Tag: Education

China Aims for “Quality” Overseas Students With Entry Exam

China’s introduction of a standardized admissions exam for international students shows that efforts to build a world-class university system matter more to the country than increasing enrollments, according to experts.

Beginning with the 2026 intake, most international applicants will be required to take the China Scholastic Competency Assessment (CSCA), a centrally designed test intended to benchmark students from different education systems against a common academic standard.

The exam will be compulsory for recipients of Chinese government scholarships starting this year and later phased in more widely, becoming mandatory for all international undergraduate applicants by 2028.

It will be delivered primarily as an online, remotely proctored test, with some countries also offering off-line test centers.

Richard Coward, CEO at Global Admissions, an agency that helps international students apply to universities, said the policy was “one of the biggest changes” he had seen for international students studying in China.

“This is more about the shift in focus away from quantity to quality, which is happening all over the world. Previously China had the target of 500,000 students; now the target is towards world-class universities by 2050 with the double first-class initiative.”

“There is a great deal of variation in students with different academic backgrounds and it can be challenging to assess,” Coward said. “There are also many countries that don’t have the equivalent level of maths compared with China. This change aims to make all international applicants have the same standard so they’ll be able to follow the education at Chinese universities and so they are at least at the same level as local students.”

Under the new framework, mathematics will be compulsory for all applicants, including those applying for arts and humanities degrees.

Coward said this reflected “the Chinese educational philosophy that quantitative reasoning is a fundamental baseline for any university-level scholar.”

Those applying to Chinese-taught programs must also sit for a “professional Chinese” paper, offered in humanities and STEM versions. Physics and chemistry are optional, depending on program requirements. Mathematics, physics and chemistry can be taken in either Chinese or English.

Gerard Postiglione, professor emeritus at the University of Hong Kong, said the CSCA should be understood as part of a broader shift in China’s approach to internationalization.

“The increasing narrative in China in all areas is to focus on quality,” he said. “That also means in higher education. If China has the plan by 2035 to become an education system that is globally influential, there’s going to be more emphasis on quality.”

Postiglione added that the move also reflected how China approaches admissions locally.

“If you look at how China selects students domestically, there is no back door,” he said, pointing to the importance of the gaokao, China’s national university admissions test taken by local students. “The gaokao is the gaokao, and I don’t think there will be much of a back door for international students, either.”

He cautioned, however, that the framework may favor applicants with certain backgrounds.

“Language proficiency and subject preparation will inevitably advantage some students over others,” he said. “Students who have already studied in Chinese, or who come from systems with stronger mathematics preparation, may find it easier to meet the requirements.”

While the exam framework is centrally set, Postiglione said, individual universities are likely to retain autonomy over admissions decisions.

“The Ministry of Education will provide a framework and guidelines,” he said, “but it would be very difficult for a central agency to make individual admissions decisions across the entire system.”

Pass thresholds have not yet been standardized, and Coward said that in the future, universities may set minimum score requirements, but this is not in place yet.

He added that the additional requirement was unlikely to reduce demand. “Some more casual students may be deterred,” he said. “But for top-tier universities, it reduces administrative burden by filtering for quality early.”

In the longer term, though, “it signals that a Chinese degree is becoming more prestigious, which may actually increase demand from high-caliber students.”

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January 15, 2026
Indiana University Cancels MLK Celebration Dinner

The Black Student Union held an annual dinner, first convened in 1969, honoring Martin Luther King Jr., that has been canceled this year.

Indiana University in Indianapolis canceled a dinner in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. hosted annually in January by the Black Student Union, Mirror Indy reported. This year’s would have been the 57th consecutive annual MLK dinner, which was first convened in 1969.

Officials in the Division of Student Affairs told the Black Student Union the event was canceled at the end of the fall semester, citing “budget constraints,” according to a letter the Black Student Union executive council posted on Instagram.

“For months prior, we had been diligently seeking guidance and confirmation on whether the dinner would be approved, funded and supported,” the executive council wrote. “This is not just about a dinner. This is about the erosion of Black traditions under vague justifications. This is about institutional decisions being made without Black voices at the table.”

