By now, the memo from the attorney general’s office outlining the administration’s interpretation of civil rights laws as they apply to higher education has made the rounds.
It took me back to my grad school days. I took a seminar in literary theory—the ’90s were a different time—and remember being struck particularly by reader-response theory. As I understood it, it argued that the meaning of a text is determined by the reader rather than the writer. Meanings aren’t as random as that might make it sound; “interpretive communities” take shape around a host of sociological, as well as personal, variables. In other words, we learn how to interpret texts partially by modeling on how people around us do. The same text can be read differently depending on your social location.
I’ve had personal experience of that in rewatching beloved movies or rereading beloved books from my teen years. In high school, Revenge of the Nerds struck me as funny and refreshing. As an adult, I can’t get past its sexism. The movie hasn’t changed, but I have.
The assumptions that different interpretive communities make aren’t always conscious. They don’t work like geometric proofs. In my experience, the most frustrating conflicts happen when different unconscious assumptions (or givens) crash into each other. Having to defend something you take as obviously true feels like either a complete dismissal or a slap in the face; it quickly moves discussion from reasoned disagreement to exasperated incomprehension. (“How can you possibly say that?”)
If you don’t recognize when those assumptions clash, it’s easy to get stuck in cycles of verbal shadowboxing. Is someone arguing against single-payer health insurance because they believe that a regulated market system would be more efficient? If so, a reasoned discussion may be worthwhile. Or are they arguing against it because they believe that poor people deserve to die? In that case, arguments around relative efficiency are pointless. Some folks are skilled at disingenuously using reasonable-sounding arguments to defend horrific assumptions; the tip-off is when they switch from one argument to a contradictory one as soon as they start to lose. The sooner you detect that move, the more time and emotional energy you can save.
The AG’s memo offers a glimpse into the unconscious (or at least unspoken) assumptions animating the administration.
Take, for instance, the assertion that “geographic or institutional targeting” is a proxy for discrimination. The only way that can make sense is if you assume the colleges and universities they had in mind are private ones that draw students from around the country. In the case of community colleges, most have a geographic boundary in their name and/or a defined service district. Monroe Community College, in Rochester, N.Y., is defined by its location in Monroe County. It gives a discount—economists call that price discrimination—to residents of its county. Students from out of county pay more.
And that’s not unique to MCC; it’s the way most community colleges work. Even those that don’t have out-of-county or out-of-district price premiums usually have out-of-state premiums. The same is true of most public universities. I’ve personally had the experience of paying out-of-state tuition for two kids at public universities; it’s not fun. Is that illegal now? If so, I’ll apply for a refund from the Universities of Virginia and Maryland, posthaste.
Of course, the vast majority of colleges and universities draw overwhelmingly from their own state. That’s a direct version of geographic targeting. A national higher ed policy based on the presumption that geographic targeting is the problem simply ignores the vast majority of the sector.
The issues are also more granular than that. The memo ignores scholarships offered by donors for graduates of particular high schools. Are those illegal now? Private donors frequently favor graduates of their own high schools, or people from the towns in which they grew up. Do we have to turn those donors away now? Or only if the towns in which they grew up are too diverse? Are sports scholarships only OK if they don’t draw too diverse a group of students? If so, then sailing is fine and basketball is suspect. Hmm. I think there’s a word for that.
I imagine the answer the attorney general would offer would be something like “as long as geographic preferences aren’t about increasing diversity, they’re OK.” But that presumes a lot. For example, New York City is more diverse than, well, just about anywhere; if a struggling small college on Long Island starts recruiting aggressively in New York City, is that about diversity or about enrollment? And how do you know?
Discerning institutional intent isn’t straightforward. Mixed motives are entirely normal. For example, is the movement to improve graduation rates meant to help students, budgets or institutions’ public images? The answer is all of the above. Is making colleges more inclusive of people of different backgrounds for the benefit of the newly included, the folks already there or institutional budgets? Again, yes.
A serious discussion would look less at intentions and more at incentives. If decades of public disinvestment force public institutions to behave more like private ones, basing more of their budgets on tuition, then we shouldn’t be surprised to see them compete for students. They’ll do what they have to do. If we want colleges to stop competing for students, we should insulate them from the economic need to do so. It has been done before.
