Tag: Education

What AI Can’t Read: Ambiguities and Silences (opinion)

A year ago, I saw artificial intelligence as a shortcut to avoid deep thinking. Now, I use it to teach thinking itself.

Like many educators, I initially viewed artificial intelligence as a threat—an easy escape from rigorous analysis. But banning AI outright became a losing battle. This semester, I took a different approach: I brought it into my classroom, not as a crutch, but as an object of study. The results surprised me.

For the first time this spring, my students are not just using AI—they are reflecting on it. AI is not simply a tool; it is a mirror, exposing biases, revealing gaps in knowledge and reshaping students’ interpretive instincts. In the same way a river carves its course through stone—not by force, but by persistence—this deliberate engagement with AI has begun to alter how students approach analysis, nuance and complexity.

Rather than rendering students passive consumers of information, AI—when engaged critically—becomes a tool for sharpening analytical skills. Instead of simply producing answers, it provokes new questions. It exposes biases, forces students to reconsider assumptions and ultimately strengthens their ability to think deeply.

Yet too often, universities are focused on controlling AI rather than understanding it. Policies around AI in higher education often default to detection and enforcement, treating the technology as a problem to be contained. But this framing misses the point. The question in 2025 is not whether to use AI, but how to use it in ways that deepen, rather than dilute, learning.

AI as a Tool for Deep Engagement

This semester I’ve asked students to use AI in my seminar on Holocaust survivor testimony. At first glance, using AI to analyze these deeply human narratives seems contradictory—almost irreverent. Survivor testimony resists coherence. It is shaped by silences, contradictions and emotional truths that defy categorization. How can an AI trained on probabilities and patterns engage with stories shaped by trauma, loss and the fragility of memory?

And yet, that is precisely why I have made AI a central component of the course—not as a shortcut to comprehension, but as a challenge to it. Each week, my students use AI to transcribe, summarize and identify patterns in testimonies. But rather than treating AI’s responses as authoritative, they interrogate them. They see how AI stumbles over inconsistencies, how it misreads hesitation as omission, how it resists the fragmentation that defines survivor accounts. And in observing that resistance, something unexpected happens: students develop a deeper awareness of what it means to listen, to interpret, to bear witness.

AI’s sleek outputs conceal a deeper problem: It is not neutral. Its responses are shaped by the biases embedded in its training data, and by its relentless pursuit of coherence—even at the expense of accuracy. An algorithm will iron out inconsistencies in testimony, not because they are unimportant, but because it is designed to prioritize seamlessness over contradiction, clarity over ambiguity. But testimony is ambiguity. Memory thrives on contradiction. If left unchecked, AI’s tendency to smooth out rough edges risks erasing precisely what makes survivor narratives so powerful: their rawness, their hesitations, their refusal to conform to a clean, digestible version of history.

For educators, the question is not just how to use AI but how to resist its seductions. How do we ensure that students scrutinize AI rather than accept its outputs at face value? How do we teach them to use AI as a lens rather than a crutch? The answer lies in making AI itself an object of inquiry—pushing students to examine its failures, to challenge its confident misreadings. AI does not replace critical thinking; it demands it.

AI as Productive Friction

If AI distorts, misinterprets and overreaches, why use it at all? The easy answer would be to reject it—to bar it from the classroom, to treat it as a contaminant rather than a tool. But that would be a mistake. AI is here to stay, and higher education has a choice: either leave students to navigate its limitations on their own or make those limitations part of their education.

Rather than treating AI’s flaws as a reason for exclusion, I see them as opportunities. In my classroom, AI-generated responses are not definitive answers but objects of critique—imperfect, provisional and open to challenge. By engaging with AI critically, students learn not just from it, but about it. They see how AI struggles with ambiguity, how its summaries can be reductive, how its confidence often exceeds its accuracy. In doing so, they sharpen the very skills AI cannot replicate: skepticism, interpretation and the ability to challenge received knowledge.

This approach aligns with Marc Watkins’s observation that “learning requires friction.” AI can be a force of productive friction in the classroom. Education is not about seamlessness; it is about struggle, revision and resistance.

Teaching history—and especially the history of genocide and mass violence—often feels like standing on a threshold: one foot planted in the past, the other stepping into an uncertain future. In this space, AI does not replace the act of interpretation; it compels us to ask what it means to carry memory forward.

Used thoughtfully, AI does not erode intellectual inquiry—it deepens it. If engaged wisely, it sharpens—rather than replaces—the very skills that make us human.

Jan Burzlaff is a postdoctoral associate in the Jewish Studies program at Cornell University.

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May 23, 2025
What Ruth Simmons Taught Me About Standing for Something

Those who know me are well aware that I have a professional crush on Ruth Simmons. I have talked about how much I admire her career and the bold stances she has taken publicly and taken opportunities to ask others about how she has encouraged and mentored them. When presented with a chance to meet her, I quickly bought an airline ticket and counted down the days.

For those who are unfamiliar with her career, she was the first Black president of an Ivy League institution; holds the title of president emerita of Smith College, Brown University and Prairie View A&M University; and as of this past weekend, has been awarded 41 honorary degrees.

