Leon Black, the billionaire co-founder and former chief executive officer of Apollo Global Management, maintained a financial relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that lasted for years and ultimately contributed to Black’s resignation from the firm. Why should HEI be covering this old story? Because the theme, of profits over people, is a major theme in the dirty world of business that permeates US higher education.
Profits Over People
Apollo Global Management, the firm Black co-founded, is one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers, with hundreds of billions of dollars in assets under management across private equity, credit, and real estate. In 2016, Apollo, along with the Vistria Group and Najafi Companies, acquired Apollo Education Group, the parent company of theUniversity of Phoenix, for over $1.1 billion. The University of Phoenix remains under the control of these owners and continues to operate as a for-profit institution.
Critics of private equity and venture capital in education argue that such firms are driven by short-term profitability rather than long-term institutional quality. This can lead to aggressive marketing, high tuition, cuts to faculty and staff, and diminished student outcomes. In the case of Apollo Global Management’s ownership of the University of Phoenix, concerns have persisted about the potential for cost-cutting and profit-maximizing strategies to undermine the educational mission. For-profit colleges owned by large investment firms have been accused in the past of prioritizing shareholder returns over student success, adding another layer to the public scrutiny of both Apollo and the institutions it controls.
Ties Between Leon Black and Jeffrey Epstein
Between 2012 and 2017, Black paid Jeffrey Epstein approximately $158 million for what he described as financial advice, including tax and estate planning services. A March 2025 report from the Senate Finance Committee revealed that the total amount transferred to Epstein was closer to $170 million, about $12 million more than previously disclosed. In 2023, Black agreed to pay $62.5 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands to settle claims that some of his payments to Epstein were used to support Epstein’s illicit operations. Black has said publicly that his association with Epstein was a “horrible mistake” and has emphasized that had he known more about Epstein’s criminal activities, he would have cut ties sooner.
Although Black has described his relationship with Epstein as limited, records show that Epstein became one of the original trustees of the Leon Black Family Foundation in 1997. Black also contributed a handwritten poem to a 2003 “50th birthday book” for Epstein, an item that included greetings from other prominent figures. In January 2021, following an independent review by the law firm Dechert LLP that detailed the payments to Epstein, Black announced that he would step down as CEO of Apollo Global Management.
Black has faced several legal challenges connected to allegations of sexual misconduct, many of which reference Epstein. In 2023, “Jane Doe” filed a lawsuit claiming she was assaulted by Black at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse; in April 2025, her lawyers sought to withdraw from the case. In another case, accuser Cheri Pierson alleged rape but withdrew her lawsuit in early 2024. A separate suit filed by Guzel Ganieva, which accused Black of abuse and coercion involving Epstein, was dismissed in 2023. Black has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Colleges across the United States are facing an alarming increase in “ghost students”—fraudulent applicants who infiltrate online enrollment systems, collect financial aid, and vanish before delivering any academic engagement. The problem, fueled by advances in artificial intelligence and weaknesses in identity verification processes, is undermining trust, misdirecting resources, and placing real students at risk.
What Is a Ghost Student?
A ghost student is not simply someone who drops out. These are fully fabricated identities—sometimes based on stolen personal information, sometimes entirely synthetic—created to fraudulently enroll in colleges. Fraudsters use AI tools to generate admissions essays, forge transcripts, and even produce deepfake images and videos for identity verification.
Once enrolled, ghost students typically sign up for online courses, complete minimal coursework to stay active long enough to qualify for financial aid, and then disappear once funds are disbursed.
Scope and Impact
The scale of the problem is significant and growing:
California community colleges flagged approximately 460,000 suspicious applications in a single year—nearly 20% of the total—resulting in more than $11 million in fraudulent aid disbursements.
The College of Southern Nevada reported losing $7.4 million to ghost student fraud in one semester.
At Century College in Minnesota, instructors discovered that roughly 15% of students in a single course were fake enrollees.
California’s overall community college system reported over $13 million in financial aid losses in a single year due to such schemes—a 74% increase from the previous year.
The consequences extend beyond financial loss. Course seats are blocked from legitimate students. Faculty spend hours identifying and reporting ghost students. Institutional data becomes unreliable. Most importantly, public trust in higher education systems is eroded.
Why Now?
Several developments have enabled this rise in fraud:
The shift to online learning during the pandemic decreased opportunities for in-person identity verification.
AI tools—such as large language models, AI voice generators, and synthetic video platforms—allow fraudsters to create highly convincing fake identities at scale.
Open-access policies at many institutions, particularly community colleges, allow applications to be submitted with minimal verification.
Budget cuts and staff shortages have left many colleges without the resources to identify and remove fake students in a timely manner.
How Institutions Are Responding
Colleges and universities are implementing multiple strategies to fight back:
Identity Verification Tools
Some institutions now require government-issued IDs matched with biometric verification—such as real-time selfies with liveness detection—to confirm applicants’ identities.
Faculty-Led Screening
Instructors are being encouraged to require early student engagement via Zoom, video introductions, or synchronous activities to confirm that enrolled students are real individuals.
Policy and Federal Support
The U.S. Department of Education will soon require live ID verification for flagged FAFSA applicants. Some states, such as California, are considering application fees or more robust identity checks at the enrollment stage.