The universe assumed in the memo tells us a lot about the people behind it. It presumes a world in which economic issues don’t matter, intentions are obvious, people have only one motive at a time and elite institutions constitute the entire industry. It reflects the kid who thought Revenge of the Nerds was a breath of fresh air. But that kid eventually grew up and learned that there was more to the world than was dreamt of in his philosophy. The word for that process is education.
Dear Presidents, Chancellors and OTHER Temporary Custodians of My Properties:
Greetings from the Family—I mean, the Administration. You’ve been running a nice little operation there: world-class labs, libraries, free-thinking faculty, students from all over the globe who still believe in the marketplace of ideas, all asking dangerous questions like “Why?” and “What is your evidence?”
It’s over.
As the founder of a MAJOR university, I’m here to say this: We’re gonna do things my way now.
First Order of Business: You Need My Protection
As you know, I’m a SUCESSFUL international businessman. I offer certain countries—let’s call them “friends”—deals: They pay me a modest consideration, or maybe a big, beautiful luxury jet, and I won’t slap them with tariffs to make their economy bleed out. I offer the same generous arrangement to higher ed.
Take Crooked Columbia and Brownnosing Brown—smart enough to come to the table, hand over the dough and watch my charges vanish like magic. Funding? Flowing again … for now.
High and mighty Harvard’s still holding out, though, thinking they can win a staring contest. Let’s just say their next accreditation visit is gonna be … comprehensive.
UCLA? Aka Useless College for Leftist Agendas. Rumor is my friends in D.C. have started looking real close at their books. Would be a shame if we had to start collecting on that billion the hard way.
The rest of you RADICAL LUNATIC LEFT, listen up:
Investigations into your crimes against America, like “allowing students to protest” or “letting faculty disagree with the government,” can disappear overnight … for a price.
Call it a FAVOR from a friendly accreditor.
But remember, what I giveth I can take awayeth.
I don’t do promises; I do BUSINESS. And it’s business time.
Apple, Intel, NVIDIA jump when I say jump. Universities? Child’s play.
Some say I’m an ANTISEMITISM SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR on campus and sure, I like the Jews. I’ll take the compliment, right alongside credit for sprucing up big, beautiful Confederate statues.
My war on hate? Let’s just say it has … range. And if a few very fine people happen to be nearby, standing back and standing by, waiting for the signal to help CLARIFY my position, well, that’s just business.
We Don’t Need Stuck-Up Elites Who Think They’re So Smart
That NASTY WOMAN at the Bureau of Labor Statistics? The one who brought me cooked-up job numbers I didn’t like? FIRED.
That Georgia political hack who couldn’t find enough votes? ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
Judges who cross me? Death threats from my cyber goons have them looking over their shoulders.
Your degree, your Nobel Prize, your teaching awards—SAD! I’ve built towers with my name in gold, hosted the No. 1 reality show on television, and put my face on steaks, sneakers and Bitcoin.
So you publish in that fake Ranger Rick Nature magazine. I don’t care if your lab just cured cancer; if your research questions don’t support my worldview, your grant is pulled and your lab reassigned to our friend of the family on the board, Mikey, who’s very confident about his opinion on quantum biology.
IRB? More like, “I’m Rich, Buddy.”
Loyalty—to ME—is the only credential that matters.
WOKE Faculty Hiring and Student Admissions: GONE-ZO
MARXIST MANIACS who lack American values and good Christian sensibilities have no business shaping our young peoples’ minds. Cover letters with Bible verses or Lee Greenwood lyrics will receive special consideration.
After I cut more big, beautiful deals with my AI buddies, the bots will weed out candidate files with the words “inclusive excellence” or “diversifying the pipeline.”
No more “global citizen” snowflake CRAP. In fact, pretty soon, it’s gonna be all AI at the podium—no critical thinking, no unions, no problem.
International students are allowed, but only RICH ones, with no subversive ideas, like democracy, on their social media feeds. No students from the shithole countries—you know the list. (Come to think of it, I don’t like any country, so being from one of our so-called allies won’t help either.)
NO “underrepresented” anything. ONLY OVERREPRESENTED. Racial disadvantage, adversity, “lived experience” or some “community-based” qualifications? FORGET ABOUT IT.
We’re running a university, not a sob story contest!
You want to admit a Latina who speaks three languages and started her own nonprofit? Great—as long as all three languages are English and she’s truly FEMALE.
And while we’re at it, ban “optional” diversity statements. The only statement that matters is your pledge of allegiance. To me.
