Tag: Career

TCU Moves Race, Gender Studies Departments to English

On June 1, Texas Christian University will close its stand-alone gender studies and race and ethnic studies departments and fold the majors and courses into the English Department, university leaders announced earlier this month.

The research university in Fort Worth is one of the first private institutions in the state to announce changes to its gender, sexuality and race-related academic programs after firings at Texas A&M University prompted the state’s public institutions to flag, censor and cut classes related to gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity.

In a meeting with English Department faculty on Oct. 22, TCU provost Floyd Wormley cited financial reasons for the change, asserting that political pressure “had no influence” on the decision to merge the Women and Gender Studies and Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies Departments into the English Department. But some faculty aren’t convinced. They say the move follows a decline in institutional support for the disciplines as the university faces immense pressure to eliminate any and all programming related to gender, race and ethnicity.

“The explanation from the administration is financial, and that doesn’t necessarily track with earlier correspondence with the department,” said Brandon Manning, an associate professor of gender and sexuality and race and ethnic Studies. The university is expanding its physical footprint and its student body, and “there are new programs and departments popping up daily,” he added. “TCU has been receiving considerable criticism online, and this seems to be a way to placate that criticism.”

A TCU spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that conversations about merging the departments started more than two years ago. The two departments already share a leadership structure. The English Department wasn’t mentioned as a partner until the Oct. 17 announcement, said Alexandra Edwards, an English instructor at TCU.

The merger will affect seven faculty members, five of whom will likely follow the programs into the English Department. Other faculty and support staff will be deployed to other departments, Wormley and Sonja Watson, dean for the AddRan College of Liberal Arts, told faculty at the Oct. 22 meeting. The merger is part of a universitywide restructuring project and is primarily due to low enrollment in the two departments, they said. The Spanish and Modern Languages Departments will also be combined, and so will the Geology and Environmental Sciences Departments.

“Decisions are not based on academic content but on data,” a TCU spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed. “Students currently majoring in these programs have been notified that there will be no impact to their academic progress, meaning they will be able to complete their degrees as planned. TCU is growing and will need more faculty and staff—not less—to ensure that we meet the academic needs of students and demand for a TCU education.”

This fall, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies enrolled nine majors and minors, and Women and Gender Studies enrolled just two. The two programs have never been large; since becoming stand-alone departments in 2018, their highest combined enrollment was 31 majors and minors, in fall 2020. But using low enrollments to justify the merger is unfair, Edwards argued. The programs haven’t had a chance to flourish because of constant structural changes, she said.

“They have been through a ton of turmoil and leadership turnover and reassignment to various different colleges and units across the university, so for a long time they’ve been unable to become stable,” Edwards said. “I don’t see how gender studies or ethnic studies could become a priority in an English department that’s already … juggling a lot of competing interests and varied disciplines.”

Department chairs weren’t given any warning about the merger with the English department, and faculty were not consulted before the decision was made, according to notes from the Oct. 22 meeting shared with Inside Higher Ed. When faculty asked why, Wormley said it was within “the purview of the institution to make those decisions.”

A One-Man Campaign?

While TCU isn’t subject to the same state laws that eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at Texas’s public institutions, the university is still getting plenty of external pressure to ax its gender and race studies offerings. Faculty say the campaign to abolish related classes, programs and events at the university is led by Bo French, a TCU alum and the son of a sitting TCU board member. French is also chairman of the Tarrant County Republican Party and a conservative politician who was denounced by members of his own party for using slurs for gay people and people with disabilities.

French has berated the university online for what he described as “LGBTQ” and “radical Marxist” indoctrination. He celebrated on Oct. 10 when the university removed the “LGBTQ+” link from the “community initiatives” dropdown on its website. Three days earlier, he posted a poll on X asking followers if the university should “dismantle its entire racist DEI infrastructure and also stop offering courses in degenerate LGBTQ ideology.”

French interpreted the merger news as a partial victory. “This is simply hiding what they do in another department. Nothing changes,” he wrote on X on Oct. 22. “However, it does show that the public pressure is working. They are bending, but we have to make them break completely and eliminate these courses altogether.”

Since then, he has continued to wage a social media campaign against anything related to gender, sexuality or diversity at TCU. On Oct. 22 he also posted on X a photo of a lawn sign advertising campus Pride Month events, alongside the comment “I know a few things are happening behind the scenes at ⁦@TCU⁩ and I am now more hopeful than ever, but they haven’t happened yet and so stuff like this is still polluting the campus.”

Publicly, university officials have said little in response to criticism by French and others, Edwards said. She noted that she was harassed and doxed by conservatives in August 2024 over posts she made before she worked at TCU, and she was advised by administrators to “lay low” until the firestorm subsided. A former TCU Women and Gender Studies professor who received a threat of violence in response to a 2023 course titled The Queer Art of Drag was asked by police to leave campus for his own safety, Edwards said. More recently, a political science professor was doxed for online comments she made in the wake of conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk’s death.

Asked how the university has responded to political pressure and harassment of faculty, a spokesperson said, “The university has a thorough process to notify faculty and staff members and provide them with appropriate guidance and support to mitigate potential risks.”

In conversations with faculty, TCU leaders have acknowledged the pressures of the political landscape on the university, particularly on the gender and race studies departments, Edwards said. At the end of the Oct. 22 meeting, Watson told faculty she had been concerned about the future of the departments since Trump was inaugurated in January. During a March 28 meeting between faculty and Watson about combining the gender and race studies departments, Watson expressed concern about recent executive orders from President Trump.

