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Is North America’s scramble for TNE over?

Jason E. Lane is one of the founders of the Cross-Border Education Research Team, which has been monitoring the transnational education (TNE) sector since 2010. According to its data, the United States is the top player – it has 97 overseas campuses. In comparison, Canada fields just eight.

Opening a satellite location is not for the faint of heart. TNE often requires significant financial investments, which can evaporate if the school fails to attract students or runs into political trouble in the host country.

“There are a range of challenges,” Lane said. “These include maintaining the quality of teaching and offering the types of educational experiences that are available on the main campus.”

Some top American schools, including Harvard and Princeton, have declined to pursue the TNE model, instead relying on partnerships to build their international profiles.

While America remains the leader, Australia, with a population of just 27 million people, punches far above its weight, with 24 satellite campuses.

“Australia has a long history of being internationally engaged,” Lane said. “They looked at their own slowly growing population base and decided to expand overseas. It’s part of a longer term strategy of internationalisation.”

There are a range of challenges… These include maintaining the quality of teaching and offering the types of educational experiences that are available on the main campus
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Recently, some universities have backtracked on their commitment to foreign campuses. Last year, Texas A&M University announced that it was closing its 20-year-old campus in Qatar to focus on its core work in the United States. Board chair Bill Mahomes said the school “did not necessarily need a campus infrastructure 8,000 miles away to support education and research collaboration”.

In August, the University of Calgary shuttered its Qatar site after providing training to local learners there for many years. It provided no reason for the decision and did not respond to a request for more information.

For David Robinson, the executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the answer is clear: “In the end, as Calgary’s experience shows, I think branch campuses have largely turned out to be a failed business model.”

Robinson said the association had “for many years” raised concerns about institutions setting up campuses in parts of the world where academic freedom might not be upheld or respected in the same way as it would in Canada.

Academic freedom worries are also prevalent in the US, Lane told The PIE News. “A lot of US campuses have gotten into establishing foreign campuses while wanting guarantees of academic freedom. But those countries may have different definitions of academic freedom.”

Overseas campuses serve a wide range of students. In some cases, especially in the Middle East, satellites enrol only local or regional learners.

Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, has had a site at a castle in England for 30 years; many of the students attending are on a semester or year abroad from the Canadian campus.

Others leverage their overseas satellites to attract attendees from across the globe. Webster University, based in St. Louis, Missouri, has operations in several locations, including Geneva.

It offers a seamless transition between taking courses there and at the US campus. The Swiss school draws students from many countries; diverse classes prepare students to work with people from a wide variety of backgrounds.

New campuses are now reflecting shifts in the global geopolitical alignment, Lane says. After Hungary tilted to the right and fell into the Russia-China orbit, Fudan University of Shanghai opened a satellite in that country.

With its growing population and improving economic development, Africa is increasingly viewed as a potential market. Currently, universities from the United States, United Kingdom, France and Netherlands have satellites on the African continent.

The post Is North America’s scramble for TNE over? appeared first on The PIE News.

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December 12, 2025
Purdue Allegedly Rejecting Chinese, Other Grad Students

Purdue University is allegedly rejecting large numbers of Chinese graduate student applicants.

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Current and prospective Purdue University graduate students say the institution rejected a slew of Chinese applicants from its grad programs for this academic year. Also, one grad student says the university told grad admissions committees in the past couple of months that it’s highly unlikely to accept students from any “adversary nation” for next year.

Faculty were told those countries are China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela, said Kieran Hilmer, a teaching assistant on the leadership committee of Graduate Rights and Our Wellbeing (GROW), a group trying to unionize Purdue grad workers. That list broadly matches the commerce secretary’s catalog of foreign adversaries.

Hilmer said the university conveyed this prohibition verbally. “They didn’t write any of this down,” he said.

Purdue isn’t commenting on the allegations. The university has faced scrutiny from members of Congress about its ties to China. In May, the Trump administration briefly said it would revoke Chinese students’ visas nationwide. The president has since changed his tune and said he would welcome more students from China.

A Chinese student who wished to remain anonymous because he’s still trying to get into Purdue told Inside Higher Ed he received an offer to be a research assistant last February, meaning his funding was secure to become a Purdue grad student this academic year. But, in April or May, he said, the Office of Graduate Admissions told him that his application was denied.

