First-generation students make up half of all undergraduates, but only one quarter of them retain and graduate with a degree.
A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed first-generation student data against that of their continuing-generation peers to identify gaps in the classroom that may be hindering their success. Researchers found that first-generation students who received lower-than-expected grades in their first term were more likely to leave college entirely compared to their peers who also underperformed but utilized other pathways to continue in higher education.
The findings point to a need for additional support resources to help first-generation students understand academic recovery opportunities—including course withdrawal and switching majors—to promote persistence to graduation.
Digging into data: The study relies on transcript data from 145,000 first-year students at Arizona State University from 2000 to 2022, as well as survey data fielded during the 2021–22 academic year.
Researchers found that parental education is a significant predictor of a student’s academic success, even when controlling for a variety of characteristics, including demographics, household income, major choice and early college performance.
One distinguishing factor between continuing and first-generation students was their use of academic policies to protect their grades. First-generation students were less likely to change their majors or withdraw from courses, strategies that some students deploy to save their GPAs. They were also less likely to know their peers or turn to family members for support when faced with academic challenges, researchers wrote.
“First-generation students who encounter negative grade events have about a 40 percent likelihood of dropping out, which is around five percentage points higher than observationally identical continuing generation students who face the same academic setback,” according to the study. “Rather than dropping out, we find that continuing-generation students who face academic difficulties in their first year are more likely to switch majors.”
Researchers surveyed students to understand how their academic perceptions and outcomes could influence their retention. Results showed that first-generation students were more likely to consider poor grades as detrimental to their success or a signal of their academic failure, which might push them to drop out.
One example of this was the decision to switch majors. While all students were more likely to switch majors if their first semester grades fell below a 3.0 GPA, continuing-generation students were much more likely to switch their major because of lower grades; first-generation students were more inclined to remain in their major even with poor grades.
Researchers hypothesized that first-gen students may be less likely to switch majors because they have a less differentiated perspective on major earnings, meaning they expect similar earnings after graduating college regardless of their major. Therefore, poor grades in one major would mean poor outcomes in all fields—not just that particular program.
Survey Says
A 2025 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found that 55 percent of first-generation students said one of their top reasons for deciding to attend college was to pursue a specific career or profession.
First-generation students were slightly more likely to say they enrolled to increase their earning potential or to achieve a personal goal, compared to their continuing-generation peers.
One solution: As part of the study, researchers evaluated Arizona State University LEAD (Learn Explore Advance Design), a program that supports incoming students with lower grades or test scores. LEAD participants complete special first-year courses that focus on durable skills including time management and offer smaller class sizes and more interaction with faculty. The program also has dedicated staff and peer mentors who support incoming students.
Data shows the program effectively helped students learn to navigate the university; participants had a slightly higher GPA and reported a greater sense of belonging and positive mental health. LEAD students were also more likely to switch majors and less likely to declare an undecided major, signaling to researchers that the program improved students’ cultural capital and flow of information.
Related Research: First-generation students can be left behind in the classroom because they’re unaware of the “hidden curriculum,” or unspoken norms and processes involved in navigating higher education.
Similarly, one research project found that first-generation students were less aware of conduct systems and how to interpret the student handbook, which could result in disproportionate disciplinary action.
Beginning next week, First Amendment News (FAN) will be moving to Substack. Be sure to sign up and follow us there for future installments!
“No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit . . . The instant case presents an unprecedented attack on . . . foundational principles. . . . Here, deciding what process was due to plaintiff is unnecessary, because no process was provided.” — Perkins Coie LLP v. Department of Justice (Dist. Ct., D.C., May 2)
“[T]he Court found that Ms. Rumeysa Ozturk has demonstrated a substantial claim of a violation of due process.” — Ozturk v. Hyde (Dist. Ct., VT, May 16)
Maxim: #1: Vagueness and due process cannot coexist, at least not in any system of constitutional justice worthy of the name.
Maxim #2: The broader the law’s sweep, the greater the likelihood that it was designed to be arbitrarily punitive.
