The higher ed sector underwent rapid change in 2025, as leaders navigated new and evolving federal and state policy, emerging technologies and shifting employer expectations for graduates, all while responding to the diverse and pressing needs of students.
For practitioners, faculty, staff and administrators looking to impact student success in the new year, Inside Higher Ed identified 26 data points that outline the major trends of 2025 and those to watch out for in 2026.
80 percent of college students rate the quality of their education as good or excellent, up 7 percentage points from 2024.
83 percent of the class of 2023 remained enrolled for two terms and the national persistence rate rose to 77.6 percent, up from 74.8 percent in 2019.
Two-thirds of Americans say a four-year degree isn’t worth the cost because graduates leave without a specific job and with large amounts of debt.
One-third of students said they’re thriving, reporting high levels of success in relationships, self-esteem, purpose and optimism.
15 percent of colleges are using AI for student advising and support; an additional 26 percent use genAI for predictive analytics in student performance and trends.&
70 percent of Americans believe higher education is “going in the wrong direction” due to high costs, poor preparation for the job market and ineffective development of students’ life skills.
62 percent of students said they have “very high” or “somewhat high” trust in their college or university; 11 percent rate their trust as “somewhat low” or “very low.”
23 percent of stop-outs said they won’t re-enroll because they can’t afford upfront costs; 15 percent said they are already too burdened by student debt to re-enroll.
45 percent of students want colleges to encourage faculty members to limit high-stakes exams to improve their academic success; 40 percent want to see stronger connections between classroom learning and their career goals.
36 percent of students have not participated in any extracurricular or co-curricular experiences while in college; an additional 39 percent say they’re very involved in at least one activity.
71 percent of students have experienced financial trouble while enrolled in college, and 68 percent said they ran out of money at least once since the start of the year.
43 percent of students say they study in the evening, while 18 percent said they study at night.
84 percent of students say they know when and whether to use generative artificial intelligence to help with their coursework; the majority attributed this knowledge to faculty instruction or syllabi language.
71 percent of students said it was acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus; 54 percent believe it’s acceptable to block other students from attending a campus speech.
International enrollment declined 1 percent in fall 2025, with 17 percent fewer new students coming to U.S. campuses this past fall.
As of August, 37 percent of students said federal actions to limit diversity, equity and inclusion have had no real impact on their college experience.
57 percent of students said cost of living is “a major problem,” for college students today; 55 percent said mental health issues are a major problem, as well.
59 percent of Americans are in favor of awarding green cards to foreign students who graduate from American universities so they can work in the U.S.
87 percent of Gen Z said they feel unprepared to succeed at work due to limited guidance, unclear paths to career from school and uncertainty about which skills matter most.
Only 44 percent of students say they know some information about post-graduation outcomes for alumni of their college or university; 11 percent say they’re not sure where to find this information.
67 percent of students said they don’t use AI in their job searches; 29 percent said they avoid it because they have ethical concerns about using the tool.
94 percent of employers think it’s equally important for colleges to prepare a skilled and educated workforce and to help students become informed citizens.
A total of 14 centers and institutes will be decommissioned, according to a budget reductions presentation to the board in November.
Tar_Heel_Rob/iStock/Getty Images
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will close its area studies centers in 2026, faculty members within the centers told Inside Higher Ed.
The six centers—the Center for European Studies, the African Studies Center, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies—are all expected to close at some point next year.
“Our leadership team is taking a thoughtful and targeted approach, looking into areas that can be streamlined for greater efficiency, strengthening our operations while meeting our fiduciary responsibility to the people of North Carolina,” the UNC media relations department said in a statement. “A number of factors were taken into consideration while evaluating Centers and Institutes and some programs have been identified to be sunset [sic] in 2026. The list is not finalized at this time.”
Further updates will come after the January Board of Trustees meeting, the spokespeople said.
In a “budget reductions update” to the board’s finance and infrastructure committee in November, university officials said they planned to save $7 million in annual spending from “centers and institute reductions” made over several years, with a goal of $3 million in budget reductions before the end of this fiscal year in June 2026. A total of 14 centers and institutes will be decommissioned, according to the presentation.
The department says Palantir was involved in a portal tracking universities’ foreign gifts and contracts.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is publicly expressing concern about the Education Department working with Palantir, a controversial artificial intelligence and data analysis company that serves the U.S. military and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The AAUP says it learned of the partnership when FedScoop reported that it noticed a message referencing Palantir on the website foreignfundinghighered.gov Dec. 4. An hour later, the website showed “a login page with the Palantir logo,” and, a couple of hours after that, “the Palantir logo was replaced with an Education Department logo,” the outlet wrote.
Foreignfundinghighered.gov tracks foreign gifts and contracts data for higher ed institutions. If a foreign source provides a college or university more than $250,000 in a year, Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 requires the institution to report the payment to the federal government.