In a letter to campus Tuesday, IU Indianapolis chancellor Latha Ramchand said, “The MLK Dinner is not going away—rather we are in a moment of transition,” and described a new task force that will “help us reimagine our affinity dinners and related events.” The task force will complete its work by April 10, she said.

In their response letter to the Division of Student Affairs, the Black Student Union’s executive council questioned whether the current political climate may have influenced administrators’ decision to cancel the dinner. The university in May closed its diversity, equity and inclusion office, which included the Multicultural Center and the LGBTQ+ Center; student organizations within the office were transferred to the Office of Student Involvement. A student with the Queer Student Union told Mirror Indy that the Harvey Milk Dinner, typically held in October, was also canceled this academic year.

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January 15, 2026
Questions About Youth Perceptions of Access to American Dream

An impressively brilliant African American 14-year-old sent a thoughtful response to the column I published yesterday on the policing of Black men in America. He began by characterizing what I had written as “fascinating,” which could have meant a multitude of things coming from a teenager. He then explained that his eighth-grade English class included recent discussions about immigrant pursuits of the American dream. Accordingly, one major takeaway from those conversations with his teacher and peers was that many people come to the U.S. because it is perceived as a land of opportunity. My article complicated this presumption for him.

In addition to the racial profiling, harassment, abuse and police killings of unarmed Black Americans that I wrote about yesterday, this middle schooler’s perspective has me wondering how other youth his age, as well as collegians in the U.S. and abroad are thinking about the possibility of the American dream at this time for themselves and others. I am especially interested in knowing how attainable it feels among Asian, Black, Latino and Indigenous youth here and elsewhere across the globe. Juxtapositions of their perspectives with those of their white counterparts also fascinate me.

The Trump administration includes few people of color in leadership roles—certainly much, much fewer than in the Obama and Biden administrations. Programs and policies that were designed to ensure equitable opportunities for citizens who make our nation diverse have been ravaged (in some instances outlawed) during Donald Trump’s second presidential term.

Black, Latino and international student enrollments at Harvard University and other elite institutions have declined since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled race-conscious admissions practices unconstitutional. Immigrants are being threatened, terrorized and deported. It is possible that these challenges and realities have done little to erode immigrants’ and prospective international students’ faith in U.S. structures and systems. This is a researchable topic.

It would also be good for social scientists and education researchers to study how students in K–12 schools and on college campuses across the U.S. are appraising the equitable availability of the American dream to all citizens. Results collected via surveys and other research methods should be disaggregated by race, socioeconomic status, gender and gender identity, citizenship and documentation status, sexual orientation, religion, state and geographic region, political party, and other demographic variables. Those findings should be compared within and across groups. Furthermore, sophisticated analyses should be done at the intersection of identities (for example, perceptions of Asian American transgender immigrant youth).

In another column published earlier this week, I wrote about what I teach students in my classrooms. One statement therein seems worthy of amplification here: “To be absolutely sure, I have never instructed [students] to hate or in any way despise America.” I do, however, teach them truths about our nation’s racial past and present. Those lessons are not based on my opinions or so-called divisive ideologies, but instead rigorous statistics and other forms of high-quality, trustworthy data substantiate my teachings. As a responsible educator and citizen, I understand that the problem of inequitable access to the American dream requires a lot, including but not limited to consciousness raising, truth telling, reparations and restorative justice, and the implementation of equity-minded public policies, to name a few.

I want youth of color to love our country. I want immigrants who believe in the availability of the American dream to come here. But I also want access to the American dream to be fair and equitable. I want our nation to disable and permanently destroy structures and systems that cyclically reproduce disparate outcomes that disadvantage people who make our country beautifully diverse. I got a very real sense that the Black teenage boy who thoughtfully responded to what I wrote yesterday wants the same thing, too. Again, I think it would be “fascinating” to know how other adolescents and young adults, including those who are white, are thinking about who has full access to the American dream at this time.

Shaun Harper is University Professor and Provost Professor of Education, Business and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership. His most recent book is titled Let’s Talk About DEI: Productive Disagreements About America’s Most Polarizing Topics.

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January 15, 2026
N.C. Elections Board Rejects Campus Polling Centers

Some students protested the decision.

