeals in two cases challenging its 2024 Fair Labor Standards Act overtime rule, according to an April 24 court filing.
Texas district court judges twice blocked DOL’s final rule, which increased the minimum salary threshold for overtime pay eligibility in two steps. First, a November 2024 decision sided with plaintiffs including the state of Texas and enjoined the rule nationwide. A second judgment set aside and vacated the rule in response to a lawsuit by marketing agency Flint Avenue.
The government asked that the 5th Circuit place its appeals in abeyance “pending the agency’s reconsideration of the rule.” It said counsel for the appellees in both cases did not oppose its request.
The Biden administration’s effort to expand overtime eligibility to millions of U.S. workers would have pushed the annual minimum threshold under the FLSA to $58,656 in 2025 with automatic, additional increases every three years beginning in July 2027. An initial increase to $43,888 per year took effect before Texas federal judges blocked it along with the rule’s other components.
After news surfaced that the Trump administration plans to pull $510 million in federal funding from Brown University over its DEI programs, student journalist Alex Shieh had the chutzpah to identify administrators who appear to work in DEI through student newspaper The Brown Spectator. The university — which had already been investigating Shieh for the crime of publishing an interactive organizational chart — took aim at him again.
Brown threatened Shieh with sanctions over his journalism, claiming the report on federal funding was “false” because the government had not yet told Brown of its plans.
This, just weeks after Brown President Christina Paxson promised “Brown will always defend academic freedom and freedom of expression.”
Making matters worse, this wasn’t the first time Brown came after Shieh for his journalism. On March 15, Shieh sent each of Brown’s 3,805 administrators a personalized DOGE-style email asking them what they’d done in the past week. He also asked them to explain how Brown students, who pay nearly $100,000 to attend, would be impacted if their role was cut. Ever since, Brown has had Shieh in its crosshairs.
Tell Brown to Stop Railroading Alex Shieh
Page (Two-Column)
Every student deserves due process, and no student should face discipline for investigating institutional structures.
First, Brown launched a preliminary review into Shieh’s reporting, threatening him with a litany of charges, including one for “emotional harm” to the administrators on his email — an exceedingly broad and vague charge that runs roughshod over First Amendment principles. Brown also demanded he return “confidential information” he allegedly accessed without permission, while refusing to tell him what in his reporting was confidential.
On April 7, just one day after he published the list of possible DEI administrators, Brown officially charged him with “misrepresentation” and “violation of operational rules.” How did he misrepresent himself? By identifying himself as a reporter in the email. Brown’s logic was that because it did not recognize The Spectator as an official student organization, anyone holding themselves out to be a journalist at The Spectator is a liar.
The second charge was no better. The university argued Shieh had violated rules by accessing a university system and obtaining a report showing reporting relationships, both of which he was allowed to do. That report, Brown claims, included “non-public” information that no student is permitted to publish. How this should be a mystery is itself a mystery, as Google reveals org charts that are publicly available.
FIRE wrote Brown a letter demanding it drop the misrepresentation charge and produce real evidence that Shieh accessed “non-public” information. We argued that the university’s refusal to abide by its own due process guarantees makes clear that what it really wants is to silence journalism it doesn’t like.
In a testament to how little Brown values its own promises, the university replied that this targeted investigation into a student journalist was not a free speech issue. But despite this less-than-credible response, Brown actually did drop the misrepresentation charge. Good news, right? Not so fast.
Rather than produce the requested evidence that Shieh had accessed private information, the university added a new charge, alleging Shieh violated its trademark policy by including the word “Brown” in the name The Brown Spectator, which he and others were helping to restart in April 2025 after it ceased publishing in 2014.
Brown needs to cut its losses, drop the charges, and stop this chilling investigation into protected student expression.
On May 2, FIRE wrote Brown a secondletter, telling the school to knock it off.
We explained that this new charge misrepresents trademark law and violates Brown’s free speech promises by attempting to use fair trade practices as a tool to censor non-commercial journalism about news and events taking place at Brown University. It is settled law that trademarks don’t trump the First Amendment or provide infinite control over a word (in this case, literally the word for acolor), indeed, mark owners cannot stop the non-commercial use of their mark in a noncompeting industry. And nobody would mistake Shieh or The Brown Spectator for the official voice of Brown University.
Brown’s vendetta against Shieh has officially passed the point of Ivy League parody. Brown needs to cut its losses, drop the charges, and stop this chilling investigation into protected student expression. The university’s own promises demand it.
Join us in calling for Brown to uphold the free press on campus.
On April 29, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay on the litigation challenging the Biden administration’s overtime rule that will last for 120 days. The order halts further proceedings in the appeals court while the Trump administration’s Department of Labor (DOL) reconsiders the Biden administration’s rule, and it directs DOL to file additional status reports every 60 days.
