Tag: Career

Scoring the AP English Exam: A Diary (opinion)

Each May, hundreds of thousands of high school students from across the United States take the Advanced Placement exam for English Literature and Composition. Each June, hundreds of high school and college English instructors gather for a week to score them. The three-hour exam consists of two parts: a multiple-choice section and a section with three essays (analyses of poetry and fiction and a literary argument essay).

This year, for the third time, I was one of the essay graders. What follows are my unvarnished thoughts from the week, presented anonymously—because I might want to get invited back to grade again.

Day 1

My plane to Salt Lake City is delayed, so I arrive at my hotel well after midnight. My assigned roommate is fast asleep. We have the option of staying in a single room, but only if we pay half.

The alarm goes off at 7. My roommate and I introduce ourselves as he exits the shower. He is ready to go well before me. He’s a first-timer.

I head over to the convention center. At 8 a.m. sharp, hundreds of us gather in a large auditorium for orientation. The chief reader—a professor at a Baptist college—seems a genial enough person. He goes over the week’s game plan via PowerPoint (“read every essay like it’s your first”), makes sundry bureaucratic announcements and introduces the other managers (“assistant readers,” “table leaders,” etc.). Peals of applause burst out frequently, lending the proceedings a summer camp air. To cap things off, the chief reader puts up photos of his dog.

The reading room—the size of an airplane hangar, with cement floors and high ceilings hung with banks of fluorescent lights—is divided into four or five sections of probably around 100 people each. Each section is enclosed by black curtains supported by metal rods. Readers are grouped eight to a table, each with a laptop.

I admit I’m not in the most chipper mood after the short night’s sleep. The enthusiastic vibe can’t help, either. I grab a cup of free coffee (very low quality), take my seat and introduce myself to the woman seated next to me, a high school teacher from Texas. Then our peppy table leader comes over. “Hi, yeah, sorry, would you mind putting your coffee on the floor? We’re trying to be careful with the laptops.” I sigh and glance around to see other tables with coffee cups and bottles on them. I put my cup on the floor. We spend much of the first day training—watching videos, practicing on sample essays, tuning our brains to AP standards.

Day 2

As I sit in the reading room, time crawls; with no windows it could be 3 in the morning for all I know. The novelty has worn off and the grind has set in. Is this what a real job is like? I improvise a routine to manage the boredom: Along with the scheduled 15-minute breaks in the morning and afternoon, every 30 or 40 minutes I get up to walk around, check my phone, stare into space.

The other readers seem to be mostly high school teachers. They seem well adapted to the AP regimen, and to regimentation. Many wear T-shirts with pro-literacy or pro-reading themes. I’d estimate that about two-thirds of the scorers are women. That fits with the service-heavy load female professors typically shoulder at most universities.

We are served three free meals a day, buffet-style, all you can eat. There’s a strange symmetry with our daily work—all the exams you can score from a never-ending supply. As my waistline expands, I feel my brain shrinking. The buffet lines are staffed by an army of food service workers, mostly Hispanic or Asian, who bring out metal trays and various tureens from mysterious kitchens for our breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as the coffee and snacks for our scheduled breaks. The working class works for us, the petit bourgeois, as we help classify the next generation as either part of the future lower middle or upper middle class.

As we filter back into the reading room after lunch, the chief reader addresses us over a PA system, thanking us for returning on time, reminding us to score carefully, regaling us with a choice quote or two.

Day 3

I breakfast with my roommate and a few of his reading-table mates. He really is the nicest person. They invite me to karaoke later. A few drinks would be nice, though I can’t fathom singing after this kind of work.

I read (or scan, actually) more than 100 essays per day. On average, one or two offer something insightful or fluent. The rest either scrape by, or don’t. Many in fact are aborted on takeoff—a sentence or two, maybe a phrase, sometimes nothing at all. Probably 10 to 15 percent are these kind of no-show efforts. It makes me wonder why these students take this test. Do they get extra class credit for merely showing up? To quote from a favorite Scorsese movie, “Qui bono?”

I continually hear the crinkling of candy and other snacks—provided free by AP, and replenished daily—being unwrapped. This is in addition to the free, all-you-can-eat meals and snacks during breaks.

The assistant reader hovers around the tables in our section like a wary exam proctor, watching us for who knows what. This afternoon, the third day of the reading, the computers go down. With nothing to do, I pull out my phone and start reading an article on the author of a literary selection our exams are based on. My friendly table leader comes over. “Let’s please put away our phones.” I scoff and return to reading the article. A few minutes later the assistant reader sidles up to me. “Please put away your phone.” Before I can reply she has moved away.

The silent whistle finally blows at 5. We stream out of the reading room and down the long corridors of the convention center like mill workers at the end of the day shift. We enter the dining hall or drift outside into the sunny and warm late afternoon. I head straight to the hotel fitness center, the stress of the day evaporating with each set, recharging for another day, just like my Motorola plugged into the hotel room nightstand.

Later that evening my roommate returns to our room (“karaoke was great!”) and asks me if I want to go tomorrow night. I beg off again (I plead achoraphobia—fear of public singing).

Day 4

Salt Lake City—capital of the Beehive State. At lunch I skip the dining hall and make a beeline outside to get some much-needed air and sun. I make my way to Temple Square, the Mormon Vatican. Groups of tourists mix in with groups of name-tagged believers. The temple itself is swaddled in scaffolding. I watch the giant cranes convey building materials to men 10 stories up. A plaque on the Brigham Young Monument records the names of the original 1847 Mormon pioneers. One of them is my great-great-great-great-grandfather.

