Tag: Education

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 The system was targeting DEI even before Trump retook office—the UNC Board of Governors repealed the system’s DEI policy a year ago—and its general counsel pointed to the federal government’s newly threatened funding cuts to justify this further step.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
Detained Georgetown Professor Released From ICE Custody

Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow and professor at Georgetown University, was released from a federal detention center in Texas on Wednesday after being held for two months.

Suri, an Indian national, was arrested in March under government claims that he was a threat to U.S. interests and had close connections to a known or suspected terrorist. This week a federal judge in Virginia ordered Suri’s immediate release due to a lack of evidence to support such claims.

Suri is one of about a dozen foreign nationals in the U.S. targeted by the Trump administration for pro-Palestinian activism, including Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, Rümeysa Öztürk and Momodou Taal. While Khalil remains in custody, Mahdawi was released on bail on April 30 and Öztürk was released from federal custody last week. Taal chose to leave the U.S. in April.

Prior to his arrest, Suri had been in the U.S. for three years on a student visa and was teaching a course on minority rights in South Asia at Georgetown, according to The New York Times. Suri’s lawyers believe he was targeted because his father-in-law served as a political adviser to the Hamas-led government in Gaza in the early 2000s.

Suri was apprehended outside his home in Rosslyn, Va., on March 15 and was moved among detention centers in Virginia, Louisiana and Texas. Suri described his treatment in the Prairieland Detention Center in Texas as subhuman, saying he was chained at the ankles, wrists and body.

Other international academics are locked in legal battles with the federal government over challenges to their standing in the U.S.

A University of Minnesota student, Dogukan Gunaydin, has been in ICE custody since March despite having his case overturned. Alireza Doroudi, who was a doctoral student at the University of Alabama, requested voluntary departure to avoid prolonged detention, according to his attorney. Columbia student Leqaa Kordia was arrested in March and remains in an immigration detention center in Texas.

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May 16, 2025
Lessons of the Fountain Pen (opinion)

For the past two years, during the twilight of my academic career, I have become a devotee of the fountain pen, often pondering this seemingly retro act of putting pen to paper.

Composing again by hand forced me to admit how often I succumb to the internet’s never-ending temptations. In the past, some of my best prose has come forth at 40,000 feet, while I was strapped in for a long flight—with no contact outside the streaking metal tube. But the wily digital devil never rests. Most jets now offer Wi-Fi, enticing you to check your email or the Yankees–Red Sox score as you cross the North Atlantic.

My longing to write by hand, though, was undermined by largely illegible penmanship, a lifelong consequence of my naturally lefty self having been forced to write right-handed. No pen ever seemed to work for me, and I have tried most. Gel pens are the worst, producing a script that even I cannot decipher. Even so, during a research trip to Europe in fall 2022, where Wi-Fi was often unavailable, I found myself relying on a bound notebook during the day and my computer at night. The illegibility of my notes and journal entries made typing them out especially onerous and time-consuming, all the more so after I had returned home two months later. Then I remembered a fountain pen that my mother had gifted me so long ago—was it for my 50th birthday in 2005?—that its ink cartridges had dried up. A trip to Staples yielded a small pack, and I realized right away that there was enough friction between the nib and page to slow me down—enough for me to be able to decipher what I had written.

Like most brainstorms, this one proved ephemeral. To write by hand and then enter text into a computer—with my mediocre keyboarding skills—was just too burdensome. Those who started their academic journeys during the typewriter era will remember with a whiff of despair those late-night, hours-long sessions spent typing the final draft. Correction tape, erasable bond, Wite-Out—my heart sinks just listing those essential tools from another era. If you want a taste of those times, just sample the acknowledgments in academic books or dissertations from the decades before computers, in which women, typically wives, are thanked for having typed the manuscript. The acknowledgements from Sacvan Bercovitch’s The American Jeremiad, which I just pulled from a shelf, reflect more rarefied academic circumstances, as the author notes the grant provided by the English Department at Columbia University “for the typing of the manuscript.”

And then a light went off as I sat in my study, one that has changed my life as a writer. After struggling with incipient carpal tunnel syndrome a few years ago, I purchased voice recognition software. Dragon Naturally Speaking was powerful, especially if you spoke in complete phrases and sentences. My copy of the software is now old—it will not work with Windows 11—but proved a godsend with unexpected benefits. While dictating my notebook pages, I could hear the awkward sentences; I could conjure the better word on the spot, and I could detect those places where the tone needed adjusting. Sometimes inspiration would bless me and a new sentence or two would emerge like Athena.