“I think that we all know that the executive orders disproportionately affect [Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies], right? … As I said in the beginning, [I am] still very much committed to CRES and very much committed to growing the number of majors, and so I think the biggest challenge … is, how do we increase?” Watson said during the meeting, according to a recording obtained by Inside Higher Ed. “All liberal arts majors’ programs are having this issue for various reasons, but we see these issues manifest in a different way in both CRES and [Women and Gender Studies].”

In an all-hands meeting on April 4, TCU president Daniel Pullin and general counsel Larry Leroy Tyner explained the difficult bind the current national and state political landscapes have put the university in.

“If there’s a cliff that if you step off, there’s serious consequences, and [if] you don’t know where the edge of the cliff is, you stay way away from the edge,” Tyner said. “The combination of uncertainty and significant consequences creates the chilling effect.”

About a minute later, Pullin added that he and his cabinet are “trying to figure out how to stay as far away from that unknown cliff as possible so we can stay on mission and live our values and execute our plan.”

(This story has been updated to more accurately reflect the chronology of events precipitating the merger.)

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October 31, 2025
Advice on Building a Strategic Digital Presence (opinion)
For early-career researchers (ECRs), building a digital research space can feel like another burden piled onto an already demanding schedule. The idea of online professional networking often evokes images of overwhelming social media feeds and self-promoting influencers.

Yet ECRs face a significant risk by solely relying on institutional platforms for their digital footprint: information portability. While university websites offer high visibility as trusted sources, most ECRs on short-term contracts lose web and email access as soon as their contracts expire. This often forces a hasty rebuild of their online presence precisely when they need to navigate critical career transitions.

Having worked with doctoral and postdoctoral candidates across Europe, common initial hesitations to establishing a digital research space include: uncertainty about how and where to start, discouragement from senior researchers who dismiss digital networks as not “real” work, fears of appearing boastful and/or the paralyzing grip of impostor syndrome. Understanding these hesitations, I emphasize in my coaching the ways that building a digital research space is a natural extension of ECRs’ professional growth.

Why a Strategic Digital Research Space Matters

A proactive, professional digital strategy offers several key advantages.
- Enhancing visibility and discoverability: A well-curated, current, consistent and coherent digital presence significantly improves discoverability for peers, potential collaborators, future employers, funders, journal editors and the media.
- Networking: Strategically using digital platforms transcends institutional and geographical boundaries, enabling connections with specific individuals, research groups and relevant industry contacts globally.
- Showcasing expertise and impact: Your digital space allows you to present a holistic view of your contributions beyond publications, including skills, ongoing projects, presentations, teaching, outreach and broader impacts.
- Meeting communication expectations: As research advances, particularly with public funding, the demand to communicate findings beyond academic circles increases. Funders, institutions and the public expect researchers to demonstrate broader impact and societal relevance and a strategic digital presence provides effective channels for these crucial communications.
- Controlling your narrative: Actively shape your professional identity and how your expertise is perceived, rather than relying on fragmented institutional profiles or database entries.
- Ensuring information portability and longevity: Platforms like LinkedIn, ORCID, Google Scholar or a personal website ensure your professional identity, network and achievements remain consistent, accessible and under your control throughout your career.
Getting Started: Choosing Your Digital Network Combination

The goal isn’t to be online everywhere, but to be online strategically. Select a platform combination and engagement style aligned with your specific objectives and target audience, considering the time you have available.

Different platforms serve distinct strategic aims and audiences at various research stages. Categorizing digital platforms into three subspaces helps map the landscape and can help you develop a more balanced presence across the research cycle.

First, identify the primary strategic goal(s): public dissemination, professional networking expansion or deeper engagement within your academic niche? Your answer will guide your platform selection, as you aim for eventual presence in each space.

Figure 1: Align your digital platform choices with your strategic goals and target audience.

Next, consider your audience spectrum. Effective research communication depends on understanding your target audience and their needs.
- Scholarly discourse: At the outset of your career, specialized academic platforms like ResearchGate, Academia.edu, institutional repositories and reference managers with social features (e.g., Mendeley) are key for engaging directly with peers. Foundational permanent identifiers like ORCID are crucial for tracking outputs across systems.
- Professional network: As you seek to develop your career, LinkedIn, Google (including Google Scholar) and X (formerly Twitter) are vital hubs across academia, industry and related sectors.
- Share for impact: TikTok, Facebook and Instagram excel for broader dissemination. Do adjust style and tone: While academics can process jargon and complex concepts, a broader audience will engage more in plain English.
A strong, time-efficient and pragmatic starting point is to create a free and unique researcher identifier number like an ORCID, develop a professional LinkedIn profile and engage with a relevant academic platform (this would be in addition to your presence on a university or lab website). Because the ORCID requires no upkeep and a LinkedIn profile can leverage existing institutional and biographical information, with this combination ECRs can quickly establish a solid foundation for gradual digital expansion over the medium term.

Make It Manageable: Time, Engagement and Content

Once the platform combination is in place, effective digital management requires balancing three core elements: time, engagement and content.

Figure 2. Key considerations for a sustainable digital networking strategy: balancing realistic time investment, meaningful engagement and appropriate content types.