Of course, working as an AP exam reader is entirely voluntary. I need extra money this year to pay off some taxes. Scorers make $30 an hour. With overtime—we get paid time and a half on days six and seven—I’ll make about $2,000, before taxes.

After the 5 o’clock whistle, I go back to the hotel room and blast rock music from the TV so I can feel something (The Strokes’ “Room on Fire” and Greta Van Fleet’s “From the Fires”). The day’s strain melts away.

Day 5

Every few days we are tested to make sure we are scoring “accurately.” “Calibration” involves scoring a set of six sample exams—and if you score them as an “expert” reader would, you pass. If you don’t, you get sent to remediation. A few members of my table seem genuinely worried. When I arrive to our table this morning (I am always the last to arrive) my neighbor, the high school teacher from Texas, greets me with some tension in her voice: “We’re calibrating today!” I score my set like I don’t give a damn, and pass. One of my table mates disappears for a couple hours.

In the afternoon the chief reader makes his most serious announcement—apparently someone has been posting photos of the reading on social media, which is a big no-no. AP has to preserve the “integrity” of its tests, of course. Its Lloyd’s of London–type image is key to that integrity, it seems.

Most essays are painfully incoherent, ungrammatical. Many, as previously mentioned, are incomplete.

Still we read them, one after another—we scorers are the English teachers of the future, in the wet dreams of the likes of Elon Musk. All of us readers are in our field because we love reading—and here we are, scanning endless variations on a single passage from a single novel, our love being milked to a slow death, dairy cows once impregnated with passion now tightly corralled into an assembly line and hooked up to machines.

Like the character Thomas Bradshaw in the brief excerpt the AP essays are based on (from the novel The Bradshaw Variations by Rachel Cusk), most of the essays leave us wanting. We will never see the wife for whom Thomas is waiting in the kitchen; we will never experience their reunion, or the development of their relationship. Like Thomas, we marinate in limbo. Like the static but frantic figures on Keats’s Grecian urn, we chase, we desire, but never consummate.

Day 6

The other members of my table pass around a greeting card for everyone to sign for our table leader. They also take up cash donations for a gift. I sign the card.

The computer servers crash and scoring comes to a halt. I have a feeling of relief, like for extra recess or a snow day.

Day 7

Over the course of the week, I’ve given a perfect score to just a handful of exams. Is this how we’re educating the best and brightest, these college students of the near future? Are the vaunted humanities—assailed for years from without—rotting from within? I get a few exams in which the student does not offer an essay, but instead a rant about the meaninglessness of the AP exam itself. These could be mere excuses, but the voices that emerge from these exams are funny, searching, thoughtful.

“Look beneath the façade of affable confidence and seamless well-adjustment that today’s elite students have learned to project, and what you often find are toxic levels of fear, anxiety and depression, of emptiness and aimlessness and isolation,” William Deresiewicz wrote in Excellent Sheep. “We all know about the stressed-out, overpressured high school student; why do we assume that things get better once she gets to college?”

The author is a professor of English at a regional public university in the eastern United States.

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August 11, 2025
Trump Wants $1 Billion Payout From UCLA

The federal government has frozen $584 million in grants and contracts at UCLA.

The Trump administration is ratcheting up pressure on the University of California, Los Angeles, and seeking a $1 billion settlement, following concessions from other institutions, CNN reported.

University of California president James B. Milliken said in a statement Friday that “a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians.”

Demands for a settlement come as the federal government has accused UCLA of violating civil rights law by allegedly failing to protect students from antisemitism as pro-Palestinian protests surged on campus last spring. The National Science Foundation and other agencies have since suspended $584 million in federal research funding, according to UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk. The New York Times reported that the administration also wants UCLA to put $172 million in a fund for victims of civil rights violations.

UC system officials announced Wednesday they would negotiate with the federal government in the hope of reaching a “voluntary resolution agreement” over the charges.

“Our immediate goal is to see the $584 million in suspended and at-risk federal funding restored to the university as soon as possible,” Milliken wrote in a Wednesday statement, adding that cuts to federal research funding “do nothing to address antisemitism.”

UCLA was one of several institutions whose executives were hauled before Congress over the last two years to address pro-Palestinian encampments and alleged antisemitism and harassment tied to such protests.

Should UCLA reach a settlement with the Trump administration, it would be the first public university to do so but the third institution to strike a deal with the federal government over the course of several weeks. Last month, Columbia University reached an unprecedented settlement with the Trump administration, agreeing to changes to admissions and academic programs and paying $221 million to close investigations into alleged antisemitism and restore some frozen research funding. The deal will be overseen by a third-party resolution monitor.

Brown University also struck a deal with the federal government in July that did not include a payout to the Trump administration, but officials did agree to provide admissions data to the federal government and bar transgender athletes from competing, among other concessions.

Federal officials didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday.

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August 8, 2025
Teaching About Class in a Post-DEI Era (opinion)
When I taught about social class in my Intimacy, Marriages and Families course this past semester, I began with reflection and a sticky note, not with a lecture or statistics.

This wasn’t the first time I used sticky-note prompts in class. Earlier in the semester, I introduced a similar activity during our unit on race, ethnicity and immigration. That experience inspired me: It showed how a simple sentence starter could help students unpack the emotional weight of identity, belonging and difference. It also helped me refine how to frame and facilitate the conversation in a more impactful way.

So when we arrived at the unit on families and social class, I returned to the sticky notes—this time with more complexity of prompts. And what followed was one of the most meaningful moments of the semester.

