Tag: Career

For Learning, You Have to Ride Up the Hill

On a recent vacation in the southwest portion of Ireland, as I was slogging away, trying to get the bicycle I was peddling up a reasonably daunting hill, I started thinking about generative AI.

I was thinking about generative AI because my wife, who is quite fit, but historically not as a strong a biker as I am, had disappeared into the distance, visible only because we were on twisting roads and she was several switchbacks ahead.

She also powered past my older brother, who competes in triathlons, and (I was told later) a French couple that muttered some apparent swears in their native language. Ultimately, she arrived only three or four minutes ahead of me at the top-of-the-hill way station, but as I huffed and puffed the final couple hundred yards, down to my next-to-lowest gear, moving at a just-above-walking pace, the gap felt enormous.

If you haven’t figured it out, my wife was riding an e-bike, while I was on a conventional (though very nice) bike. For the most part, the biking was very doable, but there were moments where I was not entirely sure I could or should keep peddling.

But I made it! Because we were touring with Backroads, an active vacation company, there was a delicious snack waiting for me at the top, which I enjoyed with great relish, knowing that I’d burned quite a few calories with many more to come that day.

I believe those French riders might’ve said something about “cheating” by using an e-bike, but this is obviously a case where what is cheating is in the eye of the beholder and significantly dependent on what you’re valuing about the experience.

If the point of our Ireland cycling vacation was to expend maximum effort on physical activities while cycling around the southwestern Ireland countryside, using an e-bike would prevent you from achieving your objective. But this is not the point of these kinds of trips. Yes, we have a desire to be active, outside and engaged, but the point is to use these methods to experience the place we’ve traveled to, and if—as happened to me a different day—you are perspiring so hard that the sweat dripping into your eyes has temporarily blinded you, it is tough to say that you are maximizing the experience.

Having the “best” vacation on this kind of trip is often a matter of balance. At times, I actively wished for the boost an e-bike could’ve given me. Other times, particularly on a day where we did 60 miles, and my brother and I were the only ones doing the whole itinerary, and we managed to go fast enough on the closing stretch to beat the Backroads van back to the hotel, I was thrilled with what it felt like to put my full physical effort behind the task.

I think my body paid for that big effort for a couple of days afterward, but I don’t regret it.

Like I said, it’s a matter of balance and values.

The e-bikes are great because they made it easier for my wife and me to ride together. The bottom-level boost had her toasting me up the hills, but on the flats, we were essentially the same speed, with us both working at levels we were comfortable with. The e-bike isn’t a motorcycle. You are still working plenty hard at the lower levels of boost.

But at the higher levels, you might find yourself speeding through the itinerary, as a group of four gentlemen in our group seemed to do, frequently arriving at our stopping points 20 minutes ahead of the rest of us.

I was thinking of generative AI because of the different lenses through which you can look at the use of an e-bike in the context of a bike-touring vacation.

You could see it as supplementary, allowing someone to experience something (like the view from a particular peak) that they wouldn’t otherwise unless they substituted something entirely nonbiking, like a car.

You could see it as substitutive, removing effort in exchange for feeling less tired and taxed at the end of the day.

You could see it as cheating, as those French riders did.

Because I don’t bike all that often at home, my primary “training” for the trip has been my regular Peloton rides, and for sure, those helped. My metrics on the stationary bike suggested I was well prepared. And I was, but well prepared doesn’t mean you aren’t going to face some very challenging moments.

There were several times—like that sweat-pouring-down-my-face period—where I would have gladly kicked in an e-bike boost in order to reduce my effort to conserve something for a different aspect of the trip, e.g., not being exhausted over dinner. But at no point did I need the boost to continue or finish the route, and if I was so inclined, Backroads is happy for you to hop in the van and get a ride the rest of the way.

I’m stubborn enough to not do that, but knowing myself, there were many times when an e-bike boost wouldn’t have been necessary or even desirable, when I would’ve switched it on in order to alleviate some measure of present discomfort. If it’s available, why not use it?

This would have signaled a shift in the values I initially brought to the trip. Whether or not it should be viewed as a betrayal or merely a change with its own benefits is a more complicated question, but at least for this trip, I was glad to not have the temptation.

I like to look at my opportunities to travel through the lens of experience. We aren’t going somewhere to check a box, but instead to literally spend time in a different place doing different things than our regular routines. I often know that I’ve had a good trip by the number of pictures I take—the fewer the better, because it means I was too absorbed in the experience to bother reaching for my phone to document something.

As we consider how to teach in a world where students have a superpowered e-bike instantly and constantly available, I’ve found looking at learning through the lens of experience is helpful, because focusing on the experience is a good way of identifying the things we should most value.

For my focus, writing, it seems almost irrefutable that if we want students to develop their writing practices, they should be doing the work without the assistance. The work must be purposeful and focused on what’s important in a given experience, but if that’s been achieved, any use of a boost is to miss out on something important. Learning is about riding up that hill under your own steam.

For writing especially, it’s axiomatic that the more you can do without the boost, the more you could potentially do with the boost.

Perhaps more importantly, the more you do without the boost, the greater knowledge you will gain about when the boost is truly an aid or when it is a way to dodge responsibility.

Figuring out where these lines must be drawn isn’t easy, and ultimately, because of the nature of school and the fact that students should be viewed as free and independent actors, the final choice must reside with them.

But we can act in ways that make the consequences of these choices and the benefits to opting for unboosted ride as apparent and inviting as possible.

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August 15, 2025
It’s a Small World (After All)

These days, most faculty members are tired, sad and as anxious as our tired, sad students. We spend time doing things that aren’t what our advisers did, or what they trained us to do, or even really what we want to do.