The redacted two-paragraph letter that he provided to Inside Higher Ed said admission “is competitive and many factors are carefully considered,” but “we are not able to provide specific feedback.”

The student, who said he got his master’s degree in the U.S. and wishes to remain here, said he had already moved to West Lafayette, where Purdue’s flagship campus is, signed a lease and turned down other institutions’ offers. He said the rejection could impact his visa.

“I may get deported,” he said.

He said he learned through social media that at least 100 other Chinese students were similarly rejected.

Purdue spokespeople also didn’t provide a response to the Lafayette Journal & Courier and the Exponent student newspaper when asked about this issue. The Journal & Courier, which first reported the story, cited four faculty members from “a wide range of departments” who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the university.

Multiple heads of graduate admissions committees didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Thursday; one who answered the phone referred a reporter to the press office, which didn’t respond. Emails sent to Office of Graduate Admissions employees went unanswered.

While Purdue won’t explain what actions it’s taking or why, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said in a September report that it’s been investigating Purdue and five other universities—Stanford and Carnegie Mellon Universities and the Universities of Maryland, Southern California and Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—all year “regarding the presence and research activities of Chinese national students on their campuses.”

Hilmer said Purdue is rejecting Chinese applicants in “a specific attempt to comply with the U.S. Select Committee.” (The committee didn’t comment Thursday on whether it pressured Purdue to go as far as it allegedly has.) But Hilmer also said the “hostility and malice” the university is showing these students goes further than what the committee requested.

“As Purdue said in its response to the House Select Committee, international students are fully vetted by the United States government when they apply for their visas,” Hilmer said. “And, on top of that, in order to work on projects related to national security, they need to get further security clearance. So there’s no reason for Purdue to make this unilateral extralegal decision to ban all of these students.”

He said many of these students were already in the U.S.

“This policy is obviously discriminatory and immoral, and, on top of that, it violates Purdue’s policy on nondiscrimination,” he said. The Chinese student told Inside Higher Ed that he doesn’t accept the committee pressure rationale, because Purdue wasn’t the only university under investigation.

If Purdue is responding to the committee’s pressure, it’s another example of a selective American institution bending to the federal government’s efforts to reduce international enrollment and to particularly target Chinese students and scholars. During President Trump’s first term in office, the Justice Department launched the controversial China Initiative, which investigated faculty ties to China.

Republicans said the initiative sought to counter espionage, but Democrats, education lobbyists and Asian American advocates argued it was ineffective and instead justified racial profiling and discrimination. A study suggested the initiative’s investigations may have caused valuable researchers of Chinese descent to leave the U.S. for China.

Hilmer said Purdue’s rejection of Chinese students will harm its reputation and ability to recruit the best students and workers.

“Even if they’re not international students, they’re going to say, ‘Why would I ever accept an offer from Purdue if there’s no guarantee that it’s actually an offer?’” he said. “Why would they ever feel comfortable accepting an offer from Purdue if they could go anywhere else?”

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December 12, 2025
In Defense of Berkeley Instructor Peyrin Kao

Peyrin Kao, a University of California, Berkeley, computer science lecturer, was suspended from teaching for a semester after UC Berkeley decreed that Kao’s criticism of Israel had violated campus bans on “political advocacy” in class. There are two significant problems with this action: Kao didn’t engage in advocacy in his class, and Berkeley’s rules don’t restrict political advocacy.

The suspension of Kao reflects two alarming possibilities: Either Kao is being targeted for his criticism of Israel and there is selective persecution of faculty for leftist political beliefs, or Kao’s suspension shows a new, broader ban on all political speech in the classroom.

The fact that this repression is happening at UC Berkeley—a top university in a blue state legendary for the Free Speech Movement and liberal politics—indicates how widespread censorship is across the country today.

As Kao noted, “The university loves to talk about how they are ‘the free speech university,’ ‘the home of the free speech movement’ … but when it comes to Palestine: ‘Sorry, we’re drawing the line, your free speech does not apply.’”

In October, UC Berkeley executive vice chancellor and provost Benjamin Hermalin wrote a letter determining that Kao was guilty of violating Regents Policy 2301 in two incidents.

