Tag: Colleges

  • Colleges Spend Heavily on Lobbying

    Colleges Spend Heavily on Lobbying

    As President Trump’s broadside attacks on higher education continue, few institutions have shown a willingness to push back publicly. But behind closed doors, the sector has already pumped millions of dollars into federal lobbying efforts this year to plead their case in Washington.

    An Inside Higher Ed analysis of federal lobbying data shows that some of the universities in Trump’s crosshairs have dramatically increased spending this year compared to the first quarter of last year, hiring advocates on the Hill to represent their interests to lawmakers. Northwestern University, for example, has already spent more than $600,000 on federal lobbying this year, compared to $110,000 in the first quarter of 2024. Among individual institutions, Northwestern has spent by far the most on lobbying this year.

    Northwestern is one of multiple institutions that the Trump administration has taken aim at in recent months, abruptly freezing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding over alleged incidents of antisemitism on campus connected to a pro-Palestinian encampment last spring, or the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports.

    (Northwestern did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

    Here’s a look at what institutions, namely research universities, have spent on lobbying in the first quarter of 2025, and what issues they have emphasized.

    Lobbying Expenditures

    Since the analysis is focused on research universities, many of which have come under attack by the Trump administration, Inside Higher Ed reviewed the lobbying expenditures primarily by members of the Association of American Universities. Together, they’ve spent almost $9 million this year.

    Areas of focus, according to lobbying disclosures, include federal caps on indirect research cost reimbursements, endowment taxes, the upcoming appropriations bill, international student visa issues, athletics and various pieces of legislation, including the College Cost Reduction Act.

    Several institutions targeted by the federal government are among the highest spenders, including Columbia University, which mostly yielded to a list of Trump administration demands in March. Now federal officials wants more from Columbia, including a possible consent decree. While Columbia has publicly conceded on many fronts, it has quietly worked through back channels in Congress, spending $270,000 on lobbying in the first quarter of 2025. Among the lobbying activities listed: “Outreach and monitoring related to … NSF Funding, and NIH funding, generally.”

    Last year, the university spent $80,000 on lobbying in the first quarter and a total of $350,000 for 2024. Given Columbia’s spending so far this year, it is likely to surpass that in 2025.

    “Columbia values its relationships with our delegation and other officials across all levels of government,” a spokesperson wrote in an emailed response to Inside Higher Ed. “We are eager to tell our story on the vast impact Columbia research and contributions have had on improving lives and generating solutions to society’s most pressing challenges.”

    Other Trump targets, such as the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and Harvard University, have also increased lobbying expenditures. Both Penn and Yale spent $250,000 in the first quarter of 2025, followed closely by Harvard at $230,000. Those are noticeable increases from last year, when Yale spent $180,000 on lobbying in the first quarter, Penn spent $150,000, and Harvard spent $130,000.

    Other Top Spenders

    While the focus of Inside Higher Ed’s analysis was AAU members, a few universities outside that organization also cracked the top 10 in lobbying expenditures for the first quarter of 2025.

    After Northwestern, the University of Phoenix has been the top spender on federal lobbying efforts this year, shelling out $480,000 in the first quarter. However, unlike at many other institutions, that number does not represent a significant increase of typical spending.

    Last year, Phoenix, a for-profit institution, spent $1.8 million on federal lobbying.

    Priorities for the university, according to a lobbying disclosure, include such issues as “change of control, and related regulatory requirements.” Phoenix has been lobbying on change of control since at least the spring of 2023 amid efforts to sell the university, which have yet to materialize.

    Northeastern University, which is a research institution but not an AAU member, is also among the country’s top spenders; it laid out $270,000 for lobbying in the first quarter. But that number mirrors what the university spent in each quarter last year as it racked up more than $1 million on lobbying.

    “Like all major research universities, Northeastern engages with the federal government at many levels,” Renata Nyul, Northeastern’s vice president for communications, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “We work to increase funding for our expanding research enterprise, shape federal policy that affects higher education, and maximize support for student financial aid.”

    Some small liberal arts colleges have also hired federal lobbyists for the first time.

    Is It Working?

    Experts find the increase in lobbying expenditures unsurprising for two reasons. First, there is typically an uptick in lobbying efforts in the early days of a new presidential administration. Second, sectors tend to lobby heavily when presented with new opportunities or major change.

    “Many of the Trump administration’s actions pose existential threats, so universities should be working to address those threats in any way possible. That includes lawyers, appeals to public opinion, all of it, because there have been so many things that affect universities in the first 100 days,” said Beth Leech, a political science professor and lobbying expert at Rutgers University.

    Leech pointed to research funding cuts; rescinded grants; Trump’s broadsides against diversity, equity and inclusion programs; and attacks on academic freedom as key concerns for higher ed institutions.

    She noted that colleges hire lobbyists not only to better understand emerging threats but also to engage lawmakers in conversations about what legislative proposals would mean for higher education.

    “A lot of lobbying is informational, and it’s informational on both sides. The lobbying organization needs to monitor potential threats—not just the Trump administration, but everything that affects an organization, a company, or whatever,” Leech said. “They need to be able to communicate about the impacts of potential threats, because sometimes things come up [in legislation] and lawmakers are just not aware of what some of the implications of some plan might be.”

    Universities are spending heavily on lobbying at a time when the Trump administration appears to be at war with higher education, slashing federal research funding—often without informing institutions—and punishing universities before investigations are concluded. But is it working?

    “They have to try,” Leech said. “They can’t just stand aside and let whatever happens happen.”

    Source link

  • 56% of adults disapprove of Trump’s approach to colleges, AP-NORC poll finds

    56% of adults disapprove of Trump’s approach to colleges, AP-NORC poll finds

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

    Dive Brief:

    • More than half of Americans, 56%, disapprove of how President Donald Trump is handling issues related to colleges, according to a new poll from the Associated Press and NORC at the University of Chicago.
    • However, opinions varied dramatically depending on political affiliation. A strong majority of Democrats, 90%, disapprove of Trump’s response to college issues, while 67% of Independents said the same.
    • But among Republicans, 83% approve of the president’s approach, highlighting the stark political divide in how Americans believe higher education policy should be managed.

    Dive Insight:

    Trump has repeatedly criticized the higher education sector and has used much of his nascent second term to attempt to exert control over it.

    For instance, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation have moved to cap reimbursement rates for indirect research costs at 15%, though all three agencies have faced legal challenges. 

    Federal departments have also cut hundreds of millions in grant funding from colleges. In a little over a month, NIH cut $1.8 billion in grants, hitting minority health research the hardest, according to findings published in JAMA.

    Amid this fast-changing policy landscape, AP-NORC researchers interviewed 1,175 adults from May 1 to 5. Their responses offer insight into how the public views higher education and Trump’s actions in the sector.

