Tag: Education

  • NIH Speeds Up Implementation of New Public Access Policy

    NIH Speeds Up Implementation of New Public Access Policy

    The National Institutes of Health is accelerating a Biden-era plan to make its research findings freely and quickly available to the public, the agency announced Wednesday.

    The 2024 Public Access Policy was set to take effect Dec. 31, 2025, but will now take effect July 1 of this year. It updates the 2008 Public Access Policy, which allowed for a 12-month delay before research articles were required to be made publicly available. The 2024 policy removed the embargo period so that researchers, students and members of the public have rapid access to these findings, according to the announcement. 

    NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, who took over last month, said the move is aimed at continuing “to promote maximum transparency” and rebuilding public confidence in scientists, which has waned in recent years. 

    “Earlier implementation of the Public Access Policy will help increase public confidence in the research we fund while also ensuring that the investments made by taxpayers produce replicable, reproducible, and generalizable results that benefit all Americans,” Bhattacharya said in the memo. “Providing speedy public access to NIH-funded results is just one of the ways we are working to earn back the trust of the American people.”

    Although the scientific research community is supportive of the policy itself, some are calling on the NIH to reinstate the original implementation date to give researchers time to effectively comply with this and other new agency regulations. 

    “This new effective date will impose extra burdens on researchers and their institutions to meet the deadline,” Matt Owens, president of COGR, which represents research institutions, said in a statement Wednesday. “Ironically, at the same time NIH is accelerating implementation of this policy, the agency is adding new burdensome certification and financial reporting requirements for grant recipients. This runs counter to the administration’s efforts to reduce regulations.”

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  • AmeriCorps Cuts Force College Access Groups to Reduce Staff

    AmeriCorps Cuts Force College Access Groups to Reduce Staff

    Brianne Dolney-Jacobs has spent the last year advising high school seniors in Bay City, Mich., on their options after graduation.

    She met with 96 percent of the seniors at least once to talk about college applications, financial aid options, standardized tests and more. In doing so, she helped nearly 30 students access a countywide scholarship, up from under 10 in the previous year.

    But now, she’s one of 32,000 people affected by sweeping cuts to AmeriCorps, a federal agency focused on service and volunteerism across the United States. At least 100 college-access groups, including the Michigan College Access Network, where Dolney-Jacobs works, rely on AmeriCorps funding or members to make the college application process more accessible to high school students, especially those in low-income areas and at schools with low rates of college attendance.

    MCAN lost its grant funding this week and was ordered to cease all AmeriCorps work immediately, though the organization was able to use its own funds to buy staff members an extra month. Dolney-Jacobs will now wrap up her time at the high school at the end of May; she was supposed to stay on through late June.

    Without someone in her position, Dolney-Jacobs told Inside Higher Ed, there is no one at her school who would have the bandwidth to meet with individual students as they navigate the college application process. Many students would never have heard about different scholarships that are available to them or know that community college—including both an associate’s degree and some trade certifications—is free for recent high school graduates in Michigan.

    When her students heard that her position had been impacted, a group brought flowers to her office.

    “They told me, ‘you are the Class of 2025’s hero,’” she recounted. “And I was just bawling.”

    The National College Attainment Network, the association for MCAN and other similar organizations, is still taking stock of how many of its members have been impacted, said Elizabeth Morgan, NCAN’s chief external relations officer. But damage has been widespread.

    “I think it’s safe to say probably our members that use AmeriCorps are serving hundreds of thousands of students across the country,” Morgan said. “They are devastated by this news for a couple of reasons: The students they are supporting right now, many are high school seniors who are just weeding through their [college] decision-making process … [and] the AmeriCorps members are being thrown out of work months early.”

    A total of $400 million in AmeriCorps grants were axed, according to America’s Service Commission, a nonprofit that represents state and national service commissions, including funding for food pantries and disaster relief programs in areas impacted by recent natural disasters. The majority of AmeriCorps’ staff was also put on administrative leave in mid-April.

    It’s just one of the many agencies that have faced funding cuts and grant cancellations as part of the Trump administration’s war on government spending. Its defenders say that the agency, which pays modest stipends to its members, is anything but wasteful: It provides both vital supports for American communities and professional development training to its members, all for a low price tag.

    “I don’t believe Washington is really in tune to what is going on in the local communities,” said Grady Holmes, who works with a different MCAN AmeriCorps program that provides college success coaching to community college and tribal college students. “This is a program that is not government waste. It basically assists the government in making sure their productive citizens are being moved toward self-sufficiency and obtaining a college degree … When the powers that be decided this is wasteful spending—they don’t understand AmeriCorps.”

    Twenty-four states sued the Trump administration over the cuts, calling the dismantling of the agency, which was created by Congress in 1993, “unauthorized.”

    Advisers’ Impacts

    MCAN is facing cuts to two student-facing programs: AdviseMI, which is focused on college readiness for high schoolers, and the College Completion Corps, which is geared toward students at tribal and community colleges. Both rely on AmeriCorps grants and are staffed by AmeriCorps members, who work in yearlong service positions in exchange for stipends and educational awards that can cover current educational expenses or pay off student loans. The organization employs over 100 AmeriCorps members across both programs.