The last of these degrees was conferred by Southern Methodist University, which is where I earned my doctoral degree. Michael Harris, a professor at SMU, was the Faculty Senate president who nominated Simmons to receive the award. As a result, he was invited to the dinner given in her honor, and it was my great fortune his wife was unable to attend. He jokes that only one person references Simmons as often as I do, and he felt obligated to ask if I was interested in attending.

Prior to the dinner, Simmons was the speaker at a campuswide symposium, where signed copies of her book, Up Home, were distributed to attendees. She spoke about her childhood and career, offering advice to all in attendance.

Her final statement felt like a follow on to my last “Call to Action” piece, which encouraged everyone to fight on behalf of higher education:

“It’s in those moments, even when you’re wrong or when people think you’re wrong, that you’re elevated. It’s in those moments that you stand for something and know what is beyond the pale, in the things that you see before you. And so if, like my mother, you see somebody being unfairly treated, how dare you be silent? How dare you if you see someone doing something that trespasses. What should we be doing as human beings? How dare we not say something?

“So the question I get when I do my book events, from students and everyone else, is ‘What should I be doing in this moment?’ Everybody’s question is ‘What should I be doing now?’ I don’t have an answer for everybody, but I do know that at 80 years old, I get up every day ready to do something, and that’s what I always answer. ‘You’ve got to do something.’ It is not a moment to sit on the sidelines and be comfortable and say, ‘Oh, let everybody else worry about that.’ Shame on you if you draw that conclusion right now.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Like Ruth Simmons, I’ve received many questions from people who are unsure how or if they can fight, having read my recent piece. Some colleagues feel they can’t fight because they are in red states, or they worry they could put themselves or their institutions at risk through their actions. Others feel they lack the credibility or the authority to lead a fight. Still others worry they need to take on the fight on behalf of the whole industry and are already exhausted.

Fighting on behalf of higher education isn’t a one-size-fits-all endeavor. I would encourage, as Simmons notes, that this can include addressing mistruths, defending those who are being treated unfairly and speaking out when the moment demands it. I believe that fighting for higher education means that we each defend the academy within our spheres of influence in big and small ways.

For example, arm yourself with facts and be prepared to address misinformation you may hear about the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which was just approved by the House GOP and has been sent to the Senate. As passed by the House, it includes limiting Pell eligibility and eliminating subsidized student loans.

Know what the impact of the House’s proposed endowment tax will be on the institutions that will be impacted. Be versed in how institutions are reeling from the elimination of research grants and how the bill will now further impact them. It is clear to me that these are the first cuts for institutions, but they won’t be the last. The goal is to have fiscal death by a thousand cuts. I would argue it is our responsibility to speak out—to fight— when we hear people discussing the federal budget and grant cuts and explain the impacts these cuts are having on student persistence, on campuses, on research, and on everyday people.

Despite my choice of language and the traditional connotation associated with it, I don’t think of fighting as only a negative concept. Or, at the very least, I was raised in a Hispanic household where the duality of challenge and support was viewed as a given, rather than a negative. A colleague of mine said that he felt my language was solely confrontational. I suggested in response that fighting to me means asserting an alternative, which includes sharing expertise, data and information, and serving as a sense maker. I believe it covers addressing falsehoods and defending the truth. It is up to each of us if we view and live this only as a negative.

It’s possible that Simmons’s advice feels aligned with my thinking because I want so dearly to be aligned with her, but the reality is that there’s something about a fighter that is always aligned with another fighter, and for that reason I hope you’ll see yourself in her words and in mine. Once again, I invite you to fight.

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May 23, 2025
King Misrepresented in Anti-DEI Congressional Hearing

In January 2024, I wrote a Forbes article titled, “How Martin Luther King Would Respond to Today’s Attacks on DEI.” I declared therein that King would be outraged and disgusted by the catastrophic assault on values for which he fought, was arrested 29 times and ultimately died. Were he still alive today, I know for sure that King would call on leaders to demonstrate more courage and integrity as DEI is being recklessly torn down in our nation’s K-12 schools, higher education institutions, government agencies and businesses. He would insist on brave truth telling, nonviolent resistance, larger and more audacious multiracial coalitions, and strategically pulling every possible lever in defense of racial justice. King would not have been okay with colleges and universities closing culture centers and multicultural affairs offices, scrubbing their websites of language pertaining to antiracism and equity, and firing innocent DEI practitioners who broke no laws and did nothing wrong.

Regarding his dream, I insisted the following in the aforementioned Forbes article about King: “Paradoxically, many people who know little about the greatest American civil rights leader of all time at least know he famously spoke these words: ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’ The part about not judging people by skin color gets weaponized to justify colorblindness.”

Unsurprisingly, this very thing happened this week in a U.S. House of Representatives hearing titled “Restoring Excellence: The Case Against DEI.” I was the lone expert witness for the Democrats, a role I had played twice before on Capitol Hill.