Time Investment

Key message: Prioritize consistency over quantity.
- Focused engagement: Allocate short, regular blocks (e.g., 15 to 30 minutes weekly) for specific activities like checking discussions, sharing updates or thoughtful commenting between periods of focused research.
- Platform nuance: Invest strategically, recognizing that platforms have different tempos and life spans (e.g., a LinkedIn post typically has a longer life span than an X post).
- Campaign bursts: Plan ahead to strategically increase activity around key events like publications or conferences, utilizing scheduling tools for automated posting.
- Content cadence: Consistency beats constant noise, so plan a realistic posting schedule such as once a month.
Engagement

Key message: Focus on short but regular efforts.
- Active participation: Move beyond passive consumption by commenting, sharing relevant work and asking insightful questions.
- Build relationships: Genuine interaction fosters trust and meaningful connections.
- Monitor your impact (optional): Use platform analytics to understand what resonates and refine your strategy.
Content Type

Key message: Your hard work should work hard online.
- Written: Summaries, insights, blog posts, threads, articles.
- Visual: Infographics, diagrams, cleared research images, presentation slides.
- Multimedia: Short explanatory videos, audio clips, recorded talks.
- Cross-post: Share content across all relevant platforms (e.g., post your YouTube video on LinkedIn and ResearchGate).
Overcoming Reluctance

If you’re hesitant, consider these starting points:
- Start small, stay focused: Choose one or two platforms aligned with your top priority. Master these before expanding.
- Embrace learning: Your initial digital content may not be perfect, but consistent practice leads to significant improvement. Give yourself permission to progress.
- Integrate, don’t isolate: Weave digital engagement into your research workflow. Share insights from webinars or interesting papers with your network.
- Give and take: Focus on offering value by sharing insights, asking stimulating questions and amplifying others’ work. Reciprocity fuels networking.
- Set boundaries: Protect your deep work time. Schedule dedicated slots for digital engagement during lower-energy periods and manage notifications wisely.
- Be patient: Recognize that building meaningful networks and visibility is a long-term career investment.
Your Digital Research Space: A Career Asset

A strategic digital research space is essential for navigating and succeeding in a modern research career. A thoughtful approach empowers you to control your professional narrative, build lasting networks, meet communication expectations and ensure your valuable contributions are both visible and portable.

Maura Hannon is based in Switzerland and has more than two decades of expertise in strategic communication and thought leadership positioning. She has worked extensively for the last 10 years with doctoral and postdoctoral candidates across Europe to help them build strategies that harness digital networks to enhance their research visibility and impact.
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October 31, 2025
Retirees as Instructors

For the last few days, I’ve been in Boone, N.C., for the kickoff conference of the Rural Talent Lab. The conference has been terrific, with thoughtful presentations and a chance to reconnect with some folks I hadn’t seen in a while. I’m still processing much of what I heard, but one line in particular jumped out at me.

The presentation was about offering programs in the trades for students in rural locations. Addressing the frequent shortage of instructors in high-demand fields, one speaker—my notes betray me, so I don’t know who—mentioned that “we’re in the golden age of retirement, with baby boomers hitting age 65 every day.” He (I think) went on to say that if colleges were to approach companies with the suggestion of having them incorporate some teaching into employees’ final years before retirement, it could act as a combination of a glide path to retirement and a way to get well-qualified and experienced people as instructors.

I read once that the sign of a great idea is that as soon as you hear it, you wonder why you hadn’t thought of it. This one passes that test.

The areas in which this would make the most sense in the short term are the trades: HVAC, welding, plumbing and the like. These fields combine technical know-how with the ability to handle real situations in the field. It’s one thing to know how to fix a pipe; it’s another to know how to handle a cantankerous homeowner or business manager who accuses you of ripping them off. That’s where an instructor with long experience in the field can bring an added dimension.

An arrangement like this could make sense for the instructors, too, given the physical demands of these jobs. As they get older, the prospect of spending less time bending themselves into tight spots or fighting metal and more time teaching might hold some appeal. When I taught at DeVry in the late ’90s, I had a fair number of students in their 40s who were switching careers from construction to computer repair; nearly all of them mentioned back and knee injuries and general physical wear and tear as motivators. It’s not difficult to imagine that someone in a field like these, approaching retirement, might want to give their knees and backs an easier assignment. Teaching isn’t an easy task to do well, but its physical demands tend to be more modest.

For the employers, I could imagine a couple of upsides. For one, they might be able to hold on to good employees a little longer if those employees could intersperse teaching with their usual work. Secondly, they’d ensure a continued pipeline of new tradespeople coming in. It’s no secret that many skilled trades are facing a retirement cliff, since they largely skipped a generation. They need newbies.

For colleges, the upside would be having experienced professionals with industry contacts in high-demand fields. Yes, there would have to be some professional development in teaching techniques and dealing with common student issues. But stepping up our mentoring game is a good idea anyway—if this is the motivation to do that, so be it.

Wise and worldly readers, have you seen this tried at scale? If so, are there any hard-won lessons you could share? As always, I’m at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.

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October 31, 2025
GMercyU Unveils Crime Scene House for Student Investigations

Inside an unoccupied house, a student gingerly pushes open a creaky door and takes a wary step into a dark room—only to find the walls completely splattered with blood.

It sounds like the cliché climax in a horror movie, but for students in the criminal justice program at Gwynedd Mercy University, it’s a regular class assignment.

This fall, Gwynedd Mercy unveiled a new Crime Scene House, a three-story home that features various staged rooms for experiential learning in forensic science. Students now have a space for simulated criminal investigations, with each room configured to resemble a different crime scene they might encounter, including the blood spatter room.