AI-Driven Pattern Detection
Tools like LightLeap.AI and ID.me are helping institutions track unusual behaviors such as duplicate IP addresses, linguistic patterns, and inconsistent documentation to detect fraud attempts.
Recommendations for HEIs
To mitigate the risk of ghost student infiltration, higher education institutions should:
Implement digital identity verification systems before enrollment or aid disbursement.
Train faculty and staff to recognize and report suspicious activity early in the semester.
Deploy AI tools to detect patterns in application and login data.
Foster collaboration across institutions to share data on emerging fraud trends.
Communicate transparently with students about new verification procedures and the reasons behind them.
Why It Matters
Ghost student fraud is more than a financial threat—it is a systemic risk to educational access, operational efficiency, and institutional credibility. With AI-enabled fraud growing in sophistication, higher education must act decisively to safeguard the integrity of enrollment, instruction, and student support systems.
A federal judgeon Thursdaystruck down theU.S. Department of Education’s guidance that threatened to strip colleges and K-12 schools of their federal funding over diversity, equity and inclusion practices it deemed unlawful.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher’s final judgment in the case comes after she and another federal judge temporarily blocked the guidance while litigation proceeded.
Her ruling vacates the Education Department’s Feb. 14 guidance. It also strikes down a Trump administration directivethat ordered K-12 school districts to certify they’re not using DEI practices or risk losing federal funding.However, the Trump administration had already withdrawn the requirement due to a prior court ruling.
The Education Department, Gallagher wrote Thursday, didn’t take the proper steps to issue the new guidance. She also ruled that the guidance violated constitutional rights by placing viewpoint-based restrictions on classroom speechand using vague language that didn’t make clear what kind of DEI initiatives were prohibited.
The ruling deals a blow to one of the Trump administration’s many efforts to stamp out DEI practices in colleges and elsewhere.
The Feb. 14 guidance letter immediately sparked outcry from educator groups,who argued that it would limit what they could teach in the classroom, including instruction on history or systemic racism. They also argued it would prohibit campus resources, such as college cultural centers.
Shortly after its release, the guidance and related actions from the Education Department sparked at least three separate lawsuits. Gallagher’s ruling is in response to the complaint brought by the American Federation of Teachers, the union’s Maryland affiliate, the American Sociological Associationand an Oregon school district.
Those groups hailed the ruling Thursday.
“Today’s ruling makes it clear that, regardless of President Trump’s wishes and endless attacks, our public education system will continue to meet the diverse needs of every student — from teaching true history to providing critical resources,” AFT-Maryland President Kenya Campbell said in a statement.
The required steps for new policies
The sweeping Feb. 14 guidance interpreted the U.S. Supreme Court case striking down race-conscious admissions to extend to every aspect of education, arguing that colleges and K-12 schools were prohibited from considering race in any of their policies. The letter said that ban extended to scholarships, housing and graduation ceremonies.
The letter also took aim at classroom instruction and DEI practices.
“Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism’ and advanced discriminatory policies and practices,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, wrote in the letter.“Proponents of these discriminatory practices have attempted to further justify them — particularly during the last four years — under the banner of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion.’”
The Trump administration has maintained that the Feb. 14 guidance merely restates colleges and K-12 schools’ existing obligations under Title VI, which bars federally funded institutions from discriminating based on race, color or national origin.However, Gallagher pushed back on that argument, writing that the guidance created new policies for colleges and schools to follow.
Title VI — along with the landmark court decision striking down race-conscious admissions — have “never been interpreted to preclude teaching about concepts relating to race,” Gallagher wrote.
The Trump administration could have issued guidance to note that it would prioritize Title VI enforcement to “discrimination against all groups, even those in the majority,” Gallagher added. “But it went much farther than that by expanding the definitions of ‘stereotyping,’ ‘stigmatizing,’ and ‘discrimination’ to reach entirely new categories of conduct.”
Moreover, the Education Department cited the Feb. 14 letter the following monthwhen it launched investigations into more than 50 colleges over allegations that their programs or scholarships have race-based restrictions.Most of the institutions were targeted because of their relationship with The PhD Project, a nonprofit that for years provided support for underrepresented groups earning doctoral degrees in business but recently adopted a broader mission.
Because the Education Department’s guidance creates new policies and legal obligations, it therefore is a legislative rule, according to Gallagher’s ruling. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, the Education Department can only create legislative rules by following certain steps, such as first going through a notice and comment period.
Yet the department didn’t take those steps, wrote Gallagher, who was appointed by Trump in his first term.
“This Court takes no view as to whether the policies at issue in this case are good or bad, prudent or foolish, fair or unfair,” Gallagher wrote. However, she added, “it must closely scrutinize whether the government went about creating and implementing them in the manner the law requires. Here, it did not.”
Free speech and due process violations
Gallagher also agreed with the plaintiffs’ argument that the Education Department’s letter and Q&A document violated the constitutional rights of free speech and due process.
A couple weeks after the Feb. 14 guidance, the agency released a 10-page Q&A document that appeared to walk back some elements of the original letter. For instance, it said the department didn’t have the authority to control college or school curricula.
Yet in the same document, it also listed examples of curricular decisions that it could potentially deem discriminatory, such as pressuring college students to “take certain positions on racially charged issues”or mandating courses “designed to emphasize and focus on racial stereotypes.”