In 2023, Kao, after dismissing class, spoke for four minutes about ethics and technology, and expressed criticism of the Israeli government. In 2024, Kao informed students that he was on a hunger strike (without explaining why).

It’s shocking that such trivial examples of advocacy could ever justify such a severe punishment. In the first case, Hermalin makes a ridiculous argument that what happens after a class is over is in fact part of the class.

He writes, “Nothing in Regents Policy 2301 can be read to indicate it doesn’t apply when a course goes into ‘overtime.’” While it’s true that the rules about behavior during classes apply when instructors extend a class beyond the normal time (“overtime”), those limits end when the class is over. The Provost even quotes Kao’s words: “It is 2pm so class is officially over.” Once Kao says that, there is no overtime. There is only after-class time, and that time is not regulated by the Policy 2301 for course content. Of course, Kao’s brief comments on ethics in technology should be fully protected during a computer science class, but the fact that they happened outside of class means they cannot be regulated by these rules about classroom speech.

The second alleged violation is even more ridiculous. Kao is accused of breaking the rules by uttering 20 words: “I’m currently undergoing a starvation diet for a cause that I believe in. If that sounds interesting, there’s a link.”

The provost concluded, “I find Mr. Kao to have misused the classroom for the purpose of political advocacy, an action that constitutes a violation of Regents Policy 2301.”

No, he didn’t, and no, it isn’t. Telling students that you’re on a starvation diet isn’t “political advocacy”; if Kao was ill or dieting for health reasons, he would be fully entitled to warn students of this fact in case it affected him, and nothing about these words is “political advocacy.” The same logic applies to a medical condition induced for political reasons.

But the provost is also wrong on a much deeper level: There is no prohibition on “political advocacy” in Policy 2301. The word “advocacy” never appears in Policy 2301. Yet the provost proceeds to wonder “whether the instructor’s intent is to advocate” and frequently quotes his interviews rather than focusing on what he said in class and what Policy 2301 says. Political advocacy in the classroom is fundamentally protected by academic freedom.

Astonishingly, the provost even asked, “To what extent is a hunger strike an in-class advocacy activity precluded by Regents Policy 2301?” In what bizarro world could a hunger strike ever be deemed “in-class advocacy”? Refusing to eat during class is not “advocacy” at all. The suggestion that Regents Policy 2301 could be interpreted to require teachers to eat outside the classroom is insane.

The provost noted, “His actions are no different from those of an instructor who repeatedly wore a t-shirt when teaching that had on it a very visible political symbol or a picture of a political candidate.” Wait, does the provost actually think that professors are banned from wearing T-shirts with symbols on them? Will a professor with a peace symbol T-shirt be hauled before the provost for dress code violations? Wait until the provost finds out that some professors wear crosses while teaching—I’m sure that will be quickly prohibited by any fair-minded ban on advocacy.

Perhaps UC Berkeley professors need to start wearing T-shirts with the First Amendment on them to remind the provost why we must not allow political commissars to dictate what teachers wear, say or think.

Zach Greenberg of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression argued, “If you’re going on tangents during class or expressing a political advocacy to students during class as a professor, you’re on company time.” But the whole concept of academic freedom is a rejection of “company time.” Academic freedom in the classroom means that the instructor, not the company, decides what is taught. The classroom is “professional time” where instructors must meet professional standards. But professional standards allow for wide leeway to go on tangents, discuss broader issues and even chat with students about nonprofessional topics. If there is a professor who has never uttered any words in any class unrelated to the course topic, I would love to meet that weirdo.

If a professor is wasting half of every class on a tangent unrelated to the course, then that professor should be disciplined. But the reason for the discipline must be politically neutral and disconnected from any viewpoint discrimination. A professor who expresses political views in class is no different from a professor who expresses views about the football team or a professor who discusses the weather (in a class unrelated to it). All of them are engaging in speech not germane to the class.

But no one can seriously argue that a four-minute statement after class about ethics in technology or a 20-word comment about being on a hunger strike could possibly describe an instructor who is failing to teach the content of the class by going on constant tangents.

