Tag: Education

NYU Withholds Diploma Due to Pro-Palestinian Grad Speech

New York University will withhold the diploma of a student commencement speaker who used his speech Wednesday to condemn what he called “the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.”

According to a statement released by a university spokesperson after the speech, the student, Logan Rozos, “lied about the speech he was going to deliver and violated the commitment he made to comply with our rules.” The university is pursuing disciplinary actions and will withhold his diploma while that process proceeds.

“NYU is deeply sorry that the audience was subjected to these remarks and that this moment was stolen by someone who abused a privilege that was conferred upon him,” the statement continued.

Rozos spoke at the ceremony for the university’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. He told the crowd he was “freaking out” about delivering the controversial speech, but that he felt a “moral and political” obligation to use the platform to speak out in support of Palestinians. Video of the speech shows graduates in caps and gowns clapping and cheering for Rozos and some giving him a standing ovation, though some boos and jeers can be heard off camera.

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May 16, 2025
U.S. Universities Eye Branch Campuses as Way to “Survive Trump”

Establishing branch campuses abroad—often used as a crisis mitigation strategy—could become more important for U.S. universities facing increasing threats at home, but scholars are divided on their likelihood of success.

Illinois Institute of Technology has announced that it is to build a campus in Mumbai, while Georgetown University, one of six U.S. universities with satellite campuses in Doha, recently renewed its contract in Qatar’s Education City for another 10 years.

Research-intensive colleges and universities in the U.S. are faced with “new and profound uncertainties” over future funding and the strength of their endowments under the Trump administration, said Geoff Harkness, formerly postdoctoral teaching fellow at Northwestern and Carnegie Mellon Universities’ Education City campuses.

“This means that R-1 institutions will have to seek alternative sources of revenue, including partnering with nations in the Middle East. For Georgetown, which has a long-established branch campus at Education City, the renewal was a no-brainer in 2025.”

It comes just a year after Texas A&M closed its campus in Education City, citing “instability” in the region. However, academics said the decision was more likely a reflection of growing pro-Israel politics in the U.S. and unease with Qatar’s role mediating for Hamas in the Gaza conflict.

Harkness, now associate professor of sociology at Rhode Island College, said the Israel-Palestine conflict put Qatar in a difficult position but warned that Texas A&M could regret its decision to leave from a fiscal perspective.

“The nation’s vast resources and relative political moderation make it an appealing partner for U.S. colleges and universities, particularly in light of current economic uncertainties.”

Although not all partnerships are as lucrative as those with the Qatar Foundation, research by Jana Kleibert, professor for economic geography at the University of Hamburg, found that uncertainty around Brexit triggered U.K. universities to explore opening campuses in continental Europe—as Lancaster University did in Leipzig, Germany.

“Branch campuses are often used as a crisis mitigation strategy by universities,” she said.

“In this sense, it is no surprise to me that in situations of financial and geopolitical turbulence, branch campuses become more attractive to decision-makers at universities.”

University leaders hope that overseas campuses can contribute financially to the well-being of the overall institution, either through direct transfers from these sites to the main institutions or through accessing a broader pool of students, said Kleibert.

Recent figures show that U.S.-Chinese collaborative campuses have experienced record-breaking application numbers from both domestic and international students over the past few years.

Illinois Tech began planning its Indian outpost long before President Trump’s unprecedented assault on the U.S. higher education system. But Nigel Healey, professor of international higher education at the University of Limerick, said Trump’s culture wars could increase the “push factors” toward overseas expansion in the future.

“In the medium to long term, branch campuses may offer elite U.S. institutions an alternative way of maintaining their internationalization, accessing international talent and maintaining a global profile at a time when Trump is fostering a new national culture of xenophobia and isolationism,” he said.

However, he warned that the risks of being pushed into a strategy by suddenly changing political winds is that poor, reactive decisions might be made.

“The winds may change in the opposite direction, leaving the institution with a branch campus that is suddenly a white elephant.”

Philip Altbach, professor emeritus at Boston College, agreed that there are significant risks in establishing branches overseas and that they are not a high priority for elite universities right now.

“In the current situation of total instability in U.S. higher education due to the Trump administration, U.S. universities will not be thinking much about branch campuses but about their own survival.”

Although partnering with many countries may be politically safe, he said universities are unlikely to want to risk making “controversial political moves in the current environment.”

“Top U.S. universities are more interested in establishing research centers and joint programs overseas that can help their research and be a kind of embassy for recruiting students and researchers for the home campuses.”

And Kevin Kinser, professor of education and head of the department of education policy studies at Pennsylvania State University, said overseas partners are not free from scrutiny from the White House.