In February, the Trump administration’s DOL filed an appeal on a district court’s ruling in Flint Avenue, LLC v. DOL that vacated the Biden administration’s overtime rule. The Trump appeal was the second appeal filed for cases involving the Biden overtime rule. The move to appeal was largely viewed as an attempt for the Trump administration to put a placeholder on court proceedings while Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer settled into her new role and figured out next steps for the overtime regulations.
The ruling from the appeals court followed a request from Trump’s DOL to hold the case in abeyance while the agency reconsidered the rule. Further updates from the Trump administration regarding the overtime regulations are likely to follow.
CUPA-HR will continue to monitor for updates related to the overtime regulations.
History is rarely lost all at once. More often, it slips away — one forgotten battle at a time.
For Daniel Watts, that revelation arrived with the quiet ping of an alumni email. The Guardian,the campus newspaper at the University of California, San Diego, was seeking alumni donations to stave off financial collapse. Watts, who used to write for the paper, took interest — and noticed something unusual.
Buried in their appeal, the editors blamed The Guardian’s decline, in part, on a now-defunct satirical campus paper. The Koala, informally known as “The Motherfucking Koala,” had a reputation for irreverence — in 2003, it published an issue titled Jizzlam, a parody of Playboy Magazinefor Muslim men.
But for Watts, The Guardian’s jab at The Koala represented a fading understanding of the hard-won battles for a free press at UCSD.
Censorship is like poison gas: effective when your enemy is in sight — but the wind has a way of shifting.
The Koala wasn’t just a juvenile snark sheet, but an unruly bulwark of the First Amendment. In 2015, after lampooning “safe spaces,” The Koala faced defunding efforts by a student government, prodded by administrators. But with the help of FIRE and the ACLU, they fought back and won. In TheKoala v. Khosla, a federal appeals court affirmed that public universities can’t defund a student publication just because they dislike what it prints, marking a victory for all campus newspapers — including The Guardian.
But that history, along with nearly $800,000 in public funds that UCSD spent on litigation in an effort to silence its own students, now seems to have vanished.
“Reading that email,” says Watts, “and realizing that even the official student newspaper had no idea about UCSD’s history — or the sacrifices made to protect their right to publish — was a galvanizing moment.”
He adds, “If the university won’t teach students the history and value of free speech, then who will?”
Love, loyalty, and liberty: ASU alumni unite to defend free speech
News
The mission of ASU Alumni for Free Speech is to promote and strengthen free expression, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity, both on campus and throughout the global ASU community.
So Watts stepped into the breach, founding Tritons United for Free Speech, an independent group of UCSD alumni committed to defending free expression at their alma mater.
Watts knows the terrain well.
As an undergraduate, he battled administrative efforts to censor TV broadcasts and student publications. Late nights were spent scrolling the internet and cold-calling local lawyers in search of anyone to defend them.
“No one ever answered,” he recalls. “FIRE would write letters, but they didn’t litigate back then and the ACLU was spread thin. We were on our own.”
It was a lonely education but a clarifying one. Watts decided to go to law school. “I wanted to be the kind of lawyer who would pick up the phone,” he says.
Over the past 15 years, Watts has built a robust legal career defending the First Amendment rights of students and journalists across California, arguing an anti-SLAPP case before the California Supreme Court and even running for governor in 2021 on a platform of “Free Speech. Free College.”
Now, through Tritons United for Free Speech, Watts is channeling those lessons into a new kind of advocacy. The group’s mission is threefold: educate students about the history of free speech, especially at UCSD; reform campus policies that stifle free expression; and connect students under fire with alumni who can offer legal aid, journalistic expertise, or public advocacy.
“Students are like a country without an army,” says Watts. “They have moral suasion, but they lack resources — funding for litigation, experience navigating bureaucracy, or simply the wisdom of age. Alumni bring all that, as well as staying power and historical memory.”
But the fight won’t be easy.
FIRE’s most recent College Free Speech Rankings place UCSD at a middling 133 out of 251 schools overall. More troublingly, UCSD ranks 205th on the question of whether students feel comfortable expressing ideas. Among UCSD students surveyed, 78% say shouting down a speaker is sometimes acceptable; 28% say using violence to stop speech is sometimes acceptable; and 48% say they self-censor on campus at least once or twice a month.
These numbers reflect a striking cultural shift.
“When I was at UCSD in 2001,” Watts recalls, “the student government would occasionally vote on whether to defund The Koala. Every time, it was unanimous — 20 to 0 against censorship.”
By 2015, the vote was again unanimous — 22 to 0, with 3 abstentions — but this time to defund The Koala. Even The Guardian greeted the news with a gloating article, quoting the immortal words of American diplomat Paul Bremer after the fall of Saddam Hussein: “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!”
Watts was appalled. “You’re a newspaper! And you’re celebrating censorship?!”
Today, he fears, many students seem to believe that free speech is conditional. Good for me, but not for thee. They’ve forgotten, or more likely have never learned, as former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser warns, censorship is like poison gas: effective when your enemy is in sight — but the wind has a way of shifting.