We serve on too many committees, busy with work that’s unrewarded and mostly invisible, and we must explain to civilians that, no, we don’t have summers off—we just don’t get paid to do the research we have to produce to survive, even if no one ever reads it. Some of us juggle zillions of courses at multiple institutions and can barely afford dog food. Most people getting Ph.D.s these days can no longer expect to land a permanent job. And many of us who were lucky enough to get on that last gravy train to tenure are ready to hop off, if we could only think of something else we’re qualified to do.

As tired, sad and anxious as I am, I still find this gig a privilege: indoor work, no heavy lifting. And the academic world, with all its wacky quirks, is fascinating. Like other cultural niches, we have our own jargon, celebrities unknown to the wider public, rituals that make zero sense to outsiders (and to many of us) and a deeply entrenched caste system that keeps us humble. (Ha-ha.)

I’ve been in multiple rings in the academic circus. After I bailed out of scholarly publishing—first at Oxford University Press and then at Duke—I worked in undergraduate admissions at Duke. I wrote a snarky book about that experience, then published two more to atone for my sins. That experience fed into my next act: For a quarter century, I spouted off in columns for ~~The Chronicle of Higher Education~~ a rival publication, hoping to give academics permission to write for and like humans.

When I became a faculty member, I felt I’d won the lottery. Who else has this kind of job security and so many degrees of freedom? I try to remember how fortunate I am when I’m tempted to complain. (Doesn’t stop me.) It helps to remember that having tenure is luxurious compared to being staff, where I was sometimes treated as one notch above custodians and had to deal with almost as much shit.

Two years ago, I was asked by Inside Higher Ed’s co-founder, my old buddy Doug Lederman, to create a paywalled newsletter for industry leaders. I got a crash course in governance and learned how little I understood about how universities are run. In off-the-record chats with presidents, I’ve realized that rarely does anyone see the full picture, including faculty members like me who believe they know it all.

Those conversations opened my eyes to just how brutal the job has become—death threats, harassment by frat-boy trustees, vicious attacks from faculty senates, black mold in presidents’ houses and other crap that would make most of us run screaming. It’s enough to think presidents deserve those big honking salaries. Unless they suck. Which, undoubtedly, some of them do. Just not the ones willing to talk to me and write anonymously for no rewards other than the rare opportunity to be truthful and vulnerable on the page.

Of course, the problems in higher ed go far beyond presidential housing crises and governance theater. The sector’s challenges create genuine existential threats to a shocking number of the nearly 4,000 institutions that make up our ecosystem. And yet, we beat on, boats against the current, trying to figure out how to keep doing meaningful work in this strange, insular, endlessly complicated world we’ve chosen, one that’s always been isolated from what others call “the real world” (and not in a fun MTV way) and that is, in many ways, small.

Small World is, in fact, the title of the middle novel in David Lodge’s campus trilogy. Long ago in a galaxy far, far away (the ’80s, NYC), I read it after gulping down the first, Changing Places, which includes one of the best bits in academic fiction. In a game called Humiliation, each person in the English Department names a book he hasn’t read but assumes the others have. So caught up in wanting to succeed, a poor sap calls out Hamlet. He wins the game and is denied tenure.

Lodge’s fictional world captured something true about academic insularity, but even his juicy satire couldn’t anticipate the daily reality most of us don’t want to face today—the fact that we are no longer trusted and respected by the public, we’re going through leaders like Kleenex during flu season, the feds are taking a chain-saw approach to federal funding, previously dull topics like accreditation are now going to change all of our lives and ideas of inclusion and access we were naïve enough to think would change the world are being thrown into the trash heap

It’s a ~~shit show~~ big yikes. In some ways, though, academe is still a small world, even if the days of budgets for international conference hopping à la Lodge are not within the reach of most of us. But if you read The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, you might think higher ed consists of about 20 schools, plus another dozen or so when they’re trying not to be snobby.

Most of us do not live in that world.

Most of us don’t live in a world where a degree-seeking student is an 18- to 22-year-old whose only job is going to class.

Most of us don’t work at institutions where the six-year graduation rate is 90 percent. Or 80 percent. Or even 60 percent.

Most of us don’t work at places that will be hit hard by the rise in the endowment tax.

Most of our schools were in decline even before the recent upheavals, facing eroding public trust and not enough butts to put in our classroom seats. And each department plays a zero-sum game trying to attract majors, which are, if you speak with employers, as I’ve done for my most recent book, important to no one (save faculty and department chairs).

Yet many faculty, staff and students don’t pay enough attention to what goes on beyond their campus gates to notice that everything else in our society has changed while we remain ~~conservative~~ stolidly averse to adaptation. With so many colleges and universities circling the drain, “Don’t look up!” feels like a reasonable response.

In this space, each I’ll draw on my experience to explore corners of our small world that may be overlooked. What I can promise is ~~no bullshit~~ candor about both the disasters and the unexpected moments of grace. Because even as our world grows smaller and more precarious, it remains endlessly fascinating. And well worth fighting for.

Rachel Toor is a contributing editor at Inside Higher Ed and the co-founder of The Sandbox, a weekly newsletter that allows presidents and chancellors to write anonymously. She is also a professor of creative writing and the author of books on weirdly diverse subjects. Reach her here with questions, comments and ~~complaints~~ compliments.

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August 15, 2025
Student Success Coaching Success Stories

For Chianti Grantham, her vocation in life crystallized the moment she started teaching.

“The first time I stepped foot in a classroom, I knew that that’s what I was supposed to do. I knew that was my happy place.”

Grantham works as an academic success coach at Houston’s University of St. Thomas, in the Kolbe School of Innovation and Professional Studies, an associate degree–granting arm of the university that supports nontraditional learners. In her role, Grantham assists students who are facing challenges that are impeding their academic progress, including those who have fallen below a 2.0 GPA.

In an interview with Inside Higher Ed, Grantham discusses how she does the work and effective strategies she’s used to support her students.

Q: What experiences or training have helped you establish your student success philosophy?