“The turmoil in the U.S. also includes scrutinizing foreign donations, contributions, collaborations and investments. Looking overseas does not create a safe haven for current federal attention.”

As a result, he said, Texas A&M may have gotten ahead of the narrative on foreign activities by universities by quitting Education City when it did.

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May 16, 2025
Waivers Let Some N.C. Majors Keep “DEI” Requirements

Shortly after the second Trump administration began attacking higher education diversity initiatives, the University of North Carolina system ordered its 16 public universities to immediately stop requiring “course credits related to diversity, equity and inclusion.” The system was targeting DEI even before Trump retook office—the UNC Board of Governors repealed the system’s DEI policy a year ago—and its general counsel pointed to the federal government’s newly threatened funding cuts to justify this further step.

But the system’s kibosh on DEI requirements came with caveats. Majors could continue requiring courses with diversity themes if university chancellors provided waivers.The system gave chancellors the final say on which major-specific courses would continue to be mandated, and chancellors said waivers were needed because state or national accreditation and licensure criteria require diversity education.

“Approximately 95 percent of the programs identified for waivers at the chancellor level had accreditation and licensure requirements attached to them,” said David J. English, the system’s senior vice president for academic affairs, during a UNC board committee meeting this week. English said these programs are in counseling, education, nursing, psychology and social work.

According to documents attached to this week’s board meeting agenda and previously reported by Raleigh’s News & Observer, dozens of courses will remain necessary for certain majors in the UNC system, which includes all four-year public universities in the state. Among them are Feminist Theory at UNC Asheville; Multicultural Counseling at UNC Charlotte; Social Work Policy and Restorative Justice at UNC Greensboro; Teaching Reading to Culturally Diverse Children at Fayetteville State University; Inclusion, Diversity and Equity in Agriculture at North Carolina A&T State University; and Diversity in Higher Education at North Carolina Central University.

The UNC system is one example of universities across the country being asked to comply with vague statewide and national demands to excise DEI. Lacking detailed guidance, they’ve had to define that term for themselves as they seek to show compliance.

The UNC system never defined for its component institutions what it meant by the verboten “course credits related to DEI.” The universities were left to determine for themselves what they should stop requiring; some administrations used keyword searches of course descriptions, looking for terms such as “cultural” to choose which courses to review.

The Feb. 5 order from the system said universities’ general education requirements couldn’t include mandates for DEI-related courses at all. A few institutions, such as East Carolina University and UNC Asheville, responded by jettisoning broad diversity categories from their gen ed requirements. At UNC Chapel Hill, College of Arts and Sciences dean Jim White wrote that “Power, Difference, and Inequality”—a category within the gen ed curriculum there—“could be incorrectly read or understood to be ‘related’ to DEI,” so it was “streamlined” and is now called “Power and Society.”

But when it came to specific majors’ mandates for DEI-related credits, the system let chancellors grant what it called “tailored waivers” to allow these requirements to continue.

Appalachian State University’s acting provost initially asked the national Council on Social Work Education, which accredits social work programs, to waive accreditation standards that are specifically called “Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” But when the council refused, Appalachian State chancellor Heather Norris gave her university’s social work program a waiver to continue the education requirements.

Halaevalu Fonongava’inga Ofahengaue Vakalahi, the Council on Social Work Education’s president and chief executive officer, told Inside Higher Ed in an email, “We do not issue waivers except in very limited circumstances as defined by our Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards. Those circumstances are not applicable in this case.

“What we have done, and are continuing to do, is work with programs and institutions to ensure they are both meeting the appropriate standards for accreditation while also staying within the boundaries dictated by law,” Vakalahi wrote. “Social work is about healthy individuals, healthy families, and healthy communities. We value inclusion because we believe that social work is for everyone—no exceptions.”

While the waiver documents released this week show course requirements that survived, they don’t specify whether universities dropped major-specific requirements—and if so, which ones—instead of having their chancellors grant waivers. Universities didn’t provide interviews this week to Inside Higher Ed for this article. But the fact that the system ordered statewide changes to curriculum rather than have the faculties of individual universities propose them has raised academic freedom and shared governance concerns.

‘Faculty Were Not Pleased’

Wade Maki, chair of the UNC Faculty Assembly, said the faculty senates or councils of all 16 universities, plus the one specialized high school in the system, ratified a resolution calling the order to end DEI course requirements “an unnecessary and intolerable breach of the principle of academic freedom” that “deeply undermines” the system’s mission “to serve the people of our state.”