    Overall, 62% of adults support maintaining the level of federal funding colleges receive for medical and scientific research, the poll found. And support was largely bipartisan, with 75% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans in favor.

    The Trump administration has also attempted to exert influence over Harvard and Columbia universities by demanding they complete unprecedented to-do lists — such as eliminating diversity initiatives and auditing faculty and student views — to continue to receive federal funding.

    Harvard rebuked the Trump administration’s demands and sued over what the lawsuit described as its efforts to gain “control of academic decisionmaking.” In turn, the administration has frozen $2.2 billion in Harvard’s funding and said it will cut off the university from future federal research dollars.

    Columbia initially took a different tack. After the Trump administration froze $400 million of its funding, the university complied with a similar round of demands, to the praise of federal officials. 

    But the Trump administration has yet to publicly reinstate its funding, and Columbia now appears to be following Harvard’s lead. Acting President Claire Shipman said in April that the university would reject “heavy-handed orchestration from the government” that would undercut its mission.

    Trump appears to be tightening the screws on Columbia and is pursuing a consent decree against it. A consent decree would task a federal judge with ensuring the university complies with the Trump administration’s demands. 

    About half of Republicans, 51%, said they favored the federal government withholding higher ed funding unless colleges comply with requirements related to Trump’s political goals. One-third, 32%, said they had no opinion on the matter.

    In comparison, 73% of Democrats opposed the use of federal funding as a means for Trump to achieve his goals.

    The public’s view of how the president is handling higher education falls in line with his overall approval rating of 41%, the poll said.

    Trump has also threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status — a decision that is meant to fall under the independent authority of the IRS. About half of Republicans, 49%, approved of the effort, the poll found. The idea had just a 30% approval rating overall.

    Views about Trump’s specific policy goals, such as banning campus diversity efforts, also fell along party lines.

    Among Democrats, 70% supported campus services such as clubs and mentorship programs for students from underrepresented groups, and 24% had no opinion. A third of Republicans, 31%, approved of such programs, and 41% had no opinion.

    But support among conservatives fell further when pollsters asked about “diversity, equity and inclusion programs, sometimes called DEI.” A majority of Republicans, 60%, opposed programs labeled as DEI, while 23% said they neither favored nor opposed them.

    Approval among Democrats stayed largely the same, with 68% in favor.

    Republicans were also more likely to oppose classes that teach about racism than Democrats, 44% compared to 8%.

    Source link

  • To fill “education deserts,” some states want community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees

    To fill “education deserts,” some states want community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees

    MUSCATINE, Iowa — The suspect moved menacingly toward her, but Elexiana Oliva stood her ground, gun drawn and in a half crouch as she calmly tried to talk him down.

    The confrontation wasn’t real, and neither was the gun. But the lesson was deadly serious.

    Oliva is a criminal justice major at Muscatine Community College in this largely agricultural community along the Mississippi River. She was in a simulation lab, with that scenario projected on a screen as classmates watched, spellbound.

    Just 18, Oliva is determined to become a police detective, a plan that includes earning a bachelor’s degree after she finishes her associate degree here. But she’ll have to go somewhere else to do it — likely, in her case, to a university in Texas.

    Oliva and her classmates here are among the 13 million adults across the country who the American Council on Education estimates live beyond a reasonable commute from the nearest four-year university — a problem getting worse as private colleges in rural places close, public university campuses merge or shut down and rural universities cut majors and programs.

    “It’s not our fault that we grew up in a place where there’s not a lot of big colleges and big universities,” Oliva said.

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    Iowa has joined a growing number of states that are considering letting community colleges like this one offer bachelor’s degrees, or where community colleges have already started adding them, as a way of filling these so-called rural higher education deserts and training workers in rural places for jobs in fields where there are growing shortages.

    “It would be a big game-changer, especially for those who have a low income or a medium income and want to go and further our education,” Oliva said.

    Downtown Muscatine, Iowa. About an hour from the nearest public university, Muscatine could benefit from a proposal to let community colleges offer bachelor’s degrees. Credit: Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report

    About half of states allow community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees. In Iowa, which is among the half that don’t, lawmakers have commissioned a study to determine whether it should add bachelor’s degrees in some programs at the state’s 15 community colleges. An interim report is due in May.

    A similar proposal in Illinois is backed by that state’s governor, JB Pritzker, who has said the move would make it easier and more affordable for residents to get degrees — “particularly working adults in rural communities.” Three-quarters of community college students in Illinois said they would pursue bachelor’s degrees if they could do it on the same campus, according to a survey released by Pritzker’s office.

    Kentucky’s legislature is considering converting one technical and community college into a four-year institution offering both technical and bachelor’s degrees. Some Wyoming community colleges have also added a limited number of bachelor’s degrees.

    And in Texas, Temple College will open a center in June where students at the two-year public institution will be able to earn bachelor’s degrees through partner Texas A&M University-Central Texas, including in engineering technology with a concentration in semiconductors.

    “When you can offer university classes on community college campuses, that makes a world of difference” to rural students, said Christy Ponce, the president of Temple.

    What’s been blocking many of these students from continuing their educations, Ponce said, “is the sheer distance. There’s not a public university option within an hour or more away. And affordability and transportation barriers are huge issues.”

    Fewer than 25 percent of rural Americans hold bachelor’s degrees or higher, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, compared to the national average of 33 percent. And the gap is getting wider, the U.S. Department of Agriculture finds in its most recent analysis of this.

    Related: ‘Easy to just write us off’: Rural students’ choices shrink as colleges slash majors

    Significantly fewer students in rural places than in urban areas believe that they can get degrees, a Gallup survey for the Walton Family Foundation found, citing the lack of nearby four-year universities as a principal reason.

    In those states that already allow community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees, they’re often limited to certain high-demand fields, such as teaching and nursing. Even as this idea has spread, America’s 960 public community colleges collectively confer only about 1 percent of bachelor’s degrees each year, the American Association of Community Colleges reports.

    In many places, what’s stopping them from giving out more is opposition from four-year universities and colleges, many of which are increasingly hard up for students as the number of 18-year-olds begins to fall — a phenomenon enrollment managers have dubbed the demographic cliff.

    That Illinois proposal, for example, is stalled in committee after several public and private university presidents issued a statement opposing it. Negotiations are continuing.

    While community colleges in California have been allowed since 2021 to offer bachelor’s degrees, several have been blocked from adding four-year programs that the California State University System contends it already offers. An independent mediator has been brought in to resolve the impasse.

    Related: Fewer students and fewer dollars mean states face closing public universities and colleges 

    And while the two-year, public College of Western Idaho will launch a bachelor’s degree in business administration in the fall, it’s doing so only over the objections of Boise State University, which said it “could hurt effective and efficient postsecondary education in Idaho, cannibalizing limited resources available to postsecondary education and duplicating degree offerings.”