David Walter Banks/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Ahead of the 2026 primaries, the North Carolina State Board of Elections rejected a plan Tuesday to open an early-voting center on the Greensboro campus of North Carolina A&T State University, according to NC Newsline.

The Republican-controlled board also voted to close the existing early-voting centers at Elon University and Western Carolina University.

After the vote, a group of N.C. A&T students who traveled to Raleigh for the board meeting gathered in the boardroom, protesting the decision. But Francis De Luca, chair of the board, threatened to call the cops if they didn’t leave, according to the news outlet.

De Luca, who voted against the early-voting sites, said he’s not in favor of them for numerous reasons. “There’s no parking,” he said. “They may set aside parking; if it’s filled, you’re going to get a ticket. We don’t put sites where there’s no parking anywhere else.”

But Siobhan Millen, a Democratic member of the board who voted for the voting centers, said the move puts “student voting is in the crosshairs.”

Without voting sites on campus, students—including many who don’t own cars—will have to travel to off-campus precincts, though some in favor of axing campus polling centers have described them as redundant. Zayveon Davis, a voter engagement leader at N.C. A&T, said the HBCU would provide shuttles to take students to the nearest polling place.

Nonetheless, he called the decision “disappointing” and reflective of broader Republican-led efforts to restrict voting access, especially for marginalized communities.

“I hope that everybody leaves here knowing that your voice does matter. Your vote does matter,” he told NC Newsline. “And if it didn’t, they wouldn’t be working this hard to take it away.”

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January 15, 2026
DOJ Report Compounds MSI Advocates’ Worries

Minority-serving institutions sustained another blow after the U.S. Department of Justice released a December legal report declaring funding to many of these institutions as unconstitutional. That memo could reach further than the Education Department’s move to defund some of these programs, ramping up uncertainty for the institutions.

Much like the Education Department in September, the DOJ argued these programs are unconstitutional because they require colleges to enroll a certain percentage of students from a particular racial or ethnic background to qualify, among other criteria. ED ultimately redirected hundreds of millions of dollars intended for Hispanic-serving institutions and other MSIs for fiscal year 2025; it remains unclear whether the DOJ memo will result in more of the same.

But the 48-page document offers new insight into the dangers a wide range of MSI grant programs could be facing and how the administration is legally justifying its stance against the institutions.

The Trump administration seems to be “doubling down” on its attacks on MSIs, offering some “legal justification for what they’ve already done, and in light of that justification, extending it to some additional programs that they did not pursue in the first go-around,” said John Moder, interim CEO of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.

Mandatory Funds at Risk

Similar to ED, the report by the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel uses an expansive interpretation of the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that barred considering race in admissions.

But the DOJ went further and called into question not just discretionary dollars but also congressionally mandated funds to MSIs, said Amanda Fuchs Miller, former deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs in the Biden administration and now president of the higher ed consultancy Seventh Street Strategies. The Education Department left mandatory funds alone in September, acknowledging in a news release that those funds “cannot be reprogrammed on a statutory basis,” but it would continue “to consider the underlying legal issues associated with the mandatory funding mechanism in these programs.”

The DOJ implied that “they don’t have to give out the mandatory money as required anymore—in their opinion,” Miller said. But as far as she’s concerned, “the executive branch has to enforce statutes,” including discretionary and mandatory funding authorized by Congress.

“They don’t have the authority to declare a statute unconstitutional,” she added.

In contrast, the legal memo argued that the president may be able to reject statutes altogether “even if only parts of them are noxious.” And it concluded that “the race-based portions” of various programs—including funds for Hispanic-serving institutions, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian–serving institutions and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander–serving institutions—are “inseverable,” meaning the unconstitutional parts, according to the DOJ, can’t be removed.

The DOJ did, however, make some exceptions, including competitive grants to predominantly Black institutions (but not mandatory funds) and the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program; the department claimed these programs could be stripped of “race-based provisions.” The memo also scrutinized two TRIO programs, the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program and Student Support Services, but ultimately considered them constitutional, provided the grants aren’t used “to further racially discriminatory ends.”