It is undeniable: Many of Donald Trump’s executive orders run wildly afoul of basic tenets of fairness. Time and again, he has ordered his subordinates to enforce orders that are shockingly vague and disturbingly broad. Both in their conception and execution, such orders patently violate the commands of the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. And yet, the public and the courts are asked to countenance such abridgments of law in the name of unfettered executive prerogative.
Clarity and precision in lawmaking are fundamental to any system of justice. That call for clarity, which traces back at least to Roman law, finds expression in Montesquieu’s “Spirit of Laws” and William Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Laws of England.” Laws must be “plainly and perspicuously penned,” is how Blackstone tagged it.
In “FederalistNo. 62,” James Madison condemned those laws that were “incoherent that they cannot be understood.” The idea is rooted in basic fairness, in due process of law. Such a process is especially important in the First Amendment context.
Whether it be in executive orders directed at DEI practices, law firms, universities, libraries, or immigrants, among others, the basic problem of vagueness is the constitutional cancer present in all of them.
As Justice Thurgood Marshall made clear in 1972’s Grayned v. City of Rockford, vagueness offends fairness because (i) it provides no meaningful warning to ordinary persons as to “what is prohibited,” (ii) it provides no “explicit standards” to law enforcement officials, judges, and juries necessary to avoid “arbitrary and discriminatory application,” and (iii) vague laws chill protected speech insofar as the “boundaries of the forbidden areas [are not] clearly marked.”
Justice William Brennan explained the First Amendment importance of that principle in 1963’s NAACP v. Button: “Standards of permissible . . . vagueness are strict in the area of free expression. . . [I]n the area of First Amendment freedoms, the existence of a [vague mandate is] susceptible of sweeping and improper application.”
In the unconstitutional process, lawyers, scientists, librarians, universities, law firms and others are chilled into silence — and that is precisely the point.
The evils of vagueness, among other constitutional wrongs, were thoughtfully identified by federal district court Judge Adam B. Abelson in the recent Maryland District Court case National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education v. Trump. In relevant part, Judge Abelson began:
This Court remains of the view that Plaintiffs have shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits of their facial free speech and vagueness claims . . . The Challenged Provisions forbid government contractors and grantees from engaging in “equity-related” work and from “promoting DEI” in ways the administration may consider to violate antidiscrimination laws; they demand that the “private sector” “end . . . DEI” and threaten “strategic enforcement” to effectuate the “end[ing]” of “DEI”; and they threaten contractors and grantees with enforcement actions with the explicit purpose of “deter[ring]” such “programs or principles.”
Judge Adam B. Abelson
Thereafter, he emphasized that the Court was
…deeply troubled that the Challenged Provisions, which constitute content-based, viewpoint-discriminatory restrictions on speech (in addition to conduct), have the inherent and ineluctable effect of silencing speech that has long been, and remains, protected by the First Amendment. And they do so through impermissibly vague directives that exacerbate the speech-chilling aspects of the Challenged Provisions.
To elucidate that point, he added:
Historically, the metaphor used to describe the effect of laws that restrict speech is “chill.” The more apt metaphor here is “extinguish.” Part of the explicit purpose and effect of the Challenged Provisions is to stifle debate — to silence selected viewpoints, selected discourse — on matters of public concern. They forbid government contractors and grantees from engaging in discourse — including speech such as teaching, conferences, writing, speaking, etc. — if that discourse is “related” to “equity. ” And they direct the “private sector” to “end” diversity, to “end” equity, and to “end” inclusion. See J21 Order § 4(b) (directing agencies to “encourage the private sector to end . . . DEI”). “End” is not a mere “chill.” “Deter[rence]” is not a side-effect of the Challenged Provisions; their explicit goal is to “deter” not only “programs” but “principles” — i.e. ideas, concepts, and values. After all, the opposite of inclusion is exclusion; the opposite of equity is inequity; and, at least in some forms, the opposite of diversity is segregation.
Such are but some of the evils rooted in many of Trump’s executive orders. Those affronts to due process and First Amendment principles are so obvious as to render their design intentional (see “Trump’s ‘So what?’ stratagem,” FAN 470).