Academic Freedom, Suckers!
You thought academic freedom meant hiring the best scholars, encouraging debate and letting a thousand ideas bloom.
HILARIOUS!
From now on, FREEDOM means freedom to offer academic programs that look just like the ones we had in 1952, when America was great (minus the jazz) and McCarthy knew what higher education should look like.
It took Viktor 10 YEARS to bring his universities to heel. I’m doing it in six MONTHS, results like nobody’s ever seen before.
“woMEN’s” studies? GONE.
African American literature course? Replaced with Great Books by Even Greater White Men.
Faculty scholarship on critical race theory, gender equity or, God forbid, climate science, will get an automatic tenure-denial stamp. Come to think of it, tenure? What’s that? More like Permanent Welfare for America-Hating Communists.
Just watch what you publish, pal. I can make tenure go away real fast, the same way I disappeared USAID.
My good friend VICE CHANCELLOR Rufo will replace it with rolling one-year contracts, renewable upon click-through loyalty oath training modules.
Also, just a heads-up. Any course material still using the outdated term “Gulf of Mexico” will be flagged in our next surveillance round. My top patriot and loyal adviser, Stephen, suggests: “The Gulf of AMERICA FIRST.” And you so-called political scientists, get your facts right on who won the 2020 election. You’d best update those course materials, nice and clean, and nobody’s sabbatical turns into an extended stay at Alligator Alcatraz.
Capishe? I don’t want to have to slam any more heads together.
It’s time you got the picture, EGGHEADS: Knowledge isn’t power. Power is power.
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Your Don
P.S. I’ll let you keep your football program. You’re welcome.
Jennifer Lundquist is a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her satirical observations in this essay are hers alone and not intended to represent the views of her employer.
A class action suit led byresearchers 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.
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.”
At first glance, Southeastern Michigan University’s website looks like it represents a real institution.
Smiling students in graduation regalia embrace, diplomas in hand, in the video on the front page. A chat bot pops up to ask, “How can I help you?” Southeastern Michigan’s website touts the university’s scholarships, array of accredited academic programs, award-winning faculty, 75 percent graduation rate and “vibrant campus life.”
But littered throughout the website are signs that something is off about Southeastern Michigan.
Blurry backgrounds and distorted limbs hint at the use of generative artificial intelligence. Some images seem likely to fool the untrained eye, while others—like a basketball player with veins bulging from his angular arms—could have been ripped from a poorly illustrated comic book. Meanwhile, paragraphs of text contain repetitive, grandiose and nonspecific language, characteristic of a chat bot’s writing.
In reality, the university is as fake as some of the content on its website. And it’s part of a much larger scam fueled in part by the rise of generative AI.
Some of the images on Southeastern Michigan University website appeared to be AI-generated.
“It took me a while to realize it wasn’t an actual institution,” said Aaron Ament, president of the National Student Legal Defense Network and a lawyer who has investigated for-profit colleges that have defrauded students. “For the average person who’s looking for a program, you could easily see how people would think it’s a real institution.”
Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel warned consumers about Southeastern Michigan University in an alert last week, following a complaint from Eastern Michigan University to her office about the fraudulent website using deceptive practices in an effort to scam students.
Southeastern Michigan is one of nearly 40 fake university sites that Inside Higher Ed recently uncovered, which appear to have been developed with or supplemented by AI. The sites seem to be part of a network, based on the use of identical language, the repetition of images and other design similarities. And many of these fake colleges also have a presence on social media sites, including LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
An Inside Higher Ed analysis also turned up dozens of websites for nonexistent accreditors and a fake U.S. Department of Education website. They all contain at least some AI-generated images and design templates similar to the college websites’, including many that list those fake accreditors—and link to their websites—to give an air of legitimacy. The Education Department is also investigating the scam.
But the network uncovered by Inside Higher Ed reveals how the rise of generative AI is making it faster and easier for scammers to repackage an old ruse and deploy it on a much larger scale.
“This lowers the transaction costs for making a scam site,” said Jose Marichal, a professor of political science at California Lutheran University who studies how algorithms and AI are restructuring social and political institutions. “If I wanted to do this [before generative AI], it would have taken me a week, maybe a month, to put all this together. Now, it would take me a matter of hours.”
AI Increases Scammers’ Reach
The technology is also making it harder for consumers to immediately recognize fraudulent websites like Southeastern Michigan’s and dozens of other similar scam college websites Inside Higher Ed identified.
