How can you assuage family fears about the cost of college?
After two years of reading survey responses and digging into the numbers, I have learned something simple and essential about how families and students navigate the college planning journey: most families do not walk away from college because of the price tag itself. They walk away because they do not understand what that number means.
What these studies, and broader research (George-Jackson & Gast, 2015; Marcus, 2016; Rainey & Taylor, 2024; Uperberg, 2023; Gallup & Lumina Foundation, 2025), show us is simple but urgent: cost is not just about dollars. It is about clarity, confidence, and trust.
Let’s start with what I learned from the broader research.
What research tells us about cost, aid, and college decisions
Across the literature, several consistent themes emerge about how families perceive cost, aid, and value in college planning:
Sticker price stops the conversation
Families often see the full cost of attendance and assume it is what they will pay. Most are unaware of net price calculators, or if they are aware, they do not know how to interpret the results (George-Jackson & Gast, 2015). This lack of understanding creates a “sticker shock” effect that prevents many students from even considering certain institutions, particularly those with higher published tuition rates. Research shows this disproportionately affects first-generation and lower-income families.
My takeaway: If sticker price ends the conversation before it begins, institutions must lead with clarity about net price and affordability, not bury those numbers deep on a website.
Loan fear limits options
Families are deeply wary of borrowing, shaped by personal experiences, community narratives, and national headlines about student debt. This fear often pushes students toward the cheapest option or away from college altogether, regardless of fit or long-term return (Rainey & Taylor, 2024; Uperberg, 2023). While many students still anticipate borrowing, the emotional weight of debt creates hesitancy, stress, and in some cases, a complete halt in the college search process.
My takeaway: Colleges need to acknowledge debt anxiety directly, offering tools like loan repayment calculators, loan repayment assistance programs (LRAPs), or transparent messaging that frames borrowing as an investment, not a trap.
College value is still believed, but proof is demanded
Despite concerns, most families still believe higher education is a worthwhile investment and a pathway to upward mobility (Gallup & Lumina Foundation, 2025). However, they are increasingly asking colleges to “show the math.” They want to see career placement rates, average earnings by major, and clear evidence that a degree will lead to tangible outcomes (Marcus, 2016). Simply promising that college “pays off” is no longer enough.
My takeaway: Institutions must highlight outcomes early and often— weaving graduate stories, salary data, and career ROI into recruitment messaging, not waiting until yield season.
Aid matters, but only if it is understood
Financial aid has the potential to completely change affordability for students, but too often, the way it is communicated undermines its impact. Many students and families report being unclear on how aid works, what types of aid are available, and how to apply (Rainey & Taylor, 2024). Complex language, late timing, and lack of plain explanations mean that aid packages often add to stress instead of reducing it.
My takeaway: Aid communication must be simplified, visual, and personal. Families need plain language, early outreach, and real-world examples of how aid changes the bottom line.
Revolutionize your financial aid offers with video
What RNL research reveals about cost, clarity, and college decisions
Sticker shock is real and misleading
Families often see the full cost of attendance and assume it is what they will pay.
72% of families eliminated a college based on sticker price alone (RNL, Ardeo, & CampusESP, 2025).
Only 12% of students used a net price calculator (RNL, Ardeo, & Halda, 2024).
More than half of parents still did not know their likely aid after visiting a college website (RNL, Ardeo, & CampusESP, 2025).
Students say: Sticker price stops the conversation. Families say: We are not asking for a discount; we are asking for clarity.
My takeaway: If families do not know the real price, they walk away before there is even a chance to explain. That is not a money problem; it is a communication problem.
Clarity is the new currency
Confusion about aid derails progress toward enrollment.
57% of students started but did not finish at least one application because “it seemed too expensive” (RNL, Ardeo, & Halda, 2024).
65% of prospective families say final cost (after financial aid and scholarships) is the decisive factor to choose a college, and 80% of students agree (RNL, Ardeo, & CampusESP, 2025).
43% of families have trouble finding a financial aid or scholarship calculator, and nearly four out of ten cannot find scholarship info on college websites (RNL, Ardeo, & CampusESP, 2025).
Students say: Confusion kills momentum. Families say: If we do not understand the process, we will not finish it.
My takeaway: Clarity is not just nice, it is currency. If cost feels hidden or complicated, families spend their trust elsewhere.
Fear of loans drives the conversation
Loan fear shapes how families perceive every option.
71% of students said loan concerns shaped their planning negatively; 8 in 10 still plan to borrow (RNL, Ardeo, & Halda, 2025).
72% of students, and 51% of families (69% of first-generation), would be more likely to enroll if the college offered a Loan Repayment Assistance Program (RNL, Ardeo, & CampusESP, 2025).
Students say: Debt is emotional, not just financial. Families say: We fear making a mistake that follows us for years.
My takeaway: Until you address loan fear head-on, families will see debt as a dealbreaker, not a doorway.
Families are involved, but often left out
Parents and caregivers play a central role, but they often lack the tools.
80% of students involve a parent or caregiver in college planning, but first-gen parents are less confident reviewing aid (RNL, Ardeo, & Halda, 2024).
Email is the preferred channel for all families (90%), yet awareness of portals and tools is low, especially among low-income and first-gen families (RNL, Ardeo, & CampusESP, 2025).
Students say: Families want to help but need more than a brochure. Families say: Include us; do not just assume we know where to look.
My takeaway: Families are the co-pilots of this journey. Ignore them, and you risk losing the student, too.
Technology needs a human touch
Digital tools can open doors, but students and families still crave connection.
91% of students use college websites; 65% are more likely to apply after a virtual tour (RNL, Halda, & Modern Campus, 2025).
1 in 4 apply after engaging with an AI assistant, but many still follow up with email (RNL, Halda, & Modern Campus, 2025).
Only 53% of families know about parent/family portals, with even lower awareness among first-gen families (RNL, Ardeo, & CampusESP, 2025).
Students say: Yes, we are digital, but we are also human. Families say: Technology helps, but we still want a person on the other side.
My takeaway: Digital opens the door, but human connection makes families walk through it.
Cost is not just about affordability; it is about perception, trust, and understanding.
Families and students are not asking for a discount; they are asking for clarity. When institutions lead with transparency, plain language, and humanity, they transform the way students and families see higher education.
In Alpine School District, we serve a wide range of students, from Title I to highly affluent communities. While our population has traditionally been predominantly white and middle income, that’s changing. In response to this growing diversity and shifting needs, one of my missions as professional learning and curriculum director for secondary schools has been to provide needs-based professional learning, just in time for educators, and to give them a real voice in what that looks and feels like.
I lead a team of full-time educator equivalents across every discipline: math, science, social studies, ELA, the arts, health, and PE. Together, we guide professional learning and instructional support. Over the past several years, we’ve had to take a hard look at how we teach, how we engage students, and how we prepare educators for long-term success.