Defending the place of faculty in setting curriculum, the resolution says, “Faculty, who are trained at the highest level of our disciplines, collaborate within our departments, universities and communities to design and lead programs—including defining the core curriculum and graduation requirements—to ensure our students’ growth and success.”

While “faculty were not pleased” about the order, they stepped up to take part in the course review, Maki said. Because the system “did not prescribe how” to comply, “it was up to faculty and administrators to work together to determine what to do,” he said.

“Each major had to look and say, ‘Do we think we’re at risk of being out of compliance here, and what’s the best course of action?’” he said.

Herle McGowan, chair of North Carolina State University’s Faculty Senate, said her university dropped a general ed requirement in response to the system’s order—a requirement that had been created by faculty with student input.

“The fact that it changed without consultation from faculty is definitely concerning to me,” McGowan said.

She said she personally believes academic freedom rights should cover “the broader curriculum,” not just individual faculty teaching and research. Within majors, she said experts should agree on what students need to learn, and when it comes to gen ed, there should be “collaboration from faculty experts all across the university” in determining what students need to be good, well-rounded citizens prepared for life and work.

Regardless of her own views on academic freedom, McGowan said, the fact that the system handed down such an order points to a need for constituents—from faculty to board members—to come to a consensus on what academic freedom means.

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May 16, 2025
Canceling AmeriCorps grants threatens the future of education and workforce pipelines that power our nation’s progress

The recent decision to cancel $400 million in AmeriCorps grants is nothing short of a crisis. With over 1,000 programs affected and 32,000 AmeriCorps and Senior Corps members pulled from their posts, this move will leave communities across the country without critical services.

The cuts will dismantle disaster recovery efforts, disrupt educational support for vulnerable students and undermine a powerful workforce development strategy that provides AmeriCorps members with in-demand skills across sectors including education.

AmeriCorps provides a service-to-workforce pipeline that gives young Americans and returning veterans hands-on training in high-demand industries, such as education, public safety, disaster response and health care. Its nominal front-end investment in human capital fosters economic mobility, enabling those who engage in a national service experience to successfully transition to gainful employment.

As leaders of Teach For America and City Year, two organizations that are part of the AmeriCorps national service network and whose members receive education stipends that go toward certification costs, student loans or future education pursuits, we are alarmed by how this crisis threatens the future of the education and workforce pipelines that power our nation’s progress, and it is deeply personal. We both started our careers as corps members in the programs we now lead.

Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

Aneesh began his journey as a Teach For America corps member teaching high school English in Minnesota. Jim’s path began with City Year, serving at a Head Start program in Boston. We know firsthand that AmeriCorps programs are transformative and empower young people to drive meaningful change — for themselves and their communities.

At Teach For America, AmeriCorps grants are essential to recruiting thousands of new teachers every year to effectively lead high-need classrooms across the country. These teachers, who have a consistent and significant positive impact on students’ learning, rely on the AmeriCorps education awards they earn through their two years of service to pay for their own education and professional development, including new teacher certification fees, costs that in some communities exceed $20,000.

Termination of these grants threatens the pipeline of an estimated 2,500 new teachers preparing to enter classrooms over the summer. At a time when rural and urban communities alike are facing critical teacher shortages, cutting AmeriCorps support risks leaving students without the educators they need and deserve.

City Year, similarly, relies on AmeriCorps to recruit more than 2,200 young adults annually to serve as student success coaches in K-12 schools across 21 states, 29 cities and 60 school districts.

These AmeriCorps members serving as City Year student success coaches provide tutoring and mentoring that support students’ academic progress and interpersonal skill development and growth; they partner closely with teachers to boost student achievement, improve attendance and help keep kids on track to graduate. Research shows that schools partnering with City Year are two times more likely to improve their scores on English assessments, and two to three times more likely to improve their scores on math assessments.

Corps members gain critical workforce skills such as leadership, problem-solving and creative thinking, which align directly with the top skills employers seek; the value of their experience has been reaffirmed through third-party research conducted with our alumni. The City Year experience prepares corps members for success in varied careers, with many going into education.

AmeriCorps-funded programs like Breakthrough Collaborative and Jumpstart further strengthen this national service-to-workforce pathway, expanding the number of trained tutors and teacher trainees while also preparing corps members for careers that make a difference in all of our lives.

Those programs’ trained educators ensure all students gain access to excellent educational opportunities that put them on the path to learn, lead and thrive in communities across the country. And the leaders of both organizations, like us, are AmeriCorps alumni, proof of the lasting effect of national service.

Collectively, our four organizations have hundreds of thousands of alumni whose work as AmeriCorps members has impacted millions of children while shaping their own lives’ work, just as it did ours. Our alumni continue to lead classrooms, schools, districts, communities and organizations in neighborhoods across the country.