    Both programs have been successful, MCAN leaders say. In the 2023–24 academic year, students supported by AdviseMI advisers submitted 21,420 college applications and were awarded more than $32 million in financial aid.

    The advisers “often interact with parents, as well, to help parents understand the role of FAFSA and help parents understand what’s happening with their student,” said Ryan Fewins-Bliss, the organization’s executive director. “And [they] engage the school in what we hope to be a schoolwide college-going culture … so when the juniors become seniors, they’re ready for this.”

    After MCAN learned Friday night that it lost one of its AmeriCorps grants, the organization spent the weekend trying figure out how it could keep its AmeriCorps staff on board if the rest of the grants were also canceled. (In total, MCAN lost $2.1 million in AmeriCorps funds.)

    Come Monday, MCAN found out its remaining grants, including funding for AdviseMI and College Completion Corps, were indeed cancelled, and that it had to stop operating those programs immediately. MCAN was able to find funding in the budget to continue those programs for an extra month, but the future beyond then is uncertain.

    Other organizations had to lay off their AmeriCorps members entirely. Partnership 4 Kids, a Nebraska-based organization that works with students from prekindergarten through college, had two full-time AmeriCorps fellows working with high school seniors and three fellows working directly with college students. All five had to stop working Friday, immediately after P4K received word that its grants had been terminated.

    “These two in the high schools had great relationships with their students. They were doing one-on-one case management; they were the driving force [behind] college applications, scholarship applications, helping students overcome barriers they might have, and really to get them to that finish line to graduate,” P4K president Deb Denbeck said.

    This year, 97 percent of P4K’s senior cohort graduated and 80 percent of them are going to college—an impressive feat in a state where the college-going rate for high school graduates has been on the decline.

    ‘Brings Out the Best in People’

    AmeriCorps members have worked in high schools as college advisers for at least two decades, starting with the College Advising Corps, an organization that began in Virginia and has since expanded to 15 states. It’s a model that college-access leaders say has been incredibly effective, helping thousands of students go to college and boosting the careers of the advisers.

    It’s also been embraced by politicians on both sides of the aisle, according to Nicole Hurd, who founded the CAC and is now president of Lafayette College.

    AmeriCorps members are a natural fit for college-readiness work, these leaders say. Because many are recent college graduates, they can remember what it was like to be in the high schoolers’ shoes, making it easy for them to empathize with and respond to the challenges their students are facing. The college adviser positions are relatively easy to train, meaning individuals from any background can take on these roles.

    But perhaps most importantly, leaders of college-access nonprofits feel AmeriCorps’ long-standing ethos of volunteerism aligns perfectly with their missions to bring educational opportunity to all.

    “AmeriCorps brings out the best in people, and it gives them an opportunity to learn as well—to learn how to be professionals in their field,” said Denbeck. “When you look at everything that AmeriCorps does, whether it’s working in education or mentoring or agriculture or disaster relief, they’re doing it because of their heart.”

    The impacted organizations doubt they’ll be able to rely on AmeriCorps going forward. For now, they’re working to figure out how to continue their work and where they might get the funding necessary to deploy college advisers into the communities that need them most.

    “In the future, it’s safe to say that there are countless students that won’t attend college because they’re not getting this kind of support,” Morgan said.

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  • ED Announces Further Changes to Accreditation

    ED Announces Further Changes to Accreditation

    Secretary McMahon said the Dear Colleague letter will “foster a competitive marketplace” for accreditors and the institutions they oversee.

    Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

    The Department of Education intends to accelerate the process for changing accreditors, a move announced in a Dear Colleague letter that builds on other recent changes to oversight.

    Last week the Trump administration released a highly anticipated executive order to overhaul accreditation. That order took aim at accreditors who have diversity, equity and inclusion in their standards, threatening to revoke their recognition, and sought to make it easier for institutions to switch from one accrediting body to another and for new accreditors to enter the marketplace.

    The Department of Education cast the Dear Colleague letter as an action to comply with that executive order and announced that ED had “lifted the Biden Administration’s moratorium on accepting and reviewing applications for initial recognition of potential new accreditors.”

    The Trump administration revoked guidance from the Biden administration from 2022 that exerted more scrutiny over changing accreditors, which came after Florida’s Republican-led Legislature passed a bill that year requiring its public institutions to switch accreditors regularly. (The bill came after state officials clashed with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, which accredited all of Florida’s public institutions, over concerns of political influence.)

    “We must foster a competitive marketplace both amongst accreditors and colleges and universities in order to lower college costs and refocus postsecondary education on improving academic and workforce outcomes for students and families,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement about the guidance. “President Trump’s Executive Order and our actions today will ensure this Department no longer stands as a gatekeeper to block aspiring innovators from becoming new accreditors nor will this Department unnecessarily micromanage an institution’s choice of accreditor.”