Large language models—which can immediately generate text and images like those populating the scam college websites—are becoming more sophisticated at mimicking human-created content by the day. For example, last week OpenAI released GPT-5, the latest version of ChatGPT, advertising it as its “smartest, fastest, most useful model yet,” capable of putting “expert-level intelligence in everyone’s hands.”
While suspicious, Marichal couldn’t say for certain if the fraudulent college websites were created using generative AI. But Junfeng Yang, a computer science professor at Columbia University who helped develop a novel tool that can discern whether text was generated by an LLM, had one of his graduate students peruse Southeastern Michigan’s website. “It appears that the [university’s] engineering page is AI generated,” he said in an email.
“A year ago, if you tried to do this, you may have had some bugs to work out,” Marichal said of the scam college websites. “Now, we’re getting to a place where you could keep spitting these out and it doesn’t cost much to host it. If you make 100 of them, you increase your yield. Instead of casting one fishing line, you cast 20, upping your chances of catching fish.”
‘Didn’t Seem Legit’
One prospective student who was looking for a business degree program almost got hooked by Southeastern Michigan’s con, according to Walter Kraft, a spokesperson for Eastern Michigan University, which is a real, accredited institution in Ypsilanti.
The fake Southeastern Michigan University prompted a complaint to the state attorney general from Eastern Michigan University, which has accused it of deceptive practices.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
“He came across an institution named Southeastern Michigan University, and it looked legit to him,” Kraft said. “So he contacted them and received a phone call telling him that his total tuition would be, like, $31,000, but he would receive a 90 percent scholarship and would only have to pay $3,100.”
The fake university asked the would-be student to provide documents for his scholarship application, but he never followed up. Two days later, he got a call from a number spoofing Eastern Michigan’s admissions office number, and the person on the other line told him he got the scholarship, despite never receiving any of his documentation.
After that, he received an admissions offer on letterhead that looked similar to Eastern Michigan’s, which raised his suspicions.
“He could sense that it didn’t seem legit, didn’t seem right, and questioned it,” recalled Kraft, who said two or three other people have reported similar concerns about Southeastern Michigan’s website, though he’s not aware of anyone who has fallen for the scam.
A spokesperson with the Michigan attorney general’s office said the office had “not received complaints from any potential students losing money in connection to these websites” but had contacted officials in two other states about similar schemes and referred concerns to the Federal Trade Commission.
But that doesn’t mean other people haven’t been scammed—or won’t in the future. As of Wednesday, the website was still live.
“That’s problematic, because until somebody finds out who’s responsible and takes that site down, other prospective students could be victimized,” Kraft said. “We certainly don’t want that to happen.”
Universities Push Back
While Eastern Michigan went to the state attorney general, other universities that have encountered similar websites have sought recourse with the World Intellectual Property Organization, a group that mediates domain disputes.
George Washington and New York Universities, as well as the University of Houston system, have all filed successful complaints to challenge websites using their trademarks or a similar name and URL. Those complaints shed more light on the scheme, which appears to date to at least 2021, per archived copies of the websites that were taken down. In its filing, GWU pointed to Kenneth Stone, a person the university believed to be connected to the scheme through a company called Domain Lance, a forwarding service that allows users to redirect URLs.
(NYU did not name a specific individual in its WIPO complaint, which noted that “little is known of the respondent” and indicated the domain owner provided a contact address in Panama. However, another version of that website—New York University of Business and Technology—with a slightly different URL has already emerged.)
The University of Houston system also named Stone in a complaint filed in December, along with William Morocco and Cole Brad as the people believed to be behind the website. The filing suggests that Stone is in Panama, while the other two are in the U.S. In its second complaint, filed in May, Houston pointed to websites in Panama. Despite winning the domain dispute, another version of the contested website has since emerged.
Houston’s complaints indicated that multiple fake college websites were created last year. Three of the websites flagged by Houston were registered between July and October of 2024, and another followed early this year. The fake accreditor websites mentioned in Houston’s complaint were all registered on May 10 of last year, according to the WIPO filing.
Houston University of Texas is one of nearly 40 fake college websites uncovered by Inside Higher Ed.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Inside Higher Ed contacted two of the individuals it believed to be the persons referenced in the complaint based on a review of public records and LinkedIn profiles, but neither responded. A review of public records, including website registration information, suggests all three individuals are in the U.S., though the fake university websites are hosted on servers located overseas.