Robert Onder, a Republican congressman representing Missouri, prefaced a question to me by reciting the go-to line from King’s speech. “Let me read to you a quote you may have heard of, maybe you haven’t, it goes something like this …”

Two things ran through my mind at the time. First was “Oh, here we go with the tired, predictable misrepresentation of Martin Luther King’s stance on colorblindness.” Secondly, I thought, “Of course I have heard these words—I have been a Black man in America for nearly 50 years; I am a proud graduate of a historically Black university; I spent a decade as a member of the Africana studies faculty at the University of Pennsylvania; I have delivered numerous Martin Luther King Day keynote addresses for universities and companies across the country (including this one in 2016 at Duke University in which I critiqued the twisting of King’s Dream speech); and I have read dozens of MLK sermons, speeches and letters, including but not limited to those published in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches—how absurd to even suggest that I may be hearing these words for the first time.” It was the most disgusting moment of the hearing for me, yet I somehow maintained my composure.

I have said it many times before, but it is worth repeating during these dangerous times in higher education and our democracy: King was not a proponent of colorblindness. He hated racism against African Americans and other people of color. He called white supremacy by its name. He called Black people by their names as he fearlessly demanded equity, opportunity and justice for them. The remedies he advocated were extraordinarily race-forward and color-conscious. Any policy or practice in higher education or elsewhere that insists on colorblindness is a misrepresentation of King’s stance.

There is at least one other noteworthy thing about the annoying evocation of King in the congressional hearing: The civil rights icon said judged “by the content of their character,” but Onder and other Republicans kept insisting on narrowly judging applicants by standardized college entrance exams that tell admission professionals more about those prospective students’ ZIP codes, socioeconomic statuses, the ability of their families to pay for expensive test prep courses and tutors, and the abundance of resources in the K-12 schools they attended.

Ironically, DEI opponents often fail to recognize and appreciate the incredibly valuable proxies for character, leadership, creativity and other strong indicators of undeniable potential for greatness in holistic admissions practices.

Those of us who love King and truly value the race-consciousness of the unrealized American dream for which he fought, was repeatedly jailed and died must continue to help our family members, neighbors, colleagues, presidents and governing board members, students, and elected officials understand why wholesale, decontextualized advocacy for colorblindness is wrong, unfair and bad for our democracy.

If we really want to honor King, especially during this time, more of us would demonstrate brave resistance to the enormously consequential dismantling of DEI in educational institutions and our broader society. The civil rights hero is widely known for peace, love and nonviolence—what Cornel West calls the “Santa Clausification” of King.

But to be sure, King would have hated the weaponization of government to dismantle DEI broadly and racial equity efforts specifically right now. He would have put up the biggest fight and demanded that leaders, including those in higher education, stop cowardly surrendering to white supremacy and hate. More of us should do that, too.

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.

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May 23, 2025
3 Considerations for “Nudging” Intervention in Higher Ed
Nudging systems are low-cost, simple mechanisms colleges can deploy to ensure students stay on track with enrollment. They can have a long-term impact on student success, creating socioeconomic mobility and closing equity gaps for students from historically marginalized backgrounds. But how does a college create effective nudging measures to enhance student success?

The nonprofit group ideas42 conducted a field review of available research on educational nudging and its impact on student outcomes and identified promising practices in an April report.

Over all, researchers found nudges that reduced students and parents’ mental load and simplified processes, such as prefilled forms, were tied to higher educational outcomes, compared to messages that required additional processes or complex decision-making.

A Slice of Research

Ideas42’s report addresses the entire education pipeline, from kindergarten to higher education. This article focuses only on processes implemented in university settings or related to enrollment in higher education.

The background: Behavioral science principles have been applied to higher education for decades with the goal of supporting students and families as they navigate complex institutions. Called nudges, these interventions happen in admissions, financial aid and the registrar’s offices, and can take place via email, learning management systems and texts, to help students meet deadlines.

Large-scale nudging interventions at the state and national level have been shown to be less effective than smaller-scale outreach from groups students are familiar with. A more recent study from Georgia State University found that time-sensitive nudges, or those related to high-stakes tasks, were more likely to encourage student behavior.

Methodology: In the report, researchers define nudges as “interventions that change student behavior by modifying their decision-making context, without meaningfully restricting available choices or exerting coercive influence through large incentives or penalties.”

The report authors focused on three types of nudges that address students’ bounded awareness, rationality and self-control—subconscious factors that may limit an individual’s decision-making, willpower or information-seeking abilities.

Nudges were categorized by whether they add or subtract elements from student-facing processes. For example, an additive nudge requires students to interact with a new product or service or complete additional tasks, whereas a subtractive nudge reduces the tasks students have to complete or eliminates products (for example, texts to a student rather than notifications through a portal). Researchers also evaluated whether the nudges increased students’ cognitive load, requiring additional processing and decision-making, or reduced mental pressure to help them focus attention and process information.

The findings: Researchers found that the most effective nudges in improving student outcomes are those that reduce unnecessary steps, simplify processes and make it easier for individuals to complete their goals—such as prefilled financial aid applications or streamlined enrollment forms.

However, nudge designers often lean toward creating more steps or introducing new tools and activities, such as a texting campaign to connect students to resources about late course withdrawal, that don’t reduce the effort required by students. This can overload them and fail to benefit them in the intended ways, adding confusion.