Related: Tracking Trump: His actions to dismantle the Education Department, and more

The termination of AmeriCorps grants is a direct blow to educators, schools and students. And, at a time when Gen Z is seeking work that aligns with their values and desire for impact, AmeriCorps is an essential on-ramp to public service and civic leadership that benefits not just individuals but entire communities and our country at large.

For every dollar invested in AmeriCorps, $17 in economic value is generated, proving that national service is not only efficient but also a powerhouse for economic growth. Rather than draining resources, AmeriCorps drives real, measurable results that benefit individual communities and the national economy.

Moreover, two-thirds of AmeriCorps funding is distributed by governor-appointed state service commissions to community- and faith-based organizations that leverage that funding to meet local needs. By working directly with state and local partners, AmeriCorps provides a more effective solution than top-down government intervention.

On behalf of the more than 6,500 current AmeriCorps members serving with Teach For America and City Year, and the tens of thousands of alumni who have gone on to become educators, civic leaders and changemakers, we call on Congress to protect AmeriCorps and vital national service opportunities.

Investing in AmeriCorps is an investment in America’s future, empowering communities, strengthening families and revitalizing economies. Let’s preserve the fabric of our national service infrastructure and ensure that the next generation of leaders, educators and community advocates who want to serve our nation have the ability to do so.

Aneesh Sohoni is Teach For America’s new CEO. Previously, he was CEO of One Million Degrees and executive director of Teach For America Greater Chicago-Northwest Indiana. He is a proud alum of Teach For America.

Jim Balfanz, a recognized leader and innovator in the field of education and national service, is CEO and a proud alum of City Year.

Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].

This story about AmeriCorps, Teach For America and City Year was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

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

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May 16, 2025
The trouble with the latest accreditation round for initial teacher education

English teacher education has been the subject of ongoing and turbulent policy change for many years. But the radical shift in agenda instigated by the Department for Education (DfE) market review between 2022 and 2024 brought this change to another level. The policy instigated a reaccreditation process for all initial teacher education (ITE) providers awarding qualified teacher status.

The Conservative government’s attempt at “delivering world-class teacher development” ended up decimating the landscape of ITE, leaving those of us left to pick up the pieces. Now DfE has opened a second round of the accreditation process – has it learned any lessons?

What went wrong

Stage 1 of the process the first time around included a written proposal of over 7,000 words outlining compliance with the new standards, including curriculum alignment to the ITE core curriculum framework. Additional details and evidence of partnership and mentoring systems and processes also had to be included. Successful applicants progressed to stage 2. Here, rigorous scrutiny of further preparation and plans began, with each institution being allocated a DfE associate to work with for a further twelve months.

The additional workload this required stretched the capacity and resources of all education departments within higher education institutions. Academics were simultaneously delivering ongoing provision, continuing recruitment, and writing additional postgraduate (and for many undergraduate) revised provision – and many were under the threat of redundancy. All of the above, under constant threat of looming Ofsted visits.

A previous Wonkhe article likened to the process to the Netflix series Squid Game, using the metaphor to describe the experience for existing ITT providers – meet the confusing demands and conflicting eligibility requirements, or you’re out.

A significant number of providers failed to secure accreditation, either losing or giving up their status, with provider numbers reducing from 240 to 179.

At the time the sector offered collegiate support, forming working groups to foster joint responses when collating the sheer volume of output required. Pressures surfaced including stress and anxiety caused by the increase in workload. Insecurity of jobs and the conflicting and at times confusing advice brought many individuals to the point of exhaustion and burnout.

Squid: off the menu?

You would therefore expect an announcement of the opportunity for providers to re-enter the market to be met with a sense of joy. Wouldn’t you?

However, the new round is only for any lead provider currently working in partnership with an accredited provider. These partnerships are only in their first year and were encouraged by the DfE because of the “cold spots” created when thirteen higher education institutions failed to pass the previous process – despite having proven a history of quality provision.

The creation of such partnerships added yet more stress and workload to all concerned. No legal advice on governance was provided. They proved incredibly complex to navigate, requiring long standing buy-in to make them workable and financially viable. As of yet no advice has been published of how to exit these partnership arrangements.

Providers wishing to begin delivering ITT from September 2026 must meet the eligibility criteria. The window for the applications will be open for a much shorter period than the previous round, with the process and outcome to be completed 30 June 2025. This contrasts to the 18 months previously required for providers to demonstrate their “market readiness” in the previous round.