    Thursday’s letter, signed by Deputy Under Secretary James P. Bergeron, emphasized that the U.S. Department of Education aims to expedite the process of changing accreditors by removing what ED called “unnecessary requirements” that officials argued stifle institutional innovation.

    ED will no longer scrutinize reasons for changing accreditors, according to the letter.

    “The law and regulation do not dictate a robust or onerous process for receiving the Department’s approval for a change in accrediting agencies or maintaining multiple accreditation,” Bergeron wrote in the Dear Colleague letter. “Therefore, consistent with statutory and regulatory obligations, the Department will conduct expeditious reviews of applications received except in rare cases where an institution lacks a reasonable cause for making a change.”

    The new guidance noted that institutions can switch to accreditors for a variety of reasons, including better alignment with their religious mission, a change mandated by state law or because an accrediting body requires a university to adopt “discriminatory” DEI principles.

    Additionally, Bergeron wrote, if the department “does not approve a change in accrediting agency within 30 days of the date of its receipt of a complete notice of this change and materials demonstrating reasonable cause, approval will be deemed to have been granted, unless the change or multiple accreditation is prohibited as described” in the Dear Colleague letter.

    Some accreditors offered a positive response to the change.

    The Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which recently launched its own effort to streamline the process of changing accreditors, welcomed the development in a statement.

    “As an accreditor with institutions that have been stalled in the process, this guidance will have a positive impact on the work we have been doing with several institutions. We look forward to helping our institutions understand what this may mean for them and for us,” MSCHE president Heather Perfetti wrote. “We appreciate that there are well-defined restrictions that will not allow for institutions to change accreditors to avoid accountability with an existing accreditor.”

    Thursday’s letter also prompted celebration in some conservative quarters.

    The Defense of Freedom Institute, a conservative think tank, urged ED in February to revoke the Biden administration’s guidance on switching, saying that in doing so the department would “wipe away politically motivated and patently unlawful actions of the previous administration.”

    They argued that doing so would create a more effective accreditation system. Following the release of the Dear Colleague letter Thursday, the organization thanked the Trump administration in a statement.

    “The Defense of Freedom Institute applauds the Trump administration for taking bold, necessary action to restore integrity, accountability, and competition to our broken accreditation system. For too long, accreditors have leveraged their Title IV gatekeeper status to stifle innovation in American higher education and to require ideological litmus tests that undermine civil rights and academic freedom on campus,” DFI president and co-founder Bob Eitel wrote.

    Critics, however, argue that making it easier to switch accreditors will have negative effects.

    Wesley Whistle, project director for student success and affordability in the higher education initiative at New America, a left-leaning think tank, told Inside Higher Ed that the new process amounts to a rubber stamp for changing accreditors. He argued that allowing institutions to switch accreditors more easily will likely drive them toward accreditors with lower standards.

    “What this Dear Colleague letter does is dilute that requirement [to demonstrate reasonable cause to switch accreditors], and undermines a critical safeguard that’s meant to ensure that institutions don’t escape oversight just because they don’t like scrutiny,” Whistle said.

    Whistle also suggested the compressed timeline for ED approval within 30 days limits any actual oversight. Timing is compounded, he added, by the lack of personnel, given the job cuts at the department.

    “This guarantees there will be no meaningful review. This isn’t about streamlining, it’s surrender. It’s the Wild West here: Do whatever you want, just say ‘mission’ and you can change accreditors,” he said.

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  • Trump Order Targets Undocumented Students’ In-State Tuition

    Trump Order Targets Undocumented Students’ In-State Tuition

    Immigrant rights advocates are urging state and higher ed leaders not to make any hasty changes to their in-state tuition policies after President Trump issued an executive order on Monday threatening to crack down on sanctuary cities and localities with laws that benefit undocumented immigrants.

    The blow to undocumented students, who in nearly half the country pay in-state tuition, is tucked into an executive order focused mostly on pressuring state and local officials to abandon their cities’ sanctuary status and cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The order demands federal officials make lists of “sanctuary jurisdictions” and the federal funds that could be suspended or cut if they don’t change course. The order also commands them to take “appropriate action” to stop the enforcement of state and local laws and practices “favoring aliens over any groups of American citizens,” including in-state tuition benefits to undocumented students “but not to out-of-state Americans.”

    The move has the potential to affect 24 states and Washington, D.C., which allow in-state tuition for local students with or without citizenship. (Florida previously allowed undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates but ended its decade-old, historically bipartisan policy in February.) Undocumented students and supporters have long touted these policies as a way to make college more affordable for those who can’t access federal financial aid but who grew up in the states and plan to work in their local communities after they graduate.

    “What immigrant, international and refugee students bring is needed talent, skills and contributions,” said Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. “In-state tuition increases the number of a state’s residents who are college educated, who are able to contribute far more to the state’s economy and to their communities than if they did not have a college education.”

    Gaby Pacheco, president and CEO of TheDream.US, a scholarship provider for undocumented students, said many of these students come from low-income backgrounds and couldn’t afford college otherwise.