The Sticky Note Activity: A Gentle Way Into a Hard Topic

I gave students a set of sentence starters and asked them to complete them anonymously on a sticky note. After writing, they placed their notes on the walls, windows, doors and whiteboard—spreading them out wide enough so everyone could read at the same time. Then students walked silently around the room, taking in what their classmates had shared. After the walk, I invited each student to share one or two statements that resonated with them.

Here are some of the prompts:
- “I didn’t realize how class shaped me until …”
- “One thing my family couldn’t afford growing up was …”
- “I noticed others had more when …”
- “I felt lucky to have _______ when others didn’t.”
- “At school, I learned to stay quiet about …”
- “An opportunity I almost missed because of money was …”
- “I was taught to always …”
These prompts are simple but emotionally rich. They allow students to enter the topic from their own lived experience—before theory, before data, before the academic discourse.

The range of responses students shared was both personal and eye-opening. To the prompt “I didn’t realize how class shaped me until …,” one student reflected on “seeing how much my mother worked just to provide a roof over our heads.” In response to “An opportunity I almost missed because of money was …,” students listed things such as education, rent, bills, Air Jordan shoes, going to college and even a football trip—while one noted simply, “Nothing,” suggesting a contrasting perspective. When asked “I was taught to always …,” many shared values shaped by scarcity and resilience: “be grateful and humble,” “earn money for life by myself after high school” or “bite my tongue to maintain peace.” Responses to “One thing my family couldn’t afford growing up was …” included extracurricular activities, having their own rooms, brand-new items, frequent family time and vacations.

Furthermore, students noticed class differences with reflections such as “I had to wait for things my friends got in a blink of an eye.” Others shared the silence they learned to carry, responding to “At school, I learned to stay quiet about …” with reflections on their home situations, financial aid or how much their parents made. Some added the inverse: “I learned to stay quiet about other kids’ struggles.”

A prompt asking students for one moment that made them aware of inequality yielded responses such as “having to work in high school while others went out,” “facing racial discrimination at a young age” and “realizing some classmates couldn’t afford meals.” Finally, to the prompt “I realized not everyone had _______ like I did,” students shared privileges they had come to recognize: “the options to choose,” “the ability to study abroad” or “having parents, food, shelter and protection.” Together, these reflections painted a vivid and humanizing picture of the many ways class difference shapes lived experience—often invisibly.

After the gallery walk, the room felt palpably different—softer, more thoughtful. While the reflections I’m about to share were originally expressed during a similar activity in our earlier unit on race, ethnicity and immigration, I chose to include them here because they speak to the same core theme. Several students had shared that the activity helped them “see how diverse people in the class are—the values, backgrounds” and one added, “It helped humanize people.”

This activity then helped me transition smoothly to my key take-home message for students. After the sticky note reflections and class discussion, I prompted them to pause and consider this:

“Not everyone grows up with the same set of tools. Some of us had parents who could advocate for us, who knew how to navigate systems—others had to figure it all out on their own. Some kids are encouraged to raise their voices; others are expected to stay in line. We’re often told that success is about effort—but what if the race isn’t the same for everyone?”

I then connected some of the sticky-note reflections back to this statement—helping students draw the line between their lived experiences and structural patterns.

Why It Matters More Than Ever

In a political climate in which diversity, equity and inclusion efforts are being rolled back, educators may hesitate to bring up inequality in their classrooms. But this is precisely when it matters most.

Class disparities are getting wider. Students are balancing coursework while managing food insecurity, housing challenges or caregiving responsibilities. Others arrive with generational wealth, college prep resources and family support networks. If we don’t name these disparities, we risk reinforcing them through silence.

Teaching about social class isn’t about shame or blame—it’s about giving students the tools to understand their place in the world and the systems that shape it.

Tips for Teaching Social Class

There are several strategies educators can use to teach social class in a way that is welcoming and engaging. First, start with stories, not stats—students already live within systems of inequality, so grounding the conversation in their lived experiences builds emotional buy-in before introducing abstract concepts. One effective way to do this is to use low-stakes writing prompts, such as the sticky-note activity, which encourages honest reflection while creating a safe, low-pressure environment.

It’s also important to create space for silent voices; not all students are comfortable speaking aloud, so alternatives like gallery walks or anonymous digital boards help everyone to feel comfortable participating. After reflection, connect students’ lived experiences with research by introducing concepts such as cultural capital and texts like Unequal Childhoods (University of California Press, second edition, 2011) by Annette Lareau, which explores how social class influences parenting styles and shapes children’s life chances.

Closing the Loop

At the end of the unit, I asked students, what can we do?

I introduced them to the concept of social capital, after earlier discussions on cultural and human capital. I introduced the article “What the Privileged Poor Can Teach Us” by Anthony Abraham Jack, which shows how first-generation and low-income students can build academic support networks—particularly by building relationships with professors.

Before that, I shared Rita Pierson’s TED Talk “Every Kid Needs a Champion,” a moving reminder that in education, relationships can change lives. Her story exemplifies how connection itself becomes a form of capital, especially for those who grow up without material advantage.

This pairing helped students see how they could move from understanding class inequality to navigating it—and even challenging it—with critical thinking, empathy and advocacy.

Teaching about inequality is not partisan—it’s fundamental to education. If we want to graduate students who are not only career-ready but human-ready—who understand structural inequality and social responsibility—then we must create space for conversations about class.

Sothy Eng is an associate professor of human development and family science at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He received the 2024 Board of Regents Medal for Excellence in Teaching and is currently contributing to Psychology Today (previously to HuffPost). His work focuses on social capital, family dynamics, parenting and relationship-based education.
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August 8, 2025
Equity Gaps in Academic Advising

Recently published research has found equity gaps in the impact of academic advising support on various student groups. While students from racial minorities are more likely to meet with an adviser compared to their white peers, they’re less likely to see improvements in their GPA or graduate on time.