The Education Department said it would examine the facts of each case to determine whether a racially hostile environment exists. That means that the department’s investigation would determine whether curricular choices amount to racial harassment, Gallagher wrote.
“The broader context provided by the Letter and FAQs in fact suggests that broad swaths of classroom speech may be suspect, a stark contrast from DOE’s previous position that essentially no classroom speech was suspect,” she added.
The letter doesn’t define what constitutes a DEI program. Gallagher wrote that vagueness gives the Education Department the power to determine what counts as DEI, thereby deciding what is unlawful, she added.
“The crux of the problem, in this Court’s view, is that the Letter says to teachers and schools ‘if you engage in DEI practices we deem impermissible, you will be punished’ but does not provide any clarity on what DEI practices are impermissible,” she wrote.
The Education Department called Gallagher’s ruling disappointing in a Friday email to K-12 Dive, Higher Ed Dive’s sister publication.
“Judicial action enjoining or setting aside this guidance has not stopped our ability to enforce Title VI protections for students at an unprecedented level,” the agency said. “The Department remains committed to its responsibility to uphold students’ anti-discrimination protections under the law.”
The Education Department did not immediately respond to Higher Ed Dive’s question about whether it planned to appeal.
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A federal judge blocked two U.S. Department of Education actions attempting to restrict diversity, equity and inclusion in schools on Thursday.
The decision undoes a February “Dear Colleague” letter that threatened to withhold federal funding to schools that didn’t eliminate race-based programming, as well as a subsequent letter requiring school districts to certify that they do not incorporate DEI in their schools.
In her 76-page opinion, Judge Stephanie Gallagher of U.S. District Court for Maryland ruled that the administration violated decision-making procedures under the Administrative Procedure Act — a move that violated the constitutional rights of plaintiffs, who are led by the American Federation of Teachers.
Gallagher, a Trump-appointed judge, took no stance, however, on the content of the Education Department’s directives themselves.
“Still here, this Court takes no view as to whether the policies at issue in this case are good or bad, prudent or foolish, fair or unfair,” she said. “But, at this stage too, it must closely scrutinize whether the government went about creating and implementing them in the manner the law requires. Here, it did not.”
The administration’s anti-DEI measures were already on pause as a result of this court case and at least two other separate but similar federal court cases pending in Washington, D.C., and New Hampshire. Those cases also challenged the Education Department’s anti-DEI policy.
As a result of previous court action pausing the measures, the department had already withdrawn its certification requirement.
However, in an email to chief state school officers in April retracting the certification requirement, the department said, “Please be advised that the Court Order does not preclude the U.S. Department of Education from initiating any enforcement actions that it may otherwise pursue under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and its implementing regulations.”
Title VI bars discrimination based on race, color or national origin in federally funded programs — and has in the past been used especially to protect historically marginalized students from such bias. However, since President Donald Trump reentered the White House, the Education Department has invoked the civil rights statute to protect Asian and White students. The Trump administration’s anti-DEI efforts are a core part of that interpretation.
The Education Department echoed its earlier sentiments in a reaction to Thursday’s ruling.
“While the Department is disappointed in the judge’s ruling, judicial action enjoining or setting aside this guidance has not stopped our ability to enforce Title VI protections for students at an unprecedented level,” said the department in an email to K-12 Dive on Friday. “The Department remains committed to its responsibility to uphold students’ anti-discrimination protections under the law.”
However, some public school educators and advocates say the measures would harm decades of equity work meant to level the playing field for Black and brown students. Moreover, the directives would create an environment of fear that impacts other underserved students such as students with disabilities, they say
“Our district works hard to ensure that every student feels included through thoughtful curriculum and programs,” said Eugene School District 4J school board member Jenny Jonak in a statement on Thursday. The Oregon district was a plaintiff in the lawsuit that led to Thursday’s court decision.
“Teachers and schools must be able to provide inclusive, comprehensive education without fear of losing critical federal funding. We should never be forced to choose between supporting our students and securing the resources they need and deserve,” Jonak said.
The Trump administration, in its court response to the lawsuit, argued that the certification requirement “fails to rise to the level of final agency action,” which would have required the formal rulemaking procedures that the department didn’t undergo.
“The Certification requirement merely requests state educational agencies who receive federal funds confirm their compliance with Title VI, which Plaintiffs acknowledge they have been asked to do in the past,” the administration said.
“The government did not merely remind educators that discrimination is illegal: it initiated a sea change in how the Department of Education regulates educational practices and classroom conduct, causing millions of educators to reasonably fear that their lawful, and even beneficial, speech might cause them or their schools to be punished,” she said. “The law does not countenance the government’s hasty and summary treatment of these significant issues.”
The department did not respond to a question as to whether it would appeal Gallagher’s decision in time for publication Friday.
BPP Education Group’s growth plan has been backed by the private equity firm TDR Capital, with a view to expand geographically into various sites around the world.
The group, which provides education and training in various fields of work like Law and Finance, hopes to increase the variety of ITS portfolio of courses through the acquisition of dynamic education businesses like Sprott Shaw College.
Sprott Shaw College (SSC), founded in 1903, is one of the largest regulated career colleges IN Canada and offers students connections with real-word opportunities to ready them for work in positions such as nursing and business.