Where we started: Tier 1 challenges and high turnover
When I first became curriculum director, I noticed in our data that our schools were not making much progress, and in some cases had stagnated in growth scores. We were leaning heavily on Tier 2 interventions, which told us that we needed to shore up our Tier 1 instruction.
At the same time, we were hiring between 400 and 500 teachers each year. We’re located near several universities, so we see a continuous flow of new educators come and go. They get married, they relocate, or a spouse gets into medical school, which translates to a constant onboarding cycle for our district. To meet these challenges, we needed professional learning that was sound, sustainable, and meaningful, especially early in a teacher’s career, so they could lay a strong foundation for everything that would come after.
Teacher clarity and engagement by design
Several years ago, we joined the Utah State Cohort, doing a deep dive into the Teacher Clarity Playbook. That experience was a real turning point. We were the only team there from a district office, and we took a train-the-trainer approach, investing in our strongest educators so they could return and lead professional learning in their content areas. Since then, we’ve used Engagement by Design as the framework behind much of our PD, our classroom walkthroughs, and our peer observations. It helped us think differently: How do we support teachers in crafting learning intentions and success criteria that are actually meaningful? How do we align resources to support that clarity? We’ve embedded that mindset into everything.
Coming out of the pandemic, Alpine, like many districts around the country, saw decreased student engagement. To focus deeply on that challenge, we launched the Student Engagement Academy, or SEA. I co-designed the Academy alongside two of our content specialists, Anna Davis and Korryn Coates. They’re both part-time teacher leaders at the district office and part-time visual arts teachers in schools, so they live in both worlds. That was important because we believe professional learning should always be contextualized. We don’t want teachers burning extra bandwidth trying to translate strategies across subject areas.
SEA is a yearlong, job-embedded learning experience. Teachers participate in PLCs, conduct peer observations, and complete a personalized learning project that showcases their growth. Our PLC+ coaches work directly with our lead coach, Melissa Gibbons, to gather and analyze data that shapes each new round of learning. We also included classroom observations, not for evaluation, but to help teachers see each other’s practice in action. Before observations, Anna and Korryn meet with teachers in small groups to talk through what to look for. Afterward, they debrief with the teachers: What did we see? What evidence did we see of student engagement? What did we learn? What are we still wondering? As we answer these questions about teaching, we’re also asking students about their experience of learning.
Learning from student surveys
Hearing from our students has been one of the most powerful parts of this journey. With the support of our Director of Student and Educator Well-eing, we created a student survey. We asked a random group of students questions such as:
What are you learning?
How are you learning it?
How do you know how you’re doing?
Why does it matter?
The responses were eye-opening. Many students didn’t know why they were learning something. That told us our teachers weren’t being as clear or as intentional as they thought they were. One specific question we asked was based on the fact that attendance in world language classes stayed high during the pandemic, while it dropped in other subjects. We asked students why. The answer? Relationships, expectations, and clarity. They said their world language teachers were clear, and they knew what was expected of them. That led other disciplines to reflect and recalibrate.
Today, teachers across subjects like ELA, math, and social studies have participated in a SEA cohort or aligned learning. We’re seeing them plan more intentionally, better target skills, and align instruction with assessment in thoughtful ways. They’re starting to see how mirroring instruction with how learning is measured can shift outcomes. It’s been truly exciting to witness that change. Engaging students through improved teacher clarity, positive classroom relationships (with each other, the teacher, and the content), and providing the students with appropriate levels of rigor has been a game changer.
Building teacher leadership teams
Next year, we’re focusing on developing teacher leadership skills, knowledge, and dispositions across the full geographic area of our district. We’re building professional capacity through leadership teams using the PLC+ model, with an emphasis on facilitation skills, research-based practice, and advocacy for strong instruction in every discipline.
If you’re a district leader looking to boost student engagement through professional development, my advice is simple: You can’t do it alone. You need a team that shares your values and your commitment to the work. You also have to be guided by research–there’s too much at stake to invest in strategies that don’t hold water. Finally, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Aim for small, incremental changes. There’s no silver bullet, but if you stay the course, you’ll see real transformation.
Dr. Mari Braithwaite, Alpine School District
Dr. Mari Braithwaite is the professional learning & curriculum director at Alpine School District in American Fork, Utah. She can be reached at [email protected].
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I read Susan Blum’s Ungrading as a first-year graduate student and was immediately smitten. At the same time, COVID-19 forced many seasoned instructors to grapple with assessing their students, making alternative assessment more mainstream. My first attempt at alternative assessment didn’t go very well. I failed to appreciate the value of clear expectations and the inescapable necessity that my students needed to walk out of my class with a grade. I struggled to make my system transparent, to emphasize growth over perfection, and to implement a good rubric. For the next four years, I used Kevin Gannon’s grading contract to implement more structure and Barbara Schapiro’s ‘third space’ to reflect on what worked for me and my students. My system improved. Now, as a fifth-year graduate student approaching completion of my degree, I use contract grading. Each assignment has 1-10 points, with a total of 100 points. Each point corresponds to a specific objective and is graded complete/incomplete. In my more recent students’ evaluations, students say they are less stressed, they are more motivated, and they understand assignment expectations at the beginning of the semester.
My Journey in Alternative Grading: From Curiosity to Clarity
The first time I stood in front of 20 bored freshmen, all alone, teaching a course I had designed, also all alone, I was teaching a general education writing and speaking course at the University of Iowa. After using traditional grading the first semester, I turned to alternative assessment in the second. In brief, my students received a complete/incomplete grade for any given assignment and then a cumulative midterm and final grade. I wanted to deemphasize grading entirely, but in retrospect the flaws were glaring. Halfway through the semester, in the middle of class, a student burst out in confusion and frustration, “Where did my grade even come from?” What a good question. My first system failed to appreciate the value of clear expectations and the inescapable necessity that at the end of the day my students needed to walk out of my class with a grade.
As a first-year graduate student, I had read Susan Blum’s Ungrading and was immediately smitten. Blum (2020) argues that grades provide minimal feedback, they deemphasize learning, and what they actually measure is inconsistent (10-14). I came to alternative assessment alongside many other instructors as COVID-19 forced seasoned instructors to grapple with assessment policies. In 2021, a Faculty Learning Community formed at the University of Iowa to address assessment practices and, spurred on by their work, in 2023 the University changed their grading policy page to include alternative assessment (“Grades: Undergraduate Policies”).