    Community colleges also need more students; their enrollment declined by 39 percent from 2010 to 2021, and they face that same impending demographic cliff. Those that add bachelor’s degrees increase their full-time enrollment from 11 percent to 16 percent, research conducted at the University of Michigan has found.

    The Norbert F. Beckey Bridge, seen from the Mark Twain Overlook in Muscatine, Iowa, which links Muscatine with Rock Island County, Illinois, across the Mississippi River. Credit: Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report

    The principal impetus for the largely bipartisan push to offer bachelor’s degrees at community colleges, however, is to train more workers for those fields in which there are shortages.

    “What I think is misunderstood is that, in general, these are not like the baccalaureates that conventional four-year institutions offer,” said Davis Jenkins, a senior research scholar at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. (The Hechinger Report, which produced this story, is an independent unit of Teachers College.)

    Related: In this tiny and shrinking Mississippi county, getting a college degree means leaving home behind

    Bachelor’s degrees at community colleges, said Jenkins, “meet an economic need for bachelor’s degree graduates that isn’t being met by other institutions.”

    That includes by helping rural workers move up in their jobs without leaving home. “It’s all about serving our workforce needs,” said Iowa state Rep. Taylor Collins, Republican chair of Iowa’s House Committee on Higher Education, who requested the study into whether bachelor’s degrees should be offered at community colleges in that state. “It’s a way to upskill our workforce.”

    In his own district, south of Muscatine, “we’re kind of on an island where we only have the community college” — especially since the closing of nearby private Iowa Wesleyan University in 2023. “There are a lot of students who are place-bound. There are a lot of students who want to live locally” and not move away to get a bachelor’s degree.

    That’s a focus of the ongoing study, said Emily Shields, executive director of Community Colleges for Iowa, which is conducting it. “Sometimes people have ties, responsibilities, jobs, family things, where moving to where there is a degree available isn’t an option for them,” Shields said.

    Sure, she said, rural students can take courses online. But “you’re not getting the student services, you’re not getting activities, you’re not getting the other sort of enrichment support and belonging that a lot of our students, I think, are looking for.” 

    Many also say they’re looking for the kind of individual attention they get in their hometown and at a community college such as the one in Muscatine, which has an enrollment of 1,800.

    Related: Tribal colleges win reprieve from federal staff cuts

    Shiloh Morter stayed in his hometown of Muscatine, Iowa, to go to community college. Among the advantages, he says: “The sunsets here are pretty nice. I can tell you, there’s not a whole lot of other places that have clouds like we do.” Credit: Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report

    Shiloh Morter bikes to campus on all but the very coldest days. He plans to become an engineer, but “figured I would save the money and go to community college and try and branch out and develop better habits” first, said Morter, who is 20.

    In the automotive technology garage off the main corridor of the small school, cars were lined up neatly with their hoods popped. Nursing students worked on anatomically correct crash test dummy-style “patients.”

    Twenty-year-old Mykenah Pothoff enrolled at the college when it debuted a registered nursing program, saving herself money on tuition and a nearly hourlong drive, each way, to the University of Iowa. She also was worried about “just, like, finding my way around” the university, which has more than 30,000 students.

    Jake Siefers is majoring in psychology at an Iowa community college. If he could stay and get his bachelor’s degree in the same place, “it would be huge,” he says. “There’s a lot of untapped human potential” in rural places that could benefit from more access to higher education. Credit: Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report

    Jake Siefers, 32, is a psychology major planning to go on to get bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Siefers said he hopes to help other people who, like him, are recovering from alcoholism, and for whom he said there are too few services in Iowa. So he came home to Muscatine to start working toward an associate degree at the community college.

    “I could afford it, and it was close and I actually know a lot of people that work here,” said Siefers. “It’s great coming in here and being, like, ‘Hey, I went to high school with you, and you work in the office.’ I mean, that’s everyone in Iowa, right?”

    If he could stay and get his bachelor’s degree in Muscatine, “it would be huge,” he said. “There’s a lot of untapped human potential” in rural places that could benefit from the kind of access to a higher education that is now more limited, said Siefers. 

    Letting students like them finish bachelor’s degrees near where they live “would make it easier for everybody,” said Jaylea Perez, 19, another psychology major who also plans to earn one.

    Jaylea Perez is enrolled in community college in Iowa but eventually hopes to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Adding bachelor’s degrees at community colleges “would make it easier for everybody,” she says. Credit: Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report

    Simply having bachelor’s degrees available would make rural students aspire to them who otherwise might not, said Naomi DeWinter, president of Muscatine Community College.

    “Everything opens up to them,” said DeWinter, in a coffee shop across the highway from the Walmart.

    She sees the most potential among people already working, such as paraprofessionals in schools who want to become teachers; a state job board lists nearly 1,000 vacancies in Iowa for teachers.

    DeWinter recalled a graduate so exemplary that he was featured in a promotional video, who after earning his associate degree started substitute-teaching while commuting in his free time to the University of Iowa to get his bachelor’s degree — one course at a time.

    “He said, ‘That’s how I’m juggling my work, my family and the affordability,’ ” she said. “His whole career is going to be over before he’s a [full-time] teacher. I feel as though we failed him.”

    Like the substitute teacher, students said they want to stay in Muscatine, despite those limits. They like the peace and quiet compared to cities — hardly anyone ever honks, they noted — and the sense of community evident among the friends who run into each other at the Hy-Vee.

    “We don’t have the best view of the Milky Way, but we for sure definitely don’t have a bad one,” said Shiloh Morter, ticking down a list of advantages to living on the sweeping plain carpeted with cultivated fields and dotted with barns and silos. “And, yeah, the sunsets here are pretty nice. I can tell you, there’s not a whole lot of other places that have clouds like we do.”

    Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556 or [email protected].

    This story about rural higher education and community college bachelor’s degrees was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn't mean it's free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.


    Source link

  • Colleges Cut More Programs, Jobs in April

    Colleges Cut More Programs, Jobs in April

    April brought deep cuts to universities in Florida, Michigan and elsewhere.

    Although changes driven by the Trump administration that have included cutting grant funding and capping research reimbursement costs have driven hiring freezes and other changes, the cuts below are not directly tied to Trump. However, Trump’s agenda has directly prompted some job losses. For example, the University of Montana eliminated 42 positions after Congress excluded the Defense Critical Language and Culture Program from a government funding bill.

    But most of the below job cuts, program eliminations and other changes are instead tied to declining enrollment, rising operating costs and other factors challenging the sector.

    Jacksonville University

    Some of the deepest cuts in April were at Jacksonville University, which slashed 40 faculty jobs.