Trump’s Justice Department defends such lawlessness by procedural obfuscation coupled with political rhetoric and claims of unrestrained executive prerogative. When that fails they take cover by being evasive, as revealed in oral arguments in the Second Circuit case of Ozturk v. Hyde:
The appeals court judges pushed . . . [Department of Justice attorney Drew] Ensign on whether or not the Trump administration believed that both students’ speech was lawful speech.
“We have not taken a position on that,” Ensign told the panel of three judges, saying concerns over where the students’ cases should be heard were more important.
“Help my thinking along,” Judge Barrington D. Parker then said. “Take a position.”
“Your honor, I don’t have authority to take a position on that right now,” Ensign replied.
Drew Ensign
In the unconstitutional process, lawyers, scientists, librarians, universities, law firms and others are chilled into silence — and that is precisely the point.
Consider as well this from an article in The New York Times by Stephanie Saul:
The Trump administration is set to cancel the federal government’s remaining federal contracts with Harvard University — worth an estimated $100 million, according to a letter that is being sent to federal agencies on Tuesday. The May 27 letter [from the U.S. General Services Administration] also instructs agencies to “find alternative vendors” for future services.
The additional planned cuts, outlined in a draft of the letter obtained by The New York Times, represented what an administration official called a complete severance of the government’s longstanding business relationship with Harvard.
The letter is the latest example of the Trump administration’s determination to bring Harvard — arguably the country’s most elite and culturally dominant university — to its knees, by undermining its financial health and global influence. Since last month, the administration has frozen about $3.2 billion in grants and contracts with Harvard. And it has tried to halt the university’s ability to enroll international students.
This episode features a conversation with Cass Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School and former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. His recent working paper, ‘Our Money or Your Life!’ Higher Education and the First Amendment,’ explores the First Amendment constraints on federal funding to American universities.
In the last few weeks, the Trump administration has made several announcements that it is withholding a significant amount of federal funds from specific universities, notably Columbia University and Harvard University, and that those funds will not be released until those universities comply with a set of demands. Harvard received a letter on April 11 demanding changes in Harvard’s governance, faculty hiring practices, student admissions practices, viewpoint diversity among the faculty, and student disciplinary policies, among other things. On May 5, the Secretary of Education sent a letter to Harvard informing the university that the federal government will award it no grants for scholarly research in the future. Reportedly, there is more than $2 billion dollars at stake.
On the podcast we talk through what the Trump administration is doing, what the consequences are for Harvard and other affected universities, and what constitutional issues are raised by the administration’s actions in denying Harvard access to federal research funds. In the process, we get a short course on First Amendment doctrine relating to viewpoint discrimination and unconstitutional conditions.
Trump’s lackey: FCC Chairman Brendan Carr
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr
“He has . . . abandoned the FCC’s posture as an independent regulator in favor of an openly personal embrace of Trump.”
Four months into his tenure as head of America’s top communications regulator, Brendan Carr appears to be running a Trumpian playbook to transform a long-independent agency.
Immediately after being promoted by President Donald Trump to chair the Federal Communications Commission, on Jan. 20, Carr launched investigations into top media companies, including NPR, PBS and Comcast.
Related
Latest update of Zick’s Executive Orders repository
SCOTUS denies review in middle school ‘two genders’ shirt case
This past Monday the Supreme Court denied review (7-2) in L.M. v. Town of Middleborough. The issue raised in that case was whether school officials may presume substantial disruption or a violation of the rights of others from a student’s silent, passive, and untargeted ideological speech simply because that speech relates to matters of personal identity, even when the speech responds to the school’s opposing views, actions, or policies.
Summary of facts: “In this case, L.M.’s [middle] school prohibited him from wearing a non-obscene, non-vulgar shirt stating, ‘There Are Only Two Genders,’ because the message ‘would cause students in the LGBTQ+ community to feel unsafe.’. The school even banned him from wearing the same shirt on which he covered the words ‘Only Two’ with a piece of tape on which he wrote “CENSORED” so that the message read, ‘There Are [CENSORED] Genders.’”