During the next four years, I implemented Barbara Schapiro’s (2009) ‘third space,’ which takes into account what benefits both me and my students (423-439). I took a more structured approach, first using Kevin Gannon’s contract and Asao Inoue’s labor-based grading model and eventually designing my own contract. I struggled to make contract grading transparent, to emphasize growth over perfection, and to implement a good rubric. But the system improved. Now, as a fifth-year graduate student approaching completion of my degree, I use a blend of labor-based, or specifications, grading, and contract grading. In specifications grading “the instructor designates bundles of assignments that map to different letter grades” and in contract grading “each student signs a contract indicating what grade they plan to work towards” (“Alternative Approaches to Assessment”). In evaluations, students say they are less stressed, they are more motivated, and they understand assignment expectations better.
Despite the flaws in my first grading system, it taught me that I functioned better in a classroom when I use alternative assessment, and I have maintained some semblance of the complete/incomplete system ever since. Traditional grading felt too subjective, based on a sliding scale of bad, average, or great. As a TA, I even received rubrics with that language. As much as it was my job to teach students to write, I also felt the grading system disadvantaged those students who came in with subpar high school educations and less writing experience. I wanted to design a system that addressed those problems.
Gannon’s Contract Grading: A Transparent Framework
Kevin Gannon’s (2022) grading contract (see Figure 1) heavily influenced my third semester of teaching. In Gannon’s model, students begin with a B- and achieving, or failing to achieve, specific requirements raise or lower their grade. His system was easy to explain and students responded positively. When I introduced Gannon’s system, I used the word ‘labor’ a lot. In Asao Inoue’s (2022) labor-based grading model, he defines labor as “the engine that runs all learning. You can’t learn without laboring” (76). But, on my own, I doubted whether I could evaluate a student’s labor when it mostly took place outside of the classroom. I aimed, therefore, to bring the writing process further into the classroom, including proposals, drafts, and revisions. I especially wanted students to understand that the ‘final’ assignment was anything but. Usually written in one to three weeks (if not one to three days), ‘final’ assignments are first thoughts, or, if we’re lucky, second thoughts. Drafts and revisions help students embrace what Gannon (2020) calls “not-yetness,” the recognition that they are still learning and the goal is not perfection (146).
Figure 1:Gannon’s Contact System
Grade
Number of Non-Participation Days
Number of Late Assignments
Number of Ignored Assignments
B-minus
0-4
0-4
0
C-minus
5-6
5
1
D-minus
more than 6
6 or more
more than 1
Despite the overall success of the system, I had problems. Students were still demotivated by a lack of clear expectations. Because everything was graded complete/incomplete, three-sentence reading responses held the same weight as thousand-word essays, making it unclear how much time I expected them to spend on a given assignment. My assignments also didn’t have detailed enough rubrics and some students felt quality didn’t matter.
My Grading Design and Process
At this point, I started teaching general education in literature, which had different grading expectations. Needing to change my system anyway, I created a contract with 100 points, each assignment assigned 1-10 points (See supplementary materials). I like this system. I’m still using it two years later.But my first go-around had only middling success. The system seemed straightforward to me, but my students were confused, as nearly all of them pointed out in their evaluations. Although students understood what the assignments were, my rubrics were sparse – perceptive readers might notice this as a reoccurring problem.
So, here’s how I fixed it: On the first day of class, I explain my system and give everyone a copy of the contract, which I ask them to fill out with their desired grade. Being in physical contact with the contract helps them understand it better and immediately establish a goal for the semester. I explain the larger purpose of the contract, but I also boiled the system down to some simple numbers: if a student successfully completes all the main assignments and three revisions, they get an A.
And, at long last, I have a functioning rubric. I still grade each point complete/incomplete. For simple assignments like reading responses, where I just want students to get their thoughts down, it’s a simple question of “Did you do the assignment?” For more complicated assignments, I assign each point an objective, and each objective introduces a new skill or concept. For example, in an eight-point paper, I assign four points to close reading (See Figure 2). The objectives build from including close reading consistently in the paper to synthesizing the new skill they’re learning (close reading) with the class content (monster theory). The objectives become more difficult and the final objective requires the most subjective grading. But overall, the system allows the students to see whether they’re meeting requirements even before I’ve given them a grade, and the system highlights what skills or content they are struggling with.
Figure 2: Analysis Rubric
1 point
Close reading throughout the paper that addresses specific, quoted moments from your song
1 point
Close reading that makes an argument about why those specific moments are there throughout the paper
1 point
The paper addresses monstrosity as we have discussed it in class (i.e. have you told us what the monster is a metaphor for?
1 point
Analysis heavily relies throughout on an argument about monstrosity that goes beyond ‘monster as metaphor.’
Conclusion
I find alternative assessment highly effective. Even though I recently received the comment, “Never do contract grading again,” student evaluations are overwhelmingly positive and more often sound like, “So helpful, literally my favorite thing ever.” Stress reduction and increased motivation appear frequently in evaluations. But more than that, alternative assessment taught me how to be a teacher. Improving my grading system required me to create clearer rubrics, state the purpose of my lessons, design assignments that gave my students more agency, and provide more concrete methods of measuring participation. This meant a lot of big changes at once, but alternative assessment can be implemented in much smaller steps, like using it for one assignment or rewriting one rubric. Now that I have a good system, I’m working on those smaller steps, like making assignments more time effective and integrating revisions more effectively. Implementing alternative assessment was really hard, but I hope as more teachers take it up, there will be more resources for those who want to take the plunge.
Sarah Barringer is a graduate student at the University of Iowa. Her dissertation, “Transmasculine Narratives in Medieval Literature,” argues that transmasculine characters in medieval literature allowed medieval audiences to imagine a gender that comprised both feminine and masculine elements. She teaches general education in literature courses at the University of Iowa on monstrosity and identity.
Inoue, Asoa. Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom. University Press of Colorado, 2022.
Schapiro, Barbara. “Negotiating a Third Space in the Classroom.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 9, no. 3 (2009): 423-439.
Are you on the job market or seeking a new career? Professors and researchers, this interview is especially for academics considering leaving academia (or if you’re forced to leave unexpectedly). I’m happy career coach, Dr. Jennifer Polk of From PhD to Life is back for this 2025 episode.
Jen’s been on The Social Academic to chat with me back in 2022 when we talked about Informational Interviews. She also joined me for a YouTube live in 2020 where she answered the question, What Is Networking? This year especially, mid-career and senior academics may be pivoting away from their more traditional academic career path. Many researchers and scientists in the United States of America have been let go. While there’s many resources out there to help with your next steps, such as the From PhD to Life blog, you may want personalized support from a career coach and community. We talk about Jen’s PhD Career Clarity Program which you may find helpful.
While we talk about a service for academics in this and other interviews on The Social Academic, I don’t receive any gift or monies if you choose to move forward with Jen’s PhD Career Clarity Program. I share people including Dr. Jen Polk with you, because I trust and recommend her to clients and friends.