Gwynedd Mercy is one of a dozen-plus colleges across the country that turn houses into mock crime scenes; West Virginia University claims the title for largest hands-on training complex in the U.S., boasting four crime scene houses, a vehicle processing garage, a ballistics test center and designated grounds for excavation.

The not-so-haunted houses are designed to give students a safe, supervised space to immerse themselves in a crime scene. Plus, it’s a great enrollment draw for students who get a thrill out of murder mysteries.

“We’re very excited about the opportunity to have students come into our program and learn the how-to, so then they walk out of here and they say, ‘This is what I want to do,’” said Patrick McGrain, associate professor of criminal justice and the program director at Gwynedd Mercy. “It really is for the benefit of creating a more professional law enforcement community.”

From convent to crime scene: McGrain and university leaders aspired to open a crime scene house on campus for years. In July, the dream became a reality when the Catholic university’s administrators identified an older building that used to house the Sisters of Mercy. The building was in disarray, and when McGrain was offered the opportunity to revamp it for students, he jumped at the chance.

The Crime Scene House holds a variety of staged rooms to practice different investigations including a kitchen, a bathroom, two bedrooms and an office. In addition, the house features spaces for other simulated experiences, including an interrogation room, an evidence area to analyze fingerprints and a model “flophouse,” or a low-rent motel room used for drugs. And of course, the blood spatter room.

“We’re going to teach students how to analyze blood splatter, the analysis of the trajectory,” McGrain said.

Every element of the house is available for students to manipulate and investigate, even the flooring.

“We have carpet laid down that they cut out pieces, use luminol and then take it over to the lab, well, what is it that we have?” McGrain explained. “Is it feces, it is urine, is it semen, is it blood? What is it that we’re looking at and what do you think happened in this room?”

Faculty can track students’ progress solving the investigations through cameras mounted in each of the rooms.

While the home at times may resemble an escape room, with CCTV cameras and a mystery to solve, “the only person locked in is the one who’s been kidnapped, and that’s been planned, and it’s a dummy,” McGrain said.

The university allocated a small budget for furniture, but a significant number of items came directly from campus community members, who donated household items or clothing.

“I even had two students who found a couch on the side of the road, grabbed it, put it in their trunk and brought it in,” McGrain said. “It is now the couch that sits in the living room.”

Because the house is designed to be ransacked and torn up by “criminals,” the university also keeps backup furniture and wall decor.

“If we want to break something, if we need to tear something, we do,” McGrain said. “The hands-on learning knows no limits.”

Experiential learning: Other academic programs, including nursing, psychology and social work, have simulation labs integrated into the curriculum to allow students to practice their skills. In the same way, the house gives criminal justice students a chance to gain career skills.

Before the Crime Scene House was established, Gwynedd Mercy faculty would set up a classroom to resemble the crime scene.

“It’s not nearly as detailed,” McGrain said. “You don’t have the furniture. You don’t have the fake drugs or guns.”

The facility has also served as a resource for law enforcement to train new detectives on how to use tech tools, such as digital photography and indoor drones.

Jerome Mathew, a junior criminal justice student, said having the Crime Scene House is a game-changer—especially for getting incoming students amped about studying criminal justice.

“They were really thrilled about seeing all the different fake drugs, money, different rooms, the cameras and how monitored everything was,” Mathew said.

Gwynedd Mercy has plans to grow the criminal science major and launch a forensic science minor. The Crime Scene House will be an integral piece of that, McGrain said. “We’re expecting to see a spike in applications and a spike in admissions.”

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October 31, 2025
ED Finalizes PSLF Rule Limiting Who Gets Forgiveness

Employees at any company the Trump administration deems as having “a substantial illegal purpose” will no longer qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness under a new set of regulations finalized Thursday by the Department of Education.

The final rule is very similar to the first draft released in August—both of which have been heavily criticized. The policy change, in the works for months, stemmed from an executive order issued in March. Lawsuits challenging the new rule, which takes effect July 1 of next year, are expected as soon as next week.

“My first reaction when reading the rule was that we will see them in court,” said Brian Galle, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who submitted a comment along with at least a dozen other scholars of tax law.

Collectively, the commenters called on department officials to conduct an extensive review and study over the rule, none of which were completed. So now, Galle said, the department will face the consequences.

“I know that firsthand,” he explained. “A rule that I wrote for the Securities and Exchange Commission was sent back by the Fifth Circuit because there was one statistical study that the agency didn’t do.”

Under the new rule, illegal activities will include: aiding and abetting violations of immigration or civil rights law, supporting terrorism, providing gender-affirming care, or “trafficking” children from one state to another for purposes of emancipation. The education secretary will decide whether an employer violates the rule based on a “preponderance of the evidence.”

Many Democrats, industry leaders and student borrower advocates who have spoken out against the rule say it is vague and could allow Trump and future presidents to abuse executive power, essentially choosing which organizations qualify based on ideological preferences.

Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, told Inside Higher Ed that the rule “opens the door for all kinds of mischief.”

“If you’re on the Trump side of the partisan political agenda on an issue, you get loan forgiveness. If you’re on the other side of the controversy, you don’t,” he explained. “A group promoting civil rights may be in jeopardy.”

The National Council of Nonprofits went as far as declaring the new rule “unlawful” and saying it sets “a troubling precedent.”