The petition had been distributed for conference twelve times.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent. Justice Samuel Alito also wrote a separate dissent, which in part read:
This case presents an issue of great importance for our Nation’s youth: whether public schools may suppress student speech either because it expresses a viewpoint that the school disfavors or because of vague concerns about the likely effect of the speech on the school atmosphere or on students who find the speech offensive. In this case, a middle school permitted and indeed encouraged student expression endorsing the view that there are many genders. But when L. M., a seventh grader, wore a t-shirt that said “There Are Only Two Genders,” he was barred from attending class. And when he protested this censorship by blocking out the words “Only Two” and substituting “CENSORED,” the school prohibited that shirt as well.
The First Circuit held that the school did not violate L. M.’s free-speech rights. It held that the general prohibition against viewpoint-based censorship does not apply to public schools. And it employed a vague, permissive, and jargon-laden rule that departed from the standard this Court adopted in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U. S. 503 (1969).
FBI reopens probe into Dobbs Supreme Court leak
The FBI will launch new probes into the 2023 discovery of cocaine at the White House during President Joe Biden’s term and the 2022 leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a top official announced on Monday. Dan Bongino, a rightwing podcaster-turned-FBI deputy director, made the announcement on X, saying that he had requested weekly briefings on the cases’ progress. . . .
‘So to Speak’ podcast: Heather Mac Donald on Trump & free speech
“[M]y reaction to everything that Trump is doing, and I agree almost across the board with his substantive aims whether it’s with regards to the universities, whether it’s regards to immigration, is what would we feel if the democratic administrations were doing this exact same thing in favor of their values? Everything we’re doing sets a precedent. Again, I acknowledge the precedent has already been set. . . . I’m still very nervous about the government using power because even though I’m not deeply libertarian, I do think that the hope of a neutral arbiter of a government that is restrained by rules that are content-free that are politics-free is one of the biggest yearnings of humanity, at least in the west.” — Heather Mac Donald
Heather Mac Donald discusses the Trump administration’s free speech record amidst its battles with higher ed, mainstream media, law firms, and more.
Mac Donald is a Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Her most recent book is “When race trumps merit: How the pursuit of equity sacrifices excellence, destroys beauty, and threatens lives.”
Related
Heather Mac Donald, “The White House’s Clumsy Attack on Harvard,” City Journal (April 15) (“The administration is growing ever bolder in its crusade against the institutions responsible for left-wing ideology — whether elite law firms or universities. That crusade is unquestionably justified. Its targets deserve little sympathy. . .”)
2024-2025 SCOTUS term: Free expression and related cases
Cases decided
Villarreal v. Alaniz(Petition granted. Judgment vacated and case remanded for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam))
Murphy v. Schmitt (“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam).”)
TikTok Inc. and ByteDance Ltd v. Garland (9-0: The challenged provisions of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.)
Review granted
Pending petitions
Petitions denied
Emergency Applications
Yost v. Ohio Attorney General (Kavanaugh, J., “IT IS ORDERED that the March 14, 2025 order of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, case No. 2:24-cv-1401, is hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court. It is further ordered that a response to the application be filed on or before Wednesday, April 16, 2025, by 5 p.m. (EDT).”)
Free speech related
Mahmoud v. Taylor (argued April 22 / free exercise case: issue: Whether public schools burden parents’ religious exercise when they compel elementary school children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality against their parents’ religious convictions and without notice or opportunity to opt out.)
Thompson v. United States (decided: 3-21-25/ 9-0 w special concurrences by Alito and Jackson) (interpretation of 18 U. S. C. §1014 re “false statements”)
Beginning next week, First Amendment News (FAN) will be moving to Substack. Be sure to sign up and follow us there for future installments!
This article is part of First Amendment News, an editorially independent publication edited by Ronald K. L. Collins and hosted by FIRE as part of our mission to educate the public about First Amendment issues. The opinions expressed are those of the article’s author(s) and may not reflect the opinions of FIRE.