The fact that Kao’s words were repeatedly described as “political” is not evidence of Kao’s guilt, but proof of the administration’s guilt. By targeting Kao purely for his political speech, and applying standards that would never be used for similar noncontroversial speech, the Berkeley administration is confessing to its violation of the First Amendment and standards of academic freedom that protect faculty from retaliation for their views.

Policy 2301 is a terrible policy, enacted in 1970 by the regents to suppress free speech, and it violates standards of academic freedom and the First Amendment by targeting “political indoctrination” (rather than all “indoctrination”) and therefore engages in viewpoint discrimination against disfavored political views.

But even Policy 2301 does not allow the kind of repression demanded by the provost, which is why he doesn’t quote any of its specific provisions in claiming Kao’s alleged violation of it.

The provost repeatedly accuses Kao of being “at odds with the spirit of Regents Policy 2301” but fails to quote anything in the policy he actually violated. Suspensions cannot be justified by “spirits”; they can only be legitimate if there is a clear violation of the rule.

The provost’s report is so grossly incompetent—fabricating clauses about “advocacy” that don’t exist in a policy he apparently hasn’t read—that it shows how arbitrary this act of political retaliation was.

Writing that the punishment was “up to you,” the provost gave his subordinates an implicit order to suspend Kao with only one other option: “I would have no objection if you wished to impose a more severe disciplinary action than the one I proposed.” Obviously, he would object to anything less than a suspension, and the resulting suspension is not surprising to anyone. It is highly unprofessional for a top administrator to personally intervene in a discipline case in order to manipulate the outcome and decree what punishment must be given.

The repressive administrative overreaction at Berkeley is precisely why we must give enormous freedom to instructors to do things that we think are wrong. Unless you protect the right of faculty to say dumb and inappropriate things in their classes, people driven mad by the possession of administrative power will seek to fire professors for what they say and do outside of class.

We should want professors who feel free to express their values and their ideas openly, even when it offends some people. We should reject a world where every professor must fear saying a disapproved word in a classroom where every utterance is monitored for wrongthink.

I don’t agree with Kao’s goals of campus divestment from Israel. I don’t agree with Kao’s tactics of engaging in a hunger strike. And I don’t agree with Kao’s methods of discussing his views in or after his classes.

But Kao did not violate any university rules, and it is fundamentally unjust to suspend him for purely political reasons. People are free to criticize him for his ideas, but not to censor him or punish him for expressing them.

UC Berkeley administrators have violated Kao’s academic freedom and the First Amendment in their shameful punishment of him for his free speech, and they deserve condemnation not only for this unjust act against Kao but also for the much larger chilling effect this repression will cause across the University of California.

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December 12, 2025
College Aid Previews Aim to Improve Early Decision

With the imminent arrival of early-decision results comes a new round of hand-wringing about the admissions practice, which affords students a better chance of getting accepted to their top institution but requires them to commit if admitted.

Critics argue that the practice disadvantages low- and middle-income students, who fear being locked into attending a college before they know if they can afford it—although many colleges with an early-decision option allow students to back out over financial constraints. It also prevents applicants from comparing financial aid offers across multiple institutions.

“Because there is so much uncertainty, families with high incomes are more likely to choose early decision and therefore benefit from its more favorable odds. It’s the perfect tool for maximizing revenues at schools positioned as luxury products, with price tags to match,” wrote Daniel Currell, a former deputy under secretary and senior adviser at the Department of Education from 2018 to 2021, in a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday that argued for the end of early decision. Indeed, Common App data about the fall 2021 freshman class showed that students from the wealthiest ZIP codes were twice as likely to apply early decision.

But despite the criticisms, some institutions are aiming to make the practice more equitable. A handful of small liberal arts colleges have introduced initiatives in recent years to allow students to preview their financial aid offers before they decide whether or not to apply early, which admissions leaders say they hope will make lower-income students feel more comfortable taking the leap.

Reed College, a selective liberal arts college in Oregon, began offering early-decision aid reviews this year, which allow early-decision applicants to request and view their full financial aid packages before they receive an actual decision from the university. Just like an official aid offer, the preview is calculated by financial aid staff using the College Scholarship Service profile.

If they aren’t entirely comfortable with the amount of aid they’re set to receive—or they’d rather compare offers from other institutions—they can drop their application down into the early-action pool.