A: All of the experience that I’ve had over the years has taught me how to do what I do. I have a varied amount of experience from teaching, from being a tutor, and I think that it grew as I matured and grew as an educator. So did my skill level and paying attention to the needs of the students, and establishing those relationships with the students.

One of my very first classes that I taught, I had a student disclose in a paper that he had HIV. I learned quickly, like, “OK, this is about more than just teaching these students how to write. I have to be a mother. I have to be a support system. I have to be that person that they can go to.” Because if he felt comfortable enough in disclosing something like that with me, then I have a lot of power, and I can use that power for good, or I can use that power for bad. I decided that I wanted to use that power for good, and I specifically wanted to serve the nontraditional, underserved population.

I’ve been an academic success coach for going on four years at St. Thomas and then two years prior with Lone Star College. I have found that, once I reach out to a student and I’m like, “Hey, your instructor indicated that you have fallen behind. You haven’t turned in your assignments. Your assignments have been subpar. You’ve been unresponsive,” whatever the situation is—I always ask for very detailed information about what’s going on with the student—it’s like the floodgates open. Students are like, “Oh my gosh, somebody called me, somebody cares.” And that’s what I normally hear, like, “Yes, I’m sorry. I lost my job,” or “I’m overwhelmed with work,” or “I’m overwhelmed with life,” or “I’m depressed,” or “My husband and I have separated.” It’s generally an external factor that is impeding them from being successful in the classroom.

What I tell our instructors is: We have to get to the root of the issue, but we have to get to the root of the issue early. Early intervention is the best and most viable way to help a student to be successful. If I don’t know until a week before classes end, I can’t help that student, right? But if I know week one, they haven’t submitted any assignments within that first week, I tell the instructors to contact me, give me their information, tell me what’s going on and I’m reaching out. In that instance, I can help a student to turn it around.

Q: You recently started a program to support students on academic probation. Can you talk about where that idea came from and where you saw a need to improve processes for these students?

A: What we’re trying to do is find as many ways to support the students in their success. So, specifically, when they’re on academic probation—meaning that they’ve fallen below a 2.0 grade point average—at that time, they go under my wing.

They’re required to be in contact with me, either through phone call or meeting face-to-face or virtually, just to help them get back on track. We’re sitting down, we are creating a routine and a study schedule that also includes their personal lives.

What I tell a student is “Let’s look at your personal as well as your professional life. Let’s put all of those responsibilities in a calendar.” So whether it be a paper calendar or on a cellphone—I’m an old-school person, so I actually do paper and I do my cellphone—I help them in that way.

I also refer them to other resources. If they’re telling me they’re having some type of housing issue, I will contact our residence life department. I’ve also sought out shelters, other community resources. I have advocated for students to get scholarships so that they can pay their rent. It’s a gamut of things.

I’m in the process now with one of my colleagues to write an academic probation course that the students must take for an entire semester, and it focuses on time management, organizational skills and some mental wellness tips. All of these things that I have either seen myself in interacting with students or in my conversations with faculty and adjuncts, things that they’ve seen. We’ll be launching that this semester.

Q: How do you balance the complexity of student support work? Each student is going to need a different thing, so how do you keep yourself educated as to what those resources are and who’s going to help you and be a partner in this work?

A: What I found early on in this role is that it’s super important, actually, that I build relationships with other departments around the campus.

I have also learned that it’s super important that I build relationships within the community. So there have to be people within the community that I can have a conversation with about, like, “Hey, I have a student that is unhoused. Can you help me? They need food; they need somewhere to live. They need clothing.” Those relationships are key. If I didn’t have those relationships, I wouldn’t be able to support my students.

Q: How have you built up relationships with instructors as well, letting them know that you’re here to help with students’ success?

A: At the beginning of every semester and then midway through the semester, I always send an email to all of the instructors reminding them, “I’m here. These are the services that I offer. These are the hours that I’m available if the students are performing at a lower level, if they’ve inquired about additional resources, if they’re unresponsive, if they said, ‘Hey, I just need help.’” If faculty feel they can’t offer that, those are the kind of things that I tell the instructors that I am able to help the students with.

Also, I advocate for the students. Because I know these students very well, I’m copied on all emails that are sent to students when there is an external factor that’s going on that’s impeding them from being successful. I’m able to just keep a pulse on what’s going on. But yeah, my relationships with the faculty are great. It has to be, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to support my students.

Q: Do you have any advice for other academic success coaches you’d like to share?

A: The one thing that I would say is the relationships that you build are so key. If you have relationships, if you reach across the aisle, so to speak, and you keep an open mind, just because someone doesn’t look like you, just because someone doesn’t share the same interests and beliefs as you, doesn’t mean that you can’t have a relationship with them.

Some of the most beneficial relationships that I’ve had with students have been with people that are not like me and don’t share similar interests as me, but we’ve been able to come together.

A perfect example is I had a student come to campus. He is local, but he didn’t ever come on campus because our programs are fully online. He’s really shy, so when he came to campus, I made a point to introduce him to one of my colleagues over at the peer-mentor program so that he could become a peer mentor. I took him over to career services because he was interested in an internship program, so I put him in touch directly with the person that handles that. Then he was like, “Oh, well, I also want to get involved in this particular club.” Well, it just so happened that the person in career services is also over [at] that particular club.

I didn’t just pass him off like he was a baton or a number. I took him to these specific people. We had a conversation. We determined what the need was. I already knew what the need was, but I also have to help students advocate for themselves, right? That is the biggest thing—those relationships have been key, because I’ve been able to go into spaces that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to, or maybe not effectively go into.

If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.

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August 15, 2025
Recipe for Science Superpower? “Pay Your Taxes With Pride”

Denmark’s world-leading success in commercializing research should not be written off as a one-off confined to the country’s booming weight loss drug industry, a Nobel-winning scientist has argued.