The research points to a need for improved advising processes, not just in increasing access to and knowledge of academic advising, but in developing holistic student support programs, said lead author Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng, vice dean for research and equity at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.

The background: Academic advising is a critical part of student retention and progression, but not every student receives the support. A 2023 survey by Tyton Partners found one-third of student respondents were not aware of academic advising on campus, despite 98 percent of college employees saying the resource was available to their students.

Similarly, a spring 2023 survey by Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse found, when asked what types of assistance students had received during academic advising, 8 percent of students said they had received no assistance since starting college. Additionally, 5 percent of respondents said they had never met with an academic adviser. Twenty-three percent of respondents said they have to set up meetings with an academic adviser if they’d like to meet, and 10 percent of all respondents said it was difficult to get an appointment with their academic adviser.

The study: Hua-Yu’s study evaluated data from a large public research institution (total enrollment of 80,000) between 2017 and 2021, considering students’ grades, graduation rates, demographics and the number of appointments made with advisers.

To ensure relevant comparisons, researchers matched students in the same school or academic program because advising requirements and processes varied by school, Hua-Yu said.

Across the university, nonwhite and international student groups met with advisers more frequently than white domestic students, disrupting commonly held notions about who is aware of and using services on college campuses, Hua-Yu said.

But the impact of advising was not affected by the frequency of appointments. Rather, despite meeting with advisers less frequently than minoritized students, white students were more likely to have higher GPAs compared to their white peers who didn’t meet with an adviser. White students’ frequency of meeting with an adviser also correlated with their graduation rates, the only racial or ethnic group that saw benefits in this way.

“This is really damning evidence that advising is not doing what it’s supposed to be doing,” Hua-Yu said.

Even among students with undeclared majors, where this institution felt it had a gold standard of advising supports and resources, data showed similar patterns: White students had better outcomes after meeting with advisers, despite their nonwhite peers having more meetings.

Continuing-generation students were more likely to see benefits from advising appointments, compared to their first-generation peers, and low-income students who met with an adviser had slightly higher graduation rates compared to their higher-income classmates.

The why: Hua-Yu theorizes that institutional messaging encouraging students to take advantage of advising could have been effective, resulting in more students having appointments with their advisers. But if marginalized students have complex concerns or are looking for advice on which path to choose, they are more likely to walk away from appointments without all the information they need or feeling like they don’t belong.

A 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found 75 percent of students said they had at least some trust in academic advisers on campus; 20 percent said they didn’t have much trust in them.

First-generation students were 7 percent less likely to meet with an adviser and less likely to graduate, compared to their continuing generation peers, the IHE survey found.

According to Hua-Yu, continuing-generation students are less likely to seek advice on changing their major when talking to staff, compared to their first-generation peers, because they have other support systems that can offer that insight. Instead, they’re using advising appointments to address logistical and bureaucratic impediments to reaching their goals, he noted.

Building better: The findings, Hua-Yu emphasized, do not fault advisers but rather underline concerns with academic advising structures and staffing issues at colleges and universities across the country. A 2024 report by Tyton Partners found high caseloads and adviser burnout and turnover are some of the top challenges for the field.

Advisers have caseloads as high as 400 students, which can limit their ability to engage with students intentionally and address their concerns at a deeper level, Hua-Yu said. Instead, leaders at institutions should recognize that quality advising can make a substantial difference in student outcomes and, in turn, advocate for resources and support to improve advising experiences.

Hua-Yu called for more training for advisers on how to work with students in a specific program of study, as well as with a variety of student identities. Academic advisers cannot become social workers or mental health professionals, but improving how advisers are onboarded and supported can make substantial differences, Hua-Yu said.

Advisers can also be given a set of questions to encourage more meaningful relationships with students during advising appointments, such as asking about students’ lives, their goals and their support systems.

What’s next: Using the same data set, Hua-Yu and his team plan to investigate the use of flags or kudos within the advising system to see how early intervention could affect student success.

The researchers are also exploring the role of gender on advising supports; initial results show white male students are less likely to engage in advising compared to other student groups.

Incidentally, the data set covers a period of remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, so Hua-Yu and his team are exploring shocks to advising processes and supports after spring 2020. So far, researchers noted there were more advising meetings taking place, just remotely, and these advising appointment levels remained higher than pre-pandemic.

Seeking stories from campus leaders, faculty members and staff for our Student Success focus. Share here.

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August 8, 2025
Reducing Transfer Admissions Time to Decision

In an era when learners move fluidly across institutions, credentials, work-based learning and military education, the path to a degree is rarely linear. One area of the transfer process where improvement is both possible and measurable is the time it takes to render an admissions decision.

Timely decisions support learners’ ability to register, engage in advising and complete financial aid processes. Faster admissions decisions can help institutions better align with the needs and expectations of today’s mobile learners.

This is the opportunity the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, in collaboration with the National Association of Higher Education Systems, is advancing with its new National Learning Mobility Challenge: Improving Transfer Time to Decision.

A Call to Action

While institutions have made significant progress in modernizing admissions operations and technology over the past decade, continued refinement is needed to align those improvements with learner-centered goals.

AACRAO’s recent report, “A Blueprint Toward a Learner-Centered Credit Mobility Ecosystem,” notes that “the core challenges for credit mobility are not primarily a lack of technology but rather structural and operational issues.” Manual processes persist even when electronic systems are available. Institutional fragmentation, policy complexity and data gaps create barriers that disproportionately affect mobile learners.