Prior to the deal, it was a subsidiary of Global Education Communities Corporation (GECC), which is one of the largest education and student housing investment companies in Canada.
The college also places a large focus on cultural awareness and inclusivity – and its courses are designed with these in mind.
According to Graham Gaddes, CEO of BPP, the acquisition marks an “important milestone into BPP’s internationalisation”.
“The acquisition will support SSC’s plans to continue to be agile in meeting the needs of the domestic and international community, with programmes developed with cultural awareness and inclusivity in mind,” he added. “We admire what Sprott Shaw College has achieved to date and look forward to welcoming the team to the BPP Education Group.”
The college has grown substantially in size with integrity and has gained respect from the global education community Toby Chu, GECC
This purchase opens doorways for BPP to offer a vast range of professional education programs due to an alignment with other institutions in its portfolio, such as Ascenda School of Management and Arbutus College.
The programs would range from certificates to degree levels, which would aid both domestic and international students.
Toby Chu, president and CEO of GECC, said that he is “confident that Sprott Shaw College will continue to flourish under BPP’s ownership”.
The college had weathered many difficulties in recent years, he said, including the Covid-19 pandemic and more recent study permit caps in Canada.
“Despite these challenges, the college has grown substantially in size with integrity and has gained respect from the global education community. I am confident that Sprott Shaw College will continue to flourish under BPP’s ownership,” he said.
In SRHE News and Blog a series of posts is chronicling, decade by decade, the progress of SRHE since its foundation 60 years ago in 1965. As always, our memories are supported by some music of the times.
1995 was the year of the war in Bosnia and the Srebrenica massacre, the collapse of Barings Bank, and the Oklahoma Bombing. OJ Simpson was found not guilty of murder. US President Bill Clinton visited Ireland. President Nelson Mandela celebrated as South Africa won the Rugby World Cup, Blackburn Rovers won the English Premier League. Cliff Richard was knighted, Blur-v-Oasis fought the battle of Britpop, and Robbie Williams left Take That, causing heartache for millions. John Major was UK Prime Minister and saw off an internal party challenge to be re-elected as leader of the Conservative Party. It would be two years until D-Ream sang ‘Things can only get better’ as the theme tune for the election of New Labour in 1997. Microsoft released Windows 95, and Bill Gates became the world’s richest man. Media, news and communication had not yet been revolutionised by the internet.
“The 1990s has been the decade of quality in higher education. There had been mechanisms for ensuring the quality of higher education for decades prior to the 1990s, including the external examiner system in the UK and other Commonwealth countries, the American system of accreditation, and government ministerial control in much of Europe and elsewhere in the world. The 1990s, though, saw a change in the approach to higher education quality.”
In his own retrospective for the European Journal of Education on the previous decade of ‘interesting times’, Guy Neave (Twente) agreed there had been a ‘frenetic pace of adjustment’ but
“Despite all that is said about the drive towards quality, enterprise, efficiency and accountability and despite the attention lavished on devising the mechanics of their operation, this revolution in institutional efficiency has been driven by the political process.”
Europe saw institutional churn with the formation of many new university institutions – over 60 in Russia during 1985-1995 in the era of glasnost, and many others elsewhere, including Dublin City University and University of Limerick in 1989. Dublin Institute of Technology, created in 1992, would spend 24 years just waiting for the chance[1] to become a technological university. 1995 saw the establishment of Aalborg in Denmark and several new Chinese universities including Guangdong University of Technology.
UK HE in 1995
In the UK the HE participation rate had more than doubled between 1970 (8.4%) and 1990 (19.4%) and then it grew even faster, reaching 33% by 2000. At the end of 1994-1995 there were almost 950,000 full-time students in UK HE. Michael Shattock’s 1995 paper ‘British higher education in 2025’ fairly accurately predicted a 55% APR by 2025.
There had been seismic changes to UK HE in the 1980s and early 1990s. Polytechnic directors had for some years been lobbying for an escape from unduly restrictive local authority bureaucratic controls, under which many institutions had, for example, not even been allowed to hold bank accounts in their own names. Even so, the National Advisory Body for Public Sector HE (NAB), adroitly steered by its chair Christopher Ball (Warden of Keble) and chief executive John Bevan, previously Director of Education for the Inner London Education Authority, had often outmanoeuvred the University Grants Committee (UGC) led by Peter Swinnerton-Dyer (Cambridge). By developing the idea of the ‘teaching unit of resource’ NAB had arguably embarrassed the UGC into an analysis which declared that universities were slightly less expensive for teaching, and the (significant) difference was the amount spent on research – hence determining the initial size of total research funding, then called QR.