Professor Mark Scott said teaching course enrolments are up 30 per cent compared to last year. Picture: Louise Cooper
Student teacher enrolments are bouncing back nationally after they dipped during the Covid-19 pandemic, fuelling positivity that the pipeline of graduates can ease the profession’s workforce shortage.
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New York University will withhold the diploma of a student commencement speaker who used his speech Wednesday to condemn what he called “the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.”
According to a statement released by a university spokesperson after the speech, the student, Logan Rozos, “lied about the speech he was going to deliver and violated the commitment he made to comply with our rules.” The university is pursuing disciplinary actions and will withhold his diploma while that process proceeds.
“NYU is deeply sorry that the audience was subjected to these remarks and that this moment was stolen by someone who abused a privilege that was conferred upon him,” the statement continued.
Rozos spoke at the ceremony for the university’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. He told the crowd he was “freaking out” about delivering the controversial speech, but that he felt a “moral and political” obligation to use the platform to speak out in support of Palestinians. Video of the speech shows graduates in caps and gowns clapping and cheering for Rozos and some giving him a standing ovation, though some boos and jeers can be heard off camera.
Every semester, a student hoping to “earn their desired grade” approaches me at the last minute, asking to make up all their missed assignments. I have a standard missed due date policy, 1) let me know (communication) and 2) get it done in a week (extended deadline). The students requesting to stockpile assignments at the end of the semester usually had not completed the assignment at all or had not completed the assignment even with an extended deadline. Basically, they hadn’t even tried to complete assignments. It wasn’t like they had completed it at 12:01 am and it was due at 11:59 pm.
That being said, I do wonder, Why not grant a student’s request to get it (the class) all done at once? You know the requests: “I know this already. Isn’t there a test I can take so I don’t have to sit through the class?” or “I am sure I can get all these assignments done before finals week.” It makes sense that if a student can pass all the assessments, they should pass the class. So why not just complete all the assessments at the same time?
Would these students who were absent from most of the class or hadn’t done any of the assignments on their due dates pass the class with a C or better? Probably. So why enforce due dates at all. Why shouldn’t a professor simply allow a student to complete all the assignments before final grades are due without regard to timing?
The caveat in this “all at once” scenario is that a successful grade is wrongly associated with learning. If a student completes all the assignments in a few days during the semester, then assessments are the sole criteria used to define successful learning. However, the truth is that learning means much more than successfully navigating a certain percentage of the assignments.
In my reality, most students could use their previous knowledge to muddle through the assessments of an introductory course at an accelerated pace. Let’s view the situation from the perspective of a student. They have after all been in school for the last 13 years and they have become really good at taking quizzes and exams and writing essays with thesis statements. My pre- and post-quiz data for the course reveals this. At the beginning of the semester without warning, I ask a group of anxious, ill-prepared students to (within a limited and unreasonable amount of time) answer 20 questions about a topic that they haven’t even considered before walking into the room. The questions are a sampling of the final exam. The average on the pre-quiz hovers at about 50%. Given more time and a couple of days to study and contemplate, most of these students would pass the pre-quiz, and in essence, have the knowledge required to pass the final exam.
Nevertheless, is completing all the assessments what defines learning the contents of a course? Should a student be allowed to stockpile all the assignments and get credit for them as long as they get them done before the final grades are due. In my humble opinion, absolutely not, and it’s not for the classic soft skills reason. Of course, deadlines help students to navigate the world, (e.g. being responsible). After all, the professor is required to turn in final grades by a deadline.
That said, to me, deadlines are important because people (not just students) learn best when information is spaced out or interleaved (Birnbaum et al., 2013; Samani and Pan, 2021). In order to retrieve something from memory, you need time to learn it. Retrieving information is when you know something without having to look it up—like your name and phone number or all the lyrics of your favorite song. This type of learning requires time—spaced learning. You need to learn it, forget it, be asked about it, refresh it, forget it, be asked about it, refresh it and then if you’re lucky you can retrieve it (Feng et al., 2019; Kobayashi, 2022). This is considered spaced learning and is why deadlines are so important.