As students cycle through every four years, faculty grow fearful of speaking out, and administrators grow ever entrenched with power, institutional memory slowly fades.
Alumni are the living link to that past — and the stewards of its future.
“That’s why Tritons United for Free Speech exists,” Watts says. “And that’s why I’m not giving up.”
If you’re ready to join Tritons United for Free Speech, or if you’re interested in forming a free speech alumni alliance at your alma mater, contact Bobby Ramkissoon at [email protected]. He will connect you with like-minded alumni and offer guidance on how to effectively protect free speech and academic freedom for all.
Let’s be real — online teaching isn’t about dumping lecture notes into a learning system and calling it a day. If we want students to actually engage, grow and retain what we teach, we’ve got to meet them where they are with tools and strategies that turn passive screens into powerful learning spaces.
This is at the heart of our Spring 2025 Empowered Educator recorded webinar session, “Interactive Learning Redefined With A.I.”
During our session, we explored tools and mindsets that make all the difference, whether you’re just starting as an educator or looking to breathe new life into your virtual classroom.
Let’s talk about the “why”
We’re teaching in an era where attention spans are short, expectations are high and personalization is the norm. Students don’t just want to listen. They want to participate, problem-solve and feel seen. The combination of interactive learning andGenerative AI (GenAI) makes this not only possible, but sustainable.
Interactive learning: Real-time tools that work
Forget static slides. The key is giving students something to do, not just something to watch. Some of the most effective, real-time strategies listed in the CID Quick Tip Guide were explored during our session:
Synchronous engagement ideas:
Live polls and Q&A: Check comprehension on the fly.
Gamified quizzes (Kahoot, Mentimeter): Turn reviews into fast-paced competitions that stick.
Virtual whiteboards (like Miro or Padlet): Co-create visuals in real time.
Asynchronous options that still feel real:
Scenario-based videos and interactive PDFs help students explore at their own pace.
Gamified modules with badges or levels give students a sense of progress and motivation.
This kind of learning keeps things dynamic, allows for quick feedback and, best of all, shows students you’re in it with them.
How GenAI changes the game for personalization
Now, here’s where we level up. AI isn’t just about automation — it’s about tailoring the learning journey to meet each student where they are. In our session, we explored ways to:
Use GenAI to generate custom study guides or quizzes based on student progress, ensuring that the use of copyrighted material falls within your license or other legal parameters.
It’s like having a digital co-teacher who’s always ready to personalize.
The evidence is in
We also dove into case studies and data from real classrooms where these approaches led to:
Higher engagement and retention
More frequent participation
Better overall comprehension
Improved digital and collaborative skills
When students feel included and in control of their learning, outcomes naturally improve.
Final thoughts: Teaching that connects
In the end, this isn’t just about tools or tech. It’s about creating experiences where students feel challenged, supported and seen.
Watching this session on transforming student engagement in the online classroom will more than inspire you. You’ll learn how to:
Integrate interactive strategies with your LMS.
Engage with gamified quizzes, reflective prompts and real-time activities.
Evaluate your current engagement strategies and plan next steps.
Let’s create classrooms that aren’t just digital — but dynamic.
Written by Dr. Clevester Moten, Business Instructor at Jackson College and James Bender, Adjunct Instructor at Jackson College.
Dr. Clevester Moten is a transformative educator, scholar and thought leader whose research and work focus on equity, leadership and systemic reform. With more than 20 years of leadership spanning public, private and nonprofit sectors, he specializes in fostering collaboration and addressing societal challenges. Dr. Moten holds advanced degrees in public policy and business administration.
Watch Dr. Clevester Moten and James Bender’s recorded webinar session, “Interactive Learning Redefined with AI,” part of our Spring 2025 Empowered Educator series, to learn more about transforming student engagement in the online classroom.
The judges in the 17th News Decoder Storytelling Competition chose as winners articles by students from The Hewitt School and The Tatnall School in the United States and Realgymnasium Rämibühl Zürich in Switzerland.
The entries tackled serious issues such as grade inflation, the local impacts of an international conference, demographic changes at universities, cell phones in classes, nepotism and the loss of languages to climate change.
First Prize went to Stella Petersen of The Tatnall School in the U.S. state of Delaware for “Eliminating grade inflation isn’t as easy as ABC”, an article that considers whether letter or numerical grades on assignments are the best measure of student achievement.
One judge noted that the story was different from the others in the contest and well sourced. Another judge wrote: “This topic of grade inflation is an up-and-coming relevant conversation even across colleges around the country, and so many implications were considered here. The nuance in this article is marvellously impressive.”
And for second place…
Tying for Second Prize were Sophie De Lavendeyra of The Hewitt School in New York City and the team of Lennox Huisman and Maximilian Wunderli from Realgymnasium Rämibühl Zürich.