In this interview
Reintroducing Dr. Jennifer Polk (@FromPhDToLife)
Jennifer Van Alstyne[‘Jennifer’]: Hi! Welcome back to The Social Academic, a podcast, blog, YouTube channel about online presence for professors, researchers, PhDs, people who are in academia. Dr. Jennifer Polk is back with me today. She’s someone who we featured here on The Social Academic in the past. She’s been live on the YouTube channel, but this time we have new things to talk about. I mean, the social media landscape has changed in 2025. Jen, would you start by introducing yourself?
Dr. Jennifer Polk [‘Jen’]: Oh no, I’m on the spot!
Yes, I’m Jen Polk. My business is called From PhD to Life. I work with professors, postdocs, and other PhDs who are ready to leave academia and go somewhere where they will be respected and valued and all that good stuff, even if they don’t yet know what the heck that could ever be. I’ll help them figure it out.
Jennifer: I love that. You’re a career coach who’s like, you’re not new to this space, right? You’ve been doing this for a while.
Jen: A while, indeed. What’s a while? More than 10 years? More than 10 years, yes.
Jennifer: Amazing.
Jen: Yes. Someone called me the OG PhD career coach. Am I saying that right? OG, is that what the kids say?
Social media climate for academics in 2025
Jennifer: OG, yeah. I love it. I love it. I’m curious because you’re actually like an early social media user, early online user. How have you seen things shifting or changing in social media in the past year or so?
Jen: Big sigh, sob, hysterics. [Sighs]. Okay, one way of putting it is Twitter is dead to me. I mean, Twitter is dead, right? Twitter is dead to me and Twitter is dead. And now that was a big problem. And please interrupt me when I go on and on and on about this. Most of my clients the last few years found me via Twitter. Not 100%, but that was a big place where people got to know me and eventually work with me. And that was true for individuals who wanted to work with me as like for career coaching, guidance on their own individual job searches, as well as the folks who work in universities and bring in speakers to do workshops and presentations. And so a lot of my business happened in part on Twitter.
Now, I don’t even go to Twitter anymore. So just for me personally, Elon Musk has ruined my life. No, I’m being dramatic. Yeah, just like that’s a small but sort of huge thing for me when it comes to social media. I mean, that’s the first thing that comes to mind.
Jennifer: I’m curious, like, gosh, you’ve been such a prolific Twitter user. Are you finding community elsewhere? Like, are you using other platforms the way you used to use Twitter or what?
Jen: Yeah, it’s a good question. And I don’t have a good answer because my answer right now is also a sigh. And I am on Bluesky, but I haven’t quite started using it for my career. Let’s put it that way. So it’s not that I’m not using it at all, but I tend to go on there more as like a personal, I want to share a thing. And ideally, if it was, if it made sense to spend the time, it would have a mix of like me as a person and me as a business owner that you could work with. That is how I always used Twitter. And Bluesky is different in terms of reach and engagement. That is not just because I’m bad at it, but that was like a deliberate, you know, that’s how it works.
Jennifer: I think that’s so helpful to share with people. I mean, like you are, you have a huge following on social media. Whether Twitter is dead or not, like people still follow you there. And yet on Bluesky, what was working for you in the past, maybe it doesn’t feel the same, maybe it doesn’t get the same engagement. The same thing on different platforms can have different results. And that’s something helpful for people to know when someone has an audience size of yours is still experiencing that, I don’t know, that frustration.
Jen: Yeah. And something else that might be interesting for your audience is that I have mixed feelings, I mean, I have mixed feelings about so many things in life, but including LinkedIn as well. I go through like seasons with LinkedIn. Last year, what is it, 2025 now. So back in 2024, for the first almost six months of the year, most days of the week, I would say I was posting on LinkedIn. And yeah, I did that consistently for those first six months and I got out of the habit and I’m much more sporadic now and I want to like it, but it’s just never, it’s just never really done it for me the way it’s . . . oh, lament, lament for Twitter of old.
I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know social media, you’re not doing it for me, but I want to like it.
Social media for academics who are job seekers in 2025
Jennifer: Mm. Hmm. Now, there are so many job seekers right now, whether they’ve been laid off in federal government and their PhDs or their academics who are finding funding issues that are now unexpectedly needing to search for jobsl for their financial future. I’m curious, what we just talked about in terms of social media, how might that impact job seekers?
Jen: Man, it’s such a scary time. One thing that comes to mind for the impact on job seekers is folks that do have jobs in the US federal government, in the US in general maybe, in universities, I think they might want to be a little bit more circumspect if that’s the right word. A little more cautious about what they put out there. I mean, we’re reading like insane things. Who knows if they’re true, but like, is Grok reading your tweets? Is DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency], are the teenagers surrounding Musk like turning the AI on your tweets and deciding who to fire that way? Like, I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I think there’s some evidence that, anyways, I think people might be right to be a little bit more cautious about what they put out there. Even Bluesky, my understanding is that Bluesky is open. So you don’t even, I mean, even though it’s not owned by bad faith actors, foreign actors, it’s still maybe, you still want to maybe be a bit cautious about it. I don’t know if that’s what you were getting at with your question, but that’s one thing. That’s not the only thing, but I think that’s one thing that folks might want to think about.
Jennifer: Yeah, I really appreciate you saying that because that’s a question that’s been on my mind lately as professors who, this actually came up in a workshop, have sensitive topics. That was a good way of putting it. Sensitive in the sense that if they talk about it, the thing that they do in their research, in their work every day, they could attract hate. They could attract political controversy, even if they’re just posting about a new publication. And so this is actually something I brought up in a social media mastermind group that I’m in monthly because I wanted to hear how other people, how strategists who work on social media with companies and different agencies are handling the political divide. And it was really great to be open about the worries and fears that some professors are having right now. Yeah, everyone kind of said, “Airing on the side of caution.” Airing on the side of facts doesn’t even always work. It’s not enough anymore. And so really thinking about protecting yourself and having that feeling of safety, if you’re unsure before you post, maybe don’t do it. Ask a friend to look it over in advance. It’s hard.
Jen: I hate it, right? I hate it. I don’t want this. I have a client who is, well, let me not give away too many details, but who is a target of bad actors, right-wing bad actors as a person that shows up on lists, the kind of lists that you don’t want to be on and that is just total BS, right? And her solution, one solution anyways, to continue to be a public intellectual, to write because that’s important to her, is that she has changed the name that she uses. So it’s still kind of basically the same name, but the addition of like an initial or, I forget exactly what it was, the decision, but like of using like the first name instead of the middle name kind of thing as just one, it just makes it easier to differentiate herself from the person who’s being targeted on the internet. And I thought that was a nice, you know, partial kind of practical thing that was in her control, you know, because she can’t scrub the web, doesn’t have any control over that, but she could, you know, add an initial or anyways, you know what I’m saying?