Due dates provide the structure for spaced learning and learning that is more substantive. Much to the chagrin of the student who wants to “get it all done at once,” this isn’t the way to learn retrievable material. Retrieving information is what allows you to progress to the next set of information and then progress to creativity and eventually creation. Assessments play a crucial role, but true learning doesn’t come from merely completing them. Instead, it happens through active participation in class, where students engage with the material and are consistently challenged by the professor to recall and apply previous lessons.
As professors, we should enforce due dates to give students the time to learn content in a meaningful and retrievable way. But maybe, just maybe, we can do it with a spoon full of sugar.
Adriana J. LaGier is an American Cell Biologist, whose main area of research is active learning and mechanobiology. She is a professor of biology at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, specializing in teaching undergraduate level general biology and cell biology courses.
References
Birnbaum, Monica S., Nate Kornell, Elizabeth Ligon Bjork, and Robert A. Bjork. 2013. “Why Interleaving Enhances Inductive Learning: The Roles of Discrimination and Retrieval.” Memory & Cognition 41 (3): 392–402. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-012-0272-7.
Feng, Kanyin, Xiao Zhao, Jing Liu, Ying Cai, Zhifang Ye, Chuansheng Chen, and Gui Xue. 2019. “Spaced Learning Enhances Episodic Memory by Increasing Neural Pattern Similarity Across Repetitions.” The Journal of Neuroscience 39 (27): 5351–60. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNeurosci.2741-18.2019.
Kobayashi, Keiichi. 2022. “The Retrieval Practice Hypothesis in Research on Learning by Teaching: Current Status and Challenges.” Frontiers in Psychology 13 (May):842668. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.842668.
Samani, Joshua, and Steven C. Pan. 2021. “Interleaved Practice Enhances Memory and Problem-Solving Ability in Undergraduate Physics.” NPJ Science of Learning 6 (November):32. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-021-00110-x.
Every semester, a student hoping to “earn their desired grade” approaches me at the last minute, asking to make up all their missed assignments. I have a standard missed due date policy, 1) let me know (communication) and 2) get it done in a week (extended deadline). The students requesting to stockpile assignments at the end of the semester usually had not completed the assignment at all or had not completed the assignment even with an extended deadline. Basically, they hadn’t even tried to complete assignments. It wasn’t like they had completed it at 12:01 am and it was due at 11:59 pm.
That being said, I do wonder, Why not grant a student’s request to get it (the class) all done at once? You know the requests: “I know this already. Isn’t there a test I can take so I don’t have to sit through the class?” or “I am sure I can get all these assignments done before finals week.” It makes sense that if a student can pass all the assessments, they should pass the class. So why not just complete all the assessments at the same time?
Would these students who were absent from most of the class or hadn’t done any of the assignments on their due dates pass the class with a C or better? Probably. So why enforce due dates at all. Why shouldn’t a professor simply allow a student to complete all the assignments before final grades are due without regard to timing?
The caveat in this “all at once” scenario is that a successful grade is wrongly associated with learning. If a student completes all the assignments in a few days during the semester, then assessments are the sole criteria used to define successful learning. However, the truth is that learning means much more than successfully navigating a certain percentage of the assignments.
In my reality, most students could use their previous knowledge to muddle through the assessments of an introductory course at an accelerated pace. Let’s view the situation from the perspective of a student. They have after all been in school for the last 13 years and they have become really good at taking quizzes and exams and writing essays with thesis statements. My pre- and post-quiz data for the course reveals this. At the beginning of the semester without warning, I ask a group of anxious, ill-prepared students to (within a limited and unreasonable amount of time) answer 20 questions about a topic that they haven’t even considered before walking into the room. The questions are a sampling of the final exam. The average on the pre-quiz hovers at about 50%. Given more time and a couple of days to study and contemplate, most of these students would pass the pre-quiz, and in essence, have the knowledge required to pass the final exam.