In “When world leaders descend on your town”, Huisman and Wunderli looked at how the town and inhabitants of Davos, Switzerland are affected each year by the hordes of people who arrive for the World Economic Forum. Of the story, one judge wrote: “This was BY FAR my personal favorite in this storytelling contest. It grabbed at what really matters in journalism: How real-world, normal people are affected by big players attending the World Economic Forum.”
The winners were selected by a three-person jury that included John West, a News Decoder correspondent based in Paris; Chloé Pété, a project officer for the international nonprofit organization Media & Learning Association; and Kaja Andrić, a former News Decoder intern and a journalism student at New York University.
Judging student stories by professional standards
The judges used the following criteria to rank the stories: whether the topic was fresh, different or timely; whether the student interviewed anyone for the story; whether the student reported the story without bias; whether the student considered different perspectives and finally the judge’s own subjective assessment.
Besides the winning entries, student Arya Sharma from VIBGYOR High NIBM in Pune, India won honorable mention for a story about how climate change can result in the extinction of human languages because of forced migration. One judge wrote: “This is my favourite story. I loved the topic, the style.”
News Decoder Educational News Director Marcy Burstiner was particularly impressed by the challenging topics students took on. “There was such a great diversity of story topics,” she said. “It shows how curious students are about all kinds of things. They are questioning what they see around them and what they read.”
It can’t be overstated how difficult a challenge the students were given, Burstiner said. Not only did they have to come up with an original topic to investigate, they need to find credible sources for their information and, at least for all the prize winners, they found experts to interview, and incorporated quotes from these people into their interviews.
“Imagine, here you have a high school student asking a professional to set aside time to answer their questions for a story that will be published,” Burstiner said. “That is a difficult thing for professional journalists to do.”
How the contest works
The contest is held two times a year in honor of the late Arch Roberts Jr., who served with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna after more than 12 years as a staff member with the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. With the backing of an anonymous donor, News Decoder was able to award a total of $850 in cash prizes to this year’s winners.
The entries came from students across News Decoder’s network of school partners.
To be considered for the contest, an entry must have been written by one or more students enrolled in a News Decoder partner institution. Students from nine schools in seven countries submitted articles to this iteration of the Storytelling Contest. Learn more about News Decoder’s school partnership program.
Ok, everyone, buckle up. For I have been looking at university financial statements for 2023-24 and the previous few years, and I have Some Thoughts.
In this exercise, I examined the financial statements from 2017-18 onwards for the 66 Canadian universities which are not federated with a larger institution and had income over $20 million. L’Université du Québec was excluded from the analysis below because it has yet to release financial statements for 2023-24.
Figure 1 shows the average net surplus (that is, total income minus total expenditures as a percentage of total income) across all institutions for the fiscal years 2017-18 to 2023-24. As is evident from the graph, fiscal years 2018 through 2021 were all pretty good, apart from 2020 (the stock market did its COVID tank right at the end of the fiscal year and radically reduced investment returns that year), and overall surpluses were in the 6% range, which is not bad. But post-COVID, things got a bit rough, and the returns dropped to about 4%. Note, though, that there is a significant gap between the “big beasts” of the Canadian university scene and everyone else. In the good years, U15 institutions, which in financial terms represent about 60% of the system, saw surpluses about two percentage points higher than non-U15 institutions. Since 2022, the gap has been about three percentage points.
Figure 1: Average Surpluses as a Percentage of Total Income, Canadian Universities, Fiscal Years 2018 to 2024
Why have surpluses shrunk in the past few years? No surprise here: it is simply that costs have increased by about 7% in real terms for the past five years (that is about 1.4% above inflation each year), while revenues have only grown 3.7% (0.75% above inflation each year). Income growth has been pretty similar across U15 and non-U15 institutions, but expenditure growth has been significantly larger at non-U15 institutions.
Figure 2: 5-year real change in Income and Expenditure, Canadian Universities, 2018-19 to 2023-24
It is worth pointing out here, though, that all of this data is from before any of the effects of the international student visa cap of 2024 come into play. In eight out of ten provinces, it has been income from students that has driven universities’ revenue growth over the past five years. Only in Quebec and British Columbia has government spending been the main driver (and yes, I know, the idea that revenue from students is declining in British Columbia was a bit shocking to me too, but I triple-checked and its true—this is the one part of the country where international student revenue was falling even before Marc Miller started swinging his axe around).
Figure 3: 5-year real change in Income by Source and Region, Canadian Universities, 2018-19 to 2023-24
If you assume that international student numbers overall drop by 40% over three years (which is roughly what the government says it wants to achieve), then what we are likely is a decrease of about 11% in total university revenues between now and 2027 (assuming no other changes in enrolment or tuition fees, and an annual increase in government expenditures of inflation plus 1% which is what we saw in last year’s budget cycle but I wouldn’t necessarily bet on it for the future). Meanwhile, if we keep expenditures increasing at inflation plus 1.5%, we will see an increase in expenditures of about 6% by 2028. The result is what I would call a trulyyawning financial gap over the next four years. And it is precisely this that keeps senior admins up at night.