An Inside Higher Ed reporter also had conversations with individuals operating the chat service on three different websites connected to the network. After a reporter requested admissions info through Southeastern Michigan’s chat service, a woman called to talk him through the process.
Over a nearly half-hour conversation, the operator—a woman with a heavy accent—explained the tuition and fees, gave the reporter a password to a demo version of its student portal, and pressed hard for a $300 “registration fee.” When the reporter pushed back on the cost, she offered to lower it to $199 and stressed the importance of signing up while seats were available.
A chat operator at Southeastern Michigan University offered insights into the scheme.
Justin Morrison/Josh Moody
But when the reporter questioned the legitimacy of the operation, telling her it appeared to be a scam, she said, “I will suggest you contact the Department of Education, not me” and hung up.
Contacted by Inside Higher Ed, a Department of Education spokesperson wrote by email that “the department is currently investigating these malign activities and will work with the appropriate authorities to prevent predatory action toward our nation’s students.”
Sector Responses
Universities with similar names to fake college websites encouraged consumers to take steps to protect themselves from scams.
“Students have many affordable, high-quality education options among North Carolina’s public universities. It’s a shame that bad actors are creating fake university websites to prey on students who want to pursue their dreams of a college degree,” Andy Wallace, a spokesperson for the University of North Carolina system, wrote while encouraging people to report the sites.
University of Houston spokesperson Shawn Lindsey wrote by email that UH “continuously monitor[s] for threats, including false or misleading websites and domain names, and use[s] a variety of tools to support this vigilance” and noted UH’s legal team has acted on offending sites.
The Council for Higher Education Accreditation also condemned the rise of fraudulent college and accreditor websites designed to mimic legitimate institutions in an emailed statement.
“Accreditation is meant to assure quality and integrity in higher education—not to be misused as a tool for fraud,” CHEA president Nasser H. Paydar wrote. “These fake accreditors prey on the trust of students and the public, and we are committed to exposing and stopping them.”
But experts warn if these websites aren’t shut down—or similar ones continue to crop up—it could further weaken the public’s trust in higher education in an era marked by politicized attempts to discredit legitimate universities as overpriced and biased.
“People may not know what’s a real university and what isn’t, so they just throw their hands up and say, ‘Universities are too expensive anyway,’” said Marichal, the algorithm expert. “When people don’t know what’s true or false anymore, they’re less inclined to trust any of it.”
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, recently told the undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children known as Dreamers, who have for years participated in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, to self-deport.
She insisted that the Obama-era program, which protects these individuals from deportation and gives them work authorization, “does not confer any form of legal status in this country.”
“We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right, legal way,” McLaughlin said in a statement to NPR.
Her comments contradict those made by President-elect Donald Trump in a December interview with Meet the Press. He said then that he’d willingly work with Democrats on a plan to keep Dreamers in the country.
“They were brought into this country many years ago,” he told Meet the Press. “Some of them are no longer young people, and in many cases they’ve become successful. They have great jobs … We’re going to have to do something with them.”
This conflicting rhetoric is emblematic of the tenuous position Dreamers, including thousands of college students, have occupied for years, uncertain whether past protections and legal promises will hold. Today, most of the country’s roughly 400,800 undocumented students don’t have DACA status. But the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration estimates about 119,000 are eligible for the program based on 2022 data.
DACA has suffered—and survived—attacks before, including from Trump during his first term, but immigrant advocates say this administration is launching precision strikes against Dreamers; instead of moving to end the DACA program wholesale, they’re casting doubt on the program’s legal power, and, one by one, targeting other benefits historically extended to Dreamers.
Gaby Pacheco, president and CEO of TheDream.US, a scholarship provider for undocumented students, said the federal government is “chipping away” at protections and public benefits for this population.
The administration is “coming at it from different angles in different ways and creating a lot of chaos,” Pacheco said. “A lot of people are confused and are trying to figure out what’s next and how to protect themselves,” including students and higher ed leaders.
A ‘Methodical, Surgical’ Attack
Legal challenges to DACA go back more than a decade. The U.S. Supreme Court prevented the program from expanding in 2016. Then, during Trump’s first term, he ordered the end of DACA under pressure from Republican lawmakers. When the Supreme Court ruled against his plans to immediately end the program, Trump tried to curb DACA in 2020 by rejecting new applications and limiting the renewal period.