Jennifer: I really like that. That’s such a, it’s a doable solution for people when you’re unsure, just know that you have that option. And maybe now is a time that anonymous accounts could protect you. If you’re someone who does want to say something politically, and you don’t want it to touch your professional or your personal kind of social media. I did hear from a couple of people who do like to say, what is truth? What is science? What is facts? And they need to protect themselves in order to do that by creating maybe an anonymous profile that’s not connected with themselves. So there are options, even though yes, it is scary. Yes, things have changed. [Sighs]
Jen: It’s just like you’re in that lament mode.
Jennifer: I know. I’m sorry. I’m kind of a downer. But honestly, I think that’s how people are feeling. And that’s what people are experiencing right now. So if we didn’t say it, it would be not right.
Jen: Yeah. The free speech brigade is, that’s not what they care about. I mean, this is obvious, right? But let’s just say we know that this is obvious. They don’t have consequences, but you might experience consequences.
Blogging and other ways to share online
Jennifer: Exactly. Exactly. Now, there are other ways to create content and you’re someone who’s actually for a long time tried different forms of content. Blogging is one of them.
Jen: [Laughs] In other words, you have failed so many times, Jen. You have failed to hit on the thing that works.
Jennifer: No. In other words, you’ve experimented with lots of different forms of media and you found things that really work for you for a time. And then sometimes you get curious about something else. And so you switch it up.
Jen: That’s a better way to put it.
Jennifer: I think that’s really what’s happened with you because you were prolific at the things that you do try and experiment with. And the From PhD to Life blog is one of them. I mean, when did you start that? That’s pretty old, right?
Jen: It’s old. So unless my memory is going, I started, so From PhD to Life started as a blog and a website the same day, December 12, 2012. I bought the domain and I got the WordPress site and I wrote my first two posts, I think, if memory serves. Yes, back in 2012, I was really excited about it. The internet was a different place back in 2012, but that is how I started and that is how I grew my business in the early years. I was on Twitter pretty quickly as well, but first the blog, then came Twitter. I think important for folks to know is that although I started my blog on my own website, within, I think I’m getting this right, within a few months, I got asked to blog on an external site. So universityaffairs.ca, which is a Canadian post-secondary ed sector magazine. I don’t know if they’re still a physical magazine, but they were like a 10 times a year kind of magazine and they also had a website. And so I was one of their bloggers, one of their columnists as they called me, but just online. So that was amazing for reach in Canada and beyond as a legitimizing place. Again, the internet is different now, but that was cool.
Jennifer: That is so cool. And you actually, I remember you won an award for that, didn’t you?
Jen: Three!
Jennifer: Three! You won three awards!
Jen: I mean, it’s been a few years now. I think back in 2015, 16, 17, I got the Gold Award in front of the Canadian Online Publishing Awards for best blog or column in the Blue category, which was for business.
Jennifer: Amazing. It’s amazing. I mean, it’s amazing because having a blog about PhDs seeking careers and finding a path that works for their life is like, that should be awarded. But I mean, it’s exciting that that’s the topic that they chose because your blog was so great. Now, the blog did win awards and it did have this big reach, but recently kind of disappeared from the university affairs website, which is typical. I will say like, websites do this. They take down the public writing sometimes in order to put new stuff up. And so when did you notice that it was gone?
Jen: Yeah. So I think I noticed maybe late fall 2024, something like that. I noticed because I think it was when a client alerted me to a broken link in our online platform for my online course. And I was like, “Oh. Oh, it’s all gone. Okay. Okay. All right. Fair enough.” I know. Gut punch, stab, but also, “Yeah, fair enough.” Okay. It’s been a few years. I stopped blogging for them back in 2020. So it’s been a few years. They owe me nothing. But there was a bit of a moment of, there was at least some good content there that, of course, I didn’t have a record of because who’s that organized? Maybe everybody else listening, but not me.
Jernnifer: No, when I’m thinking about it now, like my first two years of blogging, I backed up everything. Like I have like a word document of them at least. Recently, nothing. I don’t have anything saved outside of the website itself.
Jen: Well, it’s time.
Reclaiming online presence from out of the past
Jennifer: I know, it’s time, especially after what happened with the University Affairs version of your blog. Now, what did you do? Like, that stuff was just gone and you had a solution for actually finding the most important things and bringing it back. What happened?
Jen: Yeah. So the immediate issue was that there was this post that I’d linked to from my course that I think was a good one and useful. And I found it on Internet Archive. And so when it came time to think sort of beyond this immediate problem of like, “Okay, that one post, I want to continue to link to it. Oh, can I find all of the ones on Internet Archive?” In fact, I made a donation to Internet Archive because I was like, “Thank you so much!” Yeah. So then with your help JVA, I went through and picked out the blog posts that I thought were worth saving. I mean, there were, there were a handful that was like, “Eh, that was what I was thinking, you know, eight years ago, but whatever.” And yeah, you helped me put them on my website, copy and paste. Anyways, if you want to say more about that, I’ll let you say more about that. But I’m glad for that because now it’s on my site, I own it. Well, whoever owns the internet owns it. I feel like it’s a little bit more in my hands.
Jennifer: Yeah. I think that process is overwhelming for people. So it was kind of nice that we got to do it together. But my father-in-law, for instance, is a critic of art. And so he’s had a long career where he’s written, I mean, like hundreds, like thousands, I don’t know, like so many reviews and articles that, when art critics were being laid off quite a while ago and since then, his writing has disappeared from, a lot of his writing has disappeared from the website. And they did give him permission to pull all of the things that he wanted. But like, is he going to go back through the Internet Archive and pull all of those things? No, he doesn’t have the same drive or motivation that someone like you does. So a lot of that stuff, it’s not lost. He has it in physically bound, beautiful books, but it doesn’t mean that it’s like accessible for other people. And so when that’s the goal, when like that’s what you want, yeah, sometimes the project takes a little bit longer than we might want. It can be a little bit frustrating to have to search down old things, but then you have agency and choice in what you do about it next. And so for Jen, she got to pick the ones that were most important to her, we put them back on her blog, on her website FromPhDtolife.com. And that’s something that you could do for your own website. There’s so many options for you, but just knowing that the Wayback Machine and the Internet Archive exist for you to search, it’s a huge tip for people. Actually, after we worked together on that, I went back and I found some things that I’d written as like guest posts for other people in the past that had disappeared. Like they weren’t on the blog anymore because maybe the business had changed or what they were doing with the organization had changed. And so it was really easy for me to pull my original writing, which I didn’t have a good copy of, and put it back on my website so it could still help people. And when I did, I still put a little note at the bottom that said this has originally appeared on this place because I still want to honor that original purpose for the writing. And it’s really interesting to see how we can create afterlives for the things that we’ve written and created. So I love that.