Since Novo Nordisk’s diabetes treatment Ozempic was sold as weight-loss drug Wegovy, the Danish biotech company has quickly grown into one of the world’s biggest companies and Denmark’s largest single corporate taxpayer, contributing almost $4 billion in corporate taxes in the year ending March 2025—about half of the country’s total corporate take.

A further $3.8 billion in income taxes—which can reach up to 56 percent for higher earners—was also collected from Novo Nordisk staff in 2024.

That success has led to major interest in how Denmark’s model of combined strong fundamental and applied research paid off so spectacularly and whether it can be replicated, although some pundits have wondered whether the serendipitous discovery of Ozempic—whose roots lie in research on snake venom—represents a one-shot for its industrial science sector.

Speaking to Times Higher Education, however, the Nobel laureate Morten Meldal, who is professor of chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, said Novo Nordisk’s story should not be seen as an outlier in Danish research but one of many prosperous science-based companies based in the country of just six million people.

“Novo Nordisk is the result of Denmark’s system—its success is directly attributable to how our society operates: We have high taxes, but those taxes result in huge tax-exempt industrial foundations funding science and creating opportunities for both academic and industrial success. That is why Novo Nordisk happened in Denmark,” said Meldal, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2022.

While Novo Nordisk—whose $570 billion valuation last year was famously larger than Denmark’s entire GDP—has captured the interest of research policymakers, it should be understood in a wider context of sustained investment in research from industry, he added.

“Look at Novozymes, Maersk, Carlsberg—if you consider how much our companies invest in research, it is far more than the government. Novo Nordisk has the blockbuster product now, but it arrived within the context of our system—there are lots of companies doing well by commercializing research.”

Noting the advances made by U.S.-based Eli Lilly, which has two medications—Mounjaro and Zepbound—approved for use by American regulators, Meldal predicted that Novo Nordisk’s undisputed advantage in this area will eventually be eroded. But Denmark’s system will produce other big science success stories, said the biochemist, who leads the synthesis group in the chemistry department at the Carlsberg Laboratory.

“We have won so much with Novo Nordisk, but its scientific success is the rule, not the exception,” he said, underlining the importance of basic research to create the opportunities of tomorrow.

Denmark’s success in research has an even simpler root, continued Meldal, who was speaking at the annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting held in southern Germany last month.

“The best investment that any country can make is education; the payback on this is huge, and that allows for other investments, such as science. To do this you need our high-tax system and a government dedicated to long-term success of the entire society,” he said.

“My advice to any country who wants Denmark’s system of science is simple: Pay your taxes with joy and ask for return on investment for the community.”

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August 15, 2025
CEO Reflects as the Common App Marks 50 Years

Ever since 15 private colleges and universities teamed up to launch the Common App 50 years ago, the college admissions form has shifted practices and technology to meet the changing needs of institutions and students.

For instance, the latest iteration of the application, which opened Aug. 1 for the 2026–27 academic year, has what the organization calls a “refreshed look” and a new question that allows students to share their experiences with working at a paid job or taking care of their siblings. Common App, the nonprofit that runs the portal, piloted the Responsibilities and Circumstances question over the last three years, which showed in part “the importance of giving students space—beyond the personal essay—to share how these factors have shaped their high school experience,” the organization wrote in its innovation guide.

Common App is continuing to build out its Direct Admissions program, in which eligible students get an admissions offer before they actually apply. In its second year, 119 institutions have participated in the initiative and more than 700,000 students received offers.

Nearly 1.5 million first-time applicants completed the Common App in the 2024–25 cycle, submitting more than 10 million applications, according to a report released this week. That included just over 571,000 first-generation students—a 14 percent increase compared to the previous cycle. The Common App is aiming to continue to increase the number of applicants who are first-generation and from low- or middle-income households as it seeks to close equity gaps.

For this current cycle, more than 1,100 institutions are participating in the Common App, which includes 10 community colleges—yet another change for the organization aimed at ensuring students know about the available opportunities.

As the organization marks its 50th anniversary, CEO Jenny Rickard sat down with Inside Higher Ed to talk about how the Common App has changed over the years and what’s next. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: How has the founding and the history of Common App influenced the organization today?

Jenny Rickard has led Common App since 2016.

A: The thing about Common App that is unique is how its mission actually has not changed over the 50 years of history. It still is an organization that is governed by our members. The mission has always been to simplify the admission process to enable more students to gain access to higher education. So the idea of trying to simplify the college application process by collaborating and working with all the different stakeholders in the admission process—that include students, applicants, school counselors and, obviously, admission officers—is how we go about developing this application, and it’s critically important that we listen to all of those different constituencies. Over the 50 years of Common App, what has changed is technology and the demand for higher education has continued to grow over that time. Just as the times have changed, we’ve expanded the types of institutions that we serve. As a result of that, the students and the different high schools or secondary schools that we’re able to reach.

Q: As the demographics of who is attending college have changed, Common App has made an effort to adjust to that, such as working to better serve financially independent students. So what are the biggest demographic shifts happening now and that you see coming in the applicant pool over the next few years? And how are you looking to accommodate and invest in those changes?

A: I think one of the main challenges over the past 50 years has actually been reaching different socioeconomic groups. So our moon shot that we launched to close our gap in the income bands of students using Common App shined a light on the access challenges that higher ed has faced. And some of the initiatives that we have launched are to address that gap—70 percent of the students using Common App to apply to college are from above the national median income and 30 percent are below. And that’s something that has been pretty constant in the college admissions space. We’re working through some of the initiatives that we’ve launched to reach out to more low- and middle-income students who may not think that college is something that’s possible for them, to let them know it is possible and you can go to college, and colleges would love to see you there.

So it’s trying to go beyond addressing some of what I’d call the logistical barriers that students face to apply to college and get to some of the social and economic barriers that students face in applying to college. The main theme of what we’re trying to accomplish these days is expanding access to students who have felt that higher education may not be attainable for them.