Instead, campus leaders should prioritize subtraction in the number of messages and steps a student may receive in the hopes of reducing their mental burden.

Some additive measures can be helpful, such as creating a tool for students and families to evaluate various options in a choice set, because it makes decision-making easier or enables action in a simpler manner.

But in general, the best practice is to reduce the complexity of processes and the cognitive demands of the task.

Making changes: To enhance nudging systems, the ideas42 review suggested education leaders consider the following:
- Focus on the messenger. Often, nudge development focuses on the content of the message, but identifying a trusted and recognized source to deliver the message can increase its credibility. Messengers who are trusted, local and human are more likely to engage recipients than generic, institutional or automated senders.
- Forget the low-hanging fruit. Nudges can be developed as a cost-effective and scalable intervention, but they may neglect the deeper, more systemic solutions that could generate long-term student success. “This focus on cheap and incremental solutions also risks exacerbating inequities in educational outcomes, because the barriers faced by historically marginalized communities often require deeper solutions,” the report says.
- Evaluate the problem thoroughly. The nudge design process can begin with a predetermined solution, rather than a diagnosis-driven approach, which doesn’t necessarily fit the need at hand. Campus leaders should seek to understand the barriers students face and create nudges that touch the root of the problem.
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May 23, 2025
Higher Ed Unions Call for Free College in Fed Policy Agenda
A coalition of labor unions representing faculty and other higher education workers called for free college and more Thursday—the same day House Republicans passed their reconciliation bill, which would cut Pell Grants and target postsecondary education in other ways.

The federal policy agenda is from Higher Ed Labor United (HELU), which seeks to unify all types of higher ed workers—academic and nonacademic, unionized or not—in a single national coalition that can organize together.

The other broad prongs of HELU’s agenda are to:
- Establish strong labor standards on every campus
- End the crises of student and institutional debt
- Rebuild and expand the nation’s research infrastructure
- Enshrine and protect the right to learn, speak freely and teach without fear or retaliation
- Ensure democracy and shared governance for those who work, learn and live alongside colleges and universities
“Now is the time to rally our forces and offer a different vision of higher education and a positive path forward,” said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors and a founder of HELU, at a news conference in Washington, D.C.

“Higher ed is under a withering assault right now,” Wolfson said. “But it’s important for us to be clear: The assault on higher ed did not begin with Trump.”

“As a sector, we have suffered through 50 years of federal and state divestment,” Wolfson continued. He said this has led to, among other things, “skyrocketing tuition” and a lack of job security for campus workers.

“The corporatization and neoliberal attacks on our universities are entwined with the right-wing authoritarian attacks,” Wolfson said. “They want to stop political dissent,” and, “as higher education goes, so goes democracy.”

Two Democratic politicians—Rep. Mark Takano of California and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts—spoke at Thursday’s event alongside leaders from multiple unions. Markey said House Republicans “have proposed a budget that will decimate the Pell Grants, leaving colleges out of reach for hundreds of thousands of low-income and first-generation students.”

“Donald Trump and Republicans don’t want freedom, they don’t want democracy, they want control,” including over curricula, research and student speech, Markey added.
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May 23, 2025
U.K. Invests $40M to Attract International Researchers

The Royal Society has announced a $40 million fund designed to attract global research talent to the U.K.

The Faraday Fellowship “accelerated international route” will provide up to $5.4 million per academic or group willing to relocate to British universities and research institutes, over a period of five to 10 years. The society said that it would be willing to consider larger awards “in exceptional circumstances.”

The announcement comes as countries around the world vie to attract leading scholars who are considering fleeing the U.S. in protest of President Donald Trump’s attacks on research funding and diversity initiatives.

Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society, said that international science was “in a state of flux with some of the certainties of the postwar era now under question.

“With funding streams and academic freedom coming under threat, the best scientific talent will be looking for stability. The U.K. can be at the front of the queue in attracting that talent,” Smith said.

“Our new opportunity, combined with schemes from [UK Research and Innovation] and the Royal Academy of Engineering, is a step in the right direction.”

The society said that two-thirds of the initiative’s budget would come from the Faraday Discovery Fellowship Fund, part of a $335 million government endowment set aside in 2023 to support attempts to attract midcareer academics to the U.K. The society will top this up with $13.4 million of its own, enabling the plan to be widened to cover researchers at other career stages.

Full eligibility criteria will be published by the end of June.

The announcement follows the European Union’s unveiling of a $565 million fund to attract researchers, including doubling to $2.25 million the maximum grant available to those arriving from outside the bloc to set up a laboratory or research team.

Individual European countries and universities have also launched initiatives to attract international researchers following Trump’s election, including a $9.8 million scheme in Norway. France’s University of Aix-Marseille is providing nearly $17 million in grants for those seeking “scientific asylum” from the U.S.

Leading scientists have been calling on the U.K. to launch a similar initiative. However, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has warned that such attempts could be stymied by U.K. immigration policies, including high visa and health-care costs.