    Officials also announced plans to shutter JU’s music and theater programs in a cost-cutting effort, which, coupled with faculty layoffs, is expected to save the private university $10 million.

    President Tim Cost called the move “the most robust strategic review of our academic offerings we have ever done” in an April 15 video posted to Facebook where he cast the cuts as “strategic recalibration.” Cost argued that the move would improve academics and “streamline” expenses.

    Cost argued that higher education as a sector is beset with challenges and referenced hard choices at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and Pennsylvania State University. However, with the exception of Penn State, hiring freezes and other changes at those institutions have been driven by changes to federal research funding. (Jacksonville is not a research university, while those institutions are.)

    Unmentioned in Cost’s video were concerns that the university could close, which were raised in JU’s most recent audit. Specifically, auditors noted that the university fell out of compliance with its debt agreements. Violations of such covenants can result in debt becoming due immediately. Jacksonville had nearly $144 million in debt at the end of fiscal year 2024.

    Despite the university’s financial challenges, enrollment is up. In fall 2015, JU enrolled 4,048 students, federal data shows. This spring, that number was 4,601, according to a bond filing.

    JU’s deep cuts have been met with anger and a sense of betrayal from faculty members.

    “I really believed that this was a place that believed in its mission,” an anonymous faculty member who was laid off told local media. “And now it is so completely changing that mission. And what’s worse is they are gaslighting us into pretending like this has always been the plan.”

    Although faculty voted no confidence in Cost, college officials have argued that changes at JU have followed its shared governance processes, which included faculty input, and that such changes are necessary to drop low-performing programs and prioritize other academic offerings.

    Concordia University

    The private Christian university plans to lay off 46 employees across two states.

    Concordia University—which has its primary campus in Wisconsin—informed the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity in a letter it would move forward with plans to lay off 41 employees at its Ann Arbor campus on May 31 or “during the 14-day period thereafter.” Another five employees will be laid off in Wisconsin, according to a similar filing there.

    Concordia announced last summer that most Ann Arbor academic programs would go online.

    Concordia has navigated financial struggles in recent years and closed three campuses it operated in Wisconsin in 2023. However, officials have sought to reassure community members that there are no immediate plans to close the Ann Arbor campus.

    “Concordia Ann Arbor will continue to offer a variety of degree options in 2025 and beyond,” reads a university page on frequently asked questions. The page added that “Concordia can no longer sustain multi-million-dollar operational losses at the Ann Arbor campus.”

    California State University, Sacramento

    Facing state budget cuts, the public university in California made a series of personnel changes in April.

    “Due to the severe state budget cuts and the escalating labor costs we are facing for the upcoming fiscal year, 28 management (MPP) positions have been eliminated, merged, or not retained. These actions included 15 MPP employees who were released from their positions today,” Sacramento State president Luke Wood wrote to the campus community April 7.

    More changes are on the horizon as Sac State navigates a $37 million budget deficit, amid cuts to state appropriations that will ultimately hit all 23 California State University system members.

    Franklin & Marshall College

    Last month Franklin & Marshall College laid off 16 staff members, LancasterOnline reported.

    The private Pennsylvania institution laid off staff members in the library, as well as areas such as facilities and event services, but appeared to spare faculty, according to a list obtained by the news outlet. Officials told LancasterOnline that F&M was exercising “responsible management” by “reducing the number of our employees to better match the size of our student body.” (Like many other colleges, Franklin & Marshall’s enrollment has slipped in recent years from 2,209 students in fall 2014, according to federal data, to around 1,900 currently.)

    Some other jobs were also changed from a 12-month to a 10-month schedule.

    University of Akron

    Amid efforts to trim $22 million from its budget by the end of fiscal year 2026, the University of Akron is eliminating its physics and anthropology departments, Cleveland.com reported.

    Approximately 20 full-time faculty members across the university have also accepted voluntary separation agreements, the news outlet confirmed. An advisory committee to help steer faculty cuts and ideas for generating revenue has pitched buyouts as a possible alternative to layoffs.

    University of Toledo

    Elsewhere in Ohio, the University of Toledo is suspending nine programs due to a state politics and policies.

    The public university announced last month that it’s pausing admission to the Africana studies, Asian studies, data analytics, disability studies, Middle East studies, philosophy, religious studies, Spanish and women’s and gender studies programs, to comply with legislation, Senate Bill 1, that recently passed and became law.

    All affected programs will remain available as minors, according to the university website.

    SB 1—controversial and sweeping legislation that affects both program offerings and campus speech—bans diversity efforts in higher education and requires colleges to drop undergraduate programs that yield fewer than five degrees annually, on average, over a three-year period.

    Unrelated to SB 1, Toledo also announced it was suspending admissions to a dozen other undergraduate and graduate programs, following a recent review of academic offerings.

    Portland Community College

    More than a dozen programs could be cut at Oregon’s largest community college.

    Portland Community College is currently weighing a plan to eliminate as many as 14 programs in a cost-cutting effort, local CBS affiliate KOIN reported. So far, PCC has identified two programs that will be eliminated within two years: music and sonic arts, and gerontology.

    Other potential programs on the chopping block at PCC are anthropology, art, Chinese, criminal justice, electronic engineering technology, English for speakers of other languages, general science, German, machine manufacturing technology, Russian, theater arts and welding.

    Middlebury College

    Officials at the private liberal arts college in Vermont announced a series of cost-cutting moves last month, including employee buyouts, in an effort to plug a projected $14 million budget hole.

    Middlebury officials blamed the deficit on declining enrollment and increased operating costs.

    Other fiscal moves include reducing Middlebury’s retirement matching contributions, shedding rental property leases and evaluating health insurance plans for possible changes. Altogether, officials said initial efforts are expected “to realize more than $10 million” in savings.

    Canisius University

    The private Jesuit university in Buffalo, N.Y., is offering buyouts to staff as part of a plan to identify $15 million in savings across the next two fiscal years, NBC affiliate WGRZ reported.

    Canisius has also sought to refinance $55 million in debt recently.

    Source link

  • In some states, colleges face a double dose of DOGE

    In some states, colleges face a double dose of DOGE

    Oklahoma wants some of its less-expensive universities to cut travel and operational costs, consolidate departments and reduce energy use — all in the name of saving money.

    Already, earning a degree at one of these regional institutions is relatively inexpensive for students, costing in total as much as $15,000 less per year than bigger state universities in Oklahoma. And the schools, including Southeastern Oklahoma State University and the University of Central Oklahoma, graduate more teachers and nurses than those research institutions. Those graduates can fill critically needed roles for the state.

    Still, state policymakers think there are more efficiencies to be found.