    Her organization is currently scrambling to help undocumented students in Florida pay for the remainder of their credits and graduate before they have to pay much higher out-of-state tuition rates. In some cases, that means helping them transfer to more affordable institutions.

    For many, “it’s just impossible for them to be able to come up with that money,” she said.

    She’s encouraging state and institutional leaders to avoid “panicking” or “making abrupt policy changes” in response to the executive order.

    Other executive orders have “created so much panic and unnecessary movement from colleges, universities, states, that it was more hurtful than anything,” she said. The administration is putting forward a “belief” that charging undocumented students in-state tuition rates is unlawful, but “that belief is legally dubious.”

    Deciphering the Executive Order

    Immigrants’ advocates and legal scholars say the meaning of the executive order is somewhat hazy. For example, it’s unclear what it means for federal officials to “take appropriate action” to prevent in-state tuition policies from being enforced.

    The order also doesn’t directly say states or institutions with such laws will lose any federal funding, noted Ahilan Arulanantham, professor from practice at the UCLA School of Law and co-director of the law school’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy.

    Still, the order’s threatening tone toward sanctuary cities’ federal funds could be “a window into where this fight could go if the federal government wants to expend significant political capital on this issue,” Arulanantham said. Congress, for example, could decide to pass a law to cut federal funds from universities that offer undocumented students in-state tuition—a proposal outlined in Project 2025. But the executive order itself doesn’t explicitly take away federal dollars from anyone or have the power to do so, he said.

    “If I were a local government or state government official, I probably wouldn’t sue tomorrow over this,” Arulanantham said. “I would wait to see if this is actually going to have any teeth, or if it’s just like a press release.”

    Pacheco similarly described the order as “warning” states of the administration’s posture toward these policies. At the same time, she believes it’s important to plan ahead in case Trump takes the issue further.

    “They’re trying to tell states, ‘We believe that you providing certain benefits for undocumented students is against the law,’” she said. “We’ve known this forever—these states are not violating the law.”

    The order suggests that in-state tuition for undocumented students “may violate” a federal statutory provision that says undocumented people can’t receive higher ed benefits unless citizens are also eligible. But in-state tuition policies are designed to serve citizens living in these states, as well. For example, under California’s Assembly Bill 540, any nonresident who spent three years in California high schools is eligible for in-state tuition. That policy also benefits citizens who grew up in the state who may have left for any reason and returned.

    These types of in-state tuition policies, including California’s, have faced legal challenges in the past, “but all the challenges have failed, said Kevin Johnson, dean of the UC Davis School of Law. He described the executive order as “vaguely worded,” while the state laws, by contrast, are “very clear.”

    The legal argument is that undocumented students are “just being treated equally as all other residents of the state,” he said. “The idea is that they’re residents, which means they’re taxpayers—maybe it’s sales tax, maybe state income tax, federal income tax—whatever it is, they should be treated like other residents and not discriminated against because of their immigration status.”

    What Happens Next

    Arulanantham worries that despite their strong legal foundation, states and higher ed institutions may rush to end in-state tuition benefits for undocumented students out of fear.

    “That’s actually almost certainly the primary purpose of this order”: to spur “pre-emptive discrimination because [institutions] think they have to or they think it’s safer to,” he said.

    Feldblum noted that, prior to the executive order, some state lawmakers were already starting to shift on the issue, perhaps “to align themselves with the federal government.”

    While some states have recently doubled down on such policies, proposing new legislation to expand in-state tuition eligibility, others have also moved to curtail them. Following in Florida’s footsteps, lawmakers in other states, including Kansas, Kentucky and Texas, are considering legislation to prohibit in-state tuition for undocumented students. Texas was the first to allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates in 2001, joined by California that same year.

    “This is not coming in a vacuum … We have to take this seriously and substantively, consider the kinds of actions we need to take to defend in-state tuition—including, if needed, legal action,” Feldblum said. “And then also make sure we’re placing equal emphasis on supporting and communicating with potentially impacted students so that they know their education is important and that they’re important.”

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  • New ICE Policy Puts International Students at Greater Risk

    New ICE Policy Puts International Students at Greater Risk

    The Trump administration issued plans earlier this week for a new policy that vastly expands federal officials’ authority to terminate students’ legal residency status, according to newly released court documents.

    The policy detailed in the filings asserts that immigration officials have the “inherent authority” to terminate students’ legal residency status in the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System “as needed.” It also explicitly lays out two new justifications for SEVIS terminations: the vague “evidence of failure to comply” with nonimmigrant visa terms, and a visa revocation, which can be issued without evidence of a violation by the State Department—and which, crucially, is not subject to court challenges.

    Immigration attorneys told Inside Higher Ed that if implemented, the new policy would enshrine broad permission for ICE to begin deporting students practically at will.

    “This is very bad news for foreign students,” said Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney representing 133 international students in the largest lawsuit challenging recent SEVIS terminations. “Any student who’s arrested, literally for any reason, is probably going to have their status terminated going forward.”