“Federal law makes clear that eligibility under PSLF applies to all charitable nonprofit organizations,” the organization wrote. “The Education Department does not have the authority to change eligibility. By unlawfully excluding certain nonprofits, the final rule opens the door to government overreach and abuse.”

The Trump administration and fellow Republicans, however, say it has nothing to do with partisan politics and instead is focused on terminating unlawful actions that by their “very nature run contrary to the public good.”

“As the name suggests, Public Service Loan Forgiveness was intended to help meet workforce needs for employers who serve the public good. Unfortunately, the open-ended nature of PSLF has forced taxpayers—many of whom never went to college, to foot the bill for employees at radical organizations that violate state and federal laws,” Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican and chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, said in his statement about the rule.

Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent also chimed in, saying in a statement that “the Trump Administration is refocusing the PSLF program to ensure federal benefits go to our nation’s teachers, first responders, and civil servants who tirelessly serve their communities.”

In addition to defining what activities are illegal, the rule outlines types of evidence that the secretary may consider in the decision process, establishes an appeals process and states that the department must provide “prompt notification” to both borrowers and employers when their eligibility is at risk. It also notes that, in general, employers with “minor compliance issues” and “no concerted practice of illegal activity” will be safe.

The department estimates that fewer than 10 employers will be affected each year. But critics say that estimate is based on little research and worry the effect will be much broader.

The National Council of Nonprofits said ultimately the rule could harm millions, as countless communities depend on their local nonprofits. By putting the nonprofit workforce at risk, they added, the rule jeopardizes nonprofits’ ability to meet those needs and provide essential services.

A collection of half a dozen physicians’ groups echoed that point, arguing that if hospitals and the medical professionals they employ lose access to PSLF, it could jeopardize both physicians’ financial stability and patients’ access to care.

“PSLF is not just a loan program; it is a lifeline that allows medical graduates to choose primary care or psychiatry careers in high-need areas without being weighed down by insurmountable debt,” the group wrote in a news release. “We strongly urge the Department of Education to preserve physicians’ access to the PSLF program and recognize that a healthy America depends on a strong physician workforce.”

Galle from Berkeley believes that this lack of awareness regarding the scope of impact will become evident in court. He said that such a lack of evaluation, along with what he sees as the department’s executive overreach in issuing the rule, will give any plaintiffs a strong case in court.

“The Supreme Court in the last eight years has really been at pains to say that Congress doesn’t give agencies … the authority to be way outside their lane,” he said. “And you couldn’t possibly be further outside your lane and your expertise than ED is with this rule.”

Shortly after the department announced the final rule, multiple legal groups said they intend to sue over it.

Democracy Forward, which has led a number of lawsuits against the Trump administration this year, and Protect Borrowers, a student loan advocacy group, described the new policy as “a craven attempt to usurp the legislature’s authority in an unconstitutional power grab.”

Student Defense, a policy, litigation and advocacy organization, accused the president of “playing political football with the financial well-being of people who have dedicated their lives to public service.”

All three said a lawsuit can be expected in a matter of days.

“Congress created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program because it is important for our democracy that we support the people who do the hard work to serve our communities,” Democracy Forward wrote in its release. “In our democracy, the president does not have the authority to overrule Congress.”

Galle said the key question in the legal fight will be whether the Supreme Court will enforce those checks and balances.

“Under any judge or justice who was applying the law as it is today, I don’t think this rule would have any hope of being upheld,” he said. “The only room for doubt is that it seems like the Supreme Court is willing to ignore most of what current law is.”

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October 31, 2025
4 Weeks Into Shutdown, Colleges, Students Running Out of Options

The government has been shut down for a month and Congress remains locked in a stalemate. Students are going hungry, veterans have been deserted and vital research has been left in the lurch. The longer the shutdown drags on, the more harm it will do to higher education.

Most urgently, the USDA will not use emergency funds to help cover the costs of the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program. More than a million college students who rely on SNAP for their basic needs won’t have that support starting Saturday. Mark Huelsman, the director of policy and advocacy at the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, said the situation will force students and colleges into “an impossible situation” and could lead to many students dropping out.

The crisis extends beyond food insecurity into student support programs, with the shutdown throwing veterans’ education into limbo. Nobody is answering the GI Bill hotline that thousands of veterans use each month to get information on tuition, eligibility and housing allowances. Staff at Veterans Affairs regional offices are furloughed, putting an end to career counseling and delaying GI Bill claims.

As direct services to students falter, colleges are moving into mitigation mode. Gap funds, meant to serve institutions in these circumstances, are dwindling. Inside Higher Ed reported last week that institutions are limiting travel, research and job offers in order to preserve cash while hundreds of millions in research funds are on pause. A training program funded by a grant from the Labor Department is on hold because a federal program officer isn’t at work to approve the next tranche of cash.

Ironically, part of Democrats’ resistance to reopening the government is serving to protect higher ed funding. Democrats are trying to prevent Republicans from clawing back approved funding through the rescissions process, like they did this summer with grants to public broadcasting and USAID. The risk to education funds that don’t align with the White House’s priorities is real. In a potentially illegal move of impoundment, the Department of Education has canceled or rejected funding for at least 100 TRIO programs affecting more than 43,000 disadvantaged students. Last month it reallocated $132 million in funds away from minority-serving institutions to historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration—never one to let a good crisis go to waste—is using the shutdown to further gut the Education Department. Most of the department has been furloughed, and 10 days into the shutdown the administration fired nearly 500 more Education Department staff. A federal judge indefinitely blocked the layoffs this week, but the administration will likely challenge the ruling. If the cuts happen, the department will have fewer than half the employees it started with in January. The offices that handle civil rights complaints, TRIO funding and special education will be decimated.