Local authorities realised too slowly that controlling large polytechnics as if they were schools was not appropriate. Their attempt to head off reforms was articulated in Management for a Purpose[2], a report on Good Management Practice (GMP) prepared under the auspices of NAB, which aimed to retain local authority strategic control of the institutions which they had, after all, created and developed. It was too little, too late. (I was joint secretary to the GMP group: I guess, now it’s time, for me to give up.) Secretary of State Kenneth Baker’s 1987 White Paper Higher Education: Meeting the Challenge was followed rapidly by the so-called ‘Great Education Reform Bill’, coming onto the statute book as the Education Reform Act 1988. The Act took the polytechnics out of local authorities, recreating them as independent higher education corporations; it dissolved the UGC and NAB and set up the Universities Funding Council (UFC) and the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council (PCFC). Local authorities were left high and dry and government didn’t think twice, with the inevitable progression to the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. The 1992 Act dissolved PCFC and UFC and set up Higher Education Funding Councils for England (HEFCE) and Wales (HEFCW). It also set up a new Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) for colleges reconstituted as FE corporations and dissolved the Council for National Academic Awards. The Smashing Pumpkins celebrated “the resolute urgency of now”, FE and HE had “come a long way” but Take That sensibly advised “Never forget where you’ve come here from”,
The Conservative government was not finished yet, and the Education Act 1994 established the Teacher Training Agency and allowed students to opt out of students’ unions. Debbie McVitty for Wonkhe looked back on the 1990s through the lens of general election manifestos:
“By the end of the eighties, the higher education sector as we know it today had begun to take shape. The first Research Assessment Exercise had taken place in 1986, primarily so that the University Grants Committee could draw from an evidence base in its decision about where to allocate limited research funding resources. … a new system of quality assessment had been inaugurated in 1990 under the auspices of the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals (CVCP) …
Unlike Labour and the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats have quite a lot to say about higher education in the 1992 election, pledging both to grow participation and increase flexibility”
In 1992 the Liberal Democrats also pledged to abolish student loans … but otherwise many of their ideas “would surface in subsequent HE reforms, particularly under New Labour.” Many were optimistic: “Some might say, we will find a brighter day.”
In UK HE, as elsewhere, quality was a prominent theme. David Watson wrote a famous paper for the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) in 2006, Who Killed What in the Quality Wars?, about the 1990s battles involving HE institutions, QAA and HEFCE. Responding to Richard Harrison’s Wonkhe blog about those quality wars on 23 June 2025, Paul Greatrix blogged the next day about
“… the bringing together of the established and public sector strands of UK higher education sector following the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act. Although there was, in principle, a unified HE structure after that point, it took many more years, and a great deal of argument, to establish a joined-up approach to quality assurance. But that settlement did not last and there are still major fractures in the regime …”
SRHE’s chairs from 1985-1995 were Gareth Williams, Peter Knight, Susan Weil, John Sizer and Leslie Wagner. The Society’s administrator Rowland Eustace handed over in 1991 to Cynthia Iliffe; Heather Eggins then became Director in 1993. Cynthia Iliffe and Heather Eggins had both worked at CNAA, which facilitated a relocation of the SRHE office from the University of Surrey to CNAA’s base at 334-354 Gray’s Inn Road, London from 1991-1995. From the top floor at Gray’s Inn Road the Society then relocated to attic rooms in 3 Devonshire St, London, shared with the Council for Educational Technology.
In 1993 SRHE made its first Newer Researcher Award, to Heidi Safia Mirza (then at London South Bank). For its 30th anniversary SRHE staged a debate: ‘This House Prefers Higher Education in 1995 to 1965’, proposed by Professor Graeme Davies and Baroness Pauline Perry, and opposed by Dr Peter Knight and Christopher Price. My scant notes of the occasion do not, alas, record the outcome, but say only: “Now politics is dead on the campus. Utilitarianism rules. Nationalisation produces mediocrity. Quangos quell dissent. Arid quality debate. The dull uniformity of 1995. Some students are too poor.”, which rather suggest that the opposers (both fluent and entertaining speakers) had the better of it. Whether the past or the future won, we just had to roll with it. The debate was prefaced by two short papers from Peter Scott (then at Leeds) on ‘The Shape of Higher Education to Come’, and Gareth Williams (Lancaster) on ‘ Higher Education – the Next Thirty Years’.
Research into higher education was still a small enough field for SRHE to produce a Register of Members’ Research Interests in 1996, including Ron Barnett (UCL) (just getting started after only his first three books), Tony Becher, Ernest Boyer, John Brennan, Sally Brown, Rob Cuthbert, Jurgen Enders, Dennis Farrington, Oliver Fulton, Mary Henkel, Maurice Kogan, Richard Mawditt, Ian McNay, David Palfreyman, Gareth Parry, John Pratt, Peter Scott (in Leeds at the time), Harold Silver, Maria Slowey, Bill Taylor, Paul Trowler, David Watson, Celia Whitchurch, Maggie Woodrow, and Mantz Yorke. SRHE members and friends, “there for you”. But storm clouds were gathering for the Society as it entered the next, financially troubled, decade.
If you’ve read this far I hope you’re enjoying the musical references, or perhaps objecting to them (Rob Gresham, Paul Greatrix, I’m looking at you). There will be two more blogs in this series – feel free to suggest musical connections with HE events in or around 2005 or 2015, just email me at [email protected]. Or if you want to write an alternative history blog, just do it.
Rob Cuthbert is editor of SRHE News and the SRHE Blog, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management, University of the West of England and Joint Managing Partner, Practical Academics. Email [email protected]. Twitter/X @RobCuthbert. Bluesky @robcuthbert22.bsky.social.
[1] I know this was from the 1970s, but a parody version revived it in 1995
[2]National Advisory Body (1987) Management for a purpose Report of the Good Management Practice Group London: NAB
Academic researchers are worried that the government’s plans to stop investing in the development of messenger RNA vaccines, a technology university scientists first used to help develop the COVID-19 vaccines, will undermine the United States’ standing as a global leader in biomedical research and development.