Stage 1 of the new process will include a written submission of no more than 1500 words – remember, it was 7,000 last time – with applicants submitting a brief summary of their ITT and mentor curricula. In this short piece they will need to “demonstrate how their curriculum meets the quality requirements in the ITT criteria.” A window across March and April 2025 was open to complete and upload this portfolio.

Stage 2, this time round, is an interview, where applicants “deliver a presentation to a panel, and answer questions further demonstrating how they meet the quality requirement.” Following both the written and verbal submissions, an assessment will be made and moderated by panels of ITT experts.

For those still haunted by the lived experience of the first round of ITT accreditation, the greatly reduced stringency of the process would appear to make a mockery of the previous, highly controversial, demands and expectations.

Like last time, success in the accreditation will require a demonstration of compliance with the expectations of the core curriculum framework (or from September, the ITTECF) along with further DfE quality requirements through submission.

However, unlike last time, prospective providers will not be required to create extensive written responses, detailed curriculum resources or an extensive mentor curriculum (for which many of the requirements were axed overnight in the government’s announcement in November).

Unbalanced

How can the two contrasting timelines and expectations possibly be seen as equitable or comparable?

In addition, how can we guarantee a smooth transition between lead partners and current accredited providers? Some of these partnerships involve undergraduate provision, established as a result of “rationalising” ITT provision. For those students only in year one of a three-year degree, how will this transition work?

As a sector we recognise that the policy is aimed at meeting the government target of recruiting an extra 6,500 teachers this sitting parliament. And we welcome our peers back into the fold. Many of us are still reeling from the injustice of those colleagues being locked out in the last round (at the time all rated good or better by Ofsted).

However, as NFER’s recent teacher labour market report pointed out, teachers’ pay and workload remain the highest cited reasons for ongoing difficulties in recruitment and retention. Neither of these things have been addressed by the new accreditation process.

For those of us still clinging on for dear life, our confidence in the system is fading. One day, just like our stamina and resilience, it will evaporate all together.

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May 15, 2025
Higher education postcard: Hughes Hall, Cambridge

Greetings from Cambridge – and unlike last week, this time we’re definitely in England.

It is 1878, and the Cambridge Independent Press of 7 December reports that the university has taken steps to enable the training of teachers. The Teachers’ Training Syndicate (its Cambridge-ese for a committee or working group, I think) is to be established, to oversee programmes of training for students intending to become school teachers, and the colleges at which they train.

Image: Shutterstock

All of this took place in the context of increased state engagement with school education: the provision of schools for all children was becoming increasingly necessary, and local authorities of various kinds (it’s complicated!) were empowered to fund such schools.

And it stands to reason that where you have schools, you need teachers. And by then the practice of teaching was becoming increasingly professionalised. Plus, it was one of the few professions open to women.

And so in 1885 the Cambridge Training College for Women was opened. Initially based at Newnham College, there were fourteen students, under the guidance of the college’s first principal, Elizabeth Phillips Hughes. Hughes was the first woman to gain first class honours in moral sciences at Cambridge, having studied at Newnham. (She also helped to found the Barry Teachers Training College, which ultimately became part of the University of South Wales, and helped to draft the statutes of the University of Wales). She remained principal of the new college until 1899, steering it from its modest start to a new building – that shown on the card – in 1895.

The driving forces behind the establishment of the college included Miss Frances Buss, champion of girls’ education, and one of the subjects of an anonymous verse of some fame:

Miss Buss and Miss Beale

Cupid’s darts do not feel.

How different from us

Miss Beale and Miss Buss.

Miss Beale was Dorothea Beale, suffragist, headmistress of Cheltenham Ladies’ College and one of the founders of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. And it seems that the pioneers of women’s education had a lot to put up with.

At this point Hughes Hall was not a college. (It wasn’t even Hughes Hall yet!) It was only after the university recognised women as full members (in 1947, less than a lifetime ago) that the college gained recognition as part of the university (albeit not yet a college) and was renamed Hughes Hall. This was in honour of Elizabeth Phillips Hughes, the first principal; its full name at that time was Elizabeth Phillips Hughes Hall.

It began to admit male students in 1973: the first of Cambridge’s all-women institutions to do so. In 1985 Hughes Hall became an “approved foundation” of the university (it’s the step below being a full college) and in 2006 Hughes Hall became a college of the university, with a charter and everything. And a full name – for Sunday best or when it has been naughty – of The President and Fellows of Hughes Hall in the University of Cambridge.

Hughes Hall admits only mature students (judged by age not attitude), to both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. It still teaches education, both as an academic subject and as a PGCE, as well as programmes across other disciplines.

This post owes its origins to the eagle-eyed Professor Chris Brooke of Homerton, Cambridge, who corrected me about wat was shown on the card. I’d shared the card as one of my daily posts on Bluesky thinking it was Homerton. But it definitely isn’t!