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May 23, 2025
Calif. Community Colleges Ramp Up Battle Against the Bots

Faced with an ongoing swell of fraudulent applications and enrollments, the California Community College system is hotly debating what to do next to win their battle against bot “students” for good.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the 116-college system has been haunted by ghost students—impostors who enroll online, apply for financial aid and disappear with the funds. System administrators say the issue arose in the last five years, with fraudsters eager to access federal aid made available to students. The growth of online education and spread of AI has exacerbated the problem, making it easier for bots to apply in droves. The issue has put strain on professors and staff who have had to flag and purge thousands of bots from online courses and led to the loss of millions of dollars of student aid.

System leaders brought a proposal before the Board of Governors in a meeting Tuesday, asking them to consider a “nominal” student fee to help pay for artificial intelligence tools and other defenses against the bots. After more than two hours of discussion, board members opted against taking steps to charge a fee. But the board didn’t reject the idea outright; instead they asked system staff to further “explore” it and unanimously voted in favor of other recommendations. Notably, the system now has approval to require an identity-verification process for all applicants and to ramp up use of high-tech and AI tools to combat the issue.

Over the past year alone, the system found 31.4 percent of applications were fraudulent, system officials said. Ghost students have stolen about $10 million in federal financial aid and $3 million in state and local aid in the past year, according to system officials. That’s an escalation from prior years; campus reports obtained by Cal Matters revealed that between September 2021 and January 2024, fraudsters took off with $5 million in federal aid and $1.5 million in state and local aid.

Those figures have alarmed state lawmakers. Last month, nine Republican members of Congress from California sent a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Attorney General Pam Bondi calling for a federal investigation into the fraud issue. State lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats alike, have since demanded a state audit of the system’s fraud challenges.

Chris Ferguson, executive vice chancellor of the California Community College system, told Inside Higher Ed that stolen funds account for “about two-tenths of a percent” of the several billion dollars of aid flowing into the colleges, “well below the threshold that would normally trigger federal investigations of financial aid fraud,” he said. He also emphasized that the system’s current tools for fraud detection capture about 85 percent of false applications.

At the beginning of last year, the system rolled out a new identity verification process as a part of applications, called ID.me. But the process was optional for community college districts until the Board of Governors voted to require it at this week’s meeting.

Ferguson would like to see the share of fraudulent cases caught—and prevented—approach 100 percent, partly by scaling AI tools already in use on some campuses. But advancing those efforts could cost up to $10 million, Ferguson estimated, which is why administrators requested the authority to charge a student fee in “the low tens of dollars.”

The goal of the fee would be to “both support application review costs and deter fraudulent application submissions,” according to the proposal.

James Todd, assistant vice chancellor of the California Community College system, told Inside Higher Ed that the system is trying to prevent fake students from continuing to take away resources from real students. He said campus employees have had to pivot from their day-to-day, student-facing work to focus their attention on identifying bots. Meanwhile, ghost students’ registrations are crowding out actual students from classes they need for their programs.

“Our entire system is based on increasing equitable access for students,” Todd said. “Students who are already on a degree or certificate path are sometimes finding barriers to being able to enroll in a class or a class being canceled because colleges have found that it’s all enrolled with fraudulent students. That is what we’re dealing with on an everyday basis across our campuses.”

But students came out in force at the Board of Governors meeting to express their opposition to the fee. Many students, from campuses across the system, acknowledged the importance of rooting out ghost students but also shared concerns that an additional charge, even if small, could pose a financial barrier for low-income students.

The fee “is someone’s food, is someone’s gas,” Daniela Romo, president of the Associated Students of Delta College at San Joaquin Delta College, told the board. “But it’s also a message to other people that there is some barrier to entry … I think that the beauty of the California Community College system is that it accepts everybody with open arms.”

A National Issue

While California community colleges have a particularly stubborn bot problem, student aid fraud isn’t new or isolated to the system.

The Office of Inspector General at the federal Department of Education has been working for years to raise national awareness about financial aid fraud rings. For example, OIG investigations revealed $10 million worth of student aid fraud in Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina and other states, according to a 2021 report.

Community colleges tend to be the most vulnerable to these types of scams because of their open-access mission, said Jill Desjean, director of policy analysis at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. They intentionally make it easy for students to apply, unlike more selective universities, and they’re low-cost, or even no cost in states with free college programs. That means a fraudulent student who feigned eligibility for the Pell Grant could pay minimal tuition and pocket the rest of the aid money intended for other educational expenses like textbooks and transportation.

“Because of their very nature of being welcoming to all, [community colleges] invite this kind of opportunity for fraud,” Desjean said.

She emphasized that there are guardrails in place to prevent people from exploiting the financial aid system, like the FAFSA verification process, which requires some students to verify information on their financial aid applications. The Department of Education also flags potentially fraudulent behavior, like enrolling and withdrawing multiple times at different nearby institutions.

But there’s a difficult balance to strike between stopping fraudsters and making the financial aid process so burdensome that real students are deterred from applying, she said.

Adu Love, a student member of the Board of Governors, raised similar concerns about the community college system’s verification process, now required for all applicants. She told the board she worries extra steps could make applying more difficult for homeless, incarcerated or undocumented students, who might lack some of the necessary documentation. She herself drove five hours to Moorpark College to verify her identity because she was unable to use ID.me, she said.