This approach raises questions, Miller said. For example, the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program was specifically designed to bolster engineering and science programs at MSIs, so what would it mean to continue the program without MSI status as a factor? She also stressed that Native Americans aren’t a racial category, according to federal law, which the administration has acknowledged in the past. But the DOJ memo seems to muddy the administration’s take on the issue, she said, by arguing that Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian–serving institutions and Native American–Serving nontribal institutions rely on “racial and ethnic classifications rather than political classifications.”

Ultimately, “Congress needs to stand up and fight back for these schools that play key roles in their districts” and make sure its statutory authority is respected, Miller said.

Some members of Congress have called out the DOJ and ED for stepping out of bounds. Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the House education committee, called the DOJ memo “deeply at odds with the fundamental goal of the [Higher Education Act] to ensure all students, regardless of their background, can access an affordable, quality degree.” Sen. Alex Padilla, chair of the Senate Congressional Hispanic-Serving Institutions Caucus, said the DOJ opinion “ignores federal law.” But lawmakers have yet to share a game plan on if or how they plan to push back.

Next Steps

What happens next is unclear.

Moder said the administration might withhold new funding for the flagged programs, rescind funds already given, or both.

In that case, institutions could sue, he said, but that’s an expensive ordeal for colleges and universities that, by definition, are underresourced. To qualify for most of the programs targeted by the DOJ, institutions are required to have low per-student expenditures compared to similar institutions, meaning they have relatively few resources to spend on students. They also need to serve at least half low-income students, in addition to a certain percentage of students from a particular racial or ethnic background.

“It’s an expensive proposition and a time-consuming proposition,” Moder said. Although MSIs could have already sued over their lost discretionary funds, “it’s not surprising that there hasn’t been a flurry of legal challenges presented to date.”

HACU has been defending HSIs against a legal challenge from the state of Tennessee and the advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions, after ED declined to stand up for the institutions. The lawsuit argued that Tennessee institutions don’t meet the requirement for HSIs—enrolling 25 percent Hispanic students—and miss out on federal funds; therefore, the federal criteria are discriminatory based on race. HACU has since asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing it’s a moot issue now that ED took away the discretionary funds Tennessee protests.

The hope is “it will leave the possibility of … Congress voting for renewed funding,” and eventually “a new administration to continue to administer it,” Moder said.

Deborah Santiago, co-founder and CEO of Excelencia in Education, an organization focused on Latino student outcomes, believes the DOJ report could have a positive twist: It offers more insight into how the administration is thinking about MSIs—and more fodder to fight back, she said.

The DOJ memo “went a little bit deeper on examples, and in doing so, created opportunities to understand where they’re coming from,” and to “challenge some of the basic framing and concepts that are in dispute,” said Santiago, who previously worked as deputy director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

Notably, she said, the report didn’t take issue with the idea that “there is a clear federal policy goal in providing capacity-building for underresourced institutions.” Instead, it took aim at “racial quotas” and quibbled with whether “individual discrimination” against particular students or types of students occurred. But Santiago said it’s easy to argue back that MSI grants support underserved institutions, not individual students, and there’s a difference between racial quotas and enrollment thresholds.

“MSIs are about institutional capacity-building and not about redressing individual student discrimination. I think that was a false framing that they put out there,” she said. “At the core, this is about persistent structural disadvantages of institutions and how the federal government can fund them.” And when the federal government has limited funds to invest, “you can make the case” that increasing academic quality at institutions with a persistent lack of resources and a disproportionate number of historically underrepresented students “is a clear federal role and responsibility.”

She also pushed back on the idea that institutions that don’t get the money are discriminated against. By the same logic, “students who are not enrolled in military academies are being discriminated against because they’re not getting access” to investments in military academies, she said.

She believes that the DOJ memo will help hone how MSIs and their supporters advocate for the institutions to members of Congress and others.

“I think we need to reframe and make the case to our colleagues on the Hill,” she said.

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January 15, 2026
Education Department launches 18 Title IX transgender athlete investigations
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The U.S. Department of Education announced a string of Title IX investigations Wednesday into over a dozen colleges and state and local school systems with policies that allow transgender students to play on sports teams aligning with their gender identity.

The 18 investigations come just a day after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could decide the future of transgender student athlete participation on sports teams.

