Tag: Blast

UVA Board Members Blast Lawmakers, Faculty in Texts

University of Virginia board members blasted state lawmakers as “extremist” and faculty members as “out of control” in a batch of text messages published by the Washington Post.

Richmond-based author Jeff Thomas sued the university to force the release of communications between board members and university officials from June 2023 through last month; then he released the 947 pages of messages to the newspaper.

In recent months, the Board of Visitors—stocked with GOP donors and other political figures—has defied state lawmakers, including Governor-Elect Abigail Spanberger, over calls to pause a presidential search. That search concluded with an internal hire last month, though multiple critics have flagged process concerns and state lawmakers have also voiced displeasure.

The text messages show that board members reacted sharply last year when a Democrat-controlled board rejected multiple university board picks by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin. The governor lost a subsequent legal fight to seat the picks and several boards remain hobbled.

In August text messages to Jim Donovan, one of the rejected picks, UVA Board Rector Rachel Sheridan, called the General Assembly’s refusal to approve Youngkin’s nominees “Very disappointing. Completely unprecedented and destructive.” Sheridan added: “I hope this backfires politically and reveals them to be the extremists they are.”

Sheridan did not apologize or backtrack after the texts were released. In a statement to the Washington Post and Inside Higher Ed, she wrote: “I respect the General Assembly’s authority on these matters but share the frustration of those four individuals that were summarily rejected without the benefit of consideration of their merit and the value these individuals have given and could have continued to give to the university community.”

Her remarks highlight tensions between the board and the General Assembly, which have spiked since President Jim Ryan resigned under pressure in June and the university signed an agreement with the Department of Justice in October to close multiple investigations into alleged civil rights violations.

In other text messages, Vice Rector Porter Wilkinson expressed frustration with the UVA Faculty Senate, which has demanded answers about whether Ryan was pushed out by the board and the DOJ agreement.

When Board of Visitors Secretary Scott Ballenger texted Wilkinson in October that the Faculty Senate was debating a resolution to demand a meeting with Sheirdan and then-Interim President Paul Mahoney, Wilkinson responded “That is insane.” When he told her the Faculty Senate was weighing a resolution of no-confidence in Mahoney, she wrote: “So embarrassing. For them.” Wilkinson added in response to another text from Ballenger: “This is out of control.”

The published text messages also expose the board’s dramatic behavior behind the scenes. In a text to Sheridan, former Rector Robert Hardie, a Democratic appointee who has since rotated off the board, made vague references to an “unhinged” board member threatening the university administration.

Hardie called board members Stephen P. Long and “BE” (presumably Bert Ellis) “assholes.” (Ellis was removed by Youngkin in late March for his combative style on the board.) Hardie referred to board members BE, Long, Douglas Wetmore and Paul Harris as “four horses asses.” Hardie also complained about a member that he did not name trying to stir controversy and a “food fight.”

The full batch of text messages can be read here.

The release of the texts—spurred by legal action—comes as UVA has been slow to release information in response to public records requests, prompting criticism from a local lawmaker and others. Citing “a significant backlog,” UVA has not yet fulfilled a public records request regarding communications with federal officials sent by Inside Higher Ed in October.

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January 9, 2026
UNL faculty blast chancellor’s $1.1M severance payout amid budget cuts
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Dive Brief:
- The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is under fire from faculty over a hefty monetary payout for its departing leader, Chancellor Rodney Bennett, as the campus braces for program and faculty cuts he put in place.
- Bennett unexpectedly announced Monday that he would resign effective Jan. 12. A copy of his separation agreement obtained by local media through records requests details a one-time payment of $1.1 million.
- On Tuesday, the UNL American Association of University Professors blasted the severance payment and called for a halt to all faculty cuts and reconsideration of the program eliminations approved by the University of Nebraska board of regents last month.
Dive Insight:

UNL has gone through a tumultuous few months under Bennett as he has tried to eliminate millions of dollars from the university’s budget in an effort to slash away at a structural deficit.

In September, he proposed axing six academic programs to cut costs. Faculty quickly condemned the plan and questioned its methodology. They also warned that Nebraska would suffer from losing subject-matter knowhow.

Critics also questioned the fiscal necessity of the program eliminations. An auditor hired by the AAUP voiced doubt the university was undergoing a budget crisis, finding historical budget surpluses and other markers of financial health.