Here’s a jigsaw of the card – hope you enjoy it.

Backstory

A couple of you have asked about the #HigherEducationPostcard backstory.

It started about ten years ago when I was in a Cardiff antiques mall, sheltering from the rain. One of the stalls had books and old postcards, and when browsing the latter I found half a dozen showing universities. Which I thought was quite cute. So I bought them.

Fast forward to 2020 and the pandemic. The first few months were scary for lots of reasons, and if you were self-employed in the HE sector the question of how to do consulting without being on site was very much front and centre. And whilst sitting at my desk trying to solve this puzzle I noticed the small stack of postcards, and thought I’d share them on Twitter. They were really popular, so I thought I could carry on doing this. But where to get postcards? eBay, mostly. And so I started bidding. And then the collection sort of growed. Its at about 1200 cards now, in fifteen albums with a stack of a couple of hundred still to be scanned and filed.

In the summer of 2020 I ran a #HigherEducationPostcard world cup on Twitter – 32 cards, paired off, the one with most votes went through to the next round. In the final, Swansea University beat van Mildert College, Durham; thousands of votes were cast, each institution getting its students, staff and alumni to join in. It was great fun!

I’d been posting daily on Twitter, and when in summer 2021 Paul Greatrix retired from weekly Registrarism blogposts on Wonkhe, I suggested that I write a weekly higher education postcard blog. The good folk at Wonkhe towers said yes, and here we are, 170 posts later. My only rule is that I have to own the actual postcard; and I try to make them interesting and informative. And mostly true. I really enjoy writing and sharing them, and have no plans to stop just yet. I hope you like them too. Thanks for reading!

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May 15, 2025
Education Department retracts CTE grants for Native American and Hawaiian students

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The U.S. Department of Education canceled two grant competitions for fiscal year 2025 meant to improve career opportunities for Native American and Native Hawaiian students, according to notices published in the Federal Register earlier this month.

The competitions were canceled because they do not “align with the objectives established by the Trump Administration while fostering consistency across all grant programs.” The department also said in its notices that canceling the competition for the fiscal year is part of “enhancing the economic effectiveness of Federal education funding.”

Instead of continuing the competitions, the department will dedicate available funds to support current recipients of the grants.

In total, the grants provided nearly $21.6 million for the Native American Career and Technical Education Program and the Native Hawaiian Career and Technical Education Program, according to the Education Department’s Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education. It provided nearly $18 million in Native American opportunities and $3.6 million for Native Hawaiians on an annual basis, according to the department.

The competitions were originally announced in the Federal Register on Jan. 7, prior to the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who has proposed a much slimmer Education Department budget that would cut its total funding by 15%. The administration has also already slashed a handful of other education grant programs.

In previous years, the Native American and Native Hawaiian grants have supported colleges, schools and tribes in establishing postsecondary career pathways.

For example, in fiscal year 2021, the department awarded 39 grants under the NACTEP program and nine grants under the NHCTEP program.

A NACTEP grant awarded to Chief Leschi Schools, a Native American tribal school located in Washington, allowed for work-based learning related to fisheries, medical facilities, schools and other careers.

“The tribal connections of pathways embrace and honor the culture and identity of students and families and provide students a connection to their heritage along with a path to a successful future,” the program description states.

In Castle High School in Hawaii, the NHCTEP program prepared students for a medical career pathway.

“The project will provide culture-based education to Native Hawaiian students and foster a community where relationships are formed, and learning is connected to the context of students’ lives applied to the real world,” the description states.

In 2021-22, there were more than 8.1 million high school CTE participants out of 11.5 million participants nationwide, according to the Association for Career and Technical Education. Nationally, about 109,000 were American Indian or Alaska Native and 43,000 were Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.

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May 15, 2025
Bastyr University Plans to Sell Campus

Cash-strapped Bastyr University is selling its campus in Washington State in an effort to stabilize its shaky finances, which landed the institution on show cause status with its accreditor earlier this year.

Bastyr’s Board of Trustees approved a plan last week to list the campus for sale.

The Washington campus is located on 50-plus acres outside Seattle; the university also maintains a site in San Diego. Officials wrote on a frequently asked questions webpage that the “sale of the [Washington] campus will restore financial health to our university, allow continued movement forward with our strategic plan and is intended to positively impact our accreditation status.”

The FAQ page emphasized that selling the campus does not mean Bastyr is closing.