Q: One of those initiatives is direct admissions. Why is that something you wanted to invest in and how’s the program going?

A: There are students who won’t even create a Common App account because they fear that rejection. And so one of the things that we’re working on is, how do we give students the positive reinforcement that you are going to be able to find a college? There are colleges that would love to enroll you. That can then inspire them to not only perhaps apply to some of the colleges that are reaching out to them, but also maybe think more broadly about where they might want to go to school and understand that they have some agency in this process.

How we went about doing our direct admission work was inspired by the state of Idaho that had launched a program to let high school students know about the state institutions that they could get into. And we looked at that and thought, “Wow, what could Common App do nationally to help students in states that may not have a direct admission program, but also be able to expose them to the 1,100 colleges and universities that are members of this nonprofit membership association?”

We did three different pilots to email students. We worked on the language and tried to understand from the student perspective what they were experiencing. We worked with our member colleges to understand the process from their vantage point as well as school counselors to see what might work best for their students and how to support them in this effort. And after the three pilots, we decided we could scale it and also enhance the technology so that we went beyond an email notification.

Once they’re in Common App, they can now have a dashboard to see which schools would already admit them if they just continued in the process with those institutions. Every year, we make enhancements to the process as we learn from all the different stakeholders about which aspects are supporting students the best and which are supporting the institutions the best.

Q: And the number of institutions participating in the direct admissions program is going to increase to more than 200 this fall, correct?

A: I found it overwhelming, in a really great way, that we reached out to over 700,000 individual students with direct admission offers last year. Thinking about the scale that we have and being able to provide that positive reinforcement to help encourage students to continue in the admission process and be able to attain higher education is really exciting.

Q: Certain elements of the admissions process are under scrutiny, such as concerns about standardized tests. I recently wrote about a report led by a Common App researcher that found letters of reference for some minority groups tend to skew shorter. What do you make of those debates and how do you think college admissions will change over the next several years?

A: As technology changes and institutions look at their own way of doing their admission processes, we will continue to work with our members to understand what they are experiencing and what they are wanting in order to enroll the classes of students that they want and who will thrive on their campuses. We have a common platform, but there is also flexibility by institutional type, as well as a section for colleges to have their own questions beyond what’s on the common form. That format has provided the flexibility for us to be able to have a very diverse group of members, and also in welcoming associate’s degree–granting community colleges to the platform.

We’ve been constantly evolving as the higher education environment has evolved, as technology has evolved. When you look back at Common App 50 years ago, its technology inspiration was the photocopier, and the idea was a really great idea of admissions deans seeing that they were asking some similar questions, maybe they could streamline this process for students. And then floppy disks came along, and admissions officers and college counselors said, “We need to move into this floppy disk area.” And they quickly pivoted when the internet came out, and in 1998 launched the first online application. So we will continue to evolve. Obviously, with artificial intelligence, we’re looking into how this can assist in the process.

Q: Common App has reams of data about students’ applications, and the organization has worked to make that information more easily available. What do you see as Common App’s role in the world of higher ed research?

A: We were very grateful to the Gates Foundation who, over five years ago, awarded us a grant to create a data warehouse so that we could share nationally about trends in the college application process and help shine a light on areas where there are differences across institutions and across students. So you pointed to that research about how recommendations for some populations of students aren’t as strong as others. What does that mean? And is that a reflection of the students? Is it a reflection of the secondary schools that they might attend?

Because when you think about the great diversity of colleges, the diversity of secondary schools is that much more, and the opportunities that students have [are] so different, and being able to really highlight what that means from a student access perspective is critically important for all of us to try to make sure that students have the same level of opportunities.

So investing in that data warehouse—and that investment from the Gates Foundation—is something that has really transformed us, not just only from the research reports that we’re able to do but also during COVID, we were able to see right away that first-generation college students’ applications had really dropped off. And we were able to alert all of our members that COVID was really having an impact on first-generation college students and [look into] what we could all do to try to mitigate that negative impact.

It also has been important for us to be able to understand how students are persisting within the Common App, and to help us enhance the system to try to ensure that students are not only able to start an application but to complete the application. And we’ve been able to collaborate with organizations like the National Student Clearinghouse to see if students are persisting in college. We have been able to add the texture that the admission application provides to the clearinghouse data to understand more about student behavior, not only in Common App but also in college.

I see that as all critical in terms of informing our broad community about the kinds of changes we might need to make or things that we might want to stop doing because it’s not helping the situation. The data has really just shined a light on a number of the challenges in the admission process and informed us about ways that we might be able to mitigate those challenges. Direct admission is one of those.

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August 15, 2025
Indiana Governor Responds to IU Plagiarism Allegations

Gov. Braun has appointed the entire board at Indiana University.

Anna Moneymaker/Staff/Getty Images North America

This article has been updated to reflect changes to WFYI’s original reporting

Indiana governor Mike Braun said that Indiana University’s Board of Trustees should “take action” if allegations that President Pamela Whitten plagiarized her doctoral dissertation are true, WFYI reported.

Braun’s comments this week came in response to reporter questions about the plagiarism allegations. A report earlier this year found parts of her dissertation, published in 1996, appeared to plagiarize other academic research. IU officials brushed off that report, telling media outlets that the university investigated the plagiarism allegations in the summer of 2024 and determined the claims had no merit. But last week, a local newspaper reported new findings that indicate Whitten copied other research.

Braun, a Republican, said at a press event that he expects the board “to get on that right away,” responding to the hypothetical about the Whitten allegations. He didn’t specify how the trustees should look into the charges.

IU’s board is entirely appointed by Braun, following a change to how trustees are selected earlier this year. Previously, the governor appointed six members while three others were elected by alumni. But a provision in Indiana’s latest budget bill now gives the governor full power over who serves on the board, which he quickly exercised, selecting new trustees in June and July.