    Higher education is one of the specific areas targeted by a new state-run agency with a familiar name, with the goal of “protecting our Oklahoma way of life,” Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said in the first DOGE-OK report this spring. The Oklahoma Division of Government Efficiency, created around the same time as the federal entity with a similar title, counts among its accomplishments so far shifting to automated lawn mowers to cut grass at the state capital, changing to energy-efficient LED lighting and cutting down on state government cell phone bills. The Oklahoma governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment about this effort.

    Oklahoma is one of about a dozen states that has considered an approach similar to the federal DOGE, though some state attempts were launched before the Trump administration’s. The federal Department of Government Efficiency, established the day Trump took office on Jan. 20, has commanded deep cuts to federal spending and the federal workforce, with limited justification.

    As academia becomes a piñata for President Donald Trump and his supporters, Republican state lawmakers and governors are assembling in line: They want to get their whacks in too.

    Related: Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    Beyond Oklahoma, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launched FL DOGE in February, with a promise to review state university and college operations and spending. Republicans in the Ohio statehouse formed an Ohio DOGE caucus. One of the Iowa DOGE Task Force’s three main goals is “further refining workforce and job training programs,” some of which are run through community colleges, and its members include at least two people who work at state universities.

    The current political environment represents “an unprecedented attack on higher education,” said Veena Dubal, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and general counsel for the American Association of University Professors.

    The state-level scrutiny comes atop those federal job cuts, which include layoffs of workers who interact with colleges, interdepartmental spending cuts that affect higher education and the shrinking of contracts that support research and special programs at colleges and universities. Other research grants have been canceled outright. The White House is pursuing these spending cuts at the same time as it is using colleges’ diversity efforts, their handling of antisemitism and their policies about transgender athletes to force a host of changes that go beyond cost-cutting — such as rules about how students protest and whether individual university departments require more supervision.

    Florida Atlantic University students Zayla Robinson, Aadyn Hoots and Meadow Swantic (from left to right) sit together at the Boca Raton campus. Swantic objects to Florida’s efforts to dictate what subjects universities can or can’t teach: “You can’t erase history.” Credit: Michael Vasquez for The Hechinger Report

    Higher education, which relies heavily on both state dollars and federal funding in the form of student loans and Pell grants, research grants and workforce training programs, faces the prospect of continued, and painful, budget cuts.

    “Institutions are doing things under the threat of extinction,” Dubal said. “They’re not making measured decisions about what’s best for the institution, or best for the public good.”

    For instance, the Trump administration extracted a number of pledges from Columbia University as part of its antisemitism charge, suspending $400 million in federal grants and contracts as leverage. This led campus faculty and labor unions to sue, citing an assault on academic freedom. (The Hechinger Report is in an independent unit of Teachers College.) Now Harvard faces a review of $9 billion in federal funding, also over antisemitism allegations, and the list of universities under similar scrutiny is only growing.

    Related: The Hechinger Report’s Tuition Tracker helps reveal the real cost of college

    Budget cuts are nothing new for higher education — when a recession hits, it is one of the first places state lawmakers look to cut, in blue states or red. One reason: Public universities can sometimes make up the difference with tuition increases.

    What DOGE brings, in Washington and statehouses, is something new. The DOGE approach is engaging in aggressive cost-cutting that specifically targets certain programs that some politicians don’t like, said Jeff Selingo, a special adviser to the president at Arizona State University.

    “It’s definitely more political than it is fiscal or policy-oriented,” said Selingo, who is also the author of several books on higher education.

    “Universities haven’t done what certain politicians wanted them to do,” he added. “This is a way to control them, in a way.”

    The current pressure on Florida colleges extends far beyond budget matters. DeSantis has criticized college campuses as “intellectually repressive environments.” In 2021, Florida state lawmakers passed a law, signed by the governor, to fight this perceived ideological bent by requiring a survey of public university professors and students to assess whether there is enough intellectual diversity on campus.

    A diversity-themed bus transports students at the University of Central Florida’s Orlando campus. Credit: Michael Vasquez for The Hechinger Report

    At New College in Sarasota, DeSantis led an aggressive cultural overhaul to transform the college’s atmosphere and identity into something more politically conservative. The governor has cited Hillsdale College, a conservative private Christian institution in Michigan, as a role model.

    Faculty and students at New College sued. Their complaints included allegations of academic censorship and a hostile environment for LGBTQ+ students, many of whom transferred elsewhere. One lawsuit was ultimately dropped. Since the takeover, the college added athletics programs and said it has attracted a record number of new and transfer students.

    Related: A case study of what’s ahead with Trump DEI crackdowns

    Across America, Republicans control both the legislature and the governor’s mansion in 23 states, compared with 15 states fully controlled by Democrats. In those GOP-run states, creating a mini-DOGE carries the potential for increased political might, with little oversight.

    In Florida, “state DOGE serves as an intimidation device,” one high-ranking public university administrator told The Hechinger Report. The administrator, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said “there’s also just this atmosphere of fear.”

    In late March, university presidents received a letter signed by the “DOGE Team” at the governor’s office. The letter promised a thorough review by FL DOGE officials, with site visits and the expectation that each college appoint a designated liaison to handle FL DOGE’s ongoing requests.

    The letter highlighted some of the items FL DOGE might request going forward, including course codes, descriptions and syllabi; full detail of all centers established on campus; and “the closure and dissolution of DEI programs and activities, as required by law.”

    The student union at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, launched FL DOGE in February, promising to review state university and college operations and spending. Credit: Michael Vasquez for The Hechinger Report

    The state did not respond to a question about whether FL DOGE is designed to attack higher education in the state. Molly Best, the deputy press secretary, noted that FL DOGE is now up and running, and cities and counties are also receiving letters requesting certain information and that the public will be updated in the future. 

    DOGE in Florida also follows other intervention in higher education in the state: Florida’s appointed Board of Governors, most of whom are chosen by the governor, removed dozens of courses from state universities’ core curriculum to comply with the Stop WOKE Act, a state law that took effect in 2022. The law, which DeSantis heavily promoted, discourages the teaching of concepts such as systemic racism or sexism. The courses removed from Florida’s 12 state universities were primarily sociology, anthropology and history courses.

    “You can’t erase history,” said Meadow Swantic, a criminal justice major at Florida Atlantic University, a public institution, in an interview at its Boca Raton campus. “There’s certain things that are built on white supremacy, and it’s a problem.”

    Fellow Florida Atlantic student Kayla Collins, however, said she has noticed some professors’ liberal bias during class discussions.

    “I myself have witnessed it in my history class,” said Collins, who identifies as Republican. “It was a great history class, but I would say there were a lot of political things brought up, when it wasn’t a government class or a political science class.” 

    At the University of Central Florida in Orlando, political science major Liliana Hogan said she had a different experience of her professors’ political leanings.

    “You hear ‘people go to university to get woke’ or whatever, but actually, as a poli-sci student, a lot of my professors are more right-wing than you would believe,” Hogan said. “I get more right-leaning perspectives from my teachers than I would have expected.” Hogan said.   