Earlier this year, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit unanimously affirmed a 2023 district court order that deemed DACA unlawful, but the judges also issued a stay, leaving the status quo unchanged for now. No new DACA applications have been processed since the judge who made that order, U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen, first ruled against the program in 2021. Hanen issued a new order in late July asking for additional written arguments from the parties in the case.
Pacheco said that now the government is doing a “very methodical, surgical” unwinding of Dreamers’ rights.
For example, the administration revoked DACA recipients’ eligibility for Affordable Care Act health insurance. Some Dreamers with DACA status, including students, have been detained by law enforcement.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice sued four states for allowing local undocumented students, with and without DACA, to pay in-state tuition, successfully ending these policies in Texas and Oklahoma with support from state lawmakers. The Department of Education is also investigating five universities—the University of Louisville, the University of Nebraska, the University of Miami, the University of Michigan and Western Michigan University—alleging scholarships they provide for undocumented and DACA students violate civil rights law.
“There has been an escalating series of attacks and targeting of undocumented students, including those with DACA, and the institutions seeking to enroll and support them under this administration,” said Miriam Feldblum, president and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance. “Over all, for students with and without DACA, this has become an increasingly anxious time” as well as for “campuses who are being targeted.”
A DACA recipient, who gained DACA status in 2014 and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 2022, said the slew of new policies is “really affecting” day-to-day life for undocumented immigrants, including those in the program.
The recipient, who asked to remain anonymous, said the DACA program offered some sense of safety, but that protection now feels “very thin,” like a “Band-Aid on a wound.”
“I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be, especially a younger student or somebody who is currently in college,” they said. “You’re probably in the middle of your academic career and your state has now rescinded in-state tuition … How do you finish your education? What are you supposed to do?”
‘Just the Beginning’
Diego Sánchez, director of policy and strategy at the Presidents’ Alliance, said in a recent webinar that he worries the administration’s coordinated attack on DACA, and Dreamers over all, could signal a larger-scale war on the policy. He believes it’s a “very real concern right now” that the Trump administration could try to end DACA through the formal rule-making process—posting a proposed rule for public feedback, then issuing a regulation to phase out the program.
“We haven’t seen a formal announcement, but the rhetoric coming out of DHS, along with the uptick in enforcement, the detention of Dreamers all over the country, some who’ve had DACA, some who have never benefited from DACA, suggests that this may be under serious consideration,” he said.
Pacheco also fears life for Dreamers in college is going to get worse. She noted that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act poured about $170 billion into immigration enforcement. And while ICE doesn’t have access to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid database, a data-sharing agreement between the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security has students and their advocates worried about immigrant students’ data. Meanwhile, the federal government has plenty of data on DACA recipients, who have been dutifully filing their renewals every two years.
“I always try to be very careful how I say this to our students and to folks when I’m speaking, but this is really just the beginning,” she said.
Higher Ed as ‘Lines of Defense’
Immigrant advocates say colleges and universities have a vital role to play in making DACA and undocumented students safer.
Pacheco believes higher ed institutions over all are “one of the biggest lines of defense for students.” College officials can have plans in place for potential ICE visits and insist that law enforcement show warrants if they come looking for undocumented students, she said, and the fact of being a student, if they’re detained, can elicit public sympathy. And campuses have networks of alumni who can “rally around” them.
“One of the safest places where they can be is in a classroom, in an institution of higher learning,” Pacheco said.
Feldblum said higher ed institutions can also support Dreamers by not complying pre-emptively with the Trump administration’s legal challenges to benefits. For example, scholarships based on immigration status are “permissible,” she said, provided they don’t discriminate based on race, ethnicity, national origin or shared ancestry.
“The key here is to be clear that these programs, this status, is lawful,” Feldblum said. “And while the federal government may be attempting to threaten different regulations or programs … states and colleges and universities need to make sure they are not pre-emptively changing policy or regulation when the law does not require them to do so.”
Pacheco said she empathizes with higher ed leaders who are nervous to put their federal funds at risk by showing public support for their undocumented students. But she believes, at some point, higher ed is going to need to push back.
“When is it going to be enough?” she said. “And when are we going to draw a line and fight back and stand up for academic freedom and stand up for what these institutions have pledged, which is to educate everyone and to ensure that everyone has access to an equitable education?”