“These policies jeopardize both the safety and the equal opportunities of women in educational programs and activities,” the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights said in a Wednesday announcement.

Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement that her office is “aggressively pursuing” complaints about alleged discrimination in women’s sports, which it says is a result of transgender student participation on women’s and girls’ sports teams.

“We will leave no stone unturned in these investigations to uphold women’s right to equal access in education programs,” Richey said.

The investigations were launched into large and small public education systems and colleges, including the New York City Department of Education, Washington’s Tacoma Public Schools, and the Hawaii State Department of Education.

A handful of investigations were also launched into districts in California and Maine — states that have already been the target of Education Department investigations that resulted in U.S. Department of Justice referrals and threats to federal funding loss.

The earliest of those state investigations, which was aimed at Maine’s transgender athlete inclusion policies, put over $860 million of the state’s federal education funding on the line.

The Justice Department sued Maine following a Title IX investigation that said the state had discriminated against cisgender women and girls. However, as of last week, there have been no recent major developments in that case despite the lawsuit being announced last April, according to a Maine state attorney general office spokesperson.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in West Virginia v. B.P.J and Little v. Hecox, in which justices were asked to weigh the constitutionality of state bans limiting transgender athlete participation on sports teams aligning with their gender identities and whether such bans violate Title IX.

While the high court’s conservative majority seemed inclined to uphold state bans, justices on both sides of the ideological spectrum questioned what their limits should be, considering the role of student age, hormone therapy and puberty blockers.

“I’ve been wondering what’s straightforward after all this discussion,” said Justice Neil Gorsuch in court on Tuesday.

The outcome of the cases could change the course of transgender students’ rights in schools, school district policies allowing or barring their participation on sports teams under Title IX, and the Education Department’s enforcement of the sex discrimination statute.

The new investigations also come as Office for Civil Rights employees have been indefinitely reinstated to their positions after the department’s rescission of their layoff notices. The employees were laid off as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize the federal government and to shutter the Education Department.

The civil rights employees were put on administrative leave but were in limbo as legal challenges to the layoffs worked their way through the courts and resulted in temporary blocks. However, the Education Department abandoned its efforts last month to push some of the layoffs through, which resulted in the employees’ indefinite reinstatement as of December.

The full list of new investigations includes:
- Jurupa School District (Calif.)
- Placentia-Yorba School District (Calif.)
- Santa Monica College (Calif.)
- Santa Rosa Junior College (Calif.)
- Waterbury Public Schools (Conn.)
- Hawaii State Department of Education (Hawaii)
- Regional School Unit 19 (Maine)
- Regional School Unit 57 (Maine)
- Foxborough Public Schools (Mass.)
- University of Nevada, Reno (Nev.)
- Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District (N.Y.)
- New York City Department of Education (N.Y.)
- Great Valley School District (Pa.)
- Champlain Valley School District (Vt.)
- Cheney Public Schools (Wash.)
- Sultan School District No. 311 (Wash.)
- Tacoma Public Schools (Wash.)
- Vancouver Public Schools (Wash.)
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January 14, 2026
Calif. College of Arts to Close, Sell Campus to Vanderbilt

As part of its national expansion, Vanderbilt has purchased the California College of the Arts campus, which is closing.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed

California College of the Arts will close by the end of the 2026–27 academic year amid enrollment declines that have rendered its business model unsustainable, officials announced.

But the Wednesday announcement at a press conference at San Francisco’s City Hall came with surprising fanfare. Though CCA is going away, Vanderbilt University is stepping in to purchase its campus, giving the private institution in Tennessee a foothold on the West Coast.

Following the closure, Vanderbilt will assume ownership of the campus and “establish undergraduate and graduate programming, including art and design programs,” and maintain archival materials from the college, CCA president David C. Howse wrote in an announcement.

The move comes after recent financial struggles for CCA, which laid off 23 employees in 2024 and closed other vacant positions to address a $20 million budget gap. While the private college raised nearly $45 million recently, those funds were evidently not enough to stave off closure.

CCA enrolled 1,308 students in fall 2024, according to recent federal data, down from a recent high of nearly 2,000 students in fall 2016.

Officials have not made details of the transaction publicly available.