“Our responsibility is not just to stop fraud, but it’s also to maintain the access we have as a system while we do it,” she told board members.

Using AI to Fight AI?

Earlier in the Board of Governors meeting, some community college leaders detailed the stress fraudulent applications have put on their campuses and the steps they’ve taken to resolve the issue.

Jeannie G. Kim, president of Santiago Canyon College, told the board that her institution identified about 10,000 fraudulent students by employing various verification methods, including making phone calls to individual students.

“We had to actually take them out of our system, and when we did that, of course, our enrollment numbers … dropped tremendously,” Kim said. “But we needed to do it, because we needed to bring our real students in. That saved the day for our students … Our students were clamoring for these classes that they could not gain access to.”

Clearing out the false students made room for about 8,000 actual students to enroll.

Jory Hadsell, vice chancellor of technology for the Foothill–De Anza Community College District, told the Board of Governors that “waves” of fraudulent applications last year left admissions and financial aid personnel “overwhelmed and exhausted” as they sifted through thousands of suspect applications.

“Internal fraud tools were no longer keeping up with the speed and the sophistication of the threat that we were facing,” he said.

Now the Foothill–De Anza district and Santiago Canyon are part of a group of 48 colleges that have turned to artificial intelligence to flag potentially fraudulent applications—and they say it’s working.

Kim told board members that AI has been a game changer, helping her college catch bots at the application stage and keep them out of enrollments and wait lists.

The AI model reviews each application and gives it a “fraud score” indicating how likely it is to be fraudulent, along with an explanation of what factors triggered its suspicions. For example, the AI can detect whether lots of applications are coming from the same IP address.

The fraud problem “is controllable,” Kim said. “We have a 99 percent efficacy rate with the implementation that we have done” for a cost of less than $100,000.

Kiran Kodithala, CEO of N2N Services, which offers LightleapAI, the tool colleges are using, said at the meeting that the company processed roughly three million applications in the last eight months and prevented about 360,000 fraudsters “from defrauding taxpayers, stealing classes from students” and worrying campus leaders, helping them avoid “waking up in the middle of the night” fretting over whether they can trust their enrollment numbers.

These are the kinds of tools Ferguson wants to see expanded to more institutions.

“The more we can stop [fraud] at the application phase, the less you have to do on the enrollment front and … the less you have to do on the financial aid front,” he said.

Kim told the board that not every institution can use the same AI tools, because the bots used for fraud are too “smart”—they’ll quickly adapt if colleges aren’t using a diverse set of defenses. But she believes the entire system should be required to use some form of AI as part of their antifraud strategy, especially lower-resourced institutions that may not have the money or staffing to flag a swell of suspect applications on their own.

“We have a lot of small rural colleges, and those colleges cannot handle the kind of attack that we endured last fall,” she said. “If that happens to them, they are going to be in jeopardy.”

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May 23, 2025
Four Things to Know About the House Budget Plan

After much back-and-forth and late-night dealing, House Republicans have passed a sweeping budget plan to cut spending and taxes that is moving on to the Senate—a significant milestone for legislation that seemed dead in the water a week ago amid concerns that the bill didn’t include deeper cuts.

The plan, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, narrowly advanced Thursday morning by a one-vote margin. All Democrats opposed the legislation, arguing that the spending cuts would hurt the working class and vulnerable populations while raising the deficit and giving tax breaks to wealthy individuals.

Among other changes, the legislation would levy new taxes on colleges, require institutions to pay millions to the federal government, change how students pay for college and limit eligibility for the Pell Grant. In the lead-up to Thursday’s vote, higher education leaders warned that the proposal would make trying to attend and pay for college much more complicated and raise costs for those who do enroll. The bill does include some wins for colleges, institutional lobbyists say, but those don’t outweigh the negatives.

Republicans, who say the cuts are necessary, are using a legislative procedure known as reconciliation to advance the bill. That process allows lawmakers to fast-track the legislation and pass it with a simple majority of votes in both chambers. (Typically, the Senate requires 60 votes to cut off debate for a bill.)

“It’s time we stopped asking a factory worker in Michigan or a rancher in Texas to subsidize the student debt of a lawyer in Manhattan so colleges can continue to spike their tuition to whatever they want,” said Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican and chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, in a statement. “By capping loan amounts and giving some financial responsibility to schools, this legislation addresses the root cause of high college costs and provides schools an incentive to deliver real value for students and taxpayers.”

With the measure now in the Senate’s hands and lawmakers eyeing a July 4 deadline, here’s what else you should know about the legislation that could reshape American higher education.

1. Students Set to Lose Pell Money

Many House committees had a hand in the legislation, but the proposals that will have the biggest impact on colleges are from the Committee on Education and the Workforce. The 103-page Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan, which is part of the broader reconciliation bill, would reduce spending by nearly $350 billion over the next 10 years.