Bennett would go on to reduce his proposal to cutting four academic programs and over 50 jobs, a move regents later approved. In November, UNL’s faculty senate voted no confidence in the chancellor — the first such vote in the university’s history.

The faculty body voted overwhelmingly for the measure, which alleged “failures in strategic leadership, fiscal stewardship, governance integrity, external relations, and personnel management.”

Less than two months later, Bennett resigned. His message to the UNL community focused on positives, including fundraising milestones and new records for six-year graduation rates and first-year student retention under his tenure.

“Your energy, your enthusiasm, your optimism, and your determination to do your part to make our communities, our state, and our world better are an inspiration to us all, and it has been my highest honor and privilege to have served as your Chancellor,” Bennett, who joined UNL as chancellor in 2023, wrote on Monday.

And then came the revelations about his severance, which was first unearthed by the Lincoln Journal Star.

The UNL AAUP pounced on the payment, arguing that it “demonstrates that substantial funds remain available for executive compensation even as entire academic units are dismantled and careers are disrupted, if not destroyed.”

“The university cannot credibly claim that it lacks the resources to sustain academic programs and faculty positions while simultaneously paying over a million dollars to a failed chancellor,” Sarah Zuckerman, president of the AAUP chapter, said in a statement. Zuckerman is a professor in UNL’s educational administration program, one of the departments set for elimination.

She added, “This payout exposes the administration’s financial crisis narrative as a matter of priorities, not necessity.”

Replacing Bennett in the interim is Kathy Ankerson, who served as an executive vice chancellor at UNL until her 2024 retirement. Ankerson and system President Jeffrey Gold plan to hold campus listening sessions in the coming months to take public input. As Gold put it in a public message, “The news about Chancellor Bennett is one change on top of many other changes” at UNL.
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January 7, 2026
Higher ed groups blast Trump plan to expand applicant data collection

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More than three dozen higher education organizations, led by the American Council on Education, are urging the Trump administration to reconsider its plan to require colleges to submit years of new data on applicants and enrolled students, disaggregated by race and sex.

As proposed, the reporting requirements would begin on Dec. 3., giving colleges just 17 weeks to provide extensive new admissions data, ACE President Ted Mitchell wrote in an Oct. 7 public comment. Mitchell argued that isn’t enough time for most colleges to effectively comply and would lead to significant errors.

ACE’s comment came as part of a chorus of higher education groups and colleges panning the proposal. The plan’s public comment period ended Tuesday, drawing over 3,000 responses.

A survey conducted by ACE and the Association for Institutional Research found that 91% of polled college leaders expressed concern about the proposed timeline, and 84% said they didn’t have the resources and staff necessary to collect and process the data.

Delaying new reporting requirements would leave time for necessary trainings and support services to be created, Mitchell said. The Education Department — which has cut about half its staff under President Donald Trump — should also ensure that its help desk is fully crewed to assist colleges during implementation, Mitchell said.

Unreliable and misleading data?

In August, Trump issued a memo requiring colleges to annually report significantly more admissions data to the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

The Education Department’s resulting proposal would require colleges to submit six years’ worth of undergraduate and graduate data in the first year of the IPEDS reporting cycle, including information on standardized test scores, parental education level and GPA.

In a Federal Register notice, the Education Department said this information would increase transparency and “help to expose unlawful practices″ at colleges. The initial multi-year data requirement would “establish a baseline of admissions practices” before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against race-conscious admissions, it said.

But the department’s proposal and comments have caused unease among colleges, higher ed systems and advocacy groups in the sector.

“While we support better data collection that will help students and families make informed decisions regarding postsecondary education, we fear that the new survey component will instead result in unreliable and misleading data that is intended to be used against institutions of higher education,” Mitchell said in the coalition’s public comment.

The wording of the data collection survey — or lack thereof — also raised some red flags.

Mitchell criticized the Trump administration for introducing the plan without including the text of the proposed questions. Without having the actual survey to examine, “determining whether the Department is using ‘effective and efficient’ statistical survey methodology seems unachievable,” he said.

The Education Department said in the Federal Register notice that the additional reporting requirements will likely apply to four-year colleges with selective admissions processes, contending their admissions and scholarships “have an elevated risk of noncompliance with the civil rights laws.”

During the public comment period, the department specifically sought feedback on which types of colleges should be required to submit the new data.

The strain on institutions ‘cannot be overstated’

Several religious colleges voiced concerns about the feasibility of completing the Education Department’s proposed request without additional manpower.