As promising as mRNA technology may be for treating a range of maladies, including numerous types of cancer and autoimmune diseases, its role in developing the COVID vaccine has thrust it into a political crossfire, fueled by the Trump administration’s smoldering criticisms of the Biden administration’s handling of the pandemic.
Last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., director of the Department of Health and Human Services, who frequently cites misinformation about vaccines and other public health issues, announced that the department is winding down mRNA vaccine research under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and canceling $500 million worth of contracts and grants with numerous biotech companies and Emory University in Atlanta.
“We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted,” Kennedy, a lawyer by training, said in a statement, claiming that “thedata show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu. We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.”
Jeff Coller, director of the RNA Innovation Center at Johns Hopkins University, whose own graduate student helped develop Moderna’s COVID vaccine, said that “mRNA technology is incredibly misunderstood by the public and many of our politicians.”
Despite that, “the science has always been consistently clear about the powerful medical benefits of the mRNA platform,” he said. “It’s saved millions of lives, is incredibly safe, has huge potential and will revolutionize medicine in the next 100 years. Yet, we’re ceding American leadership in this technology.”
The half-a-billion-dollar cut comes at the same time that the Trump administration has withdrawn support for federally funded scientific research that doesn’t align with its ideological views, including projects focused on vaccine hesitancy, LGBTQ+ health and climate change.
According to a report from STAT News, the 181-page document Kennedy cited as his evidence that mRNA vaccines aren’t safe or effective references disputed studies written by other skeptics of COVID mitigation protocols, including stay-at-home orders and vaccines.
In his op-ed, Bhattacharya acknowledged that mRNA is a “promising technology” that “may yet deliver breakthroughs in treating diseases such as cancer,” but that “as a vaccine intended for broad public use, especially during a public health emergency, the platform has failed a crucial test: earning public trust.”
“Unfortunately, the Biden administration did not manage public trust in the coronavirus vaccines, largely because it chose a strategy of mandates rather than a risk-based approach and did not properly acknowledge Americans’ growing concerns regarding safety and effectiveness,” he wrote.
‘Political Shot Across the Bow’
The vast majority of scientists agree that the mRNA-based COVID vaccine—which was created in record time as a result of President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, launched in 2020—is generally safe and effective.
“I’m concerned about [the cut] weakening our country and putting us at a disadvantage,” said an mRNA researcher who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation. “The promise of mRNA is almost limitless, and I’d like to see those advances being made in this country. But currently it seems those advances are more likely to come from Europe and Asia. I’m also worried about the impact this could have on our economy—this is a growing field of industry.”
Coller, of Johns Hopkins, said Kennedy’s decision to withdraw funding for mRNA vaccine research has more than financial implications.
“It was a political shot across the bow of the entire research community, both in industry and academia,” Coller said. “What it says is that the government doesn’t want to support this technology and is going to make sure it doesn’t happen. If you’re an academic thinking about starting a new program in mRNA medicines, don’t waste your time.”
And now it will be even easier for political whims to drive the government’s scientific research priorities. Last week, Trump issued an executive order that will put political appointees—rather than subject-matter experts—in charge of federal grant-making decisions.
Heather Pierce, senior director for science policy and regulatory counsel at the Association of American Medical Colleges, said that while Kennedy’s decision won’t end all of the nation’s mRNA research, “the indication that a certain technology or scientific area won’t be pursued regardless of the progress made so far is worrisome as a concept.”
That’s in part because “when we unilaterally close the door on a specific type of research or technology, we don’t know what would have come from that,” she said. “It’s not to say that every research project using every technology and scientific tool will necessarily lead to a cure or breakthrough, but the initial funding of these projects shows that there was promise that made it worth exploring.”
Both Kennedy and Bhattacharya have said the government will continue to support research on other uses of mRNA technology unrelated to infectious disease vaccines. But experts say separating those research areas isn’t so simple.
“They’re all interconnected,” said Florian Krammer, a professor of vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “If you take away funding in the infectious disease space and innovation doesn’t happen there, it’s also not happening in other spaces where mRNA technology is used.”
That will create a “huge problem for researchers,” he added, “because a lot of fields are using this technology, and if it’s not moving forward, it closes doors.”
The judge denied a motion for a preliminary injunction to block the anti-DEI law.
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Ruling in part that professors lack First Amendment protections in the classroom, a federal judge denied an effort from college faculty and students in Alabama to block a 2024 state law that banned diversity, equity and inclusion programs as well as the teaching of so-called divisive concepts.
The plaintiffs, who include students from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and professors at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, argued in court filings and at hearings that the legislation known as Senate Bill 129 amounted to state-sponsored censorship and infringed on their rights under the First and 14th Amendments. The professors alleged that they had to cancel class projects or events and faced other questions about their classroom conduct from administrators because of the law. They’ve also changed course material as a result.
R. David Proctor, chief judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, found that while the professors and the Alabama NAACP had standing to sue, they weren’t likely to succeed at this time. For instance, he ruled that the professors aren’t protected by the First Amendment because their “in-class instruction constitutes government speech.”
Furthermore, Proctor wrote, based on other rulings in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, “when there is a dispute about what is taught in the classroom, the university’s interests outweigh those of a professor, and the professor’s interest in academic freedom and free speech do not displace the university’s interest inside the classroom.”