I’m no neo-Luddite longing to smash all computers, even when Windows or MS Word betray me, as they so often do. I recognize the realities and benefits of our digital age. But wielding a fountain pen these past two years has prompted me to wonder whether some challenges the humanities face regarding writing and reading might be overcome by heeding the pen’s simple lessons.

The Importance of Touch

For millennia the act of writing has been tactile. From Babylonian cuneiform on clay tablets to elaborate Medieval script on vellum and modern calligraphy on heavyweight wedding stationery, writing has always meant touching the surface, with words being physically imprinted as the pen journeys across. When I write well, my hands seldom leave the page. And when I stop to consider the right word or a more felicitous phrase, my pen often poises a mere quarter inch above, ready to strike.

Compare this to composing on a laptop, where pauses can lead to disaster. Distractions fill your field of vision—apps, task bars, weather forecasts and seemingly never-ending notifications that another email has arrived or another appointment looms. When you grasp for the right combination of words, it’s all too easy to seek them beyond the screen, or, even worse, to succumb to the program suggesting what it believes should come next. And unless you are vigilant about shutting off endless features, the software will insist upon indicating that you just misspelled a word or used a questionable grammatical construction. Most of us then dutifully correct the “mistake,” only to lose the rhythm and even essence of our prose. More and more, the virtual page seems to be doing the writing.

The Value of Tangibility

We have all had the experience of composing and revising a document on a computer only to lose the effort because of a crash, a software freeze or a moment of forgetfulness in which we clicked “no” instead of “yes.” What might have seemed so real to us for an hour or more vanishes like a genie who returns to his bottle without granting our wish.

When I compose by hand, my efforts are right in front of me. The crossed-out word—which turns out to be the right one—can still be recovered. The history of moving paragraphs, those arrows and circles that sometimes fill the page, are not lost as they would be in computer drafting. Even more satisfyingly tangible for me, however, is the physical evidence of my labors: the blue ink stains on my right hand, the ritual of refilling my pen from the bottle when I have gushed out a pool of words, the celebratory occasion when I empty a bottle of ink and need to open a new one. A similar mood of celebration arises when I fill the last page of my wide-ruled notebook and place it on the shelf next to its predecessors. Scrolling through thousands of documents and folders on my computer is certainly a humbling experience, as they represent the literal steps in a multidecade academic journey, but I regret not having found my fountain pen niche many years before. What a collection those notebooks would’ve been.

The Pleasures of Portability

Coinciding with my return to compositional roots has been my regular presence at a place where my words seem to flow so easily, the Hall Street Bakery in Grand Rapids. During my sabbatical, I was there at least five days a week and now continue to show up on nonteaching days. All I need is my notebook, a folder with ideas or drafts, a full pen and my regular—a large house coffee and a cranberry-almond scone—to set me up for a solid hour of writing. Conversations bubble from nearby tables, kids run around hopped up on sugar, drivers retrieve DoorDash orders—all set against the occasional counterpoint of the hissing espresso machine—and I am in my element. No need for Wi-Fi passwords or the elusive table next to an electrical outlet. I can walk across the room to speak with someone, order a refill, visit the men’s room—all without fearing that my laptop will disappear. And spilling coffee on my notebook or dropping it onto the floor is a minor inconvenience, not an expensive technological catastrophe. Traveling light, I can sweep up my possessions in an instant and head out the door.

The Relevance to Reading

In thinking about writing as a physical act that produces something you can hold, I recognized anew how relevant these same qualities are to reading. We seem today to be awash in words, yet paradoxically find ourselves in the midst of a reading crisis that extends from the youngest learners to those at America’s universities.

An article by Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books,” convinced me that my experience with the fountain pen might be relevant to the challenges she describes.

Horowitch reports that students at elite colleges, who have already proven their ability to read complex texts, seem less and less able (or willing) to read long literary works. She mostly ascribes this to high schools emphasizing standardized tests, to teens distracted by smartphones and to college students who view their educations in strictly transactional terms, as means to specific, often exceedingly specific, ends—which seldom include pushing through Middlemarch.

She may be right, but the teachers and faculty she interviewed offer little beyond assigning shorter texts: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening instead of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye instead of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. A book or two at most from The Iliad or Paradise Lost.