“Meeting the new requirements would necessitate developing new data extracts, coding structures, validation routines, and quality assurance checks — all while maintaining existing reporting obligations,” Ryon Kaopuiki, vice president for enrollment management at the University of Indianapolis, said in a submitted comment.

The religious college’s Office of Institutional Research has just two staff members, Kaopuiki said. The Education Department would not provide additional funding and did not suggest it would offer technical support.

Vanguard University of Southern California, another religious institution, said in a public comment that the new work would fall on just one staff member.

A majority of the college leaders surveyed by ACE and AIR said it would take their institution between 250 to 499 hours of work to comply with the new reporting requirements. The federal proposal estimated that the changes will create over 740,000 hours of additional work across the higher ed sector.

But the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities said required labor will be much worse.

“The strain this collection will place on institutions cannot be overstated,” NAICU, which signed on to ACE’s letter, said in a separately submitted comment. “The proposal greatly underestimates both the burden and timeframe, particularly for colleges with limited staff, infrastructure, and resources already stretched thin” by other new reporting requirements.

Vanguard and the University of Indianapolis urged the department to delay implementing the new requirements until the 2027–28 collection cycle and to test them via a pilot with volunteer institutions before rolling them out nationally.

The institutions also proposed an exemption for small colleges, though they suggested different enrollment cut-offs — the University of Indianapolis suggested fewer than 750 full-time students, while Vanguard pitched fewer than 3,000.

Other concerns from colleges

The University of Texas System, along with the University of Alabama System and the ACE coalition, raised concerns about student privacy and the feasibility of collecting graduate-level data.

“Graduate admissions are inherently decentralized and vary by program,” Archie Holmes, the Texas system’s executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, wrote in a public comment. “Required data elements such as program-level GPA and test scores are not uniformly collected and may not be directly comparable.”

He recommended that the Education Department focus on undergraduate data until the process has been standardized.

Holmes also flagged that colleges risk inadvertently sharing private student data by disaggregating it so significantly, especially in smaller programs.

The University of Alabama System likewise warned of “significant legal and privacy risks” if the Education Department did not provide “clear federal guidance” on privacy protections.

The presidents of Capella and Strayer universities, two for-profit institutions owned by the same company, asked that the Education Department exclude noncompetitive scholarships from its reporting requirements for colleges that accept all or a “vast majority” of their applicants.

For example, a scholarship “whose only eligibility requirement is student persistence” does not “bear any connection to race” and reporting data on its recipients “would not advance the Department’s goal of detecting or preventing racial discrimination,” they said in a joint comment. But it would add an unnecessary administrative burden for colleges, they said.

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October 16, 2025
Democrats Blast McMahon Over Education Department Cuts

Sen. Bernie Sanders, ranking member of the Senate committee that oversees education policy, and 37 Democrats blasted Education Secretary Linda McMahon in a letter Monday, expressing “outrage” and arguing that the “reckless” cuts to her department’s staff last week will be “nothing short of devastating” for America’s students, schools and communities.

“At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when 60 percent of people live paycheck to paycheck, millions of Americans cannot afford higher education, and 40 percent of our nation’s 4th graders and 33 percent of 8th graders read below basic proficiency, it is a national disgrace that the Trump Administration is attempting to illegally abolish the Department of Education and thus, undermine a high-quality education for our students,” Sanders wrote.

The letter noted that less than 24 hours after the reduction was announced, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid temporarily shut down; Education Department workers responsible for fixing it had reportedly been fired.

Education Department spokesperson Madi Biedermann told the Associated Press that the layoffs didn’t affect employees working on the FAFSA or student loan servicing.

“They are strategic, internal-facing cuts that will not directly impact students and families,” Biedermann said.

But top Democratic appropriators, including Sen. Patty Murray of Washington State and ranking member of the House committee Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, disagreed. In their own letter Monday, they argued that the cuts would impact students’ daily lives and demanded to know how McMahon will uphold the law with a decimated staff.

“Firing the people that ensure states, school districts, and institutions of higher education live up to their legal obligations is neither efficient nor accountable,” the lawmakers wrote. “The President’s disregard for appropriations and other laws and the need for stability and productivity in government creates an imperative for the Department to provide accurate, timely responses on its use and planned use of taxpayer resources provided by the laws passed by Congress.”

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March 18, 2025