Rather, “Financial infusion makes the university more stable and allows us to better weather the fluctuations of the academic environment should a crisis occur,” officials wrote. They also noted Bastyr “cannot afford to maintain and modernize the main campus building” and that “the university occupies less than 50% of its space, but must fund 100% of campus upkeep.”

The FAQ indicated that either a full or partial sale of the campus is possible.

Despite the sale, a move will likely be years away; officials wrote on the FAQ page that Bastyr plans to lease the campus for “up to a few years to allow for a thoughtful and phased transition.”

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May 15, 2025
The Contest Over Fairness in Higher Ed (opinion)

My 5-year-old recently told me it was unfair that her teacher makes her write from left to right “like everyone else.” She’s left-handed, and for her, it smudges the ink and feels awkward—while her right-handed friends have no problem. I affirmed her frustration. It is harder. But I also knew that was discomfort, not injustice.

If she told me her school never included stories with Black or Indian characters—her own identities—or skipped over Black history and Diwali while celebrating Halloween and Christmas, I’d respond differently. That’s not just about feelings. That’s curricular erasure—structural invisibility embedded in education.

Higher education is now facing a similar test of discernment. In recent weeks, the American Bar Association, under pressure from the Trump administration, suspended its DEI accreditation requirement for law schools. The University of Michigan shuttered its DEI programs. And Harvard University received a sweeping federal demand to dismantle its DEI programs, reorient admissions and hiring, and submit to ideological audits.

Harvard’s decision to reject the federal ultimatum—even at the cost of more than $2 billion in research funding—offers a rare but vital example of institutional clarity. Harvard said no to the false equivalence now dominating our public discourse: the notion that discomfort is the same as discrimination.

Critics claim that DEI efforts create an exclusionary climate and reflect a lack of “viewpoint diversity,” framing a commitment to racial equity as an ideological litmus test. But that framing ignores history, context and the actual purpose of DEI work, which at its best corrects for the unfairness of cumulative white advantages built into college admissions, curriculum and culture in higher education. It treats the discomfort that arises when racism is named as equivalent to structural exclusion. And then, under that pretense, the federal government now imposes its own litmus test—seeking to dismantle the very practices aimed at addressing structural harm.

Now that federal litmus test is extending into faculty hiring. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, under the Trump administration, has launched an investigation into whether Harvard’s hiring practices discriminate against white men and other traditionally overrepresented groups. Cloaked in the language of civil rights enforcement, the inquiry reflects a disturbing reversal: Efforts to address long-standing exclusion are being reframed as exclusion themselves. Rather than confronting the structural realities that have kept academia disproportionately white and male, this investigation uses claims of “reverse discrimination” to undermine the very mechanisms created to correct inequity. It’s a strategic misreading of fairness—one that turns tools of justice into instruments of suppression.

Similar to my daughter calling left-handed writing “unfair” because it invokes feelings of discomfort and victimization—despite the absence of structural exclusion—DEI’s powerful opponents manipulate the language of fairness to justify conformity and suppress interventions that respond to actual harm. “Race neutrality” is the legal fiction of our time, much like “separate but equal” was in another era. Both erase history in favor of surface-level parity and use the language of justice to obscure harm. We saw this logic in the Students for Fair Admissions ruling, which restricted race-conscious admissions. But as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent, the deep racial disparities we see today were “created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day.” The issue isn’t too much talk about race—it’s our refusal to hear it.

Now, under the guise of neutrality, institutions are being pressured to abandon DEI work, censor curricula and silence student voices. And many institutions are acting as if this call is guided by law. But the SFFA decision didn’t ban DEI programming or prohibit race-based affinity spaces, racial climate assessments or the consideration of lived racial experiences in admissions essays.

This is interpretive overreach: stretching legal decisions out of fear. In doing so, institutions compromise not only their policies, but their principles. But there’s another path—what I call interpretive reimagination. It’s the ethical clarity to meet ambiguity with purpose, not retreat. To respond not only as a matter of compliance, but of mission. And this discernment—the ability to differentiate between discomfort and structural harm—is at the heart of racial literacy. It means recognizing that not every claim of unfairness is equal and that treating them as such can perpetuate injustice. That discernment is essential for educators and institutions.

What we’re witnessing is not just a policy shift. It’s a redefinition of fairness—one that casts efforts to name inequality as divisive, while branding ideological control as “viewpoint diversity.” That redefinition is being enforced not just through rhetoric, but through decrees, audits and intimidation. Harvard’s refusal matters—not because the institution is perfect, but because it disrupted the pattern. It reminded us that higher education still has choices. The contrast with Michigan and the ABA is instructive. When institutions comply pre-emptively, they legitimize coercion. They don’t just narrow the space for justice—they help close it.