One improvement institutions can pursue today is tracking and improving the time it takes to render an admissions decision for transfer applicants. The assumption that they’ll wait belies the urgent, real-world demands faced by transfer students, many of whom are older, working, supporting families or juggling multiple institutions and life transitions. Delays in admission cut off timely access to advising, registration and financial aid packaging.

These are not administrative delays; they are missed opportunities for learner-centered service delivery.

The Challenge is not a competition. Instead, it is a national call for action, experimentation and transparency. Participants commit to measuring their own time to decision, identifying internal or systemic friction points and piloting solutions to reduce them. AACRAO will provide visibility, collaborate with NASH for technical support and showcase progress at the Assembly, its newly reimagined national convening on learning mobility.

Why Admissions Decision Speed Matters

In many cases, transfer students apply with urgency. They may be returning after a stop-out, seeking a more affordable or supportive environment, or adapting to major life changes. These students are often older, working, supporting families or managing housing and food insecurity. For them, extended decision timelines may limit access to advising, course registration and timely financial planning. Without an offer of admission, students cannot register, access advising, complete financial aid steps or make informed decisions about their futures.

Measuring and improving time-to-decision is one way institutions can demonstrate responsiveness. Institutions that prioritize transparency and timeliness in their transfer admissions process send a clear signal to the transfer community: you are welcome and we are ready.

Building on the Work of Learning Mobility

This Challenge builds on years of work by AACRAO to advance learning mobility—a learner-centered framework that recognizes the full range of educational experiences.

In a previous “Beyond Transfer” article, we emphasized that many failures of reform are failures of implementation. Too often, institutions adopt promising ideas—articulation agreements, credit frameworks, technology platforms—without addressing the operational bottlenecks that slow them down or dilute their impact. The admissions decision for transfer learners is one area where aligning process improvement with institutional values can yield measurable progress.

As the stewards of institutional systems, AACRAO members sit at the intersection of policy, technology, compliance and student support. They know how long decisions take. They know where the bottlenecks are. And they are well positioned to lead the change.

A Challenge Worth Taking Up

Addressing transfer admissions timelines is not a silver bullet. But it is a concrete, measurable starting point—one that institutions can act on today. And it may be one of the fastest ways to demonstrate that higher education is not only listening to learners but responding with urgency and care.

Learn more and express interest in joining the Challenge here.

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August 8, 2025
Madison College, Brandeis, Murray State

Susan A. Andrzejewski left her role as dean of California State University Channel Islands’ Martin V. Smith School of Business and Economics to be interim president on Aug. 4.

Jennifer Berne assumed the role of president at Madison College in Wisconsin on July 1. Previously, Berne was provost at Oakland Community College in Michigan.

Jim Burkee has been selected to lead Saint Leo University in Florida. He is stepping down as the president of Avila University in Missouri and will start in his new position on Sept. 1.

Frederick Bonato was named the 22nd president of Manhattan University on July 16 after serving as interim since September 2024.

Selena Grace is the new president and CEO of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. She previously served as executive vice president of NWCCU.

Andy Jett, currently the executive vice president and chief innovation officer at Avila University, will take up the post of interim president at the Kansas City, Mo., institution on Sept. 1.

Arthur Levine was named president of Brandeis University on July 21 after serving as interim president for nine months. Levine previously served as president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and as president of Teachers College at Columbia University.

Ron K. Patterson, the previous president of Chadron State College in Nebraska, assumed the role of president of Murray State University in Kentucky on July 1.

Christina Royal was named interim president of Connecticut State Community College. She previously served as president of Holyoke Community College and was selected as a 2024–2025 Judith Block McLaughlin President-in-Residence in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her term started on Aug. 1 and will end on June 30, 2026.

Alan Smith became Gadsden State Community College’s permanent president on Aug. 1 after serving as interim for two months. Smith has held various positions at the Alabama college, including adjunct instructor, dean of workforce development and most recently vice president of capital projects, community relations and workforce development.

Susan D. Stuebner began her duties as interim president of Simpson College in Iowa on July 28. Stuebner most recently served as president and professor of business and social sciences at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, N.H., for eight years.

Sinda K. Vanderpool has been named the 10th president of the University of St. Thomas–Houston. She is also the first female president in the institution’s 77-year history. Most recently, Vanderpool served as president and vice chancellor of St. Mary’s University in Alberta, Canada.

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August 8, 2025
DHS Offers to “Simplify” Harvard Lawsuit

The Trump administration has extended an offer to Harvard University to “simplify” an ongoing legal battle by pulling back on threats made in a May 22 letter from U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem to revoke the institution’s ability to host international students.

At the time, Noem wrote in a letter to Harvard officials that DHS was stripping its Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification due to an alleged “failure to adhere to the law.” Harvard responded with a lawsuit, and a judge quickly granted a temporary restraining order to block the federal government from stripping Harvard’s SEVP certification, which would have likely resulted in a loss of international students and dealt the university a severe financial blow. (Harvard also sued the Trump administration over frozen federal research funding in April.)

Harvard argued in its May lawsuit that the revocation was “a blatant violation of the First Amendment” and due process and a retaliatory move by the federal government after the university rejected demands to control its governance, curriculum and the “ideology” of faculty and students. The move, according to the lawsuit, could potentially “erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body” and would harm students who had already been admitted to the university.

Now, in a Wednesday court filing, government attorneys have agreed “that the May 22 letter will not be used to revoke Harvard’s SEVP certification or Exchange Visitor Program designation.” They called the proposal “an attempt to jointly simplify the case.”