Growing public skepticism in higher education has fueled a number of polls and surveys aimed at understanding how families, students and taxpayers perceive the value of a college degree.
For instance, a majority of Americans believe at least one type of postsecondary credential holds value, according to a 2025 study by Gallup, and most parents want their kids to attend college. But few of those studies have looked at how colleges and universities see themselves improving students’ lives.
A new survey by Tyton Partners released Thursday found three in four college stakeholders strongly believe their institution’s education is worth the cost of tuition. However, two-year institutions were more likely to say this is true, compared to private universities.
Only 28 percent of administrators and support staff working at private four-year institutions strongly agree that their institution’s education is worth the cost, compared to 68 percent of community colleges. The survey, fielded in late June and early July, includes responses from more than 1,600 stakeholders at 825 institutions.
The sector breakdown wasn’t a surprise to Catherine Shaw, Tyton’s managing director, in part because of how the vocational missions of two-year colleges to prepare the local workforce compare to four-year private institutions that focus more on holistic student development.
“That part of it was so squarely within the value proposition of the reasons we have two-year degrees,” Shaw said.
For students, there’s a direct relationship between those who say their college is worth the cost and those who think the college prepares students well for jobs and careers. Among the 792 student respondents who do believe their college is worth the cost, 95 percent believe college is preparing them well for jobs and careers. Inversely, fewer than half (48 percent) of students who don’t see the value of their degree believe college is preparing them well for a career.
“In short, perceptions of value hinge on whether institutions effectively prepare students for the workforce,” the report states. This was true regardless of an institution’s sector, size, selectivity or demographic makeup.
This was the first time Tyton’s survey has asked respondents about perceived value, which Shaw said was in part because of larger national studies gauging perceived value among individuals in the U.S.
“It was interesting that there wasn’t the institutional perspective captured at scale [in previous surveys],” Shaw said. “We wanted to contextualize [the conversation] and see if our institutional stakeholders and our students are asking themselves the same questions and how they feel relevant, because they’ve got skin in the game.”
What Creates Value
More than a quarter of all institutions pointed to career readiness as a top college outcome beyond earning a credential, but two-year colleges were most likely to say this was the top outcome (37 percent). In comparison, the most popular outcome among four-year public and private institutions was critical thinking skills (41 percent and 36 percent, respectively).
Faculty members were most likely to say critical thinking skills were a top college outcome, which Shaw said makes sense given their role in higher education. Administrators and advisers were more likely to point to career readiness as a top outcome for students.
Tyton’s survey also asked administrators, support staff and faculty members which support services improve students’ value of education. Academic and career advising rose to the top, with over half of respondents in all roles ranking these services higher than tutoring, financial aid counseling or mental health counseling.
How institutions deliver high-impact career preparation varied based on institution type. Thirty-eight percent of community colleges said apprenticeships were the most meaningful measures to improve student employment metrics, followed by career pathways at 35 percent.
In comparison, embedded career exploration ranked highest among four-year institutions (54 percent of public universities, 50 percent of private) as did guaranteed internships for all students (31 percent of four-year public institutions) and experiential learning coursework (33 percent of four-year privates).
Student awareness of these opportunities is the greatest barrier to career readiness, according to career services professionals (45 percent), followed by limited capacity (17 percent) and a lack of consistent programming throughout the year (13 percent). Fewer than half of surveyed students (42 percent) said they were aware of career services available to them.
“This focus is especially timely as institutions prepare for increased scrutiny under new federal measures, such as the earnings accountability test,” the report states. “Programs that do not result in gainful employment risk losing eligibility for federal aid. Embedding career readiness across offerings isn’t just about boosting ROI: It’s fast becoming essential for institutional viability.”
President Trump first issued the executive action Aug. 7 mandating colleges and universities submit data to verify that they are not unlawfully considering race in admissions.
A draft of the proposal, which will officially be published Friday on the Federal Register, states that certain institutions will be required to collect and report comprehensive data about their admissions decisions going back five years. It must be broken down by race and sex and include students’ high school GPA, test scores, time of application (early decision, early access or regular decision) and financial aid status, among other things.
However, the new survey component, which the Department of Education is calling the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement, will not affect all colleges and universities—just four-year institutions that use “selective college admissions,” as they “have an elevated risk of noncompliance with the civil rights laws,” officials wrote in the notice.
(The document does not say anything about reporting data on legacy admissions, another practice that, like affirmative action, has received public pushback in recent years.)