Jen: Yeah, I will say one thing for folks to know, at least in my experience, the Internet Archive kind of crapped out after a few years. So if you’ve got stuff from like 20 years ago, well, is it even alive after 20 years, I don’t know. But anyways, just do it now. You know, put an hour or two in your calendar, do it now. Don’t wait for five years.
Jennifer: Yeah, right. Pull the content now and you can always do something with it later.
Jen: Yep. Yeah, it really only took me an hour or two-
Jennifer: Perfect.
Jen: And I didn’t have your father-in-law’s archive, but you know, I had a few years of stuff.
Jennifer: There was actually more than I expected in a good way, in the sense that like it really created new life for those pieces of writing that were just lost in the Internet Archive. Now, I’m curious about how your website has kind of changed over time, because the website is 2012. That’s a long time to have a website and actually add new things to it. Like, that’s a lot of new things. So what’s it been like to have a website for that long?
Jen: Whew, boy. Yeah. And for most of that time, I, and only I was the one doing all the things and you could tell. That’s okay, but you know. I always used a free WordPress. So it’s always been a WordPress and I, it’s always been on WordPress.org, is that right?
Jennifer: Yeah, that’s correct for you.
Jen: Yeah. And it’s always been connected to my domain FromPhDtolife.com. Anyways, I’m veering from your question. What was it, a year and a half ago that I hired you? Two years ago?
Jennifer: Yeah, something like that.
Jen: And you, so we’ve done this in two or three stages now. Which has felt manageable, you know, both financially and also in terms of my own need to do some homework, pre-work.
Jennifer: We only have so much capacity to do things for our own websites and stuff.
Jen: Yeah. So that was, I think that’s really a key point because I had not an outrageous number of pages, but it’s not, it’s not just a one page or two or three page website. There’s a few more pages than that. And for the most part I think my pages were ones that I wanted to keep, but they just over, over time they get longer like an academic CV, right? I’m thinking of like one or two pages in particular that they just, they just grow. You know, as if I was some sort of like tenured professor. So it was really good to say, “Okay, let’s focus on this page and this page and then let’s stop.” And then six months later, “Okay, now I’m ready to do this and this,” right? So that was, so yeah, it just made the process a lot more manageable. And now if you go to my website now, unless I’ve messed it up, unless I have messed it up, it’s looking so much more in-, it’s just more inviting and welcoming, easier for people to use and get at the information that will help them. Yeah, so that I can help them, whether they’re just looking at my website or wanting to take another step or two into working with me.
How to work with Dr. Jen Polk
Jennifer: Yeah. Like what, what does that look like? Like what if someone does come to your website and they want to take those next steps to work with you? How can PhDs, professors, researchers thinking of leaving academia, you know, work one-on-one with you, work in a group with you? How does that work?
Jen: Yeah. So folks that are like raring to go. They have options to just pay me money and start working with me immediately. Of course, that’s not going to be most people, especially if you’ve never heard of me before. The main thing that I recommend, so this is for individuals who are interested in their own job search, right? You know, getting another job. There is a free webinar, it’s a video on my website and then there’s like a yellow button kind of all over the place. So I recommend starting with that. You can sign up, you can watch this whenever, you can put it in your schedule and watch it later. It’s got captions and you can press pause, all that good stuff, right? So that I really recommend because it is a, a rich intro to what I teach my clients and the step-by-step process that I recommend everybody go through from like, “Uhh” to “Okay!” You know, I have a great offer and I’m starting a job. Yeah, and then at that point, what most folks do is of course, they feel more confident and more ready to, and they just have a sense of, “Okay, I’m going to stop doing that approach and,” you know, shift my energies more in this direction. And they can go off and do it on their own. There’s a couple of options after that. Individuals can sign up for a one-on-one with me, over Zoom, phone if you want and we can go more in depth for an hour on, you know, your particular issue, whether that’s networking or LinkedIn, or I don’t even know what I should be doing for the rest of my life. Or even better, depending on the person, I have a program. It’s an online course plus, plus other stuff, right? I called a PhD Career Clarity Program and that’s really great for professors, postdocs, other PhDs who are ready to leave academia and leaving academia can mean that you are right now working in academia, or it can mean like in some way you still identify with that profession even if you don’t currently work there. I often get clients who already got a job outside of academia, but that’s not the right fit. So anyways, that’s a very long answer. Start with the free thing and then take it from there.
Feeling hope with the PhD Clarity Program
Jennifer: I love that. And one of the things that we talked about when we were working on kind of the sales page for the PhD career clarity program is that feeling of hope that people have when they are joining this group and feeling like, “Oh, okay, now I can have that support.” What is the emotional journey for some of these people who are going through your program?
Jen: Yeah, it’s really interesting because I asked one of my clients a while back, asked somebody that was in the program like, “Why did you join?” And what my, the things that I thought that she would share or that I think sort of in general people share is that they’re feeling kind of like, despair. Maybe not completely, but like there’s some moment of, there’s some feeling of, “I can’t do anything. I’m no good for anybody. Nobody’s ever going to pay me money to do anything. I can’t do it.” And I think sometimes that’s relatable for some people, not everybody.
Jennifer: Yeah, yeah.
Jen: There are certainly other people that are like, “No, I’m feeling confident. I know I have something to offer. I don’t know what it is outside of academia. And so it’s not that I feel bad about myself. It’s that I need to figure out like, what is this called elsewhere?” So those are kind of two things that I had in mind, depending on the person. I mean, maybe you can tell resonated more personally with the first one.
Jennifer: I think my husband did too. He’s also a PhD who felt some despair. Yeah.
Jen: Yes. So okay, you’re in good company. If you consider me to be good company anyways.
Jennifer: Yes!
Jen: So there was a third option that I found when I asked my own client who was in the program. And, I think of course she probably felt both of those two things. And a third thing, which is the moment that she decided to join the program, she felt hope. Right? It was like, okay, I don’t know. I don’t know what it is that I’m going to do. Right? I don’t, I’m not entirely sure about my place in the world and what I have to offer and how to tell people about who I am and all of that stuff. But I’m hopeful and I’m going to invest that hope, that energy, that time, some money into moving myself forward. And I really, I love that, right? Cause that’s actually, that was I think a missing piece in my understanding of where people were at. Because yeah, I want you to bring some energy, some hope into this, which is not to downplay any of the other emotions: good, bad, ugly. But I think there’s some . . . Yeah, I think that’s a good, that’s a good, helpful thing to have and a hard thing, a hard thing, right?
Jennifer:The PhD Career Clarity Program has like a core course, it has workshops and resources. It also has a community. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that community aspect and how people from all these different fields are coming together and like actually finding support within their job search process?