Most of those savings stem from rolling back a Biden-era student loan repayment plan that never fully took effect and from capping how much students can borrow. But lawmakers are also planning to increase spending on Pell Grants by $2.8 billion as they aim to address a looming shortfall and open up the program to short-term workforce-training classes.

To make the math work, Republicans are changing who qualifies for a Pell Grant, proposing that students would have to take at least 15 credits a semester in order to receive the full award. They’ll also have to take at least 7.5 credits to get any money. Currently, the Pell Grant is prorated based on how many credits students take, and there’s no floor.

Changing the full-time-award definition would save $7.1 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated that more than half of students currently enrolled would see their Pell Grant reduced.

The CBO also estimated that cutting off Pell for part-time students would save about $687 million over the next 10 years. Currently, about 10 percent of Pell Grant recipients enroll less than half-time. Of those students, the CBO predicts that one-third of students who stand to lose their grant under this change would enroll in more classes. Presumably, the other two-thirds would either stop out or pay for their education with loans or their own money. (The CBO report was based on a minimum of six credits, but that threshold has since increased to 7.5, so the number of students affected could be higher.)

Over all, about 700,000 students would no longer be eligible for the Pell Grant after all the changes take effect. The changes are currently set to take effect in summer 2026.

2. Colleges on the Hook for Unpaid Student Loans

In addition to the Pell Grant cuts, college leaders are particularly worried about a provision known as risk-sharing, which would require institutions to pay a financial penalty based on students’ unpaid loans. How much colleges would have to pay is unclear, but the CBO estimates that by 2034, payments would total $1.3 billion and then continue to increase each year. Risk-sharing is expected to save the government $5.3 billion over the next 10 years.

Because of risk-sharing and other changes in the bill aimed at limiting student borrowing, the CBO predicts that the volume of student loans would drop by about 20 percent.

College leaders and lobbyists argue that the formula that would determine institutions’ payments is untested, and without more information, they can’t accurately gauge the ramifications. One lobbyist said the proposal represented “an astonishing level of federal overreach.” Critics of the plan also worry that underresourced and minority-serving institutions would be hit the hardest.

“The risk is not equal among colleges,” Tuskegee University president Mark Brown told senators this week.

Risk-sharing is just one of several proposed changes that would upend the student loan system. House Republicans also want to end Grad PLUS loans along with subsidized loans, restrict Parent PLUS loans and tie how much students can borrow to the median cost of a program. Some consumer protection advocates argued that these changes would drive students to private lenders, which often charge higher interest rates.

3. More Taxes and Medicaid Cuts Threaten Colleges’ Bottom Lines

Other proposals in the bill from the Ways and Means Committee would levy a host of new or expanded taxes against universities.

First, the committee created new brackets to tax wealthy universities’ endowments. Currently, private universities with endowments that are worth more than $500,000 per student pay a 1.4 percent tax. But under the plan, some could see their endowments taxed at 21 percent.

Institutions with endowments valued at $750,000 to $1.25 million per student would be hit with a 7 percent tax. That rate would climb to 14 percent for colleges with endowments worth $1.25 million to $2 million per student, while colleges with endowments of $2 million or more per student would pay 21 percent. Colleges also can’t include international students in their tally of students, which could subject more institutions to the tax.

In addition to the endowment tax, the proposal also taxes a college’s intellectual property by stating that the endowment tax should include all forms of investment income. This means that any royalties from a private university’s intellectual property, including patents and copyrights, would be taxable. Additionally, the legislation removes colleges’ exemption from the unrelated business income tax so that all institutions, public and private, would be taxed for royalties from licensing their name and logo.

House Republicans in other committees also proposed cuts to the Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance programs, which critics say would hurt students and states’ budgets. And if states do take a hit financially, public colleges might see their budgets cut.

“If federal Medicaid funding is reduced in a new federal tax law, no public college or university will be immune from future state budget reductions and the austerity that will result. Public higher education must be prepared,” two professors wrote in an Inside Higher Ed op-ed earlier this year.

4. Warnings From Higher Ed Pile Up

Higher education groups warned before and after the vote of damaging consequences if the legislation becomes law.

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten called it a “big, ugly betrayal,” while Kara D. Freeman, president and CEO of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, said in a statement that “the implications for student access, research, and innovation could be far-reaching.”

Freeman said the endowment tax is especially concerning and cited NACUBO data that shows colleges and universities spent $30 billion from their endowments in fiscal year 2024—nearly half of which funded student financial aid.

“This scholarship tax takes funds away from students and makes it less possible for colleges to support them,” she said.

Meanwhile, the American Council on Education took issue with the use of the reconciliation process to advance sweeping changes, along with the provisions in the bill.

“The totality of the funding cuts, policy changes, and tax increases included in this reconciliation package will have a historic and negative impact on the ability of current and future students to access postsecondary education, as well as on colleges and universities striving to carry out their vital educational and research missions,” ACE wrote in a letter to the House.

So far, senators have said little about the higher ed provisions in the bill, so it’s not yet clear whether they’ll agree with the House plan. Generally, while the House prefers risk-sharing, the Senate is expected to back a measure that judges programs by their students’ employment rates and income levels after graduation.