The plaintiffs said Proctor’s ruling was disappointing.
“I feel incredibly dismayed that SB 129 is allowed to continue going into the new school year,” said Sydney Testman, one of the students who sued, in a statement. “As a senior at University of Alabama at Birmingham, I’ve seen firsthand how SB 129 has transformed my college campus for the worst. Voices have been silenced, opportunities have been revoked, and meaningful community engagement has faded. This decision undermines the need for students to properly feel a sense of belonging and inclusion on campus.”
A couple of years ago, I got into a heated argument with a white male lab mate about whether racial and gender inequities still existed in science. He argued that, having both made it to our Stanford cancer biology lab for graduate school, the two of us, a white man and a Black woman, were functionally equal, and that attempts to distinguish us in future grant and fellowship applications were unfair. When I explained, among many differences, the unequal labor I took on by running a pipeline program for underrepresented aspiring physician-scientists, he replied, “If you gave a fuck about your academic career, you would stop doing that stuff.”
His attitude is not unique; it represents a backlash against baby steps made toward any form of equity that was also reflected in the 2023 Supreme Court decision to overturn affirmative action. But in recent months, as attacks on diversity equity, and inclusion have unfolded with shockingfervor from the highest office in the country, I have been confronted with terrifying questions: Was my lab mate right? Has DEI work become antithetical to advancement in science?
Science, as a seemingly objective craft, has historically not cared about the self. Science does not care if you couldn’t spend free time in the lab because you had to work to support your family. Science does not care that the property taxes in the low-income area where you attended high school couldn’t fund a microscope to get you excited about biology. Science does not care that I’ve never once gotten to take a science class taught by a Black woman.
Such experiences, and many, many more, contribute to the leaky pipeline, a reference to how individuals with marginalized identities become underrepresented in STEM due to retention problems on the path from early science education to tenured professorships. The gaps are chasmic. A couple years ago, Science published the demographics of principal investigators receiving at least three National Institutes of Health grants, so-called super-PIs. Among the nearly 4,000 of these super-PIs, white men unsurprisingly dominated, accounting for 73.4 percent, while there was a grand total of 12 Black women in this category.
Pipeline programs—initiatives aimed at supporting individuals from underrepresented groups—are meant to patch the leaks. They are rooted in the understanding that minorities are important to science, not just for representation’s sake, but because diverse perspectives counteract a scientific enterprise that, because scientists are human, has historically perpetuated racial, gender and other social inequities. Such programs range from early-stage programs like BioBus, a mobile laboratory in New York City that exposes K–12 students to biology, to higher-level pipeline programs like the one I run at Stanford, which provide targeted early-career support to aspiring scientists from diverse and marginalized backgrounds.
These programs work. Participants in the McNair Scholars Program, a federally funded pipeline program aimed at increasing Ph.D. attainment among first-generation, low-income and otherwise underrepresented students, are almost six times more likely to enroll in graduate school than their nonparticipant counterparts. These programs are designed to see the student’s full self, and they recognize the extra labor minorities and women disproportionately take on, like mentoring trainees or running their own pipeline programs.
Researchers and academics have held rallies to stand up for science and have proposed bills for state-funded scientific research institutes, but many have remained silent on DEI. Meanwhile, after a pause to screen for DEI language, the NIH has resumed grant approvals (albeit not at its normal pace), and private organizations like Chan Zuckerberg continue to fund “uncontroversial” science. But science will never be whole without the inclusion of trainees from underrepresented backgrounds, who broaden and improve scientific questions and practice in service of a diverse human population. And without pipeline programs, the gaps will grow.
That is why I am calling on academics to stand up not just for science but also for DEI. Stand up against the leaky pipeline. Universities and private research institutes must reinstate language on diversity, equity and inclusion, particularly for pipeline programs. Faculty, students and community members should contact the heads of local universities and private organizations like Howard Hughes and Chan Zuckerberg, demanding reinstatement of diversity language and programs. Labs and research groups should adopt diversity statements reaffirming this commitment.
Given the financial jeopardy federal policy has imposed on pipeline programs, states should also step in. Sixteen state attorneys general recently sued the National Science Foundation for, among other things, reneging on its long-established, congressionally mandated commitment to building a STEM workforce that draws from underrepresented groups; states can take their advocacy further by filling funding gaps. Individuals and private organizations can donate either directly to nonprofits like BioBus or to universities with funds earmarked for pipeline programs.
Many minority students who have done DEI advocacy worry they can no longer discuss their work when applying for fellowships or faculty positions. To counteract this, universities and research organizations should proactively ask applicants about their leadership and advocacy work, to signal that these are the kinds of employees they want. And scientists who are not from underrepresented groups should leverage their privilege—volunteer for mentorship programs, serve on graduate admissions committees to fight for diversity, advise young scientists from underrepresented backgrounds.
Show my lab mate that he was wrong. Caring and succeeding are not mutually exclusive.
Tania Fabo, M.Sc., is an M.D.-Ph.D. candidate in genetics at Stanford University, a Rhodes Scholar, a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, and a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project. She is the program leader for Stanford’s MSTP BOOST pipeline program.
On a recent vacation in the southwest portion of Ireland, as I was slogging away, trying to get the bicycle I was peddling up a reasonably daunting hill, I started thinking about generative AI.