IU did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

The plagiarism allegations add further controversy to Whitten’s time at Indiana. Whitten, who has been president since 2021, has been accused of retaliating against a professor for criticizing her and stifling academic freedom, while also imposing broad restrictions on campus speech. Indiana has also tried to prevent professors who took buyouts from criticizing the university.

IU faculty voted no confidence in Whitten last year following a string of controversies.

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August 15, 2025
Indiana Governor Responds to IU Plagiarism Allegations

Gov. Braun has appointed the entire board at Indiana University.

Anna Moneymaker/Staff/Getty Images North America

This article has been updated to reflect changes to WFYI’s original reporting

Indiana governor Mike Braun said that Indiana University’s Board of Trustees should “take action” if allegations that President Pamela Whitten plagiarized her doctoral dissertation are true, WFYI reported.

Braun’s comments this week came in response to reporter questions about the plagiarism allegations. A report earlier this year found parts of her dissertation, published in 1996, appeared to plagiarize other academic research. IU officials brushed off that report, telling media outlets that the university investigated the plagiarism allegations in the summer of 2024 and determined the claims had no merit. But last week, a local newspaper reported new findings that indicate Whitten copied other research.

Braun, a Republican, said at a press event that he expects the board “to get on that right away,” responding to the hypothetical about the Whitten allegations. He didn’t specify how the trustees should look into the charges.

IU’s board is entirely appointed by Braun, following a change to how trustees are selected earlier this year. Previously, the governor appointed six members while three others were elected by alumni. But a provision in Indiana’s latest budget bill now gives the governor full power over who serves on the board, which he quickly exercised, selecting new trustees in June and July.

IU did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

The plagiarism allegations add further controversy to Whitten’s time at Indiana. Whitten, who has been president since 2021, has been accused of retaliating against a professor for criticizing her and stifling academic freedom, while also imposing broad restrictions on campus speech. Indiana has also tried to prevent professors who took buyouts from criticizing the university.

IU faculty voted no confidence in Whitten last year following a string of controversies.

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August 15, 2025
The Myth of Antisemitism at Harvard

As rumors swirl that Harvard University will soon capitulate to the Trump administration and pay a $500 million fine, it’s important to speak out against university officials who bow down to authoritarianism. I’ve argued for why Columbia and Brown were wrong to settle, how their agreements endanger academic freedom, and why these agreements leave universities more vulnerable to future attacks by the Trump regime.

But it is also important to reiterate the fact that the reasons cited by the Trump administration for why Harvard must pay this money are lies. The Trump administration’s assertion that Harvard has committed antisemitic discrimination against Jews is a series of falsehoods fabricated by an antisemitic president and his obedient bureaucrats who seek to punish their perceived political enemies on fraudulent grounds.

On June 30, 2025, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism issued the finding that “Harvard University is in violent violation of Title VI.” No one knows what a “violent” violation is, since this bizarre term has never been used before, but the result was inevitable. Since Harvard had already been punished for imagined antisemitism far more harshly than any college in American history, with billions of dollars in grants cut off without due process, the finding of guilt was an inevitable ex post facto determination.

Still, it’s important to examine this absurd finding of antisemitism at Harvard in depth, because it sets a standard that all colleges will be expected to obey, and because it requires the worst attacks on free speech ever ordered by the federal government.

Most of the government’s report comes not from any investigation of its own, but from Harvard’s own self-examination of antisemitism on campus. The Trump administration’s Notice of Violation against Harvard is almost comical for its lack of evidence of any wrongdoing committed by Harvard.

The Trump administration concluded, “We find that these and other actions contributed to a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard,” citing a large number of cases of people engaged in peaceful expression, including several silent “study-in” protests at Harvard libraries. Incredibly, Harvard’s unjustifiable repression of silent, nondisruptive protests, which included banning dozens of students and faculty from the library, was used by the government as evidence that Harvard has done too little to protect Jewish students.

When carrying a piece of paper into a library is punished by Harvard, it’s a travesty. When Harvard punishes its students and faculty for carrying a piece of paper into a library and this is cited by the government as insufficiently repressive of free speech, it’s a disaster.

This also shows why Harvard may be willing to cut a deal with the government, despite the humiliation required to bow down before Trump: The repression demanded by the Trump regime is precisely what the Harvard administration has inflicted upon its students and faculty and wants to expand. Censorship is not an unfortunate side effect of any deal with Trump; it may be Harvard’s goal to use this agreement to provide an excuse for crushing dissent even more than it already has.

The other primary evidence against Harvard cited by the Trump administration was a 2024 Harvard survey of 2,295 students, faculty and staff that found 61 percent of Jewish respondents felt there were academic or professional repercussions for expressing their political beliefs, and 15 percent of Jewish respondents said they did not feel physically safe on campus. But the Notice of Violation completely omits the fact that the same survey found that a much higher proportion of Muslims feared professional repercussions (92 percent) and feared for their physical safety (47 percent).

The surveys indicate that Islamophobia at Harvard is a far worse problem than antisemitism. Yet Harvard hasn’t taken any significant actions against Islamophobia, and Harvard hasn’t adopted a new definition of Islamophobia to prohibit double standards in criticizing Muslim nations. And the Trump administration has done nothing despite the far greater fears expressed by Muslims at Harvard.

Is there antisemitism at Harvard? Sure, there’s antisemitism everywhere, just as there is racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia and every other form of bigotry. But we don’t hold universities responsible for banning these ideas under threat of massive government retaliation. In fact, we demand exactly the opposite: Colleges must protect hateful ideas and refuse to censor them.

Far from being “deliberately indifferent” to antisemitism as the Notice of Violation claims, Harvard has bent over backward to suppress free speech, ban protests, denounce its own students and faculty, and punish people without due process, all in the name of censoring criticism of Israel. It’s difficult to name an American college that has done more to suppress free speech in the name of fighting “antisemitism” than Harvard, but no amount of repression will ever satisfy the Trump regime.