Vanderbilt’s takeover of the San Francisco campus is the latest national push from the university, which has pursued an ambitious growth plan in recent years. Vanderbilt is currently leasing a campus in New York City and building another in West Palm Beach, Fla., as announced in 2024.

Vanderbilt chancellor Daniel Diermeier told Inside Higher Ed last fall that the university was exploring a site in San Francisco and noted the booming artificial intelligence scene in the city was part of the appeal for a campus there.

While at least 16 nonprofit institutions announced closure plans last year, California College of the Arts appears to be the first to do so in 2026, coming less than two weeks into the new year.

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January 14, 2026
UNC’s App Redesign Drives Student Engagement

What was once an underused mobile app at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been rebuilt to serve as a central hub for student information and services.

The app, Hello Heels, was relaunched during first-year orientation last fall after undergoing a redesign following input from students through advisory boards, focus groups and surveys.

Since the relaunch, the app now draws about 90,000 page views per week from roughly 37,000 users—up from 10,000 page views and 6,000 users before the redesign.

Elizabeth Poindexter, executive director of communications and special projects in UNC’s Office of Student Affairs, said students rely on the app for “real-time” updates on everything from bus tracking to dining hall offerings.

“Nothing thrills me more than running to the dining hall to grab my own lunch and seeing a student using the app or talking to their friends about it,” said Poindexter.

She added that student feedback has allowed the app to become a multifaceted “dynamic space,” featuring modules on career services and health and wellness and an up-to-date events calendar.

Poindexter also said the redesigned app has proven cost-effective, saving more than $40,000 in new student and family programs by eliminating the need for duplicative services. Instead of costly printed materials, the app provides real-time agenda updates and announcements.

“The more people hear about that cost savings, the more interested in and engaged with the app they become,” said Poindexter.

The approach: Poindexter said student input came from a diverse group, including undergraduates and graduate, transfer and international students.

“We really had a good spread of students who are representative of the student body at large, and they had some incredible recommendations,” said Poindexter, including suggestions to “overhaul” and “refresh” the health and wellness and career services modules.

She added that other features, such as real-time updates on recreation center occupancy, dining hall hours and integration with academic tools like Canvas, also arose directly from student feedback.

The app includes an opt-in messaging feature that allows campus offices to send targeted updates to students who choose to receive them. Poindexter said the most popular channels come from the financial well-being center and the mental health and wellness center.

The financial well-being center sends weekly money tips and appointment reminders, while the mental health and wellness center shares well-being messages during high-stress periods like finals, which she said students respond positively to.

The app also gathers in-app survey responses. Of roughly 250 respondents, 98 percent said they plan to continue using Hello Heels.

“That is why it’s been so successful,” Poindexter said. “We have student voices integrated every step of the way.”

What’s next: Poindexter said part of the redesign involved partnering with UNC’s business school to ensure the app’s long-term sustainability and continued improvement.

“It’s been really wonderful to see that we can have this universitywide impact and improve the student experience in how we communicate with them,” she said.

Poindexter recommended that higher education leaders take a close look at their own media, from mobile apps to online newsletters, and use student feedback to make sure those tools are actually engaging and informing their target audience.

“Our best advocates are our students, and they have really useful insights decision-makers should consider,” she said.

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January 14, 2026
SHEEO Releases Annual State Priorities Survey

Affordability has always been a buzzword for lawmakers on Capitol Hill, but polling shows that it’s becoming increasingly popular among state higher education agencies as well.

According to the latest annual State Priorities survey from the State Higher Education Executive Officers, college affordability jumped from the sixth-most-important policy issue among higher ed executives in 2025 to the second most this year.

SHEEO researchers emphasized that affordability has “consistently [been] among the top priorities” for the roughly 45 state executives surveyed each year; the average score from respondents this year only increased 0.1 points on a 1-to-5 scale. Nonetheless, they agreed that the increase represents a significant and timely change—one that was likely influenced by the political climate in Washington.

“Affordability is the key overarching issue for policymakers heading into the 2026 midterm election, and state higher education leaders are certainly not immune from pressure to lower costs,” said Tom Harnisch, SHEEO’s vice president for government relations. “So there’s going to be, I foresee, continued legislative efforts to hold the line on tuition, make increased investments in financial aid and address other areas that are related to college costs.”