    Last Friday a U.S. attorney promised an official update to ICE policy on SEVIS terminations. On Tuesday, U.S. attorneys presented the document as evidence in a court filing in Arizona, describing it as “recently issued … policy regarding the termination of SEVIS records.”

    It was the first time that details of a new SEVIS termination policy were made public, and it was not at first clear whether it reflected official federal policy. On Tuesday, U.S. attorney Johnny Walker confirmed during another hearing for a SEVIS lawsuit in D.C. that it did, though the policy had yet to be finalized. Spokespeople for ICE did not respond to multiple questions from Inside Higher Ed.

    The plan comes less than a week after the administration began restoring thousands of foreign students’ SEVIS statuses after a series of court decisions overturned hundreds of status terminations. Kuck said the plan seemed to be a way for ICE to get around those rulings.

    “This is basically a cover-your-ass policy,” he said. “The fact that ICE initially reinstated visas was no surprise. They probably had U.S. attorneys screaming at them, ‘What are you doing?’ Now they’re trying to retroactively develop a policy that would allow them to do what they already did.”

    Immigration lawyer and Columbia University Immigrants’ Rights Clinic director Elora Mukherjee has been counseling international students across New York City for the past two months. After the visa-restoration decision last week, some students wanted to know if they were in the clear; she cautioned them against celebrating prematurely.

    “Whiplash is a good way to describe it,” she said. “Students are losing sleep—not just those whose visas have been terminated but those who are worried theirs could be next any day.”

    Fly-by-Night Policymaking

    The updated policy was outlined in an internal Department of Homeland Security memo filed as evidence in an Arizona federal court on Wednesday, where one of more than 100 lawsuits challenging visa revocations is being litigated.

    The unorthodox manner in which it was publicized has left immigration attorneys scratching their heads and international students’ advocates wondering how to respond.

    It also appears to have taken some federal officials by surprise. Kuck said that when he heard about the memo and brought it before the judge in his own case in Georgia, the U.S. attorney defending the government asked if he could send him a copy.

    Fanta Aw, president of NAFSA, an association of international educators, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that the document “should not be relied upon as ICE’s new policy.” She also emphasized that there is no change to ICE’s visa termination policy included in the memo, only SEVIS terminations.

    The document is labeled as a “broadcast message … for internal SEVP use only,” meaning it would have been sent to Designated School Officials working in colleges’ international student offices. But Aw said that’s not accurate, either, because it lacks the customary broadcast message number, and DSOs in her organization said they had not received it.

    Kuck said the lack of a rule-making process for a sweeping policy change like the one outlined in the memo is most likely unlawful, and he was working on filing an amendment to challenge it on Thursday. But that doesn’t mean it should be taken lightly.

    “People should view this as the future,” Kuck said. “This is clearly the power ICE wants to give itself, so they’re going to move ahead with it.”

    ‘A Nightmare Booby Trap’

    Mukherjee said such a broad license to terminate SEVIS status would allow ICE to deport international students far more quickly and with less accountability. The new policy, if implemented and upheld by the courts, wouldn’t just revert to the status quo of the last few months, she said; it would create a landscape in which ICE could begin deportation proceedings with impunity.

    “We’ve already seen many students whose SEVIS terminations led directly to removal proceedings,” Mukherjee said. “It’s terrifying.”

    Kuck said it’s crucial that students understand that they’re still in danger of deportation even if their status was restored last week—and not just because of the new policy plan.

    The few hundred students who won a temporary restraining order in court over the past week have had their statuses reinstated and backfilled to when they were revoked. But the status of thousands more who did not file lawsuits was only reactivated from that point onward. That means they have a gap in status for the days or weeks in between—which, according to ICE policy, is grounds for removal from the country, even if their initial SEVIS termination was accidental.

    “This is a nightmare booby trap for these kids,” Kuck said.

    The only way to protect them, he said, is by filing a class action lawsuit for all affected international student visa holders. Kuck said he’s working on filing an injunction for one right now, and he is acting with urgency.

    In the meantime, Mukherjee said students—both those in the country and those who had planned to come in the fall—are “deeply unsettled.” She’s been asking them questions she’d never been concerned about before: whether they have any social media accounts or even tattoos.

    “I’m talking to international students who are currently in the U.S., to international students who’ve been admitted to study in the U.S. starting in the fall, and they’re asking, ‘Will we be able to complete our degree program?’” she said. “The answer is that it’s unclear.”

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  • Higher Ed After Trump’s First 100 Days: The Key Podcast

    Higher Ed After Trump’s First 100 Days: The Key Podcast

    Inside Higher Ed journalists analyze the first 100 days of the Trump administration in this week’s episode of The Key, IHE’s news and analysis podcast.  

    Editor in chief Sara Custer, along with news editor Katherine Knott and reporters Johanna Alonso and Liam Knox, discuss the major events of the last three months and the impact they have had on universities and colleges.