Figure 4: Projected changes in Income and Expenditure, Canadian Universities, 2017-18 to 2027-28, Indexed to 2017-18
Now to be clear, I don’t expect the sector to be posting multi-billion dollar gaps implied by Figure 4 (for clarity: while Figure 4 displays changes in projected income and expenditure in index terms, if the gap that opens up between 2024 and 2028 is as depicted here, the change in net position for universities will be equal to about $7 billion in 2028, which given current surpluses of $2 billion/year implies aggregate deficits of about $5 billion/year or about 11% of total income). The income drop will probably not be quite this bad, both because I expect institutions to raise fees on international students, and because I suspect international student numbers will not fall quite this far because provinces will re-distribute spots going unused by colleges (due to the reduction in enrolments that will ensure from last fall’s changes to the post-graduate work visa program). Similarly, the increase in expenditures won’t be this high either because institutions are going to do all they can to “bend the curve” in anticipation of a fall in revenues. But bottom line: there’s a looming $5 billion income gap that has to be closed just to stay in balance, and larger if we want the system to have at least some surpluses for rainy (rainier?) days in future.
Anyways, back to the present. We can, of course, drill down to the institutional level, too. At this point in the exercise, I have chosen to exclude two more institutions from my calculations. The first is Concordia because it has a unique (and IMHO really irritating) practice of splitting its financial reporting between the institution and its “Foundation” (don’t ask), with the result that the institution’s financial statements alone tend to show the institution as worse off than it really is. The second is Royal Roads, which uniquely took a stonking great write-down on capital investments in 2024 and so frankly looks a lot worse than I think it should.
So with our sample now down to just 63 institutions, Table 1 shows that in fact most universities have been doing OK over the past few years. Of the institutions included in this part of the analysis, 39 have been deficit-free since 2021-22, and 28 have not shown a deficit in any of the last five years. However, there are three institutions where it might be time to start worrying: Carleton, which has posted three consecutive deficits, and St. Thomas and Vancouver Island University, which have posted deficits in each of the past five years. Carleton is a little bit less worrisome than the other two because it socked away some huge surpluses in the years prior to 2022 and so has a little bit more runway. I’ll come back to the other two in a moment.
Years in deficit
Since 2019-20
Since 2021-22
5
2
–
4
0
n/a
3
6
3
2
13
7
1
16
16
0
28
39
Figure 5, below, shows combined net surplus over the past five fiscal years (2019-20 to 2023-24) as a percentage of total revenues. There are eight institutions which have net losses over the past five years, and another eight with surpluses between 0 and 2% of total revenues, which I would characterize as “precarious.” There are another 29 institutions with combined five-year surpluses, which are between 2 and 5% of total revenues, which are not great but not in the immediate danger zone either. Finally, there are 18 institutions with surpluses of 5% or more, which I would characterize as being “safe,” including two (Algoma and Cape Breton) which have five-year surplus rates of over 20% (this is what happens when your student body is 75%+ international)
Figure 5: Distribution of 5-year aggregate net surpluses, Canadian Institutions, 2019-20 to 2020-24
But note the right-hand side of that graph. There are two institutions that have five-year deficits equal to more than 4% of their total revenues. And those two are the same two that have posted deficits for each of the past five years: St. Thomas University in New Brunswick and Vancouver Island University in British Columbia. I’ll talk about them in a bit more depth tomorrow.
The idea that universities have stopped believing in themselves as institutions that can take on the challenges of the day and find solutions that are better than those developed by private rivals echoes a point recently revived by Mariana Mazzucato. Mazzucato explains how private firms often are portrayed like lions. Bold animals that make things happen. The public sector and third-sector organisations, on the contrary, are too often seen as gerbils. Timid animals that are no good at developing new and innovative solutions.
Skilled salesmen convinced some universities that private companies are better than universities at teaching and recruiting for university preparatory programmes. The inbuilt premise of this pitch is that universities are gerbils and private providers are lions. One university staff member explained what it felt like meeting such salesmen:
“The thing that sticks most in my mind is the dress. And how these people sat differently, looked differently, spoke differently, and we felt parochial. We felt like a bunch of country bumpkins against some big suits.” (University staff)
The lion-gerbil pitch worked in institutions across England because universities were stifled by three interlocking practices of inaction: outsourcing capability development; taking ambiguous stands on international tuition fees; and refusing to cooperate with other universities.
Outsourcing capability
Universities are increasingly outsourcing core aspects of their operations, such as recruiting international students. While university leadership is often characterised as conservative, my research suggest that this trope misses something critical about contemporary university leadership in English higher education. The problem with the term ‘conservative’ is that it implies that leadership is risk-averse, and comfortable projecting past power structures, practices and norms into the future. This does not correspond to historical developments and practices in the sector for international pathways.