Yeah. So the community I would say tends to exist, communities are amorphous things, but I would say it comes alive for the most part during our live meetings. And I, there’s two types of live meetings. One is the small group coaching sessions, which these days I do three times a month for an hour. Those are drop-in, you know, bring yourself and whatever’s going on. And then three of those a month. And then once a month, you mentioned I do live workshops. That’s really where the community comes alive, yeah? And it’s really great because the question that sometimes folks ask me is, “Oh, have you ever worked with, you know, a biochemical engineer, right? Or have you ever worked with somebody who goes into like X specific company, right? And the answer could very well be yes, but then the second part of the answer is it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because it’s really magical what happens when people with disparate backgrounds and career trajectories and, you know, knowledge, expertise and skill areas. In fact, we have a lot in common and that there are differences really enrich the discussions that we have because of course, we’re all different. We’re all different men, women, trans folks, like we, you know, life is different: mothers, fathers, people without kids, et cetera. But it really, it’s really great what happens when we’re together sharing updates and commiserations and strategizing and putting our eyeballs, you know, on each other’s resumes and LinkedIn profiles. I think it really helps people feel much more confident. Academia can be so siloed within disciplines that it can be difficult to imagine yourself stepping into a professional world where you’re not surrounded by other chemists or other anthropologists or whoever, right?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Jen: So in a way this is like part of growing your confidence, is interacting in a semi-professional space with people from different backgrounds.
Jennifer: I think it sounds really warm. I think that I’m someone who personally had avoided community or group type things in the past and it was only in the last like five years or so that I have found not just comfort, but like comfortableness within myself because of group programs. Like because I feel more comfortable in smaller communities where we can actually get like a surprising amount of stuff done, whether it’s like emotional relationship building or whether it’s like really getting down and working on strategy and doing something harder. But like my resistance to group programs is like something that, I’m so glad that I have left behind because it really opens up my world to new things. So I’m glad you said that. Yeah.
Jen: You know, when I started my business, I was doing one-on-one coaching and that’s like the typical model for someone with a coaching approach. And I sometimes do that now, but the coaching I do for the most part is group coaching. And it’s facilitation, group discussions, And that I think is, yeah, is just really powerful and fun. You know, I’m happy to chat with anybody who’s interested but concerned because I know that, there are concerns that people have like, “Am I going to be drowning in all of these other people? Am I going to be the odd person out with nothing in common with anybody else,” etc. But let me know. Let’s chat about it. It’s not for everybody, but I think it’s probably for you.
Big sigh, last words
Jennifer: I appreciate you, Jen. I’m so glad you came back on The Social Academic. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up?
Jen: Big sigh. You know, I think there’s still connection to be made online. There’s still good people out there trying to make a difference in the world in the ways that they can, including online.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Jen: There’s still value in sharing what you’re about. Even if right now in some circumstances, you might choose to be a little bit more circumspect. There’s still value in that. And in the meantime, you may build community in other ways and that’s okay too. You know, you don’t owe your social media followers. Can I say this? You don’t owe them anything, right? You don’t owe them your presence. You don’t, you can choose to pause your activity and you don’t have to stress about it. I mean, what would you say?
Jennifer: Yeah, I think that’s really good. I think that last year, personally, I leaned into more of the pause in the sense that like, I didn’t put as much effort into social media. I really tried to be more relaxed about it. And that meant I was posting less. It meant I was taking some long breaks, sometimes weeks. And it made a difference for my mental health, but it also made a difference for like my brain and what I was able to focus on instead. Letting go of some of that need to post was helpful for me. But on the flip side of that, if you’re someone who struggles to post, being conscientious, being cautious does make sense, but also know that there’s other ways that you can have a strong online presence, whether it’s filling out your LinkedIn profile, creating a simple personal website or portfolio website. There’s so many options for you. And it’s okay if social media isn’t where you want to be spending your time.
Jen: Yeah, it’s great when people reach out and they write because they found you somewhere.
Jen: Thank you. Always, always nice to chat, even if it’s a bit formal like this.
Jennifer: And for everyone who’s listening, I’m going to drop the links to Jen and I’s past interviews on informational interviews and on what is networking so you can check those resources out too.
Jen: Can I say one more thing?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Jen: Just anybody who is thinking about hiring my friend JVA to help with your online presence, writing a bio, you know, let me be more specific, getting your website looking a little better, maybe a lot better. Do not hesitate. Act now. Run, don’t walk.
It’s been really, really fun to work with you, Jennifer. And we’re going to do it again. I’m warning you now. We’re not done.
Jen: Thank you. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for coming on the Social Academic, Jen.
Dr. Jennifer Polk’s Bio
Dr. Jennifer Polk, photo by Nadalie Bardowell
Jennifer Polk, PhD, is a career coach and expert on PhD careers. Since 2013, she’s worked with graduate students and doctoral degree holders based in Canada, the United States, the UK, Australia, and elsewhere. Jen created her PhD Career Clarity Program to help PhDs navigate their career paths with confidence.
Jen has spoken on university campuses and at academic and professional conferences throughout North America on issues related to graduate education and career outcomes for PhDs. Jen regularly facilitates professional development workshops (now online) and delivers presentations for graduate students and postdocs. In addition, she currently serves on the board of directors for CAGS, the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies.
Her writing has appeared in University Affairs, Inside Higher Ed, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Globe and Mail, and Academic Matters. Her University Affairs blog (2013–20), “From PhD to Life,” won three gold awards at the Canadian Online Publishing Awards. She’s also contributed essays to three books: Moving On: Essays on the Aftermath of Leaving Academia (2014), Reflections on Academic Lives: Identities, Struggles, and Triumphs in Graduate School and Beyond (2017), and How to Get Your PhD: A Handbook for the Journey (2021). Jen was also an expert panelist for the 2021 Canadian Council of Academies report, Degrees of Success, on the challenges PhDs face transitioning to employment.
Jen was co-founder of Beyond the Professoriate from the company’s founding until her departure in January 2020. Between 2014 and 2019 she co-produced and -hosted several online conferences attended by hundreds of graduate students, PhDs, and career education professionals. For several years she also ran Self-Employed PhD, an online network of freelancers, independent consultants, entrepreneurs, and small business owners. She hosted #withaPhD chat, a twice-monthly Twitter discussion, for three years.
Jen is actively engaged in online conversations about careers for PhDs, especially on social media. Follow her @FromPhDtoLife, or interact with her on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Jen earned her PhD in history from the University of Toronto in 2012, and an MA and BA from Carleton University.
Title: Accounting for Additional Credentials in Postsecondary Earnings Data
Authors: Jason Delisle, Jason Cohn, and Bryan Cook
Source: The Urban Institute
As policymakers across both parties consider how to evaluate postsecondary outcomes and earnings data, the authors of a new brief from the Urban Institute pose a major question: How should students who earn multiple credentials be included in data collection for the college that awarded their first degree?