Fairness, equity and justice are not settled ideas. They are contested. And higher education is not outside that contest—it is a primary site of it. To meet this moment with integrity, we must refuse the fantasy of neutrality, name systems of advantage and commit to teaching truth, even when that truth is inconvenient. The difference—between choosing caution or courage—will depend on whether we, as educators, can practice the kind of discernment that parents are called to every day. Because, ultimately, this isn’t just about legal compliance or institutional risk. It’s about whether the stories we tell about fairness will include all of us—or only those already at the center.

Uma Mazyck Jayakumar is an associate professor of higher education and policy at the University of California, Riverside. She served as an expert witness in SFFA v. UNC, and her research was cited in Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion to the Supreme Court’s landmark affirmative action case.

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May 15, 2025
Faculty Survey Shows Need for Digital Accessibility Support
The U.S. Department of Justice introduced the Americans With Disabilities Act final rule for digital accessibility in 2024, requiring public colleges and universities to follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines for ensuring that online programs, services and activities are accessible. These laws require institutions to update inaccessible documents and ensure new content follows accessibility requirements.

A recent survey by Anthology found that faculty members feel they lack sufficient support and access to resources to create an accessible online classroom environment, and they have a general lack of awareness of new ADA requirements.

Anthology’s survey—which included responses from 2,058 instructors at two- and four-year colleges and universities across the U.S.—highlights a need for professional development and institutional resources to help faculty meet students’ needs.

Supporting student success: Expanding accessibility isn’t just mandated by law; it has powerful implications for student retention and graduation outcomes.

Approximately one in five college students has a disability, up 10 percentage points from the previous decade, according to 2024 data from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. A majority of those students have a behavioral or emotional disability, such as attention deficit disorder, or a mental, emotional or psychiatric condition.

While a growing number of students with disabilities are enrolling in higher education, they are less likely than their peers without a disability to earn a degree or credential, due in part to the lack of accessibility or accommodations on campus.

Survey says: Only 10 percent of faculty believe their institution provides “absolutely adequate” tools to support students with disabilities, and 22 percent say they consider accessibility when designing course materials.

Instructors are largely unaware of the ADA’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines; one-third of survey respondents said they are “not at all” aware of the requirements, and 45 percent said they were aware but “unclear on the details.”

When asked about the barriers to making course content accessible, faculty members pointed to a lack of training (29 percent), lack of time (28 percent) and limited knowledge of available tools (27 percent) as the primary obstacles.

A lack of awareness among faculty members can hinder student use of supports as well. A 2023 survey found that only about half of college students are aware of accessibility and disability services, though 96 percent of college staff members said the resources are available.

In Anthology’s survey, 17 percent of instructors said they were unaware of what tools their institution provides to help students access coursework in different formats, and 30 percent said they were aware but didn’t share information with students.

Less experienced faculty members were more likely to say they haven’t considered accessibility or were unaware of ADA requirements; one-third of respondents with fewer than two years of teaching experience indicated they rarely or never consider accessibility when creating materials.

One in four faculty members indicated more training on best practices would help them make their digital content more accessible, as would having the time to update and review course materials.

Improving accessibility: Some colleges and universities are taking action to empower faculty members to increase accessibility in the classroom and beyond.

The University of North Dakota in spring 2023 created an assistive technology lab, which trains faculty and staff members to make course resources accessible. The lab, led by the university’s Teaching Transformation and Development Academy, offers access to tech tools such as Adobe Acrobat Pro and the screen-reader software Job Access with Speech, for course content development. Lab staff also teach universal design principles and conduct course reviews, as needed.

The State University of New York system created the SUNY Accessibility Advocates and Allies Faculty Fellowship program in January, designating 11 fellows from across the system to expand digital accessibility and universal design for learning practices at system colleges. Fellows will explore strategies to build a culture of access, share expertise and experience, connect with communities of practice, and design a plan to engage their campus community, among other responsibilities.

The University of Iowa built a new digital hub for accessibility-related resources and information, providing a one-stop shop for campus members looking for support. The university is also soliciting questions from users to build out a regularly updated FAQ section of the website. Iowa has a designated Accessibility Task Force with 10 subcommittees that address various applications of accessibility needs, including within athletics, communication, health care, student life and teaching.

Colorado State University has taken several steps to improve community compliance for accessibility, including offering free access to Siteimprove, a web-accessibility assessment tool that helps website developers and content managers meet accessibility standards and improve digital user experience. Siteimprove offers training resources to keep users engaged in best practices, as well as templates for creating content, according to CSU’s website. The university also has an accessibility framework to help faculty members bring electronic materials into compliance.

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May 15, 2025