The University of Exeter, for example, submitted incorporation documents for their limited liability partnership with INTO University Partnerships only six years after the Limited Liability Partnerships Act 2000 was passed, which marked the first time in England’s history that this legal setup was possible. They took a big leap of faith in the private sector’s ability to recruit students for them, and after doing so invested time and resources helping INTO to further develop its capability. They even invited them onto their campuses. It is hard to overstate how much these actions diverged from historical practice and thus ‘conservative’ leadership.
What was once a highly unusual thing to do, has over the last two decades thoroughly normalised—to the extent that partnering with pathways now seems unavoidable. One respondent from the private sector explained this change in the following way:
“In 2006, ‘07, ‘08, ‘09, ‘10, the pathway providers were, if you like, the unwelcome tenants in the stately home of the university. We had to be suffered because we did something for them. Now, the relationship has totally moved. It’s almost as if they roll out the red carpet for the pathway providers” (C-suite)
The far more conservative strategy would have been to lean into the university’s core capabilities – teaching and admissions – and scale this up over time. Yet that is precisely what my respondents said ‘conservative’ university leaders were unwilling to do: they did not believe the university could manage overseas recruitment by themselves. As argued by former Warwick VC Nigel Thrift, this timidity is not unique to the recruitment of international students, but also extends to their engagement with government agencies. University management by and large “has done as it has been told. It hasn’t exactly rolled over and played dead, but sometimes it can feel as though it is dangerously close to Stockholm Syndrome” (Thrift, 2025, p3).
Ambiguous stands on international fees have deepened the current crises
There is no law in England that compels universities to charge high international students fees. By setting them as high as possible and rapidly increasing the intake of international students, universities de facto offset and thus obfuscated the havoc that changing funding regimes wreaked on university finances. This has contributed to what Kings’ Vice Chancellor Shitij Kapur calls the ‘triangle of sadness’ between domestic students, universities, and the government.
Had universities chosen to stand in solidarity with their international students by aligning their fees more closely to the fees of home students, then the subsequent crises in funding would have forced universities to either spend less money, or make it clearer to the wider public that more funding was needed, before building up the dependencies and subsequent vulnerabilities to intake fluctuations that are currently on full display. These vulnerabilities were exacerbated by overoptimistic growth plans, and university leadership not always fully understanding the added costs that came with such growth. In an example of this delayed realisation, one Pro-Vice-Chancellor explained to me what it felt like to partner with a private foundation pathway:
“At the time you are signing up for these things, there is euphoria around because they are going to deliver against this business plan, which is showing hundreds of students coming in. International student is very buoyant, you sign up for a 35-year deal. So, everything is rosy. If you then just take a step back and think ‘so what am I exposing the university to?’ … because in year seven, eight, ten, fifteen whatever, it can all go pear-shaped, and you are left then with the legacy building.” (Pro-Vice-Chancellor)
By seeing fee setting as a practice, that is, something universities do to their own students rather than something that is inflicted by external (market or government) powers, we make visible its ideological nature and implications. The longer history of international fees in Brittan was thus an important site of ideological co-option; it was a critical juncture at which universities could have related in a more solidaric manner towards their students.
Unwillingness to cooperate on increased student acquisition costs
You might, at this stage, be wondering: what was the alternative? The answer is in recognising the structure of the market for what it is: efficiently recruiting and training a large number of international students requires some degree of cooperation between universities. My research, however, suggests that universities have often been unwilling to cooperate because they see each other chiefly as competitors. This competition is highly unequal given the advantage conferred to prestigious universities located in internationally well-known cities.
The irony is that many universities nevertheless end up – perhaps unwittingly – cooperating by partnering with one of the few private companies that offer international foundation programmes. These private providers can only reach economies of scale because they partner with multiple universities at the same time. One executive explains how carrying a portfolio of universities for agents to offer their clients is precisely what gives them a competitive advantage:
“The importance of the pathways to the agents is that they carry a portfolio of universities, and the ambition is that you have some which are very well-ranked and academically quite difficult to get into. And, you try and have a bottom-feeder or two, which is relatively easy to get into academically. The agent is then able to talk to its clients and say, look, I can get offers into these universities. Some of them are at the very top. If you are not good enough there, then you might get one in the middle and I’ve always got my insurance offer for you. […] what the pathways do is that they provide a portfolio that makes that easier.” (Private Executive)
A public consortium with pooled resources and that isn’t shy about strategically coordinating student flows would have functioned just as well, and the Northern Consortium is living proof of this. The consortium in fact inspired Study Group to get into the pathway business themselves. The limited growth of the Consortium, relative to its private rivals, is equally proof of missed chances and wasted opportunities.
Could the gerbil eat the lion?