I was thinking about generative AI because my wife, who is quite fit, but historically not as a strong a biker as I am, had disappeared into the distance, visible only because we were on twisting roads and she was several switchbacks ahead.
She also powered past my older brother, who competes in triathlons, and (I was told later) a French couple that muttered some apparent swears in their native language. Ultimately, she arrived only three or four minutes ahead of me at the top-of-the-hill way station, but as I huffed and puffed the final couple hundred yards, down to my next-to-lowest gear, moving at a just-above-walking pace, the gap felt enormous.
If you haven’t figured it out, my wife was riding an e-bike, while I was on a conventional (though very nice) bike. For the most part, the biking was very doable, but there were moments where I was not entirely sure I could or should keep peddling.
But I made it! Because we were touring with Backroads, an active vacation company, there was a delicious snack waiting for me at the top, which I enjoyed with great relish, knowing that I’d burned quite a few calories with many more to come that day.
I believe those French riders might’ve said something about “cheating” by using an e-bike, but this is obviously a case where what is cheating is in the eye of the beholder and significantly dependent on what you’re valuing about the experience.
If the point of our Ireland cycling vacation was to expend maximum effort on physical activities while cycling around the southwestern Ireland countryside, using an e-bike would prevent you from achieving your objective. But this is not the point of these kinds of trips. Yes, we have a desire to be active, outside and engaged, but the point is to use these methods to experience the place we’ve traveled to, and if—as happened to me a different day—you are perspiring so hard that the sweat dripping into your eyes has temporarily blinded you, it is tough to say that you are maximizing the experience.
Having the “best” vacation on this kind of trip is often a matter of balance. At times, I actively wished for the boost an e-bike could’ve given me. Other times, particularly on a day where we did 60 miles, and my brother and I were the only ones doing the whole itinerary, and we managed to go fast enough on the closing stretch to beat the Backroads van back to the hotel, I was thrilled with what it felt like to put my full physical effort behind the task.
I think my body paid for that big effort for a couple of days afterward, but I don’t regret it.
Like I said, it’s a matter of balance and values.
The e-bikes are great because they made it easier for my wife and me to ride together. The bottom-level boost had her toasting me up the hills, but on the flats, we were essentially the same speed, with us both working at levels we were comfortable with. The e-bike isn’t a motorcycle. You are still working plenty hard at the lower levels of boost.
But at the higher levels, you might find yourself speeding through the itinerary, as a group of four gentlemen in our group seemed to do, frequently arriving at our stopping points 20 minutes ahead of the rest of us.
I was thinking of generative AI because of the different lenses through which you can look at the use of an e-bike in the context of a bike-touring vacation.
You could see it as supplementary, allowing someone to experience something (like the view from a particular peak) that they wouldn’t otherwise unless they substituted something entirely nonbiking, like a car.
You could see it as substitutive, removing effort in exchange for feeling less tired and taxed at the end of the day.
You could see it as cheating, as those French riders did.
Because I don’t bike all that often at home, my primary “training” for the trip has been my regular Peloton rides, and for sure, those helped. My metrics on the stationary bike suggested I was well prepared. And I was, but well prepared doesn’t mean you aren’t going to face some very challenging moments.
There were several times—like that sweat-pouring-down-my-face period—where I would have gladly kicked in an e-bike boost in order to reduce my effort to conserve something for a different aspect of the trip, e.g., not being exhausted over dinner. But at no point did I need the boost to continue or finish the route, and if I was so inclined, Backroads is happy for you to hop in the van and get a ride the rest of the way.
I’m stubborn enough to not do that, but knowing myself, there were many times when an e-bike boost wouldn’t have been necessary or even desirable, when I would’ve switched it on in order to alleviate some measure of present discomfort. If it’s available, why not use it?
This would have signaled a shift in the values I initially brought to the trip. Whether or not it should be viewed as a betrayal or merely a change with its own benefits is a more complicated question, but at least for this trip, I was glad to not have the temptation.
I like to look at my opportunities to travel through the lens of experience. We aren’t going somewhere to check a box, but instead to literally spend time in a different place doing different things than our regular routines. I often know that I’ve had a good trip by the number of pictures I take—the fewer the better, because it means I was too absorbed in the experience to bother reaching for my phone to document something.
As we consider how to teach in a world where students have a superpowered e-bike instantly and constantly available, I’ve found looking at learning through the lens of experience is helpful, because focusing on the experience is a good way of identifying the things we should most value.
For my focus, writing, it seems almost irrefutable that if we want students to develop their writing practices, they should be doing the work without the assistance. The work must be purposeful and focused on what’s important in a given experience, but if that’s been achieved, any use of a boost is to miss out on something important. Learning is about riding up that hill under your own steam.
For writing especially, it’s axiomatic that the more you can do without the boost, the more you could potentially do with the boost.
Perhaps more importantly, the more you do without the boost, the greater knowledge you will gain about when the boost is truly an aid or when it is a way to dodge responsibility.
Figuring out where these lines must be drawn isn’t easy, and ultimately, because of the nature of school and the fact that students should be viewed as free and independent actors, the final choice must reside with them.
But we can act in ways that make the consequences of these choices and the benefits to opting for unboosted ride as apparent and inviting as possible.