    The team summarizes the executive orders that will affect higher education, including one to shutter the Department of Education, another to overhaul accreditation and another to tackle alleged antisemitism. 

    The conversation also explores the new relationship the federal government has established between itself and higher education and how the administration is threatening federal research funding to set ultimatums and progress its agenda, in particular with Columbia and Harvard University.

    The group updates listeners on the latest developments with international students’ Student Exchange and Visitor Information System status reinstatements. Alonso and Knox also talk about what they learned about the administration’s targeting of international students from speaking to students, their advisers and digging through dozens of lawsuits brought against the government. 

    While what comes next is anyone’s guess. The team discusses what they’ll be watching over the next 100 days, including what Congress will be working on, the fallout from the international student crackdown and how summer might shift the vibe on campus. 

    Listen and download the episode here. 

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  • Don’t Overlook Alumni as Asset for Advocacy (opinion)

    Don’t Overlook Alumni as Asset for Advocacy (opinion)

    With research contracts, cost recovery and student financial aid totaling billions of dollars on the line, many universities have called upon powerhouse external lobbying firms to defend against federal funding cuts and make the case for the public good that flows from higher education. Engaging external government relations experts can bring important perspective and leverage in this critical period, but this approach may not be scalable or sustainable across the nearly 550 research universities in large and small communities across the country.

    Fortunately, campuses have their own powerful asset for advocacy: alumni. Graduates know firsthand the benefits of higher education in their lives, professions and communities, and they can also give valuable feedback as campuses work to meet the challenges of this moment and become even better. The National Survey of College Graduates estimates that 72 million individuals hold at least a bachelor’s degree. Engaged well, alumni can be a force multiplier.

    Alumni often get attention in their role as donors. They will receive, on average, more than 90 email messages from their alma mater this year, many asking them to reflect on the value of their college experience and pay it forward. The most generous donors will be celebrated at events or visited personally by campus leaders. Millions and sometimes billions of dollars will be raised to advance campus missions.

    As generous as alumni donors may be, the effectiveness of their philanthropic support is linked to the even greater investments states and the federal government make in higher education. University leaders in fundraising and beyond have an obligation to provide alumni with candid information about the potential impacts of looming generational policy and funding shifts, along with opportunities to support their campus as advocates.

    In a crisis, information and attention necessarily flow first to on-campus constituents. Crisis communications and management plans may initially overlook alumni or underestimate the compelling role that they can play with both external and internal stakeholders. While most alumni are not on the campus, they are of the campus in deep and meaningful ways. And, unlike the handful of ultrawealthy alumni who have weighed in to the detriment of their Ivy League campuses, a broad group of alumni can bring practical wisdom and a voice of reason to challenging issues.

    Campus leaders now preparing for a long period of disruption should assess alumni engagement as part of this planning and gather their teams to consider:

    • How might alumni and development staff work with strategic communications, government relations staff and academic leaders to shape university messaging and advocacy?
    • What facts about policy and funding challenges do alumni need to understand in a media environment filled with misinformation?
    • How might alumni perspectives inform campus discourse about challenges to the institution’s values and academic freedom?
    • How might existing alumni programming provide opportunities for information-sharing between campus leaders, academic leaders and alumni?
    • How are campuses acknowledging and supporting alumni who are directly affected by changes in the federal workforce and economic disruption?

    This is a critical time for campus leaders to build bridges. Alumni can be a huge asset in this work. As degree holders, donors, professionals and citizens, engaged alumni know the specific value of their alma mater and of higher education broadly. They have stakes, authenticity and social capital, and they deserve the opportunity to add their voices.

    Lisa Akchin, senior counsel at RW Jones Agency and founder of On Purpose LLC, previously served as associate vice president for engagement and chief marketing officer at University of Maryland Baltimore County.

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  • Higher education postcard: Mason Science College

    Higher education postcard: Mason Science College

    Greetings from Birmingham!

    This is Mason Science College, founded in 1875 by Sir Josiah Mason. It was one of the institutions which formed the nucleus of the University of Birmingham in 1900 (the other was Queen’s College, founded in 1825 as the Birmingham Medical School). The buildings were used by the university until the 1960s but are now gone.

    Mason had made his fortune in manufacturing – mostly steel pens, but other products too.

    The card was posted on 17 April 1905 in Bournemouth to an address in Doncaster.

    Thanks for letter and will answer in a day or so. Went to hear Sousa’s band today. Have you heard him? I trust you are stronger dear. Love in haste …

    John Philip Sousa and his band were touring Britain in 1905, but I can’t pin down where they played on Monday 17 April.

    Here’s a jigsaw of the card.

    Apologies for the brevity of this post – I’m under the cosh this week, with work and other stuff, so the postcard blog is short and sweet. Hopefully back to normal next week!

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  • Education research takes another hit in latest DOGE attack

    Education research takes another hit in latest DOGE attack

    Education research has a big target on its back.