The staff cuts set the stage for Education Secretary Linda McMahon to reiterate her plans to shutter the department. In a post on X two weeks into the shutdown, she said the fact that millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid and schools are operating as normal during the shutdown “confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary, and we should return education to the states.”

“The Department has taken additional steps to better reach American students and families and root out the education bureaucracy that has burdened states and educators with unnecessary oversight,” she added.

Policy experts predict the shutdown will end around mid-November, when enough people feel the pain of not getting a paycheck and start to complain to their senators and representatives. But colleges won’t pick up where they left off. A significant pause in funding derails education journeys for disadvantaged students and throttles valuable scientific research. Subject matter expertise and human resources will be lost through Education Department staffing cuts. Already on the defense after nearly a year of attacks on DEI, academic freedom and research funding by the administration, higher ed will struggle to recover from yet another blow.

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October 30, 2025
The Future of the New England Transfer Guarantee

How does an initiative achieve sustainability beyond the life cycle of the grants that funded its implementation? This is the question that the transfer initiatives team at the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) set out to answer earlier this month during a convening of higher education leaders from across the New England region.

Background

First launched in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 2021 and scaled to Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont in 2024, the New England Transfer Guarantee is NEBHE’s landmark transfer initiative. Associate degree–holding community college graduates can transfer seamlessly to participating four-year schools in the same state with guaranteed admission, provided they meet a minimum GPA set by the receiving institution. There are no application fees or essay requirements for students transferring through this program. As of October 2025, there are 53 participating four-year institutions across all six New England states.

Planning and implementation of this initiative in the six states mentioned above has been made possible through funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Davis Educational Foundation, the Lloyd G. Balfour Foundation and the Teagle Foundation.

As was highlighted in a previous column and further contextualized in the longer-form “Third Annual Guarantee Enrollment Report,” students who have transferred through this initiative are performing well above the minimum GPA requirements receiving institutions set for their admission.

Beyond that, guarantee students are retained at their transfer destination at an impressive rate of 94 percent. Analyzing this annual data has also revealed that many of the students that transfer through this initiative are from traditionally underserved backgrounds, with over 47 percent of students who have enrolled through the initiative being Pell Grant recipients.

The Future of the New England Transfer Guarantee

With the grant-funded phase of this work coming to an end in December 2025 (March 2026 for the grant from the Balfour Foundation), the time is ripe for creating a plan to sustain the guarantee for future generations of students. NEBHE gathered state higher education system leaders from across all six New England states for a hybrid meeting at the Eagle Mountain House in Jackson, N.H.

Those who attended included individuals who lead public two- and four-year systems but also those who represent four-year independent colleges. The meeting was focused on determining NEBHE’s ongoing role in administering the guarantee beyond the life of the grant, and attendees discussed what kind of coalition-based governance structure would assure that the program adapted to future trends in the higher education landscape in a way that preserved its longevity for future generations of students.

Attendees described how the initiative has improved transfer pathways and simplified the transfer landscape for students in their respective states. “I just want to say how much we appreciate it,” Nate Mackinnon, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of Community Colleges, told the group. “From the community college perspective, we’re constantly interested in making sure our students lose as few credits as possible on their pathway.”

Other participants suggested incorporating artificial intelligence and credit for prior learning into the structure of the guarantee and offered examples of successful implementations of these ideas at their institutions.

Next, the meeting’s facilitator engaged participants in a conversation regarding the roles required to sustain the initiative in the long term. In addition to collecting and analyzing student-level enrollment data on an annual basis, NEBHE has committed to continue to publish the annual enrollment report for the New England Transfer Guarantee.

NEBHE will also continue to solicit any updates to the eligible programs that each four-year institution opens to guarantee students. Attendees recommended that NEBHE should engage the webmasters to whom they send such updates each year—to see what will be required for them to continue to keep these student portals up-to-date with information that community college students need to evaluate their transfer choices through the guarantee.

Attendees also expressed an interest in NEBHE’s continued involvement in promoting the initiative to community college transfer advisers on a regular basis by integrating the guarantee into existing statewide meetings and events that focus on transfer. Additionally, attendees saw potential in partnering with third-party student success organizations to reach students and ensure that they are aware of all the options available to them when it comes to earning a baccalaureate credential.

Next Steps

While the convening succeeded in outlining system-level stakeholder priorities, there are still details that must be ironed out. Given each state’s unique higher education landscape, a one-size-fits-all model for community college transfer adviser engagement would be ineffective, highlighting the need for more nuanced state-by-state plans. Outreach to student success organizations to explore opportunities for collaboration is another option that the transfer initiatives team at NEBHE must fully explore in the coming months.

There are questions that remain unanswered for the time being; however, this meeting affirmed that the region’s higher education leaders are committed to ensuring that the guarantee can continue to serve students for years to come.

Rob Johnston is the senior program coordinator for transfer initiatives at the New England Board of Higher Education.

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October 30, 2025
Loan Forgiveness Becomes Tool for Authoritarianism (opinion)

By now, it’s obvious that the Trump administration’s efforts to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities go far beyond enforcing federal immigration policy. The near-daily stories of inhumane detainment conditions, open violence against citizens and noncitizens alike, wanton civil rights violations, and purposeful shielding of these abuses from any form of public accountability lay bare that President Trump is now using ICE as a key component for advancing his administration’s hateful agenda.