Private providers can use and have used these practices of inaction to pit universities against each other, over time resulting in lower entry requirements and higher recruitment costs. In this climate, public alternatives such as in-house programmes struggle to survive. Once invited in, pathway companies are also well positioned to expand their business with their partner universities in other ways, deepening their dependence. As one senior executive told me:
“Our aspiration is to say that the heart of what we are is a good partner to universities. They trust us. […] for some of our core partners, we bring in a lot of revenue. And, that then puts us in a really good position to think about the other services that we can add of value.” (Private Executive)
The economic downside of relying on these ‘good’ partners is the expensive and volatile market dynamics that follow. As long as universities are trapped by the notion that they are chiefly competitors best served by outsourcing capabilities to sales-oriented firms and leaving international students to pick up the bill, there is limited hope for any genuine inter-university collaboration and innovation. This limits the public potential for scaling an economically viable and resilient market in the long-run. As a sector, HE has the know-how, experience, capital, and repute to do this. It’s just about getting on with it!
Morten Hansen is a Lecturer in Digital Economy and Innovation Education at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London.
April brought deep cuts to universities in Florida, Michigan and elsewhere.
Although changes driven by the Trump administration that have included cutting grant funding and capping research reimbursement costs have driven hiring freezes and other changes, the cuts below are not directly tied to Trump. However, Trump’s agenda has directly prompted some job losses. For example, the University of Montana eliminated 42 positions after Congress excluded the Defense Critical Language and Culture Program from a government funding bill.
But most of the below job cuts, program eliminations and other changes are instead tied to declining enrollment, rising operating costs and other factors challenging the sector.
Jacksonville University
Some of the deepest cuts in April were at Jacksonville University, which slashed 40 faculty jobs.
Officials also announced plans to shutter JU’s music and theater programs in a cost-cutting effort, which, coupled with faculty layoffs, is expected to save the private university $10 million.
President Tim Cost called the move “the most robust strategic review of our academic offerings we have ever done” in an April 15 video posted to Facebook where he cast the cuts as “strategic recalibration.” Cost argued that the move would improve academics and “streamline” expenses.
Cost argued that higher education as a sector is beset with challenges and referenced hard choices at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and Pennsylvania State University. However, with the exception of Penn State, hiring freezes and other changes at those institutions have been driven by changes to federal research funding. (Jacksonville is not a research university, while those institutions are.)
Unmentioned in Cost’s video were concerns that the university could close, which were raised in JU’s most recent audit. Specifically, auditors noted that the university fell out of compliance with its debt agreements. Violations of such covenants can result in debt becoming due immediately. Jacksonville had nearly $144 million in debt at the end of fiscal year 2024.
Despite the university’s financial challenges, enrollment is up. In fall 2015, JU enrolled 4,048 students, federal data shows. This spring, that number was 4,601, according to a bond filing.
JU’s deep cuts have been met with anger and a sense of betrayal from faculty members.
“I really believed that this was a place that believed in its mission,” an anonymous faculty member who was laid off told local media. “And now it is so completely changing that mission. And what’s worse is they are gaslighting us into pretending like this has always been the plan.”
Although faculty voted no confidence in Cost, college officials have argued that changes at JU have followed its shared governance processes, which included faculty input, and that such changes are necessary to drop low-performing programs and prioritize other academic offerings.
Concordia University
The private Christian university plans to lay off 46 employees across two states.
Concordia University—which has its primary campus in Wisconsin—informed the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity in a letter it would move forward with plans to lay off 41 employees at its Ann Arbor campus on May 31 or “during the 14-day period thereafter.” Another five employees will be laid off in Wisconsin, according to a similar filing there.
Concordia announced last summer that most Ann Arbor academic programs would go online.
Concordia has navigated financial struggles in recent years and closed three campuses it operated in Wisconsin in 2023. However, officials have sought to reassure community members that there are no immediate plans to close the Ann Arbor campus.
“Concordia Ann Arbor will continue to offer a variety of degree options in 2025 and beyond,” reads a university page on frequently asked questions. The page added that “Concordia can no longer sustain multi-million-dollar operational losses at the Ann Arbor campus.”
California State University, Sacramento
Facing state budget cuts, the public university in California made a series of personnel changes in April.
“Due to the severe state budget cuts and the escalating labor costs we are facing for the upcoming fiscal year, 28 management (MPP) positions have been eliminated, merged, or not retained. These actions included 15 MPP employees who were released from their positions today,” Sacramento State president Luke Wood wrote to the campus community April 7.
More changes are on the horizon as Sac State navigates a $37 million budget deficit, amid cuts to state appropriations that will ultimately hit all 23 California State University system members.
The private Pennsylvania institution laid off staff members in the library, as well as areas such as facilities and event services, but appeared to spare faculty, according to a list obtained by the news outlet. Officials told LancasterOnline that F&M was exercising “responsible management” by “reducing the number of our employees to better match the size of our student body.” (Like many other colleges, Franklin & Marshall’s enrollment has slipped in recent years from 2,209 students in fall 2014, according to federal data, to around 1,900 currently.)