Nevertheless, is completing all the assessments what defines learning the contents of a course? Should a student be allowed to stockpile all the assignments and get credit for them as long as they get them done before the final grades are due. In my humble opinion, absolutely not, and it’s not for the classic soft skills reason. Of course, deadlines help students to navigate the world, (e.g. being responsible). After all, the professor is required to turn in final grades by a deadline.
That said, to me, deadlines are important because people (not just students) learn best when information is spaced out or interleaved (Birnbaum et al., 2013; Samani and Pan, 2021). In order to retrieve something from memory, you need time to learn it. Retrieving information is when you know something without having to look it up—like your name and phone number or all the lyrics of your favorite song. This type of learning requires time—spaced learning. You need to learn it, forget it, be asked about it, refresh it, forget it, be asked about it, refresh it and then if you’re lucky you can retrieve it (Feng et al., 2019; Kobayashi, 2022). This is considered spaced learning and is why deadlines are so important.
Due dates provide the structure for spaced learning and learning that is more substantive. Much to the chagrin of the student who wants to “get it all done at once,” this isn’t the way to learn retrievable material. Retrieving information is what allows you to progress to the next set of information and then progress to creativity and eventually creation. Assessments play a crucial role, but true learning doesn’t come from merely completing them. Instead, it happens through active participation in class, where students engage with the material and are consistently challenged by the professor to recall and apply previous lessons.
As professors, we should enforce due dates to give students the time to learn content in a meaningful and retrievable way. But maybe, just maybe, we can do it with a spoon full of sugar.
Adriana J. LaGier is an American Cell Biologist, whose main area of research is active learning and mechanobiology. She is a professor of biology at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, specializing in teaching undergraduate level general biology and cell biology courses.
References
Birnbaum, Monica S., Nate Kornell, Elizabeth Ligon Bjork, and Robert A. Bjork. 2013. “Why Interleaving Enhances Inductive Learning: The Roles of Discrimination and Retrieval.” Memory & Cognition 41 (3): 392–402. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-012-0272-7.
Feng, Kanyin, Xiao Zhao, Jing Liu, Ying Cai, Zhifang Ye, Chuansheng Chen, and Gui Xue. 2019. “Spaced Learning Enhances Episodic Memory by Increasing Neural Pattern Similarity Across Repetitions.” The Journal of Neuroscience 39 (27): 5351–60. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNeurosci.2741-18.2019.
Kobayashi, Keiichi. 2022. “The Retrieval Practice Hypothesis in Research on Learning by Teaching: Current Status and Challenges.” Frontiers in Psychology 13 (May):842668. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.842668.
Samani, Joshua, and Steven C. Pan. 2021. “Interleaved Practice Enhances Memory and Problem-Solving Ability in Undergraduate Physics.” NPJ Science of Learning 6 (November):32. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-021-00110-x.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced today it agrees with a federal court ruling that appropriately found the Biden-era Title IX rules to unconstitutionally restrict student First Amendment rights.
Those rules, effective in August 2024, infringed on constitutionally protected speech related to sex and gender. They also rolled back crucial due process rights for those accused of sexual misconduct on campus, increasing the likelihood that colleges would arrive at unreliable conclusions during those proceedings. OCR announced it will instead enforce the 2020 rules adopted during the first Trump administration which carefully considered the rights of complainants and respondents alike, while providing robust free speech and due process protections.
The following can be attributed to Tyler Coward, FIRE lead counsel for government affairs:
The return to the 2020 rules ensures that all students — whether they are the accused or the accuser — will receive fair treatment and important procedural safeguards. That includes the right of both parties to have lawyers present during hearings, the right for both attorneys to cross-examine the other party and witnesses, and the right to receive all of the evidence in the institution’s possession. Colleges are also required to adopt a speech-protective definition of sexual harassment that enables schools to punish genuine harassment instead of merely unpopular speech.
Restoring the Trump administration’s rules means that students can once again feel secure that their rights to due process and free speech will be respected while ensuring administrators have the tools they need to punish those who engage in sexual misconduct and harassment.