Let me argue, though, that the very elements I associate with composing by hand—its tactile and tangible nature, its simple conveniences—should be drawn upon when encountering long, complex and sometimes life-changing texts. And that the cool distance of the digital interface works against these very qualities.

Yes, I know it is possible to put all your books on a single device where you can search and annotate the texts. Even if you lose your Kindle, your digital library can be retrieved from the cloud. Yet the experience of reading on the screen tends to flatten all writing, making each screen much like any other, so that the unique feel and heft of Moby-Dick, for example, is lost, making Melville’s incandescent prose indistinguishable from any Substacker’s, and probably less visually enticing.

Even if you can resist distraction on your laptop, you never get the sensory experience unique to each book: how it feels in your hands, how its page design pulls you in or pushes you away, how its very smell when brand-new or decades old can evoke its distinctive qualities, how the satisfying sound of turning pages reaches a crescendo when you get to the end and close the cover with a resonant thump. Like the angry slam of a telephone receiver, it’s a sound beyond our digital age. And it all leads to a final moment when you place the book on a shelf to stand as a tangible reminder of your ever-changing reading life—no internet connection required.

The physical book, that container that our society, try as it might, cannot cast into the electronic darkness, will live on. At least I hope so. A recent visit to my university’s beautiful library leaves much room for doubt. In the popular Mary Idema Pew Library Learning and Information Commons—sorry, but that’s its official name, sans commas—hundreds of students gather at any given time. But to stroll through its busy floors soon makes this book lover feel like Diogenes in search of an honest man. My lamp has seldom shined upon a student with a physical book in hand; instead, they tap and scroll their way through reading assignments in much the same way they engage daily life.

I see them as we share the bus that travels between our university’s two campuses, filling each moment with the small screens they find far more interesting than the passing world—the season’s first snowflakes, the glow cast upon the road as dusk approaches, the deer in a harvested cornfield who look up with more curiosity than my fellow travelers.

With a sigh—and nod to the deer—I open my copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, touching its familiar pages with my ink-stained hands, and try to remember to text my wife that I’m on my way.

After 37 years as a professor of English at Grand Valley State University, Rob Franciosi recently retired to devote his time to writing.

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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
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
Why Faculty Buy-In Is the Key to Scale
Developmental edu ca tion reform has made significant strides in the past two decades, however, if the goal is equity, completion and lasting change in gateway courses, the work to reform developmental education isn’t done—not even close. Nationally, states have passed laws and higher education systems have issued mandates requiring the use of specific high-impact practices and restricting the offering of standalone remedial courses.

Institutions have redesigned placement systems to incorporate multiple measures and, with growing popularity, have begun using self-directed placement. Corequisite models, where students receive concurrent support for a gateway math or English course, have received increased attention and expansion. Using just-in-time content support and devoting time to student success techniques, corequisite courses have proven to support students’ retention rates.

While we know which practices are impactful, it is still common for them to be used alongside traditional approaches, such as stand-alone developmental courses and high-stakes placement tests. That is, these practices are not the default means of how students interact with gateway courses; they are an option. There are many reasons for this lack of scale, with skepticism from faculty being a common refrain from those in academic leadership.

Recent research reinforces what many of us in the trenches already know: Corequisite support is a powerful tool, but it is not the only solution to gateway course reform; it was never going to be. Without scaled and nuanced implementations, corequisite models are not enough on their own. Too often, states and institutions have pursued top-down solutions without sufficient attention to the people who impact scaled implementation the most: faculty.

In fact, reformers and leaders in higher education spaces may have overlooked the hardest and arguably most important part: the classroom. If gateway course reform is the goal, we have to shift from a mainly structural reform emphasis (e.g., pathways, corequisites and placement) to incorporating classroom reforms that impact curriculum, instruction and assessment. These changes are some of the most difficult ones to make but are also the ones that have shown to matter the most. Structural reform is essential, but so is reform in the space where learning occurs.

Why Early Reforms Didn’t Get Higher Education to a New Normal of Scale

Early corequisite reform efforts found initial momentum by engaging supportive policymakers and system leaders and by using clear levers for change such as legislation or funding changes. However, even where reforms have been adopted, outcomes have been mixed. Completion rates have increased in some states but remain below expectations set in goal initiatives, such as Illinois’s 60 by 25 and Tennessee’s Drive to 55. Despite a broad commitment to increasing equity in higher education, equity gaps by race, income and age persist. In states with strong shared governance structures or influential faculty unions, the pace of reform has been slower and more complex.