“I just think that this anxiety that people have over not getting the best financial deal for their family has been a barrier for people saying, ‘This is my first-choice school and I want to do everything I can to increase my chances for admission,’” said Milyon Trulove, vice president and dean of admission and financial aid at Reed.

Early financial aid offers are among the various steps institutions have taken in recent years to improve cost transparency and, in many cases, show students that their institutions are affordable. Others include improved cost estimators and campaigns offering free tuition for families under a particular income limit. Institutions hope that such innovations will help prevent students from writing off their institutions—particularly selective institutions that offer significant aid—due to their sticker prices.

So far, Reed’s reviews appear to be doing a good job of enticing applicants who otherwise might not have applied early; the number of early-decision applicants this year increased 60 percent compared to last admissions cycle. Only one student has opted to switch to early action, which is nonbinding, after receiving their estimated offer.

Similar programs at other institutions have also proven successful. Whitman College in Washington began offering early financial aid guarantees in 2020 to any prospective student who had filled out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The initiative wasn’t created specifically to promote early decision, said Adam Miller, vice president for admission and financial aid. But he said he hoped that making it clear to families that Whitman is affordable would also open doors for students interested in applying early decision but nervous about costs.

Early-decision applications haven’t increased at Whitman like they did this year at Reed. But Miller noted that the college’s early-decision applicants are as socioeconomically diverse as the institution’s overall applicant pool, rather than skewing wealthier.

“As we think about these nationwide conversations and the very valid criticism of early decision, we think that our approach allows us to have kind of a win-win,” he said. “We still get the benefit of students who are applying early, [so] that we can start to build our incoming class with some confidence,” while also eliminating financial uncertainty for families.

Last year, the university’s four-person financial aid staff handled 546 requests for early aid guarantees. It’s an extra lift for the tiny office, but, Miller said, 410 of those students ended up applying—“so it’s not like we were doing a lot of extra work for students that we weren’t going to be doing it for anyway.”

Macalester College also launched such a program in 2021. The institution, which typically admits between 35 and 40 percent of its incoming class from early decision, implemented aid previews in conjunction with a number of other steps aimed at improving access, including going test-optional and eliminating its application fee.

“If we have an opportunity to do something that we think might be helpful to an individual student or family, I guess I feel as responsibility as an enrollment manager to try to initiate a new practice or new policy,” said Jeff Allen, vice president for admissions and financial aid at Macalester.

Boosting Cost Transparency

Financial aid experts said they see early financial aid calculations as a good option for institutions hoping to make the early-decision process—and college costs over all—more transparent.

Students should be able to “apply early decision to a school where they know it’s the place for them and they don’t need to be saying, ‘But I need the financial aid so maybe this isn’t a good choice,’” said Jill Desjean, director of policy analysis at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. “That option should be available to anyone that finds the school where they really feel like they belong via early decision without having to factor in their finances, so any kind of early estimates, accurate early estimates—anything like that is a positive thing.”

She noted that such programs might be too heavy of a lift for institutions receiving massive numbers of applications every year, but also that larger institutions have more resources and staffing to accommodate such requests.

James Murphy, a senior fellow at Class Action, an advocacy organization focused on “reimagining elite higher education,” said that while he sees early aid previews as a positive step toward transparency, they don’t address some of his key concerns about early decision. At many expensive private high schools, he said, nearly every student applies early decision, whereas public high school students often aren’t even aware of the option.

“There’s kind of a culture thing. If you go to Georgetown Prep … everybody’s applying early decision, or most students are applying early decision, unless they’re applying to Harvard or Stanford that don’t have it … When you look at public schools, that’s not nearly as common,” he said. “I think raising awareness of early decision as a viable option for more students is one step that higher education could take to make it a little bit more equitable.”

He also noted that some institutions admit over half of their incoming classes from early-decision applicants, which dramatically lowers the chances for regular-admission applicants to be admitted.

“The New York Times had that op-ed about banning it. That’s not going to happen. Colleges will fight so hard to make that not happen,” he said. But, he said, “what I would love to see is caps” on the percentage of students that can be admitted early decision.

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December 12, 2025
Harvard Health and Human Rights Director Stepping Down

Officials also announced that the center will hone its primary focus to children’s health.