    Another UCF student, Johanna Abrams, objected to university budget cuts being ordered by the state government. Abrams said she understands that tax dollars are limited, but she believes college leaders should be trusted with making the budget decisions that best serve the student body.

    “The government’s job should be providing the funding for education, but not determining what is worthy of being taught,” Abrams said. 

    Related: Inside Florida’s ‘underground lab’ for far-right education policies

    Whatever their missions and attempts at mimicry, state-level DOGE entities are not necessarily identical to the federal version.

    For instance, in Kansas, the Committee on Government Efficiency, while inspired by DOGE, is in search of ideas from state residents about ways to make the state bureaucracy run better rather than imposing its own changes. A Missouri Senate portal inspired by the federal DOGE works in a similar way. Yet the federal namesake isn’t taking suggestions from the masses to inform its work.  

    And at the federal level, then-DOGE chief Elon Musk in February emailed workers, asking them to respond “to understand what they got done last week,” he posted on X. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” Employees were asked to reply with a list of five accomplishments.

    The Ohio DOGE Caucus noted explicitly it won’t be doing anything like that.

    “We’re not going to be emailing any state employees asking them to give us five things they worked on throughout the week,” Ohio state Rep. Tex Fischer, a Republican, told a local radio station. “We’re really just trying to get like-minded people into a room to talk about making sure that government is spending our money wisely and focusing on its core functions that we all agree with.”

    Contact editor Nirvi Shah at 212-678-3445, securely on Signal at NirviShah.14 or via email at [email protected].

    This story about DOGE cuts was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Source link

  • How colleges can support transgender students amid the Trump administration

    How colleges can support transgender students amid the Trump administration

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

    Almost immediately after taking office, President Donald Trump launched a flurry of executive orders and policy directives that threaten to roll back the civil rights of transgender and nonbinary students and erase their identities. The administration has also targeted colleges that support transgender inclusion. 

    Despite these moves, legal experts and transgender rights experts say college leaders can protect transgender and nonbinary students and make their campuses welcoming spaces. That type of support can be crucial to recruit those students, as well as improve their mental health and well-being on campus. 

    But implementing affirming policies for those students can be challenging, as institutions risk losing federal funding or facing Title IX investigations under the policies now in place. 

    One of Trump’s executive orders declares the federal government will only recognize two sexes, male and female, which the directive said cannot be changed — a policy out of step with scientific understanding. 

    Another executive order, which was blocked by a federal court, withheld federal funding to medical providers that provide gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapies, to transgender people under the age of 19. An additional order directed federal agencies to end “equity-related” grants “to the maximum extent allowed by law.”

    The U.S. Department of Education also issued guidance in late January advising education leaders to follow the previous Trump administration’s Title IX regulations after the Biden-era version of the rules were struck down. The Trump administration’s letter stated the department will enforce Title IX in a way that is consistent with Trump’s executive order mandating the federal government only recognize two sexes that cannot be changed.

    This interpretation stands in contrast with the Biden-era version of the Title IX rules, which had prohibited discrimination based on gender identity. The Biden administration also withdrew proposed Title IX rules in December that would have barred blanket bans on transgender students participating on sports teams aligning with their gender identity.

    Yet another executive order targeted an extremely small sliver of student athletes nationwide by threatening to withhold federal funding from colleges or K-12 schools that allow transgender girls and women from competing in sports aligning with their gender identity. The NCAA revised its policies to comply with the order. 

    The new administration has already opened Title IX investigations into San José State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, and others that allow or have allowed transgender women or girls to participate on teams corresponding with their gender identity. 

    However, the enforceability of the Trump administration’s recent executive orders, which are essentially “ideological policy statements,” has not yet been determined, said Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Williams Institute. 

    At the very least, colleges shouldn’t be rushing to implement “harmful and discriminatory policies” before they are legally required to do so, said Jose Abrigo, an attorney and HIV project director for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. The policies could be blocked or modified by the courts and preemptive compliance could “needlessly harm students,” he said. 

    The executive orders try to suppress speech, erase identities and punish those who affirm the existence of transgender and nonbinary people on college campuses — institutions that are meant to be “bastions of free thought and open discourse,” Abrigo said. 

    “Academic institutions should be places where truth is explored, not dictated,” Abrigo said, “where students are empowered to live authentically, not forced into silence by discriminatory and unconstitutional edicts from the president.”

    How colleges can protect trans students

    College leaders have several ways to affirm and protect their transgender and nonbinary students, experts say. 

    Source link

  • Colleges, Students Prefer Inclusive Access Models for Books

    Colleges, Students Prefer Inclusive Access Models for Books

    College affordability is one of the chief concerns of students, families, taxpayers and lawmakers in the U.S., and it extends beyond tuition prices.

    Costly course materials can impede student access and success in the classroom. Over half of college students say the high price of course materials has pushed them to enroll in fewer classes or opt out of a specific course, according to a 2023 survey.

    A new report from Tyton Partners, published today, finds that affordable-access programs that provide necessary materials can save students money and improve their outcomes. The report pulls data from surveys of students, administrators and faculty, as well as market research on the topic.

    The background: Affordable-access programs, also called inclusive-access programs, bill students directly for their textbooks as part of their tuition and fees. Through negotiations among publishers, institutions and campus bookstores, students pay a below-market rate for their course materials, which are often digital.

    This model ensures all students start the term with access to the required textbooks and course materials, allowing them to apply financial aid to textbook costs, which removes out-of-pocket expenses at the start of the term. A 2023 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed found that over half of respondents have avoided buying or renting a book for class due to costs.

    The first federal regulations for affordable-access programs were set in 2015 to help cap course material costs and spur utilization of inclusive access on campuses. In 2024, the Biden administration sought to redefine inclusive access by making models opt-in to provide students with greater autonomy, but the plan was ultimately paused. Most colleges have an opt-out model of affordable-access programs, requiring students to elect to be removed, according to Tyton’s report.

    Critics of affordable-access programs argue that an across-the-board rate eliminates students’ ability to employ their own cost-saving methods, such as buying books secondhand or using open educational resources. Students often lose access to digital resources at the end of the term, limiting their ability to reuse or reference them.

    Findings from Tyton Partners’ research point to the value of day-one course materials for student success, which can be provided through opt-out inclusive-access models.

    The report: Affordable-access programs are tied to lower costs for participating students, according to the report. The average digital list price for course materials per class was $91, but the average price for course materials for students in an inclusive-access program was $58 per class. (A 2023 survey found the average student spent about $285 on course materials in the 2022–23 academic year, or roughly $33 per item.)

    Opt-out affordable-access models have also placed downward pricing pressure on the market; the compound annual growth rate of course materials declined from 6.1 percent to 0.3 percent since the 2015 ED regulations.