The increased focus on affordability has also been reflected in state legislation; 33 states indicated that they had instituted a tuition freeze and/or limit in at least one public higher education sector in the past five years. Another 20 have considered legislation to create or expand statewide promise programs, which provide free or significantly reduced college tuition for eligible students.

But state systems still have work to do to address public concerns. Roughly 60 percent of all adults say cost is the biggest barrier preventing students from enrolling in or completing a postsecondary degree, according to a report from the left-leaning think tank New America.

Other key policy issues include economic and workforce development (which held its place at No. 1), higher education’s value proposition (No. 3), and college completion/student success (No. 5), the SHEEO survey shows. A topic that had not previously been included in SHEEO surveys also gained prominence this year: state impacts from federal policy changes, which placed sixth on the list of 25 issues.

Collectively, Harnisch said, this year’s results, and the relatively consistent results of recent years, reflect a slow but steady transition concerning who is responsible for bearing the cost of college.

“It just shows the overarching cost shift from states to students, and associated with that cost shift is the need for students to get a job, to help pay for their education and associated student debt,” he explained. “These are all downstream effects of that.”

SHEEO researchers also noted that while state budgets for higher ed range widely, funding has declined over all since the COVID-19 pandemic and its “record state budget surpluses.” The major funding cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will likely only make higher education budgets tighter, they added.

“Many states with biannual budgets set them in 2025, so they will not be in budget sessions again until 2027. But those states that do have budgets in 2026 are more likely to face changes, and higher education is often most vulnerable to those changes,” Harnisch said. “So as more states have budget shortfalls, revenue growth is softening and there’s increased competition for limited state funding, states are going to be increasingly challenged on the affordability front.”

Still, despite looming budget cuts, “unstable federal funding streams and intensifying state and federal political pressures,” SHEEO says there are reasons for optimism.

Concerns about completion of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid dropped nine spots to the 18th-most-important issue for higher leaders this year. And despite the looming predictions of a major demographic cliff, which is slated to take effect in 2026, enrollment declines dropped from the seventh-most-important issue in 2025 to 16th most important this year.

If anything, SHEEO hopes that enrollment will continue to climb as students pursuing eligible short-term education and training programs gain access to Pell Grants for the first time starting on July 1, under a new program called Workforce Pell.

“[The year] 2026 holds a lot of unknowns as we look to see what state legislators will prioritize and how changes at the federal level will impact states,” Harnisch said in a news release about the report. But as “economic and workforce development continues to be top of mind, and with the implementation of Workforce Pell rolling out later this year, we’re optimistic that states will continue to make advances in addressing workforce needs.”

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January 14, 2026
The Hidden Tax Students Pay for Your AI Strategy (opinion)

University leaders are thinking a lot about AI. Some institutions are purchasing site licenses, others forming task forces and others are drafting policies focused on academic honesty. Meanwhile, students are quietly bearing a cost that few are tracking: between $1,200 and $1,800 over four years in AI tool subscriptions that fragmented and unenforceable institutional policies have made necessary.

Here’s what a typical student experience looks like. Freshman fall semester: The composition professor bans ChatGPT even though the university has a site license. The biology lab recommends NotebookLM for research synthesis. The math professor encourages Wolfram|Alpha Pro Premium at $8.25 per month. Spring semester brings a different writing professor, who requires Grammarly Pro at $12 monthly, while the computer science intro professor suggests GitHub Copilot Pro for $10 monthly (though it’s worth noting here—props to GitHub Copilot—that verified students may be eligible for free access to the Pro plan). Meanwhile, the research methods professor advises students to “use AI responsibly” without defining what that means.

As students progress, the costs compound. Statistics courses need IBM SPSS Statistics with AI features or Jupyter with premium compute, such as through a Google CoLab Pro subscription ($9.99 per month). Marketing classes require Canva Pro for design projects at $15 monthly. Capstone courses recommend Claude Pro at $20 monthly, or premium versions of research tools like Consensus or Elicit running anywhere from $10 to more than $40 per month. Different courses equal different tools, and the subscription stack grows. The money matters—$1,200 to $1,800 is significant for students already stretching every dollar. But the financial burden reveals something more troubling about how policy fragmentation or policy stall is undermining educational equity and mission. The problem runs deeper than institutional inaction.