DHS officials wrote in the filing that they are “open to counterproposals and a meet and confer.” However, they wrote that Harvard “did not accept.”

Harvard declined to comment and DHS did not respond to an inquiry from Inside Higher Ed.

As Harvard and the federal government battle over international students in court, the Trump administration has found other ways to ratchet up pressure on the nation’s wealthiest university. Last month the U.S. Department of State announced it was opening an investigation into Harvard’s eligibility to participate in the Exchange Visitor program, which is overseen by the State Department and grants J-1 visas for visiting scholars, researchers and postdocs. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote that the probe will ensure programs don’t “run contrary to our nation’s interests.”

There have been recent reports—and denials—that Harvard is nearing a settlement with the Trump administration, which, in addition to attempting to cut off its flow of international students, has leveled a litany of claims against the university, including vague allegations of unlawful action and accusations of antisemitism. The Trump administration has demanded sweeping changes at Harvard, which the university has largely rebuffed thus far.

Congressional Democrats have threatened to investigate if Harvard agrees to a settlement.

If Harvard settles, it would be the third Ivy League university to strike a deal with the federal government since mid-July. Columbia University was the first, agreeing to a seemingly unprecedented settlement, which closed investigations into allegations of antisemitism and restored some frozen research funding in exchange for changes to admissions, academic programs and other concessions that will be overseen by a third-party resolution monitor. Columbia agreed to pay $221 million as part of the settlement.

Brown University also reached an agreement in late July to settle investigations into alleged antisemitism and restore about $510 million in frozen federal research funds. Brown agreed to spend $50 million on state workforce development efforts, provide admissions data to the federal government and bar transgender athletes from competing, among other stipulations.

Outside the Ivy League, the University of California system announced earlier this week that it intends to negotiate with the federal government over $584 million in suspended federal funding amid Department of Justice investigations into alleged antisemitism. UC officials said the system is seeking a “voluntary resolution agreement” with the Trump administration to restore funding.

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August 8, 2025
X’s Altmetric Hegemony Ceding to Bluesky

The end of the “hegemony” of X as the most used social media platform by researchers has been strongly shaped by political and geographic factors, as well as Elon Musk’s intervention into U.S. politics, according to a new study.

Since Musk rebranded Twitter to X, many within higher education—including some universities themselves—have decided to leave the platform, particularly since the billionaire threw his support behind Donald Trump in the 2024 U.S. election.

Researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Granada examined almost 15,000 publications from multidisciplinary and Library and Information Science journals between January 2024 and March 2025.

Across the whole period, Bluesky had a much smaller presence compared with X in terms of engaged users—those who comment on papers.

However, the paper found a “notable increase” in Bluesky accounts mentioning papers published in multidisciplinary journals in November 2024, which the paper said was likely influenced by political and platform change.

“We observe a clear surge in mentions beginning in September 2024 and continuing into early 2025, particularly around the United States presidential election and subsequent political events.”

The shift in users and increasing diversification between the two platforms, particularly from late 2024 onward, coincided with “major U.S. political events in which Elon Musk has actively intervened.”

After successfully helping Trump win the battle for the White House, Musk was appointed head of the Department of Government Efficiency—an organization that slashed federal contracts and found few friends within the scientific community.

The study says the results reveal a scholarly landscape where conversations are no longer concentrated on a single platform, but are now “genuinely distributed between X and Bluesky.”

“This reflects that the response to platform changes is not only field-dependent, but also strongly shaped by political-geographical factors.”

The study comes after a recent analysis by Andy Tattersall, an information specialist at the Sheffield Centre of Health and Related Research, found a third of U.K. universities have now quit X. While the number of active accounts on Bluesky has risen, however, many institutions are still not posting regularly.

Altmetric, which collates mentions of publications from news sources, blogs and social media, has been tracking Bluesky, which was originally created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, since October 2024.

A previous study revealed that Bluesky hosted more posts linked to work published in 2025 for the first time in March—declaring, “The days of X’s dominance are over.”

The new paper reached a similar conclusion, adding, “What is clear is that the Altmetric hegemony of X may have come to an end, as for the first time there is a clear alternative in Bluesky, which even matches user engagement in ways that would have seemed unthinkable until recently.

“Only time will tell how effective and lasting this platform shift truly is.”

It says further research was needed to learn why Bluesky has succeeded where other alternatives—such as Threads or Mastodon—did not.

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August 8, 2025
In Defense of Jonathan Brown

Jonathan Brown, the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization at Georgetown University, was suspended from his job and is being investigated for posting on X after the US bombing of Iran, “I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops.” Brown’s expressed desire for peace was twisted by conservatives into some kind of anti-American call for violence.

Rep. Randy Fine, a Florida Republican, noted that the interim president of Georgetown would soon be testifying before Congress and wrote about Brown, “This demon had better be gone by then. We have a Muslim problem in America.” Fine was Gov. Ron DeSantis’s choice to be president of Florida Atlantic University before the board rejected him. But his literal demonization of speech has a powerful impact.

Georgetown quickly obeyed the commands of anti-Muslim bigots such as Fine. Georgetown interim president Robert M. Groves testified to Congress on July 15, “Within minutes of our learning of that tweet, the dean contacted Professor Brown, the tweet was removed, we issued a statement condemning the tweet, Professor Brown is no longer chair of his department and he’s on leave, and we’re beginning a process of reviewing the case.”

Groves responded “yes” when asked by Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, “You are now investigating and disciplining him?”