    A student survey by Tyton found that 61 percent of respondents favor affordable-access models compared to buying (13 percent), renting (11 percent) or borrowing (10 percent) course materials.

    Another Angle

    The Tyton Partners report identifies opt-out affordable access as one intervention that can ensure all students have access to course materials on day one, which is tied to better student outcomes.

    Open educational resources, which are not mentioned in the report, are another method of ensuring students have access to digital course materials at the start of the term at no additional cost to the student.

    Among students participating in inclusive access, 84 percent said they felt satisfied or neutral about their user experience, according to a survey by the National Association of College Stores. Students who had a positive view of inclusive access cited the convenience of not shopping for materials (80 percent), day-one access (78 percent) and knowing all their course materials are correct (71 percent) as the top benefits.

    Among colleges that do offer inclusive access, those with opt-out models see higher student participation than those with opt-in models (96 percent versus 36 percent, respectively). Administrators report that some students, especially first-year and first-generation students, are less likely to engage in opt-in models and may then struggle because they lack the required materials, which researchers argue enables gaps to persist in student outcomes.

    Researchers compared two community colleges and found that students who participated in an opt-out equitable-access program had higher course completion and lower withdrawal rates, compared to their peers who opted in. Learners from underrepresented minority backgrounds, including Black and multiracial students, saw greater gains as well.

    While a majority of students indicated a preference for inclusive-access models, it’s still paramount that institutions help students fully understand the benefits of participation and offer them seamless opportunities to opt out, according to Tyton’s report.

    After adopting inclusive access, institutions were likely to increase offerings and expand the number of courses within the model. A majority of surveyed faculty members (75 percent) said their institution should maintain or increase affordable-access model usage.

    Report authors noted a higher administrative burden in an opt-in model, because costs are applied and resources given to each individual student who opts in, rather than simply removing students who opt out. “Since no technology currently automates the opt-in process, most institutions would need to expand their academic affairs, faculty affairs and information technology teams to handle the increased workload under opt-in models,” according to the report.

    Get more content like this directly to your inbox. Subscribe here.

    Source link

  • Carnegie Classifications debuts redesign of system to group colleges

    Carnegie Classifications debuts redesign of system to group colleges

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

    The American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching on Thursday released updates to the Carnegie Classifications, including a redesigned system to describe institutions and a new category to identify colleges that boost student access and earnings. 

    For the system’s basic classifications, colleges were previously grouped together based on the highest degree they awarded — a method that “fell short of adequately describing the full scope of activity on campuses across the country,” according to the announcement. 

    The basic classifications — renamed the institutional classifications — now group colleges together based on multiple characteristics, such as their size, the types of degrees they confer, and the fields of study they offer. For instance, the classifications will distinguish between institutions mostly focused on graduate education and those that offer a mix of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees. 

    Colleges will also be grouped together by size: Those with under 4,000 students will be classified as small, those with over 20,000 students will be considered large, and those in between will be considered medium. Additionally, colleges will be grouped together by their academic program mix, such as whether they primarily award pre-professional degrees. 

    The updated list has been highly anticipated ever since ACE and the Carnegie Foundation announced they were overhauling the Carnegie Classifications in 2023 to better reflect the diversity of college missions. 

    “With this redesign of the Carnegie Classifications, we set out to measure what matters,” Mushtaq Gunja, executive director of the Carnegie Classification systems and senior vice

    president at ACE, said in a statement. “Nowadays, institutions can’t be reduced down to the highest degree they award because they exist to serve a wide range of students in a wide variety of ways.”

    The system also debuted its new Student Access and Earnings Classification. This designation seeks to measure whether colleges are enrolling students reflective of the regions they serve and how well they are preparing them for the job market. 

    To calculate this, it examines the share of undergraduates receiving Pell Grants and those from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds, along with alumni earnings eight years after enrollment. Researchers then compare these metrics to the demographics of the regions colleges serve.

    This classification groups colleges based on their access and whether their former students have relatively higher or lower earnings compared to their regional peers. 

    Colleges with higher access and earnings are designated Opportunity Colleges and Universities. 

    Nearly 500 colleges earned this designation. The group includes a wide variety of institutions, including historically Black colleges like Howard University, in Washington, D.C., and large public universities such as Stony Brook University, in New York. 

    Meanwhile, colleges that provide lower access but higher earnings contain all eight universities that make up the Ivy League, as well as other prestigious colleges, such as Stanford University. This group also included state flagships such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Florida. 

    ACE and the Carnegie Foundation also updated their research designations, releasing their new list of research institutions under the revised metrics in February. The changes resulted in a sharp uptick in the number of institutions that earned the coveted R1 status, denoting the highest levels of research activity.

    Source link

  • Aaron Tsuchitori – Sailing, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

    Aaron Tsuchitori – Sailing, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

    null

    Source link

  • Half of Colleges Don’t Grant Students Access to Gen AI Tools

    Half of Colleges Don’t Grant Students Access to Gen AI Tools

    Transformative. Disruptive. Game-changing. That’s how many experts continue to refer, without hyperbole, to generative AI’s impact on higher education. Yet more than two years after generative AI went mainstream, half of chief technology officers report that their college or university isn’t granting students institutional access to generative AI tools, which are often gratis and more sophisticated and secure than what’s otherwise available to students. That’s according to Inside Higher Ed’s forthcoming annual Survey of Campus Chief Technology/Information Officers with Hanover Research.

    There remains some significant—and important—skepticism in academe about generative AI’s potential for pedagogical (and societal) good. But with a growing number of institutions launching key AI initiatives underpinned by student access to generative AI tools, and increasing student and employer expectations around AI literacy, student generative AI access has mounting implications for digital equity and workforce readiness. And according to Inside Higher Ed’s survey, cost is the No. 1 barrier to granting access, ahead of lack of need and even ethical concerns.

    Ravi Pendse, who reviewed the findings for Inside Higher Ed and serves as vice president for information technology and chief information officer at the University of Michigan, a leader in granting students access to generative AI tools, wasn’t surprised by the results. But he noted that AI prompting costs, typically measured in units called tokens, have fallen sharply over time. Generative AI models, including open-source large language models, have proliferated over the same period, meaning that institutions have increasing—and increasingly less expensive—options for providing students access to tools.

    ‘Paralyzed’ by Costs

    “Sometimes we get paralyzed by, ‘I don’t have resources, or there’s no way I can do this,’ and that’s where people need to just lean in,” Pendse said. “I want to implore all leaders and colleagues to step up and focus on what’s possible, and let human creativity get us there.”

    According to the survey—which asked 108 CTOs at two- and four-year colleges, public and private nonprofit, much more about AI, digital transformation, online learning and other key topics—institutional approaches to student generative AI access vary. (The full survey findings will be released next month.)