Without coordination, universities face two unsatisfying options. Option one: Buy nothing centrally. Students bear the full cost—potentially $4 million to $7 million in aggregate per year for a 15,000-student institution—creating massive equity gaps and graduates unprepared for AI-integrated careers. Option two: Attempt institutional licensing. But this means more than purchasing a single large language model. Writing disciplines might work with ChatGPT or Claude. But other disciplines might need GitHub Copilot, Canva Pro, AI-enhanced modeling platforms, Consensus, Elicit, AI features in SPSS or premium Jupyter compute. There are thousands of AI platforms out there.

A truly comprehensive strategy for a large university could exceed $2 million annually—with no guarantee of faculty adoption or pedagogical integration. So even with an investment, without consensus or agreement, students might still experience this AI tax. Some institutions have the financial capacity to invest in both comprehensive licensing and faculty development. But most universities facing enrollment pressures and constrained budgets cannot afford coordinated AI strategy at this scale. The result is policy paralysis while students continue paying out of pocket. Some institutions have tried a middle path, purchasing site licenses for tools like ChatGPT Edu or Claude for Education. But without cross-functional coordination, these investments often miss their mark.

The fundamental barrier is really a structural one. Procurement authority typically resides with the chief information officer, while pedagogical decisions belong to the provost and faculty. The information technology office selects tools based on security, scalability, cost and vendor relationships and reliability. Faculty need tools based on disciplinary fit, learning outcomes and individual professional preparation. These criteria rarely align. If an institution does purchase something, it may sit underutilized while students continue paying for what they actually need or what faculty require or prefer.

This creates the unintentional equity crisis: Two students in the same capstone course may face dramatically different access. Student A, working 20 hours weekly and Pell Grant eligible, cannot afford premium subscriptions. She uses free versions with severe limitations and usage caps—and when those caps hit midassignment, her work stalls. Student B, with family financial support, maintains premium subscriptions for every required tool with unlimited usage and priority access. Student B’s AI-enhanced work earns higher grades not because of deeper learning, but because of subscription access. Academic advantages compound over time and may continue past college and into the career.

Universities have created an unintentional AI tax here on students that exacerbates grade inflation, does not ensure learning of content and is costing students. Universities have always operated on a principle of equal access to essential learning resources. AI has become essential to academic work, yet access remains unequal.

The academic commons is breaking down. The coordination gap is structural—and fixable. Technology teams focus on infrastructure and security. Academic affairs manages curriculum and pedagogy. Student success addresses traditional access barriers. Financial aid handles emergency requests for support case by case. In practice, the CIO and provost rarely will coordinate at the operational level, where these decisions actually get made.

The employability implications compound the equity concerns. One survey found that 26 percent of hiring managers now consider AI fluency a baseline requirement, with 35 percent actively looking for AI experience on résumés. Students graduating without systematic AI literacy preparation face workforce disadvantages that mirror the educational inequities they experienced, disadvantages that may extend into career outcomes and lifetime earnings.

The real question isn’t “What should we buy?” Instead, universities need to ask themselves, “What is AI fluency and how do we know if students are getting it?” Then, “How do we make strategic decisions about what gets institutional investment—not just licenses but also faculty buy-in and development—versus what students purchase?” That requires executive-level strategic coordination that bridges IT and academic affairs, something most universities lack.

The conversations are happening in separate silos when they need to converge. Until they do, universities will continue creating hidden taxes for students while wondering why AI investments aren’t delivering promised educational transformation. Students caught in this gap might not even be aware it is happening and not have the language or platform to name it.

Higher education’s democratic mission requires equal access to essential learning tools. AI has become essential. Access remains unequal. Costs are passed to the students. The longer institutions delay action, the wider these gaps grow.

Kenneth Sumner is founder and principal of Beacon Higher Education, which provides AI governance consulting for colleges and universities. He previously served as provost at Manhattan University and has held associate provost and dean roles at Montclair State University. He holds advanced AI strategy and design and innovation certifications from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University School of Business.

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January 14, 2026