I don’t want people to think that Harvard as an institution is free from antisemitism. Harvard has indeed engaged in antisemitism and deserves condemnation for doing so. In April, Harvard administrators banned Jews from holding a Passover seder, by far the most clear-cut example of institutional antisemitism at Harvard. Banning Jews from conducting a religious ceremony on campus is clearly antisemitic. But in this case, Harvard’s antisemitism was directed at Jews critical of Israel, so naturally the Trump administration completely ignores it.

Even though it’s wrong for Harvard to try to suppress Jewish religious activities for political reasons, this isolated example of antisemitic repression would not justify a government investigation, let alone a finding of a “violent violation.” Private colleges should have wide discretion to make bad decisions, even those that violate their own standards of free expression and the religious rights of their students, without being subjected to government penalties.

Likewise, the anti-Palestinian bias evident in Harvard’s repression of pro-Palestinian protests on campus is also a clear double standard and violation of Title VI’s rules protecting students based on national origin. But moral criticism, not government control, is the best way to fix the problem.

I’ve argued that the repressive demands made against Harvard by the Trump regime are a blueprint for the obedience all colleges will be required to observe. The same is true of the fake “antisemitism” finding against Harvard, which provides a model for what future Title VI “investigations” will be. The government will make a list of every protest and controversial view expressed on a campus, quote a few right-wing students looking for a Columbia-style payday about how they are trembling in fear at hearing ideas they don’t like, and conclude that the university failed to do enough to protect the sensitive feelings of conservative students against the horrors of being criticized.

Although this charade of antidiscrimination law has begun with the Trump administration pretending to care about antisemitism, it won’t be long before men start complaining about the hostile environment caused by feminists, white guys express their fear of anyone uttering the word “diversity” and, of course, all the straight people and devout Christians who are oppressed by the gays. If this kind of ridiculous evidence of “harassment” is accepted against a university for allowing free speech, then it can be equally applied by the Trump administration to any college that permits students and faculty to criticize right-wing dogmas about race, gender or sexuality.

If Harvard submits to the Trump administration, it will be endangering its own finances, abandoning the values of academic freedom and betraying its students and faculty. But even worse, Harvard’s obedience will give the Trump administration license to pursue every college, for every implausible reason, until they submit.

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August 15, 2025
UChicago Freezing Ph.D. Admissions for Multiple Programs
The University of Chicago’s Arts and Humanities Division is reducing how many new Ph.D. students it admits for the 2026–27 academic year across about half of its departments and completely halting Ph.D. admissions elsewhere. Multiple language programs are among those affected.

In a Tuesday email that Inside Higher Ed obtained, Arts and Humanities dean Deborah Nelson told faculty, staff and Ph.D. students, “We will accept a smaller overall Ph.D. cohort across seven departments: Art History, Cinema and Media Studies, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, English Language and Literature, Linguistics, Music (composition), and Philosophy.” The university didn’t tell Inside Higher Ed how many fewer Ph.D. students would be accepted across those departments.

“Other departments will pause admissions,” Nelson wrote.

Andrew Ollett, an associate professor of South Asian languages and civilizations, said that means no new Ph.D. students for these departments: classics, comparative literature, Germanic studies, Middle Eastern studies, Romance languages and literatures, Slavic languages and literatures, and South Asian languages and civilizations, plus the ethnomusicology and history and theory of music programs in the music department.

While the university didn’t provide an interview or respond to multiple written questions, a spokesperson did point out that the UChicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice is also pausing Ph.D. admissions, while the Harris School of Public Policy is pausing admissions for the Harris Ph.D., the political economy Ph.D. and the master of arts in public policy with certificate in research methods.

“A small number of PhD and master’s programs at the University of Chicago will pause admissions for the 2026–2027 academic year while divisions and schools undertake comprehensive reviews of the programs’ missions and structures,” UChicago said in a statement. It said the aim is “ensuring the highest-quality training for the next generation of scholars” and the pauses “will not affect currently enrolled students.”

UChicago, which faces debt issues, has become yet another example of well-known universities freezing or scaling back Ph.D. admissions and programs amid financial pressures and other factors. In November, before Trump retook the presidency, Boston University said it was pausing accepting new Ph.D. students in a dozen humanities and social sciences programs, including philosophy, English and history. In February, the Universities of Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh announced pauses, following other institutions.

But UChicago’s reductions for language programs also reflect a broader trend of universities scaling back foreign language education offerings. In 2023, West Virginia University became infamous in academe for its leaders’ decision to eliminate all foreign language degrees.

“It’s sad and pathetic,” Ollett said of the pause at UChicago, “because it represents the domination of one set of values, which is money, over the values that we say that we are pursuing in our lives as faculty members, as educators and as researchers.”

He argued that the university can’t say it’s committed to the humanities as a field for producing knowledge while turning away from Ph.D. programs.

Nelson’s email said, “This one-time decision applies only to the 2026–2027 academic year.” But Clifford Ando, the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor of Classics, History and the College, questioned whether this is just a pause.

“I see no reason to think that we would resume doctoral education if we are simultaneously dismantling the curricula that sustain undergraduate training in these fields,” Ando wrote in an email sent to a classical studies Listserv. “Why would one have a doctoral program in a discipline that undergraduates can’t even study?”

Ollett also said this comes as Nelson has pushed to consolidate smaller departments. He said a big question for the coming academic year was “Do we do Ph.D. admissions if we’re not sure that our department is going to exist?”

Not Rule by Committee

Ando provided Inside Higher Ed the “charge” UChicago gave to the Arts and Humanities Languages Working Group on June 17.

“UChicago is known as a global leader in the instruction of ancient and modern languages,” the charge begins. “Language instruction and expertise is not simply a valuable object in its own right; it is an important foundation for the larger UChicago College education, for graduate education, and for the research and scholarship of our faculty.”