John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

The director of Harvard University’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights will step down in January after seven years at the helm, dean of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health Andrea Baccarelli announced Tuesday. News of her departure follows months of criticism of the center’s Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights.

Mary Bassett’s last day as director will be Jan. 9, 2026, after which she will remain a professor of practice in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department. Kari Nadeau, a professor of climate and population studies at Harvard, will serve as interim director. Bassett did not respond to a request for an interview Thursday. A Harvard spokesperson did not answer Inside Higher Ed’s questions about Bassett’s departure, including whether she was asked to step down, and instead pointed to Baccarelli’s message.

Baccarelli also announced that the center will shift its primary focus to children’s health.

“Over the past years, FXB has worked on a wide range of programs within the context of human rights, extending across varied projects, including those related to oppression, poverty, and stigma around the world,” he wrote. “We believe we can accomplish more, and have greater impact, if we go deeper in a primary area of focus.”

The center’s Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights drew increased scrutiny after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel, including from former Harvard president Larry Summers and New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik. In previous years, the program partnered with Birzeit University in the West Bank, but Harvard declined to renew that partnership in the spring. In their April report on antisemitism on campus, Harvard officials detailed complaints from students about the program’s webinars, in which speakers allegedly “presented a demonizing view of Israel and Israelis.”

“One student told us that the FXB programming created the impression that ‘Israel exists solely to oppress Palestinians, and nothing else,’” the report stated.

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December 12, 2025
Policy Impact Undervalued by Universities

Barely a third of social scientists believe their university would promote them based on the strength of their research impact, a global poll of researchers has found.

Asked whether their institution would promote or give tenure to a scholar for their efforts to apply research outside academia, only 37 percent of 1,805 social scientists surveyed by Sage agreed.

Only 28 percent of respondents said their efforts to make a difference outside academia would lead to additional research funding from their institution, while just 35 percent said their university offered awards or prizes to recognize impact.

Thirty percent of the survey’s respondents, who came from 92 countries, say they receive no recognition at all for this work.

Instead, the survey by the U.S.-based social sciences publisher suggested institutions tend to value and reward publication in highly cited journals more than academics. Asked whether the ultimate goal of research is to make a positive impact on society, 92 percent agreed this is the case for themselves, but only 68 percent believe it’s true for institutions.

“I don’t care about impacting my colleagues and being cited—I want to impact practice in the field,” explained one U.S.-based respondent, who added there is “no good way to know if this happens.”

“All the other metrics (like rejection rates, Google scores) are internal to the discipline and don’t really measure anything useful,” the researcher continued, according to the Sage report, titled “Do Social Scientists Care If They Make Societal Impact?” and published Tuesday.

Similarly, 91 percent of researchers agree the ultimate goal of research is to build on the literature and enable future research, but only 71 percent think the leaders at their institution agree with this.

That perceived misalignment between the motivation of social scientists and institutions should prompt a rethink on whether prestige metrics used in academia are misaligned with values, argues the Sage report.

It notes that researchers value peer regard more than citation metrics, yet they perceive that administrators prioritize impact factors, creating tension in tenure and promotion decisions.

“At times, this means we have to challenge the status quo of what matters in higher education—for example, by moving beyond an overemphasis on scholarly impact measures [and] toward recognizing research that benefits people through policy, practice and public life,” said Ziyad Marar, president of global publishing at Sage.

“It’s important that we listen closely to researchers themselves as we do this work—understanding what motivates them, where they focus their efforts and what barriers stand in their way. This report does exactly that,” he added.

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December 12, 2025
Friday Fragments

Friday Fragments

Sara Brady

Fri, 12/12/2025 – 03:00 AM

Sans-serif fonts, passing along great literature, Middle States.

Byline(s)

Matt Reed

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December 12, 2025
House Ed Panel Advances Financial Aid Transparency Bills

Rep. Tim Walberg, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House committee, said the legislation was an answer to waning public trust in postsecondary education.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

A House education panel voted Thursday to advance two bills aimed at ensuring that students know more about the price of college and their options to pay for it.