Some other jobs were also changed from a 12-month to a 10-month schedule.
University of Akron
Amid efforts to trim $22 million from its budget by the end of fiscal year 2026, the University of Akron is eliminating its physics and anthropology departments, Cleveland.com reported.
Approximately 20 full-time faculty members across the university have also accepted voluntary separation agreements, the news outlet confirmed. An advisory committee to help steer faculty cuts and ideas for generating revenue has pitched buyouts as a possible alternative to layoffs.
University of Toledo
Elsewhere in Ohio, the University of Toledo is suspending nine programs due to a state politics and policies.
The public university announced last month that it’s pausing admission to the Africana studies, Asian studies, data analytics, disability studies, Middle East studies, philosophy, religious studies, Spanish and women’s and gender studies programs, to comply with legislation, Senate Bill 1, that recently passed and became law.
All affected programs will remain available as minors, according to the university website.
SB 1—controversial and sweeping legislation that affects both program offerings and campus speech—bans diversity efforts in higher education and requires colleges to drop undergraduate programs that yield fewer than five degrees annually, on average, over a three-year period.
Unrelated to SB 1, Toledo also announced it was suspending admissions to a dozen other undergraduate and graduate programs, following a recent review of academic offerings.
Portland Community College
More than a dozen programs could be cut at Oregon’s largest community college.
Portland Community College is currently weighing a plan to eliminate as many as 14 programs in a cost-cutting effort, local CBS affiliate KOIN reported. So far, PCC has identified two programs that will be eliminated within two years: music and sonic arts, and gerontology.
Other potential programs on the chopping block at PCC are anthropology, art, Chinese, criminal justice, electronic engineering technology, English for speakers of other languages, general science, German, machine manufacturing technology, Russian, theater arts and welding.
Middlebury College
Officials at the private liberal arts college in Vermont announced a series of cost-cutting moves last month, including employee buyouts, in an effort to plug a projected $14 million budget hole.
Middlebury officials blamed the deficit on declining enrollment and increased operating costs.
Other fiscal moves include reducing Middlebury’s retirement matching contributions, shedding rental property leases and evaluating health insurance plans for possible changes. Altogether, officials said initial efforts are expected “to realize more than $10 million” in savings.
Canisius University
The private Jesuit university in Buffalo, N.Y., is offering buyouts to staff as part of a plan to identify $15 million in savings across the next two fiscal years, NBC affiliate WGRZ reported.
Jennifer Berne, provost of Oakland Community College in Michigan, has been appointed president of Madison College in Wisconsin, effective July 1.
Carlos Carvalho, a professor of statistics at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business, has been named the second president of the University of Austin.
Philip Cavalier, the provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Tennessee at Martin, will become the president of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, effective July 6.
Jim Dlugos, who retired as president of St. Joseph’s College of Maine in 2023, became president of Landmark College in Vermont on May 1.
Joyce Ester, president of Normandale Community College in Minnesota, has been selected as president of Governors State University in Illinois, effective July 1.
Christopher Fiorentino, former interim chancellor and president of West Chester University, became chancellor of Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education on April 11.
Jim Hess, interim president of Oklahoma State University since February, has been appointed permanent president of the institution.
Dee McDonald, vice president for enrollment and marketing at Crown College in Minnesota, has been named president of Bethel University in Indiana, effective July 1.
Summer McGee, president of Salem Academy and College in North Carolina, has been selected president of Lenoir-Rhyne University, effective July 1.
Bethany Meighen, vice president for academic and student affairs for the University of North Carolina system, has been appointed president of Concord University in West Virginia, effective July 1.
James Milliken, who has served as chancellor of the University of Texas system since 2018, has been named the next president of the University of California system, effective Aug. 1.
Martin Pollio, superintendent of the Jefferson County public school district in Louisville, Ky., has been elected president of Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana, effective July 1.
Thomas Powell, who has formerly served as president at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Maryland, Glenville State University in West Virginia and Frederick Community College in Maryland, assumed the presidency at Averett University in Virginia on May 1.
Ritu Raju, president and CEO of Gateway Technical College in Wisconsin, has been appointed president of South Central College in Minnesota, effective July 1.
Brett Sanford, former North Dakota lieutenant governor and interim president of Bismarck State College, assumed the role of interim chancellor of the North Dakota University System on April 30.
Brock Tessman, president of Northern Michigan University, has been named president of Montana State University, effective July 1.
Willie Todd, president and chief executive officer of Denmark Technical College in South Carolina, has been appointed president of Talladega College in Alabama, effective July 1.
John Zerwas, executive vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Texas system, has been named acting chancellor of the UT system— replacing Milliken, who is departing for the top job at the University of California—effective June 1.