    Of the more than 1,000 National Science Foundation grants killed last month by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, some 40 percent were inside its education division. These grants to further STEM education research accounted for a little more than half of the $616 million NSF committed for projects canceled by DOGE, according to Dan Garisto, a freelance journalist reporting for Nature, a peer-reviewed scientific journal that also covers science news.

    The STEM education division gives grants to researchers at universities and other organizations who study how to improve the teaching of math and science, with the goal of expanding the number of future scientists who will fuel the U.S. economy. Many of the studies are focused on boosting the participation of women or Black and Hispanic students. The division had a roughly $1.2 billion budget out of NSF’s total annual budget of $9 billion. 

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    Neither the NSF nor the Trump administration has provided a list of the canceled grants. Garisto told me that he obtained a list from an informal group of NSF employees who cobbled it together themselves. That list was subsequently posted on Grant Watch, a new project to track the Trump administration’s termination of grants at scientific research agencies. Garisto has been working with outside researchers at Grant Watch and elsewhere to document the research dollars that are affected and analyze the list for patterns. 

    “For NSF, we see that the STEM education directorate has been absolutely pummeled,” Noam Ross, a computational disease ecologist and one of the Grant Watch researchers, posted on Bluesky. 

    Terminated grants fall heavily upon STEM Education 

    Graphic by Dan Garisto, a freelance journalist working for Nature

    The steep cuts to NSF education research follow massive blows in February and March at the Department of Education, where almost 90 research and data collection projects were canceled along with the elimination of Regional Education Laboratories and the firing of almost 90 percent of the employees in the research and data division, known as the Institute of Education Sciences.

    Many, but not all, of the canceled research projects at NSF were also in a database of 3,400 research grants compiled by Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican. Cruz characterized them as “questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.”  

    Ross at Grant Watch analyzed the titles and abstracts or summaries of the terminated projects and discovered that “Black” was the most frequent word among them. Other common words were “climate,” “student,” “network,” “justice,” “identity,” “teacher,” and “undergraduate.”

    Frequent words in the titles and summaries of terminated NSF research projects

    Word cloud of the most frequent terms from the titles and abstracts of terminated grants, with word size proportional to frequency. Purple is the most frequent, followed by orange and green. Source: Noam Ross, Grant Watch

    At least two of the terminated research studies focused on improving artificial intelligence education, which President Donald Trump promised to promote in an April 23 executive order,“Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth.” 

    “There is something especially offensive about this EO from April 23 about the need for AI education… Given the termination of my grant on exactly this topic on April 26,” said Danaé Metaxa in a post on Bluesky that has since been deleted. Metaxa, an assistant professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania, was developing a curriculum on how to teach AI digital literacy skills by having students build and audit generative AI models. 

    Related: Chaos and confusion as the statistics arm of the Education Department is reduced to a skeletal staff of 3

    Another canceled grant involved college students creating educational content about AI for social media to see if that content would improve AI literacy and the ability to detect misinformation. The lead researcher, Casey Fiesler, an associate professor of information science at the University of Colorado Boulder, was almost midway through her two-year grant of less than $270,000. “There is not a DEI aspect of this work,” said Fiesler. “My best guess is that the reason it was flagged was the word ‘misinformation.’”

    Confusion surrounded the cuts. Bob Russell, a former NSF project officer who retired in 2024, said some NSF project officers were initially unaware that the grants they oversee had been canceled. Instead, university officials who oversee research were told, and those officials notified researchers at their institutions. Researchers then contacted their project officers. One researcher told me that the termination notice states that researchers may not appeal the decision, an administrative process that is ordinarily available to researchers who feel that NSF has made an unfair or incorrect decision. 

    Related: DOGE’s death blow to education studies

    Some of the affected researchers were attending the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Denver on April 26 when more than 600 grants were cut. Some scholars found out by text that their studies had been terminated. Normally festive evening receptions were grim. “It was like a wake,” said one researcher. 

    The Trump administration wants to slash NSF’s budget and headcount in half, according to Russell. Many researchers expect more cuts ahead.

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about NSF education research cuts was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

    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.

    Join us today.

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  • Arizona Autism Charter School Founder Tapped as DOE Special Education Chief – The 74

    Arizona Autism Charter School Founder Tapped as DOE Special Education Chief – The 74

    The founder and executive director of a network of Arizona charter schools serving autistic children has been named the U.S. Education Department’s deputy assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services. Education Secretary Linda McMahon made the announcement while touring the Arizona Autism Charter Schools’ Phoenix location.

    Diana Diaz-Harrison, whose son is autistic, said that in her new job she hopes to continue her efforts to help others launch autism charter schools throughout the country. Her schools, she said in remarks captured on video by AZ Central, are a testament to what happens “when parents like me are empowered to create solutions.”

    “My vision is to expand school choice for special needs families — whether through charter schools, private options, voucher programs, or other parent-empowered models,” she said in a statement to The 74. .

    The five-school network uses a controversial intervention that attempts to train children to appear and behave like their neurotypical peers. Created by the researcher behind LGBTQ conversion therapy, applied behavior analysis, or ABA, is widely depicted as the gold standard despite scant independent evidence of its effectiveness and mounting research documenting its harms. 