This context is essential to evaluate why the administration has sung such a different tune with the advertised $60,000 student loan forgiveness offers to new ICE recruits, compared to the normal song and dance about how higher education is evil incarnate. Trump and his political allies didn’t suddenly discover the societal benefits of affordable education, as evidenced by his simultaneous efforts to strip loan forgiveness pathways from those who are deemed obstructors to Trump’s political goals. What’s clear is that federal student loan forgiveness is now a poverty draft, coercing increased ICE and military enlistment from among those experiencing economic desperation.

Weaponizing educational debt to fuel armed forces conscription from lower-income individuals is essentially socioeconomic hostage taking. It deprives people of their agency in choosing whether conscription is truly the career and life pathway they desire by forcing the decision as a survival tactic, especially when nearly half the country is approaching an economic recession deliberately caused by Trump’s policies.

A History of Weaponizing College Affordability

The easiest way for an authoritarian regime to maintain a highly militarized state is to make enlistment the only means of socioeconomic survival for the masses. This is exactly why the Trump administration is promoting student loan forgiveness for ICE recruits while curtailing eligibility for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. By passing the reconciliation bill that nearly tripled ICE’s budget while restricting Pell Grant eligibility for some students and cutting back basic needs programs like food stamps and Medicaid, congressional leaders have identified themselves as active participants in this strategy.

Though Trump’s tactics are an unprecedentedly naked attempt to weaponize student loan relief in the service of authoritarianism, this is a foundational concept in federal higher education policy that he’s taking the opportunity to exploit. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, the first federal educational assistance program for veterans, and most follow-up educational assistance programs were more focused on rewarding military service in already-declared conflicts than using benefits as a recruitment draw.

That shift came with the larger 1960s push to align higher education with the Cold War. California’s Master Plan of 1960 provided an opening for later attacks on college affordability, because it codified into public policy the idea that some types of institutions were worth attending more than others, mainly by segregating various types of educational experiences offered by different institutions. Later in the decade, then–California governor Ronald Reagan slashed public university budgets, in this way punishing students for antiwar protests. Reagan’s camouflaging of draconian education funding cuts as a necessary tool to combat the “filthy speech movement” became the groundwork for today’s deep inequality across all levels of the educational system.

Over the next several decades, federal and state policymakers abandoned their responsibilities to fund public higher education, which has strengthened the ties between college (un)affordability and militarization. In 2022, 20 Republican House members—14 of whom are still in office—wrote a joint letter to then-president Biden expressing concern that his efforts to provide widespread student loan forgiveness would harm the ability of the military to use higher educational benefits as a recruitment tool.

Last fall, 48 percent of 16- to 21-year-olds surveyed by the Department of Defense identified “to pay for future education” as a main reason they would consider joining the armed forces. This was the second-most common reason expressed in the survey, behind only “pay/money.”

Student Loan Forgiveness Is Not Siloed Public Policy

Public policy is rarely siloed into neat categories, and we are now experiencing the widespread consequences of allowing an inequitable and unaffordable higher education system to exist for so long in the United States. Trump isn’t the only federal policymaker endorsing this strategy, but he is the primary beneficiary. The more people willing to join ICE’s march toward martial law or forced to join ICE due to socioeconomic necessity, the easier it is for Trump to fully embrace authoritarianism and stay in power past January 2029.

This is the framing that should be used in every policy conversation about student loan forgiveness moving forward, not just for the offers given to new ICE recruits. These actions are not distinct or separate from the administration’s federalizing of the National Guard, ICE’s vast increase in weapons spending or Trump’s public consideration of invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy more troops to U.S. cities; they’re a vital complement. Ransoming access to an affordable higher education, along with its associated socioeconomic benefits, based on how willing someone is to inflict terror on immigrant communities or any other population that the administration deems undesirable, is a deliberate tactic to build an authoritarian military state.

Ideally, the current scenario facing higher education will end the usual hemming and hawing from policymakers about universal student loan forgiveness or tuition-free higher education being too expensive. Are the cost savings from not offering widespread forgiveness truly worth militarizing the country against the estimated 51.9 million immigrants living in the U.S., including more than 1.9 million immigrant and undocumented higher education students? Is appeasing Trump’s desire to play dictator dress-up so vital that policymakers feel compelled to willingly eradicate recent progress in national college affordability, discourage or outright bar international students from coming to learn in the United States, and shrink the economies of every state and congressional district due to the loss of international students?

State Legislatures Are the Last Line of Defense

The Trump administration is desperate to expand domestic militarization through ICE, as evidenced by advertisements on popular media streaming services and during nationally televised football games, public commitments to keep paying ICE agents as roughly 1.4 million federal workers go without pay during the government shutdown and the elimination or loosening of recruitment and training requirements for new ICE agents in relation to their age, physical fitness and ability to speak Spanish. As the Trump administration through ICE utilizes every available tool to further its authoritarian agenda, policymakers and institutions must use every available tool to combat said authoritarianism.

State legislatures wield vast amounts of legal authority over education policy in comparison to the federal government. However, that authority is useless if states capitulate or are otherwise unwilling to use that authority to protect their education systems and their larger communities.

Efforts like Connecticut’s new statewide student debt forgiveness program, California’s prohibition on campus police departments providing personal student information for immigration enforcement purposes and Colorado’s adoption of a new state law requiring public campuses to limit federal agents’ access to campus buildings are all welcome ways that state policymakers can fight back against ICE.