Georgetown’s statement declared, “We are appalled that a faculty member would call for a ‘symbolic strike’ on a military base in a social media post.” But why would this appall anyone? Faculty members routinely support actions that actually kill innocent people—tens of thousands of people, in the case of professors who support Israel’s attack on Gaza, millions of people in the case of professors who supported the fight against the Nazis in World War II. And that’s all perfectly legitimate. So a professor calling for an action against a military target that doesn’t kill anybody should be the most trivial statement in the world.

There is a good reason why universities shouldn’t take positions on foreign policy—because institutional opinions are often dumb, especially when formulated “within minutes” rather than after serious thought. Georgetown is making the worst kind of violation of institutional neutrality—not merely expressing a dumb opinion, not just denouncing a professor for disagreeing with that dumb opinion, but actually suspending a professor for diverging from Georgetown’s very dumb official opinion on foreign policy.

Often, defenders of academic freedom have to stand for this principle even when addressing terrible people who say terrible things. But the assault on academic freedom in America has become so awful that even perfectly reasonable comments are now grounds for automatic suspension. Brown’s position on the Iran attacks is very similar to that of Donald Trump, who posted praise for Iran after it did precisely what Brown had urged: “I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured.” Unlike Trump, Brown never thanked Iran for attacking a U.S. base. So how could any university even consider punishing a professor for taking a foreign policy stand more moderate than Trump?

Georgetown’s shocking attacks on academic freedom have garnered little attention or criticism. The Georgetown Hoya reported in a headline, “Groves Appears to Assuage Republicans, Defend Free Speech in Congressional Hearing.”

The newspaper’s fawning treatment of Groves as a defender of free speech apparently was based on Groves testifying, “We police carefully the behavior of our faculty in the classroom and their research activities,” and adding, “They are free, as all residents of the United States, to have speech in the public domain.” It’s horrifying to have any university president openly confess that they “police carefully” professors’ teaching and research. But for Groves to claim that faculty have free speech “in the public domain” when he proudly suspended Brown for his comments must be some kind of sick joke.

Another Hoya headline about the controversy declared, “University Review of GU Professor for Controversial Posts Prompts Criticism, Praise.” While the campus Students for Justice in Palestine and the Council on American-Islamic Relations correctly defended Brown, the Anti-Defamation League declared, “We commend Georgetown University for taking swift action following Jonathan Brown’s dangerous remarks about a ‘symbolic strike’ on a U.S. military base.”

There is nothing “dangerous” about Brown’s remarks calling for an end to war, or any other foreign policy opinions. The only danger here is the threat to academic freedom.

When Georgetown suspended lecturer Ilya Shapiro in 2022 for his offensive comments on Twitter, I argued that “Shapiro should not be punished before he receives a hearing and fair evaluation” and added, “A suspension, even with pay, is a form of punishment. In fact, it’s a very harsh penalty when most forms of campus misconduct receive a reprimand or a requirement for education or changes in behavior.”

I called upon all colleges to ban the use of suspensions without due process. Since then, suspensions have become an epidemic of repression on college campuses. An army of advocates once argued in defense of Shapiro’s free speech. Unfortunately, none of Shapiro’s outspoken supporters have spoken out with similar outrage about the even worse treatment of Brown by Georgetown’s censors.

Georgetown’s administrators must immediately rescind Brown’s ridiculous suspension, restore his position as department chair, end this unjustified investigation of his opinions, apologize for their incompetence at failing to meet their basic responsibilities to protect academic freedom and enact new policies to end the practice of using arbitrary suspensions without due process as a political weapon.

John K. Wilson was a 2019–20 fellow with the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement and is the author of eight books, including Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies (Routledge, 2008), and his forthcoming book The Attack on Academia. He can be reached at [email protected], or letters to the editor can be sent to [email protected].

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August 8, 2025
Education Dept. Hears From Public About Higher Ed Overhaul
The Education Department’s yearlong effort to roll out the sweeping higher ed changes signed into law last month kicked off Thursday with a four-hour hearing that highlighted the many tweaks college administrators and others want to see.

The law, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, capped federal student loans, created new loan-repayment plans, extended the Pell Grant to include short-term workforce programs and instituted a new measure to hold institutions accountable. Now, the department is planning to propose and issue new regulations that spell out how those various changes will work.

On nearly all fronts, college administrators, policy experts and students argued that lawmakers left significant gaps in the legislation, and they want a say in how Trump administration officials fill them in. For instance, the legislation doesn’t explain what data will be collected for either workforce Pell or the accountability measure or who will have to take on that task. Some speakers raised concerns about how new reporting requirements could increase administrative burdens for colleges.

But Nicholas Kent, the department’s newly confirmed under secretary, said at the start of the meeting that he looks forward to clarifying all the details during the lengthy process known as negotiated rule making.

“Simply put, the current approach to paying for college is unsustainable for both borrowers and for taxpayers,” Kent said. “President Trump has laid out a bold vision, one that aims to disrupt a broken system and return accountability, affordability and quality to postsecondary education that includes reducing the cost of higher education, aligning program offerings with employer needs [and] embracing innovative education models … Today’s public hearing marks a key milestone in our accelerated timeline to implement this sweeping legislative reform.”

Neither Kent nor other department officials said what specific changes and clarifications are on the table.

What Is Negotiated Rule Making?

Negotiated rule making, or “neg-reg,” started in the early 1990s. It entails using an advisory committee to consider and discuss issues with the goal of reaching consensus in developing a proposed rule. Consensus means unanimous agreement among the committee members, unless the group agrees on a different definition. The department must undertake negotiated rule making for any rule related to federal student aid.