But, with President Donald Trump backing the legislation and a fragile majority in the House, senators have few options if they want to change the legislation.

“This is arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Now, it’s time for our friends in the United States Senate to get to work, and send this Bill to my desk AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! There is no time to waste.”

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May 23, 2025
Senate Committee Approves Education Under Secretary Nominee

The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions voted to approve Nicholas Kent as under secretary of education, the top job in the country for higher education policy and oversight, by a narrow 12-to-11 vote. The Senate will hold a final confirmation vote at a later date.

Kent, a former Virginia deputy secretary of education, is a vocal critic of the Biden administration and a former lobbyist for for-profit colleges and trade schools.

His nomination earned a mix of support and concern from higher education associations and advocates, some of whom viewed it as a worrying harbinger of the Trump administration’s plans to reduce federal regulation and oversight of for-profit colleges and credential programs.

Kent was advanced to a full vote with a tranche of six other cabinet nominees. A few organizations, including the American Federation of Teachers and the Institute for College Access and Success, expressed concern that there was no public hearing about Kent’s ties to for-profit institutions. In 2015 Kent’s then-employer, Education Affiliates, a company that operates dozens of for-profit colleges nationwide, settled a False Claims Act case brought by the Department of Justice for $2 million.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, voted no on Kent’s nomination Thursday morning, saying, “We should not be confirming a former lobbyist who represented for-profit colleges to oversee higher education.”

Other organizations say Kent could shake up a regulatory framework they believe has stifled innovation. The American Association of Community Colleges wrote a letter supporting Kent, saying it believes he is committed to “ensuring statutory compliance and program integrity while decreasing administrative burdens and supporting innovation.”

If confirmed, Kent will replace acting under secretary James Bergeron as the No. 2 education policy official in the country.

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May 23, 2025
Higher education postcard: University of Greater Manchester

Greetings from Bolton. Definitely Bolton.

In 1824, a mechanics’ institute was established in Bolton. Mechanics’ institutes were a new phenomenon – the first was established in Scotland in 1821. They were, in essence, a subscription-based club which provided an opportunity for education, aimed at the better-off members of the working class.

As the 1857 advert in the Bolton Chronicle shows, it was still going fifty years later.

You can see the 1857 subscription fees in the advertisement. It’s hard to directly read across into today’s prices, because costs and wage structures change so much over the years. On a straightforward inflation calculation, using the Bank of England calculator, the annual fee would be about £50 today, which is a bit of a bargain. But comparing wages makes this feel different – for example, an average agricultural wage in 1857 was just shy of 11 shillings a week, so the subscription would be a quarter of a week’s wages. (And note also that the annual fee of ten shillings was just the quarterly fee multiplied by four. No discounts here for upfront payment.)

The curriculum looks good, but elementary: school rather than higher education. And this makes sense – many people would have had minimal schooling. Only about 70 per cent of the population could read and write. And so a good basic education didn’t hurt.

By the late 1880s there was a groundswell of opinion that Bolton needed better. As reported in the Bolton Evening News of 1 December 1886, the new chairman of the Mechanics’ Institute, Mr John Haywood MA, argued that:

In Manchester, they are content with one well-equipped technical school; whereas in Bolton we must, forsooth, have three struggling institutions, with the result, as far as the Mechanics’ is concerned, that the progress made is in the direction of increased debt.

The newspaper continued: “Mr Haywood thinks that Bolton has gone mad on sectarian and political distinctions when its young men cannot even sit on the same form to receive technical education.”

And so in 1887 the committee of the Mechanics’ Institute agreed to establish a technical school. A committee was established, which raised funds, but found itself short; and an appeal was made to the county council. And in 1891 the Bolton Technical School opened.

In 1926 Bolton Technical School became Bolton Technical College, and in 1941 a new building opened – that shown on the card – which enabled a broader range of courses to be offered. Engineering was, apparently, the most popular.

In 1964 the college bifurcated, splitting the lower and higher level education. Bolton Technical College focused on FE, and the Bolton Institute of Technology focused on higher studies.

A brief aside is now necessary, to introduce another institution, the Bolton Training College. This focused on training teachers for technical subjects and was one of three in the country doing this (the others being in Huddersfield and at Garnett College, in London). I’m afraid I can’t tell you when it was founded, but it is clear that there was a threat to close it in the 1950s, happily averted.

And in 1982 the Bolton Institute of Technology merged with the Bolton Training College to form the Bolton Institute of Higher Education. This gained taught degree awarding powers in 1992, research degree awarding powers in 1996 and became a university in 2004.

In December 2024 the university changed its name, becoming the University of Greater Manchester. And in what is becoming a bit of a busy year for the university, in governance terms, it was placed under enhanced OfS monitoring in February and suspended its vice chancellor in May. Let’s see what June and July bring for the university.

The postcard was sent in October 1961 to Miss Medley in Andover.

Dear Janet, Today I am going through to Blackpool to see “West Side Story”. The week has flown by, and tomorrow I shall have to return to the quiet South from the lively North. Love Jillian

And here’s the customary jigsaw – hope you enjoy it. Comment below if you can identify the cars.

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May 22, 2025