    Some 27 percent of CTOs said their college or university offers students generative AI access through an institutionwide license, with CTOs at public nonprofit institutions especially likely to say this. Another 13 percent of all CTOs reported student access to generative AI tools is limited to specific programs or departments, with this subgroup made up entirely of private nonprofit CTOs. And 5 percent of the sample reported that students at their institution have access to a custom-built generative AI tool.

    Among community college CTOs specifically (n=22), 36 percent said that students have access to generative AI tools, all through an institutionwide license.

    Roughly half of institutions represented do not offer student access to generative AI tools. Some 36 percent of CTOs reported that their college doesn’t offer access but is considering doing so, while 15 percent said that their institution doesn’t offer access and is not considering it.

    Of those CTOs who reported some kind of student access to generative AI and answered a corresponding question about how they pay for it (n=45), half said associated costs are covered by their central IT budget; most of these are public institution CTOs. Another quarter said there are no associated costs. Most of the rest of this group indicated that funding comes from individual departments. Almost no one said costs are passed on to students, such as through fees.

    Among CTOs from institutions that don’t provide student access who responded to a corresponding question about why not (n=51), the top-cited barrier from a list of possibilities was costs. Ethical concerns, such as those around potential misuse and academic integrity, factored in, as well, followed by concerns about data privacy and/or security. Fewer said there is no need or insufficient technical expertise to manage implementation.

    “I very, very strongly feel that every student that graduates from any institution of higher education must have at least one core course in AI, or significant exposure to these tools. And if we’re not doing that, I believe that we are doing a disservice to our students,” Pendse said. “As a nation we need to be prepared, which means we as educators have a responsibility. We need to step up and not get bogged down by cost, because there are always solutions available. Michigan welcomes the opportunity to partner with any institution out there and provide them guidance, all our lessons learned.”

    The Case for Institutional Access

    But do students really need their institutions to provide access to generative AI tools, given that rapid advances in AI technology also have led to fewer limitations on free, individual-level access to products such as ChatGPT, which many students have and can continue to use on their own?

    Experts such as Sidney Fernandes, vice president and CIO of the University of South Florida, which offers all students, faculty and staff access to Microsoft Copilot, say yes. One reason: privacy and security concerns. USF users of Copilot Chat use the tool in a secure, encrypted environment to maintain data privacy. And the data users share within USF’s Copilot enterprise functions—which support workflows and innovation—also remains within the institution and is not used to train AI models.

    There’s no guarantee, of course, that students with secure, institutional generative AI accounts will use only them. But at USF and beyond, account rollouts are typically accompanied by basic training efforts—another plus for AI literacy and engagement.

    “When we offer guidance on how to use the profiles, we’ve said, ‘If you’re using the commercially available chat bots, those are the equivalent of being on social media. Anything you post there could be used for whatever reason, so be very careful,” Fernandes told Inside Higher Ed.

    In Inside Higher Ed’s survey, CTOs who reported student access to generative AI tools by some means were no more likely than the group over all to feel highly confident in their institution’s cybersecurity practices—although CTOs as a group may have reason to worry about students and cybersecurity generally: Just 26 percent reported their institution requires student training in cybersecurity.

    Colleges can also grant students access to tools that are much more powerful than freely available and otherwise prompt-limited chat bots, as well as tools that are more integrated into other university platforms and resources. Michigan, for instance, offers students access to an AI assistant and another conversational AI tool, plus a separate tool that can be trained on a custom dataset. Access to a more advanced and flexible tool kit for those who require full control over their AI environments and models is available by request.

    Responsive AI and the Role of Big Tech

    Another reason for institutions to lead on student access to generative AI tools is cultural responsiveness, as AI tools reflect the data they’re trained on, and human biases often are baked into that data. Muhsinah Morris, director of Metaverse programs at Morehouse College, which has various culturally responsive AI initiatives—such as those involving AI tutors that look like professors—said it “makes a lot of sense to not put your eggs in one basket and say that basket is going to be the one that you carry … But at the end of the day, it’s all about student wellness, 24-7, personalized support, making sure that students feel seen and heard in this landscape and developing skills in real time that are going to make them better.”

    The stakes of generative AI in education, for digital equity and beyond, also implicate big tech companies whose generative AI models and bottom lines benefit from the knowledge flowing from colleges and universities. Big tech could therefore be doing much more to partner on free generative AI access with colleges and universities, and not just on the “2.0” and “3.0” models, Morris said.

    “They have a responsibility to also pour back into the world,” she added. “They are not off the hook. As a matter of fact, I’m calling them to the carpet.”

    Jenay Robert, senior researcher at Educause, noted that the organization’s 2025 AI Landscape Study: Into the Digital AI Divide found that more institutions are licensing AI tools than creating their own, across a variety of capabilities. She said digital equity is “certainly one of the biggest concerns when it comes to students’ access to generative AI tools.” Some 83 percent of respondents in that study said they were concerned about widening the digital divide as an AI-related risk. Yet most respondents were also optimistic about AI improving access to and accessibility of educational materials.

    Of course, Robert added, “AI tools won’t contribute to any of these improvements if students can’t access the tools.” Respondents to the Educause landscape study from larger institutions were more likely those from smaller ones to report that their AI-related strategic planning includes increasing access to AI tools.

    Inside Higher Ed’s survey also reveals a link between institution size and access, with student access to generative AI tools through an institutionwide license, especially, increasing with student population. But just 11 percent of CTOs reported that their institution has a comprehensive AI strategy.

    Still, Robert cautioned that “access is only part of the equation here. If we want to avoid widening the digital equity divide, we also have to help students learn how to use the tools they have access to.”

    In a telling data point from Educause’s 2025 Students and Technology Report, more than half of students reported that most or all of their instructors prohibit the use of generative AI.

    Arizona State University, like Michigan, collaborated early on with OpenAI, but it has multiple vendor partners and grants student access to generative AI tools through an institutionwide license, through certain programs and custom-built tools. ASU closely follows generative AI consumption in a way that allows it to meet varied needs across the university in a cost-effective manner, as “the cost of one [generative AI] model versus another can vary dramatically,” said Kyle Bowen, deputy CIO.

    “A large percentage of students make use of a moderate level of capability, but some students and faculty make use of more advanced capability,” he said. “So everybody having everything may not make sense. It may not be very cost-sustainable. Part of what we have to look at is what we would describe as consumption-based modeling—meaning we are putting in place the things that people need and will consume, not trying to speculate what the future will look like.”

    That’s what even institutions with established student access are “wrestling with,” Bowen continued. “How do we provide that universal level of AI capability today while recognizing that that will evolve and change, and we have to be ready to have technology for the future, as well, right?”

    Source link