One of the bills, the Student Financial Clarity Act, would require the Education Department to create a universal net price calculator that would give students an estimate of what they might have to pay for a particular program or institution. That legislation, which passed with bipartisan support, would also expand the College Scorecard to include more program-level statistics so students could compare outcomes and costs.

Under the other bill, the College Financial Aid Clarity Act, the Education Department would develop a standardized format for college financial aid offers. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have sought for years to improve institutional offer letters—efforts that picked up steam in 2023 after the Government Accountability Office found that most colleges failed to clearly and accurately tell students how much their education would cost.

After the department creates the standard format, colleges that receive federal funding will have to adopt it by July 1, 2029, according to the legislation, which also received bipartisan backing.

The House and Senate education committees have explored the issue of college price transparency in hearings this fall, showing that it’s a priority for key lawmakers. Rep. Tim Walberg, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House committee, framed the legislation as an answer to waning public trust in postsecondary education.

“Too many students face bureaucracy, hidden costs and student debt for programs that don’t deliver a return on investment,” Walberg said. “These bills take important steps to fix that.”

American Council on Education president Ted Mitchell wrote to the committee that a federally mandated financial aid award letter would be difficult to adjust in response to consumer feedback and changes to federal student aid. ACE and others have spearheaded a voluntary effort to improve the letters known as the College Cost Transparency Initiative, which includes about 760 colleges and universities.

“It is also important to note that new requirements regarding financial aid award letters will impose significant administrative, financial, and technical challenges that will divert institutional resources away from student support,” Mitchell wrote.

Democrats generally supported the legislation, though they indicated that they wanted to see more changes that would actually lower the cost of college and hold the Education Department accountable.

Democrats expressed worry that a diminished Education Department wouldn’t be able to implement the changes called for in the legislation. They also pushed for language in the bills that would require the Education Department itself to perform the work. Education Secretary Linda McMahon recently outsourced several grant programs to other federal agencies, raising concerns among Democrats on the committee.

“Based on the secretary’s track record, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s already devising a way to pass these requirements on to someone else or some other agency,” said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat.

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December 12, 2025
Emporia State Gets $1.4M From Retiring President

ESU’s outgoing president, Ken Hush, faced backlash in 2022 after laying off tenured faculty.

Ethan James Scherrer/Wikimedia Commons

Ken Hush, outgoing president of Emporia State University in Kansas, is donating roughly $1.4 million—equivalent to the last four years of his salary—to the university.

Since taking the helm in 2021, Hush oversaw a controversial workforce-management policy that included firing 23 tenured faculty members. The American Association of University Professors publicly censured ESU for that decision, and some of the laid-off faculty sued. Emporia officials, including Hush, defended the job cuts, saying they were needed to address a budget deficit and falling enrollment.

Enrollment plunged in the fallout from the cuts, but according to ESU’s statement this week, the university has now eliminated a $19 million budget deficit and grown enrollment 6 percent since fall 2024.

Hush’s donation is one of the largest one-time individual gifts in ESU’s history, according to an announcement the university posted on its website Wednesday. The nonendowed gift from Hush, who is set to retire next week, will be paid out over the next three years. The money will support scholarships, new student recruitment and university operations.

“This gift is in appreciation for the meaningful impact ESU has had on our community and on me, both as a student and in my role as president. It has been a great honor to serve my home state of Kansas, in my hometown of Emporia for the institution that has changed so many lives for the better,” Hush said in the announcement. “Emporia State is focused on [students] like never before. We cannot afford to go back to the old ways of higher education that focused more on the institution than those the institution is here to serve.”

Hush—an ESU alumnus and longtime former executive for Koch Inc.’s carbon and minerals division—became interim president in 2021 and permanent president in 2022. Hush in July announced plans to retire at the end of this year.

On Thursday, The Emporia Gazette reported that the Kansas Board of Regents selected Matthew Baker, who has served as vice president of student affairs at Northwest Missouri State University for the past 14 years, as ESU’s next president. Baker is slated to begin serving in early March.

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December 12, 2025
At UNC, Professors Must Soon Post Syllabi Publicly

The new policy would also classify syllabi as “work made for hire,” which makes the institution—not the syllabus’s creator—the owner of the copyright.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | DNY59 and golibo/iStock/Getty Images

Two months after legal teams at University of North Carolina system campuses split over whether syllabi are considered public documents, system president Peter Hans announced plans to adopt a new policy that will answer an unequivocal yes.