For example, should the earnings of a master’s degree recipient be included in the data for the institution where they earned their bachelor’s degree? Additionally, students who finish an associate degree at a community college are likely to earn higher wages when they complete a bachelor’s degree at another institution. Thus, multiple perspectives need to be considered to help both policymakers and institutions understand, interpret, and treat additional degrees earned.
Additional key findings include:
Earnings Data and Accountability Policies
Many legislative proposals would expand the use of earnings data to provide further accountability and federal aid restrictions. For example, the House Republicans’ College Cost Reduction Act, proposed in 2024, would put institutions at risk of losing funding if they have low student loan repayment rates. The brief’s authors state that the bill does not indicate if students who earn additional credentials should be included in the cohort of students where they completed their first credential.
The recently implemented gainful employment rule from the Biden administration is explicit in its inclusion of those who earn additional credentials. Under the rule, students who earn an additional degree are included in both calculations for their recent degree and the program that awarded their first credential.
How Much Do Additional Credential Affect Earnings Data?
Determining how much additional credentials affect wages and earnings for different programs is difficult. The first earnings measurement—the first year after students leave school—is usually too early to include additional income information from a second credential.
Although the entire data picture is lacking, a contrast between first- and fifth-year earnings suggests that the number of students earning additional degrees may be very high for some programs. As an example, students who earn associate degrees in liberal arts and general studies often have some of their quickest increases in earnings during these first five years. A potential explanation is because students are then completing a bachelor’s degree program at a four-year institution.
Policy Implications: How Should Earnings Data Approach Subsequent Credentials?
In general, it seems that many policymakers have not focused on this complicated question of students who earn additional degrees. However, policy and data professionals may benefit from excluding students who earn additional credentials to more closely measure programs’ return on investment. This can be especially helpful when examining the costs of bachelor’s programs and their subsequent earnings benchmarks, by excluding additional earnings premiums generated from master’s programs.
Additionally, excluding students who earn additional credentials may be particularly valuable to students in making consumer and financial aid decisions if the payoff from a degree is extremely different depending on whether students pursue an additional credential.
However, some programs are intended to prepare students for an additional degree, and excluding data for students who earn another degree would mean excluding most graduates and paint a misleading picture.
To read the full report from the Urban Institute, click here.
—Austin Freeman
If you have any questions or comments about this blog post, please contact us.
At the same time, we asked OCR to give colleges additional guidance so they have a better idea of what type of speech or conduct might run afoul of its “Dear Colleague” letter. OCR has not yet done so, and with the compliance deadline set for tomorrow, we fear institutions will over-correct and engage in campus censorship.
In fact, we’ve already seen evidence of exactly that.
Grand View University in Iowa, for instance, reportedly cancelled its planned International Women’s Day activities, allegedly to comply with federal DEI directives. This, even though Bondi’s Feb. 6 memo exempts “educational, cultural, or historical observances — such as Black History Month, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or similar events — that celebrate diversity, recognize historical contributions, and promote awareness without engaging in exclusion or discrimination.”
This type of overcompliance — in this case, cancelling activities or events that are expressly exempted from enforcement — unnecessarily degrades the extracurricular educational environment at higher education institutions and harms the student learning experience.
As we said last week: OCR is bound by the First Amendment and cannot order or compel colleges and universities to violate it. If there is a conflict between federal guidance and the First Amendment, the First Amendment prevails. Whether institutions are overcomplying out of fear of losing federal funding, or in an attempt to prove a point about the directive’s vague language, colleges and universities like Grand View must not preemptively shut down speech.
OCR’s new Title VI letter: FIRE’s analysis and recommendations
News
The Department of Education should provide more clarity about its ‘Dear Colleague Letter’ to ensure protected speech isn’t censored on campus.
This isn’t the first time institutions have overread government directives to justify censorship. In 2021, for example, Idaho passed the “No Public Funds for Abortion Act.” In implementing the bill, the University of Idaho demanded that faculty not “promote or advocate in favor of abortion” or discuss “abortion or contraception” in classroom conversations unless they remained “neutral.” FIRE wrote to the university explaining that such a reading was flatly at odds with the First Amendment. In a thorough memorandum, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador agreed, explaining that the “plain text of the Act does not prohibit public university employees from engaging in speech relating to academic teaching and scholarship that could be viewed as supporting abortion,” thus ending that censorship policy at the University of Idaho.
In that same vein, OCR cannot force schools to violate the First Amendment, a point we’ve hammered since the Obama-era OCR’s “Dear Colleague” letters forced institutions to adopt harassment policies that did exactly that.
OCR must be clear about the type of conduct that runs afoul of its new directives so that institutions are on notice about what’s permissible and what is prohibited. The office has yet to address vagueness in the “Dear Colleague” letter about “institutional programming” that might violate Title VI. That silence is creating a lot of confusion and preemptive censorship, especially when paired with President Trump’s Jan. 21 executive order declaring that government contractors — which includes many institutions of higher education — cannot “operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.”
FIRE again urges institutions to hold the line on defending the free speech and academic freedom rights of their students and faculty. And we again ask OCR and the federal government to respect those same rights by immediately clarifying that their directives don’t require colleges and universities to violate those well-established rights.
Last week, a federal court enjoined two executive orders — including the Jan. 21 executive order — that prohibit, among other things, “promoting DEI” in violation of federal anti-discrimination law. The district court held the orders violate the First and Fifth Amendments because they discriminate on the basis of viewpoint and content, and are unconstitutionally vague.
While the government will likely appeal and we won’t know the final resolution for some time, the court’s analysis properly identified the orders’ ambiguity as a damning constitutional flaw. What, precisely, constitutes “promoting DEI” in ways that violate anti-discrimination laws? Can colleges host or sponsor speakers on DEI-related topics? Can institutions advertise DEI-related coursework or promote academic research? Restrictions on these activities would violate the First Amendment, but government attorneys were unable to clarify the meaning of the order when asked by the judge. Precision matters, especially when it comes to restrictions on expression. Vague pronouncements that sweep in protected debate, discussion, and programming raise constitutional and practical problems.
The best way forward for colleges is obvious, even if it might not be easy: Irrespective of the federal DEI directives, ditch speech-restrictive, orthodoxy-enforcing DEI bureaucracies and stand up for free expression and academic debate — in every political season.
As Len Gutkin, editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education, recently wrote: “Colleges should draw a sharp distinction between, on the one hand, DEI used in hiring, promotion, and training, and, on the other, curricular and disciplinary offerings.”
That’s the right balance. FIRE again urges institutions to hold the line on defending the free speech and academic freedom rights of their students and faculty. And we again ask OCR and the federal government to respect those same rights by immediately clarifying that their directives don’t require colleges and universities to violate those well-established rights.