Determining the details of the regulations and policy changes will be left up to two committees of higher education leaders, policy experts and industry representatives that will review and negotiate over the department’s proposals during a series of meetings throughout the fall and into the new year. The first committee is scheduled to begin discussions in September.

In the meantime, here are three key issues Thursday’s speakers said they hope to see addressed by both the advising panels and department officials before the legislation starts taking effect in July 2026.

Who’s Making the Decisions?

Before the public hearing, some higher ed lobbyists and advocates raised concerns about who would be included on the advisory committees. Multiple constituent groups argued they weren’t properly represented on the committees.

For instance, neither committee includes a representative from the financial aid community, despite the fact that college financial aid administrators will play a key role in implementing the legislation on campuses.

Multiple groups, including the American Council on Education, drew attention to the absence, but Melanie Storey, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, voiced the most concern.

Financial aid professionals will “interpret, communicate and operationalize the intricate details of this wide-ranging bill for millions of students and families. To exclude their practical, technical experience from the negotiation table risks developing rules that are difficult to administer, creating unintended negative consequences,” she said. “We have heard the perspective that representatives from each college sector can speak to the needs of their institutions. However, their role is to advocate for the broad interests of that sector. That is fundamentally different from representing the profession responsible for the … mechanics of aid delivery.

A department official who moderated the hearing, responded, “We expect we will have financial aid administrators at the table,” as the department has in the past, but he did not clarify how that would be done. (This paragraph has been corrected.)

Other speakers called for better representation of civil rights advocates, apprenticeship program leaders and minority-serving institutions, but none of those requests were directly addressed by government officials.

What Qualifies as a Professional Program?

Speakers also raised questions about how the new caps to student loans would work and whom they would affect.
How to Make a Policy, Neg-Reg Edition

As part of negotiated rule making, the Education Department must:

~~Put out a public notice about intent to form a committee and hold a public hearing~~

~~Publish notice inviting nominations for negotiators~~

~~Hold a public hearing~~

Pick the negotiators

Hold negotiated rule-making sessions

Write the proposed regulations

Publish those regulations for public comment, which lasts at least 30 days

Read and respond to the comments; revise the regulations as needed

Publish the final rule. Rules need to be published by Nov. 1 in order to take effect July 1 of the following year, but the department can implement rules early.
Congress’s Big Beautiful Bill caps loans for professional degrees at $200,000 and limits loans for graduate programs to half of that. But lawmakers didn’t specify which degree programs fall in which category. Determining how to sort programs will likely be a key point of debate for the rule-making committee, the comments showed.

Certain programs, like law and medical school, will almost certainly be considered professional programs, but other programs, like master’s degrees in nursing, education or social work, are not guaranteed. Knowing this, a variety of academic association representatives, workforce advocates and college administrators made their case throughout the hearing for why their own discipline should be a professional program.

Matt Hooper, vice president of communications for the Council on Social Work Education, said to not include certain programs in the professional bucket would mean ignoring their critical nature as a public service.

Social work graduates “pursue careers in health care, children and family services, criminal justice, public policy, government, and more,” he said. “An M.S.W. provides full professional preparation, similar to a J.D. in law or an M.D. in medicine, and we think it should be categorized in the same respect.”

A handful of speakers went so far as to argue that certain bachelor’s programs, like aviation or aeronautical science, that are often paired with certification from the Federal Aviation Administration should be grouped into the professional category, as they come at a cost and time commitment similar to graduate school.

If those programs don’t get the benefit of a higher loan cap, multiple airline advocates said, America could see a steep shortage of pilots within the next two decades.

“Over the next 15 years, nearly half of our nation’s airline pilots will retire due to mandatory age limits,” said Sharon DeVivo, president of Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology. “The current training pipeline is not equipped to meet that demand, putting at risk the transportation infrastructure, especially the economic health of small and rural communities that depend on reliable air service.”

Training to become a pilot can cost $80,000 to $100,000 more than a traditional bachelor’s degree, added Carlos Zendejas, vice president of flight operations at the regional airline Horizon Air. So to hold these students to the same loan limit as other undergraduates would deter prospective pilots from pursuing a high-return-on-investment career.

“The need to stabilize the pilot pipeline is real,” he said. “The One Big Beautiful Bill gives the department the ability to fix this.”

Should Gainful Go?

Since the inauguration, Trump officials in all sectors of the federal government have been vocal about combating fraud, waste and abuse. But higher education experts are concerned that one measure in the reconciliation bill could do the opposite.

The new accountability tool it introduced uses a new earnings test to evaluate colleges’ eligibility for federal student loans. But it does not apply to certificate programs, which some policy and data analysts say are more likely to provide a poor return on investment.

According to a recent report from the Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center at American University, only 1 percent of college programs at the associate level and higher will fail the new earnings test, but about 19 percent of certificate programs would do so.

Representatives from American as well as New America, Third Way and the Century Foundation, all progressive think tanks, sounded the alarm on the matter at Thursday’s hearing. As a solution, they encouraged the administration to keep an existing accountability policy in place that applies to certificate programs and for-profit institutions. That metric, known as the gainful-employment rule, is not codified in law.

“A recent publication from the Senate health committee’s chairman, Bill Cassidy, confirms it was not lawmakers’ intent to exempt such programs from any accountability,” said Clare McCann, the PEER Center’s managing director of policy and operations. “So to carry out that intent, the department should maintain a strong gainful-employment program regulation for those programs that should include maintaining the debt-to-earnings tests under the gainful-employment rules, which are an important check on institutions offering unaffordable degrees.”
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August 8, 2025