These efforts must be expanded to more states as ICE continues to ramp up its domestic terrorism and congressional leadership remains content to abandon its constitutional responsibilities to hold the executive branch in check. For institutions, advocates and concerned community members, resources available through the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration and its Higher Ed Immigration Portal, and from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, provide essential guidance on how to act in protecting immigrants and their families.

Student loan forgiveness, and the larger concept of an affordable and equitable higher education, could now be a matter of life and death for millions of people. The traditional willingness of policymakers to resist supporting higher education during times of economic surplus, while eagerly cutting educational funding at the first sign of economic distress, has now imperiled American democracy. Every image of ICE committing authoritarian violence is a stark call for policymakers to ask themselves what they value more: the fiscal savings of making no meaningful effort to address the more than $1.6 trillion owed in student debt, or American democracy itself.

Christian Collins is a policy analyst with the education, labor and worker justice team at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit organization focused on reducing poverty and advancing racial equity.

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October 30, 2025
Europeans Fear Trump-Style Attacks on Higher Ed Will Spread

The attacks on universities by the Trump administration have proven that higher education has “enemies” among authoritarian populist leaders and left other sectors wondering when they will be next, European leaders warn.

Michael Ignatieff, who was rector of the Central European University between 2016 and 2021, when the institution was expelled from Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, said the Hungarian prime minister had provided enormous inspiration to politicians around the world.

Speaking at the Going Global conference, Ignatieff, also a former opposition leader in Canada, said Orbán was “the master” who had learned that controlling the universities that recruit and train elites means they can eventually control the political system.

“Authoritarian populists have grasped the crucial strategic importance of universities … [which] gives them the possibility of ideological control of a society as a whole.”

As Trump continues to put pressure on U.S. universities, Ignatieff, now professor of historical studies at the CEU, which has relocated to Austria, likened higher education to sitting on a mountaintop “watching a storm forming on the horizon” over a nearby village.

“That village has been hit by lightning and thunder and storm, and our question now is how long will it be before that storm hits us?”

“We’re in a political battle. We cannot assume that the higher education sector in any of our countries is secure going forward. If the higher education sector can be attacked in the United States, let me tell you folks, it can be attacked anywhere,” he added.

“This sector has enemies. The American experience has shattered my confidence that the sector that I’ve spent my entire life in is safe.”

Speaking at the British Council event in London, Ignatieff said the “renationalization” of one of the most outward-looking educational systems in the world had put international education under threat for the first time in his lifetime.

He warned that European universities were also at risk because of how reliant they are on the state for research funding—allowing authoritarian governments to use funding against them to shut down academic freedom.

“I worry going forward that an authoritarian political regime could come to power … and begin to look at the way in which cutting off state funding or using the threat of cutting off state funding becomes an instrument to secure control of the higher education sector.”

Another weakness of the European sector is the lack of statutory protection for academic freedom, which makes universities vulnerable, he added, as do rising tuition fees in many countries.

“The increasing costs of higher education are weakening domestic popular political support for higher education,” he said. “It becomes easier and easier for populist politicians to attack higher education as a kind of elite luxury that the taxpayer pays for.”

Speaking at the same session, Maddalaine Ansell, director of education at the British Council, said the values that underpin higher education are coming under threat because of populism and polarization.

“In some places, academic freedom is challenged from without and highly polarized views amongst students and staff can affect robust debate within institutions,” she said.

“As nations focus on domestic issues, it can be harder to win arguments that internationalization of higher education deserves government support through regulatory support, including an enabling visa system and funding for international collaboration.”

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October 30, 2025
Blexit Escorted Off Hampton University Campus

Campus security at Hampton University escorted members of Blexit off the historically Black university’s campus this past weekend after the Black conservative group tried to join homecoming festivities as part of its “Educate to Liberate” HBCU tour. The group claims it was silenced by the university. Hampton leaders say Blexit didn’t follow proper protocols for visiting the campus.

Blexit, which is affiliated with the Charlie Kirk–founded Turning Point USA, planned to visit 10 HBCUs during homecoming events with the goal of “bringing conservative values to life, fostering critical thinking, and sparking powerful conversations on HBCU campuses,” according to Blexit’s website. The group also made stops at Howard University and other campuses, though it canceled a visit to Florida A&M University, promising to announce a new date.

Craig Long, a Blexit member, claimed on Instagram that Hampton University shut down the group’s dialogue with students.

“Instead of celebrating that spirit of open discussion, the university shut it down—claiming we ‘didn’t go through the proper channels,’” Long wrote. “Let’s be honest: this wasn’t about paperwork. It was about politics. We were silenced because we are Blexit—because we stand for Christian values, conservative principles, and independent thought that challenge the mainstream narrative.”

Hampton University leaders pushed back on Long’s description of the incident. They wrote in a statement that Blexit didn’t complete the application to participate in homecoming as a vendor or pay the associated fees. Out of 36 vendor applications submitted, the university approved 18, and Blexit “was among those that did not meet the stated requirements,” according to the statement. Those vendors were notified the week before the event that they would not be allowed on campus. University leaders framed the procedures as a “matter of public safety” to know who’s on campus, with nearly 15,000 people visiting for homecoming.

“Hampton University welcomes organizations and speakers representing a variety of perspectives, provided they follow established protocols,” the statement read. “BLEXIT failed to meet those standards.”

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October 30, 2025