The common thread I’ve come to realize is this: Significant faculty cooperation and intentional faculty involvement are key to successful reforms at scale. I’ve seen this firsthand during my career in Illinois as a tenured math professor for many years who was also a union member and went on strike in 2015. Faculty have an incredible impact on students’ learning experience and outcomes; as such, faculty should be involved in the decision making that impacts them directly. However, in faculty-driven systems, the reality is that change is harder and takes longer. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

My company, Almy Education, has worked with dozens of institutions across governance models and states. We have learned that scaled reform comes from meaningfully working with faculty. While that work may be more challenging than going around faculty, it will allow an institution to get the roots of what can hold back a scaled implementation. We’ve found when we intentionally integrate faculty as part of the institutional conversation, we can achieve the following:

Decide what courses and materials to remove or shift away from, not only add new ones.

Choose how many courses and sections of stand-alone developmental courses will be retained, even if that may mean someone’s position at the institution changes.

Determine how the class schedule needs to evolve to better support student needs and outcomes.

Adjust student intake practices to the institution that have the greatest impact on outcomes, even if it means a shift in human and financial resources.

Prioritize use and maintenance of data tools so that ongoing decision making is well informed.

Set the expectation that academic and student affairs will continually work together to improve gateway course success, not in silos or temporarily during an initiative.

To reach scale, administrators, staff and faculty have to work together in an ongoing fashion as well as compromise for the greater good of student outcomes. We all have to own our roles in contributing to the aforementioned bulleted barriers when it comes to higher education reform. While usually unintended, they are barriers nonetheless. Reducing and removing these barriers to change often requires having hard conversations. The conversations are not always comfortable, but the results for students are worth it.

More students complete gateway math and English courses and establish course momentum when developmental education reform is implemented at scale and improved upon over time. Scaled reform allows for more students to complete two-year degrees and certificates and/or transfer to complete a four-year degree. Increased student completion results in well-prepared adults in the workforce, the outcome nearly everyone in higher education is working toward.

How to Effectively Integrate Faculty Into Your Reform Initiatives to Achieve Success at Scale

So how do administrators, staff and faculty work together on scaling gateway course reform, especially when resistance occurs? Many faculty are not resistant to reform; they are resistant to being handed a one-size-fits-all solution from someone who doesn’t understand their students, classrooms or institutional realities. Research has shown that there isn’t one particular way to implement reforms like corequisites that work the best; finding the best solution is a process that must include faculty in deliberate ways.

Faculty are also exhausted. The post-pandemic classroom is more demanding than ever, with student engagement seeming to be at an all-time low. Asking faculty to make massive changes without the support to do so can bring a reaction of resistance. Similarly, student affairs staff are also stretched thin with insufficient staffing and higher demands from students. They, too, need resources to make adjustments at scale that impact gateway course outcomes.

To minimize resistance and thoughtfully add support where it can have the most impact, there are tangible ways to assist faculty and staff with scaling implementation of gateway course reform at the institutional and classroom levels. In our work across two-year and four-year institutions, we’ve observed what works:

Custom strategies tailored to each institution’s context, culture and capacity based on best practice and its own data.

Embedded professional learning that supports both pedagogy and content that’s ongoing, not one-and-done.

Support for using backward design strategies with gateway curriculum and instruction from the perspective of student needs, career pathways and transfer goals.

Staffing and funding so that corequisites are paired with intentional support, providing not just more time, but better use of time.

Deliberate use of corequisites where they make sense, alongside better-designed stand-alone options for a small number of students who may need them.

Pathways that provide clarity to connect math courses to students’ actual goals and are implemented purposefully, not as an option.

Focus on throughput, not just pass rates, and disaggregated outcomes that can support equity work.

This next phase of gateway course reform requires the higher education industry to go deeper. We will have to face the structural barriers and the pedagogical ones. We must be willing to say the quiet parts out loud and have difficult conversations. We must be brave enough to make decisions and ultimately changes that work for the good of the students. Those changes should have broad support, but they may not make each individual at an institution content 100 percent of the time. Doing this work is not simple or easy. But it is necessary if we want real reform at scale that lasts.

Kathleen Almy is the CEO and founder of Almy Education, specializing in gateway course reform at scale.
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May 15, 2025