But it then says, “language instruction at this extraordinary scope is also expensive.” It listed several questions for the committee to explore, including:
- “Should there be a universal or suggested minimum number of students?
- “Do we need to teach every class every year?
- “Are there languages we no longer need to teach?
- “Are there opportunities for partnerships with peer institutions (with similar standards and schedules) to share language instruction?
- “How can we use technology more effectively to support and enhance language instruction?”
Ollett said, “We teach more than 50 languages in the division, which seems to be too much because the committee was asked to find ways of getting that number down.”

Tyler Williams, another associate professor in the South Asian languages and civilizations department and a member of the committee, said the committee members “unanimously declined to endorse any of the suggestions about cutting languages or outsourcing language teaching.” He said Nelson “did not wait for the committee to submit its report,” nor did she “consult with that committee before she made this decision.”

Ando also provided the charge for a separate Ph.D. Working Group, which outlined a number of “existential challenges” for Ph.D. programs. Those include significantly reduced demand for entry-level faculty, increasing costs for the university and long times to degree, which can deter students.

Additionally, the document notes that the programs are facing “heightened public skepticism about the value of what is taught in Arts & Humanities PhD programs, and how it is taught. Yet Ph.D. programs remain a critical part of the research university model, necessary to teaching, research, scholarship, and creativity.”

Among other questions, that committee was asked to explore whether there should be a minimum size for Ph.D. cohorts in order to offer a program.

Williams said that this committee indicated it wasn’t going to endorse an admissions pause, but said it should be divisionwide if it occurred.

Nelson’s email announcing the changes stressed that “this decision is not the recommendation of any committee.”

Williams said the Ph.D. admissions cuts are part of “a crisis manufactured by the university administration itself.” Ollett said he worries for the future of their field.

“We are quite unique in that there’s not a lot of South Asia area studies departments in the United States, and especially ones that train the next generation of scholars,” he said. He said he’s “already turned away prospective Ph.D. students because of this, and that’s just going to keep happening.”

He said he worries that “if we’re not doing it, no one will do it, and the field will wither and die.”
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August 14, 2025
Federal Judge Orders NSF to Reinstate Suspended UCLA Grants

A class action suit led by researchers in the University of California system spurred the ruling.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images | US District Court for the Northern District of California

The National Science Foundation restored grants it recently suspended for researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, following a court order late Tuesday, a spokesperson for the agency said.

The NSF and UCLA didn’t tell Inside Higher Ed how much funding had been restored, but the Los Angeles Times reported it’s roughly $81 million.

It’s a blow to the Trump administration, which had multiple agencies cut off more than $500 million in research funds to UCLA earlier this month and, according to the UC system, demanded a $1 billion settlement payment.

UCLA is the latest target of the Trump administration’s use of mass federal research grant suspensions to pressure prominent universities to change policies and pay restitution, ranging from tens of millions of dollars for Brown University to the billion-dollar demand of UCLA. Federal agencies justify cutting off grants by accusing targeted institutions of failing to address pro-Palestine protesters’ alleged antisemitism, and accusing universities of other transgressions, such as letting transgender women compete in women’s sports or promoting racial preferences.

But this is the first known court order blocking one of those blanket funding freezes. Harvard University also challenged the administration’s decision to suspend more than $2.7 billion in funds, but a judge has a yet to rule in that case.

UCLA didn’t sue, though.

Instead, the ruling came from a lawsuit that UC researchers filed in early June against President Trump, the NSF and other federal agencies and officials that challenged previous NSF grant terminations.

On June 23, U.S. District Court judge Rita F. Lin, of the Northern District of California, issued a preliminary injunction restoring grants that the administration terminated en masse via form letters that didn’t provide grant-specific explanations for the terminations. When the NSF recently cut off grants again, specifically to UCLA, the researchers’ attorneys alleged the agency violated the preliminary injunction.

Lin agreed, writing in an opinion Tuesday that the new “suspensions have the same effect, and are based on the same type of deficient explanations, as the original terminations.”

The NSF wrote in a July 30 letter justifying the new suspensions that “NSF understands that [UCLA] continues to engage in race discrimination including in its admissions process, and in other areas of student life, as well as failing to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias.” Two days later, the NSF sent a second letter, alleging that UCLA furthermore “engages in racism” and “endangers women by allowing men in women’s sports and private women-only spaces.”

According to Lin, the NSF argued that its recent funding cuts “are not within the scope of the preliminary injunction because it suspended, rather than terminated, the grants.” She said the agency argued that suspensions, unlike terminations, “can be lifted once the grantee takes certain corrective actions.”

However, Lin said the NSF had labeled these “suspensions” as “final agency decision[s] not subject to appeal.”

“There is no listed end date for the suspensions, nor is there any path for researchers to restore funding for their project. If any curative action is actually feasible, it would need to be undertaken by UCLA,” the judge wrote. “In other words, researchers have no guarantee that funding will ever be restored and no way to take action to increase the likelihood of restoration.”

She added that “NSF claims that it could simply turn around the day after the preliminary injunction issued, and halt funding on every grant that had been ordered reinstated, so long as that action was labeled as a ‘suspension’ rather than a ‘termination.’ This is not a reasonable interpretation of the scope of the preliminary injunction.”

Researchers told the court that as a result of the latest suspensions, “projects are already losing talented graduate students, staff will soon be laid off, and years of federally funded work will go to waste,” Lin wrote. Researchers also said the defunded projects include “multi-year research into global heat extremes, a project to address environmental challenges in the Southwestern United States, and another to enhance veteran participation and leadership in STEM fields,” the judge added.

A UC system spokesperson said in an email Wednesday that, “while we have not had an opportunity to review the court’s order and were not party to the suit, restoration of National Science Foundation funds is critical to research the University of California performs on behalf of California and the nation.”

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August 14, 2025