Members of the public will have 60 days to comment on the notice. Among other things, the department wants feedback on what institutions should be subject to the new reporting requirements as well as the anticipated burden the request will place on university staff.
Some higher education scholars and officials are already chiming in with their concerns informally.
University of Tennessee higher education professor Robert Kelchen wrote in a post on LinkedIn that not only will the request be a “substantial lift” for colleges, but also for staff at the department who run the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and will manage the data on the back end.
The Department of Education laid off nearly half its staff—including most of the employees at the National Center for Education Statistics, which would collect and analyze the data—in March.
“I’d love to see the survey form where all of this data would be collected—because after years of sitting in [meetings] where we figured these things out, the sheer number of variables/elements and the lack of any definition around the vagueness of them demonstrates the loss of the knowledgeable NCES staff they lost,” wrote Carolyn Mata, a consultant who works in institutional research, in a response to Kelchen’s post. “This is a case of throwing everything possible at the wall.”
The Office for Civil Rights handles complaints concerning discrimination in federally funded education institutions.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
A federal district court judge refused the Trump administration’s request to vacate a previous ruling that prohibited the Department of Education from laying off nearly half its Office for Civil Rights staff.
The decision was made by Massachusetts judge Myong Joun on Wednesday and involved the case Victim Rights Law Center v. Department of Education. It comes just a month after the Supreme Court reversed a preliminary injunction in a similar case, New York v. McMahon, which Joun also oversaw.
In the new order, the district court judge argues that the cases, and therefore their related rulings, are separate.
The New York case, which was filed by multiple state attorneys general, addressed the reduction in force more broadly, Joun said. By comparison, the Victim Rights Law Center case more specifically addresses the RIF at OCR and how it may hold the office back from completing its statutory mandate of protecting students from discrimination.
So, although the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to continue with the reduction in force broadly, Joun argues, it does not mean the enjoinment of layoffs within OCR is no longer applicable.
Trump officials “present two arguments for why vacatur or a stay are appropriate: first, that the Supreme Court granted the stay in a related case, and second, that the two related cases are ‘indistinguishable in all pertinent respects.’ I am unconvinced by either argument,” Joun wrote. “Although this case and New York are related, I issued a separate Preliminary Injunction Order to address the unique harms that Plaintiffs alleged arose from their reliance on the OCR.”
He also noted that even though the high court judges reversed one preliminary injunction, that does not mean they have made a final ruling on the merit of the RIF.
Finally, Joun went on to say that the defendants’ motion for stay has little standing, as “they have not substantially complied with the preliminary injunction order” in the first place. Reporting from The 74 backs this up, showing that none of the 276 fired OCR employees have been reinstated.
Arizona State University ranks fourth among four-year colleges and universities in terms of total international students enrolled.
yongyuan/iStock/Getty Images Plus
This article has been revised to reflect more enrollment data provided by Arizona State University after publication to correct Inside Higher Ed’s previous analysis.
Arizona State University welcomed over 15,100 international students to its four campuses in fall 2024, but this fall, due to a variety of complications, the university expects only 14,600 international students will attend.
If the projection holds, international students will account for 7.5 percent of ASU’s 194,000 students this fall, according to an Aug. 11 news release. In comparison, during the 2023–24 academic year, ASU hosted 18,400 international students, with a total enrollment of 183,000, or more than 10 percent.
The change is in part due a drop in master’s applications from international students, but primarily driven by challenges to visa appointments, according to a university spokesperson.
“We anticipate that our enrollment of international students will continue to grow throughout the year,” said Matt López, deputy vice president of academic enterprise enrollment, said in the university news release. “When students have their visa in hand, we will welcome them with open arms and the classes they need to continue their degree without delay.”
ASU’s president, Michael Crow, told Bloombergthat as of early August, 1,000 of the university’s incoming international students (a third of the new cohort of 3,313 students) were still waiting on their visas. The university is providing several pathways for students unable to make it to campus, including online programs, study abroad, starting later in the semester or enrolling in a partner institution overseas, the spokesperson said.
ASU has the largest share of international students in Arizona, providing $545.1 million in revenue to the state and supporting 5,279 jobs, according to data from NAFSA, the association of international educators.
ASU also ranks fourth among four-year colleges and universities in terms of total international students enrolled, according to 2023–24 OpenDoors data, behind New York University, Northeastern University and Columbia University.