    Diaz-Harrison opened the network’s first school in 2014 as a free, public alternative to private schools for autistic children, which are popular in Arizona but typically charge tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition. Her Arizona charter schools are a 501(c)3 nonprofit financed by state and federal per-pupil funds. ABA is specifically endorsed by Arizona education officials as a strategy to use with autistic students.

    In the time since those charters opened, ABA has grown to be a national, multi-billion-dollar industry, with for-profit companies tapping public and private insurance to pay for as much as 40 hours a week of one-on-one therapy. The intervention uses repeated, rapid-fire commands that bring rewards and punishments to change a child’s behavior and communication style.

    A 74 investigation last year showed that most data supporting ABA’s effectiveness is drawn from research conducted by industry practitioners. Independent analyses, including a years-long U.S. Department of Defense review, found little evidence the intervention works. Former patients who underwent the therapy as children reported severe, lasting mental health effects, including PTSD.

    Diaz-Harrison told The 74 the therapy is both valuable and sought-after. “For the autism community, specifically, many families seek schools that integrate positive behavioral strategies,” she says. “The evidence supporting behavioral therapy is extensive and well-established. It has been endorsed by the U.S. surgeon general and the American Academy of Pediatrics as an effective, research-backed approach for individuals with autism.”

    During her visit, McMahon told students and staff she was eager to tell President Donald Trump about the schools. “He doesn’t believe any child, whether they have neuro-difficulties or any other problems, should be trapped in a school and not have the facilities that they need,” she said. 

    Since Trump’s second inauguration, he has issued numerous orders that have alarmed disability advocates and the autistic community. Though both edicts contradict longstanding federal laws, in March he ordered the closure of the Education Department and said responsibility for special education will be transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

    About half of the Education Department’s staff has been fired, including most of the people responsible for investigating what had been a backlog of some 6,000 disability discrimination complaints. Though it’s unclear whether Trump and McMahon may legally disregard special education funding laws and allow states to spend federal dollars as they see fit, both have said they favor giving local officials as much decision-making power as possible.

    Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stoked fear in the autistic community by announcing a new effort to tie autism to vaccines or other “environmental toxins” — a hypothesis discredited by dozens of studies. The man he appointed to head the study has been cited for practicing medicine without a license and prescribing dangerous drugs to autistic children. 

    Last week, the new head of the National Institutes of Health announced that an unprecedented compilation of medical, pharmaceutical and insurance records would be used to create an autism “disease registry” — a kind of list historically used to sterilize, institutionalize and even “euthanize” autistic people. HHS later walked back the statement, saying the database under construction would have privacy guardrails.

    Among other responsibilities, the offices Diaz-Harrison will head identify strategies for improving instruction for children with disabilities and ensure that as they grow up, they are able to be as independent as possible. The disability community has raised concerns that the administration is retreating from these goals.   

    Advocates have said they fear the changes pave the way for a return to the practice of separating students with disabilities in dedicated special ed classrooms rather than having them attend class with typically developing peers. The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act guarantees special education students the right to instruction in the “least restrictive environment” possible.          

    Families’ preferences vary widely, with some parents of autistic children refusing any form of behavior therapy, while others want their kids in settings with children who share their needs. Many insist on grade-level instruction in general education classrooms 

    Diaz-Harrison has a master’s degree in education and worked as a bilingual teacher in California early in her career. From the late 1990s until she began supporting her son full time, she worked as a public relations strategist and a reporter and anchor for the Spanish-language broadcast network Univision. 

    In 2014, frustrated with her son’s school options, she organized a group of parents and ABA providers who applied for permission to open what was then a single K-5 school serving 90 children. The network now has about 1,000 students in all grades and features an online program. 

    At the end of the 2023-24 academic year, 9% of the network’s students scored proficient or highly proficient on Arizona’s annual reading exam, while 4% passed the math assessments.      

    In December 2022, the network won a $1 million Yass Prize, an award created by Jeff and Janine Yass. The billionaire investors have a long track record of donating to Republican political candidates and organizations that support school choice. 

    One of the award’s creators, Jeanne Allen, is CEO of the Center for Education Reform. The center nominated Diaz-Harrison for the federal role. 

    Yass award winners were featured at the 2023 meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a conservative forum where state lawmakers are given model bills on education and other policies to introduce in their respective statehouses. 

    Diaz-Harrison has partnered with a Florida autism school to create a national charter school accelerator program to help people start schools like hers throughout the country. She told The 74 the effort has so far supported teams of hopeful school founders from Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Alabama and Nevada. 

    Parents of young autistic children and autistic adults often disagree about ABA. Told by their pediatrician or the person who diagnosed their child as autistic that they have a narrow window in which to intervene, families fight to get the therapy. Adults who have experienced it, however, report lasting trauma and have lobbied for research — much of it now at risk of being defunded by Kennedy — into more effective and humane alternatives.


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