Starting as early as next fall, faculty members at UNC institutions will be required to upload their syllabi to a searchable public database, according to a draft of the policy provided to Inside Higher Ed by student journalists at The Daily Tar Heel. These public syllabi must include the course name, prefix, description, course objectives and student learning outcomes, as well as “a breakdown of how student performance will be assessed, including the grading scale, percentage breakdown of major assignments, and how attendance or participation will affect a student’s final grade.” Faculty must also include any course materials that students are required to purchase.

“Public university syllabi should be public records, and that will be the official policy of the UNC System,” Hans wrote in a Thursday op-ed in the News & Observer. “We are living through an age of dangerously low trust in some of society’s most important institutions. While support for North Carolina’s public universities remains strong and bipartisan, confidence in higher education generally has dropped in recent years, driven by concerns about value and a perception that some colleges and universities have drifted from their core mission.”

The system is currently seeking feedback on the draft policy, a system spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed, and “after receiving input from elected faculty representatives and other stakeholders, the system office will revise the draft as needed.” Only Hans, and not the Board of Governors, will need to approve the policy.

In October, system campuses disagreed over whether to give up syllabi in response to a broad public records request by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. Alongside other conservative groups, the Heritage Foundation has used open records laws to gather information on and expose public university faculty members who teach about race, gender, sexuality and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Syllabi that include classroom policies, required readings and instructor’s names are particularly valuable to conservative critics. The UNC system flagship in Chapel Hill determined that syllabi are not automatically subject to such requests. But officials at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro declared the opposite.

“Having a consistent rule on syllabi transparency, instead of 16 campuses coming up with different rules, helps ensure that everyone is on the same page and similarly committed heading into each new semester,” Hans wrote in his op-ed.

The Florida Board of Governors recently enacted a policy that makes syllabi, required or recommended textbooks, and instructional materials available online and searchable for students and the general public for five years. Indiana, Texas and the University System of Georgia also maintain similar rules.

Belle Boggs, an English professor at North Carolina State University and president of the North Carolina American Association of University Professors chapter, is worried that many professors, busy with end-of-semester grading, are unaware of the forthcoming policy; administrators have yet to send out any formal announcement of the rule, Boggs said. But many of those that do know of it are pushing back. A petition started by the North Carolina AAUP chapter has garnered more than 2,100 signatures as of Thursday afternoon. The group plans to deliver it in person to Hans on Friday.

The draft policy does not explicitly require instructors to list their names on their syllabi and states that “nothing within this regulation shall be construed to require a publicly available syllabus to include the location or time of day at which a course is being held.” This stipulation provides little comfort to faculty members, Boggs said.

“As many of us have noted, there are many of us who are the only faculty who teach a particular class, and it is very easy to find out when our class is and where our classes are,” she said. “That does not make me feel safer.”

Hans acknowledged critics’ weaponization of syllabi in his op-ed.

“There is no question that making course syllabi publicly available will mean hearing feedback and criticism from people who may disagree with what’s being taught or how it’s being presented. That’s a normal fact of life at a public institution, and we should expect a vibrant and open society to have debates that extend beyond the walls of campus,” Hans wrote. “It’s awful that we live in a time when healthy discussion too often descends into outright harassment. We will do everything we can to safeguard faculty and staff who may be subject to threats or intimidation simply for doing their jobs.”

The new policy would also classify syllabi as “work made for hire,” which makes the institution—not the syllabus’s creator—the copyright owner of the syllabus, according to U.S. copyright law.

“As such, instructors do not retain personal copyright in these materials, and syllabi owned by a public agency generated in the course of public business, are not copyrightable in a manner that would exempt syllabi from public access to these records, consistent with state and federal public records laws,” the draft policy stated.

The N.C. AAUP has focused its efforts on publicizing faculty safety concerns, but the work-made-for-hire provision is also worrisome, Boggs said.

“That causes severe damage to academic freedom and how much control we have over our classes,” she said. “It may also make many faculty not want to work here, because the syllabi that they teach from or the syllabi that they’ve honed over decades in other places … [will belong to the university].”

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December 12, 2025