In an email to Inside Higher Ed, the Education Department described Palantir’s involvement in the past tense. It said Palantir was involved with the foreign funding portal as a subcontractor for Monkton, a company that has long handled privacy and data issues for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
“After soliciting feedback from institutions of higher education, the Trump Administration has upgraded the portal to make it easier for colleges and universities to report their foreign gifts and contracts as required,” Julie Hartman, the Education Department’s press secretary for legal affairs, said in a statement.
The AAUP held a news conference Wednesday raising concern about Palantir’s past work and about critical statements that Palantir leaders Alex Karp and Peter Thiel had made about higher ed.
“We want transparency,” AAUP president Todd Wolfson told reporters. “We want to know what Palantir is doing on this contract and we want to know how much they stand to make.” He said it “seems to be yet another front aimed at surveilling and criminalizing our colleges and universities,” and could indicate a “shift toward treating higher education not as a public good, but as a security threat to be monitored.”
The department didn’t tell Inside Higher Ed how much Palantir is being paid. Hartman said “universities’ clear disclosure and public transparency requirements have been in statute for decades,” adding that the AAUP’s “baseless assertion that the portal is a ‘politicized punitive action’ demonstrates their utter disregard for the rule of law.”
She said, “the Trump Administration is ending the secrecy surrounding foreign dollars and influence on American campuses.” Palantir spokespeople didn’t return Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment.
AFT President Randi Weingarten has been a loud advocate for protecting borrowers’ rights to loan repayment programs.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The Department of Education has accumulated a backlog of more than 800,000 applications for income-driven loan repayments (IDR) as of Dec. 15, according to the most recent status report in a lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
The union originally sued the department in March for pausing all applications to IDR plans, loan consolidation and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, but the case was quickly settled as the department reopened the application portal and committed to providing regular status updates.
For five months, the status reports carried on and the case remained quiet. But then, in September, AFT filed an amended class action complaint and motion for preliminary injunction, arguing that just because the portal is open doesn’t mean it is working properly. Tens of thousands of applications were going untouched, violating the rights of the borrowers who submitted them.
In October, the department again reached a settlement with the plaintiffs, committing to process applications, and the motion was stayed. But now, with the latest status report released, AFT argues that the department isn’t holding up its end of the deal.
“The problem is they don’t appear to have kept their word,” Randi Weingarten said in a news release Wednesday. “The borrower backlog remains eye-popping, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon clearly has no idea how to manage this process.”
In addition to the backlog of pending loan repayment applications, the report shows that only 170 borrowers at the end of their IDR plan and 280 borrowers who have completed their PSLF payments have received their rightful loan forgiveness.
Weingarten suggested that in addition to loan forgiveness being low on the Trump administration’s list of political priorities, much of the backlog is due to major staffing cuts.
“Perhaps [Secretary McMahon] shouldn’t have sold the Department of Education off for parts,” the union president said. “President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance may believe affordability is a hoax, but hundreds of thousands of Americans just trying to get ahead are bleeding—and the administration’s lack of action is rubbing salt into the wound.”
So, until the department “follows the law and processes every single outstanding application,” she added, AFT will not stop fighting its case.
We’re approaching the end of a year that was at various times frightening, difficult and downright ridiculous. We hope that, despite the struggles higher education faced this year, you can still find something to be thankful for this holiday season, whether it’s generous donors making big differences for small campuses, colleges striving to improve cost transparency, or institutions supporting their communities through tough times.
If not, maybe you can take some inspiration from the videos below.
Here are Inside Higher Ed’s favorite holiday greetings, from the wacky to the artsy to the classy, showcasing the talents and holiday spirit of students, staff and faculty across the country.
Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Conn.
This slapstick sketch depicts Quinnipiac’s mascot, Boomer the Bobcat, messily preparing to welcome community members to his abode for Christmas dinner. Despite mishaps like spilling a bowl of assorted vegetables all over the floor and whisking what looks like mashed potatoes so feverishly they go flying, Boomer ends up putting out a beautiful spread—roast turkey, green beans, deviled eggs and more—for his delighted guests.
University of Louisiana at Monroe
The ULM Chamber Singers bring us a stirring adaptation of the 12 Days of Christmas entitled, no surprise, the 12 Days of Finals. Among the listed gifts is “ten paddlers paddling,” referring to the campus’s unique access to Bayou DeSiard, where students can borrow a kayak for free and paddle around to their heart’s delight.
Salt Lake Community College, Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake Community College brings us another musical video, this time in the form of a tribute to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. President Greg Peterson takes on the titular role, singing: “We’ve made the most of this beautiful year, full of big hopes and holiday cheer. It’s education for you—it’s SLCC.edu. Will you join us next year?” Fuzzy video filters take the viewer back to old-school PBS, making the homage all the more nostalgic.
The University of Texas, Dallas’s Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology
This video highlights an annual tradition in an animation business development course at UT Dallas. The students are asked to design a holiday card and their peers then vote on the 10 best cards in the class. The winners’ cards are then printed and sold to fundraise for the school’s Student Emergency Fund. “I’m glad that our class is helping people have the reassurance that they need that they’re safe on campus and that somebody’s looking out for them if something does happen,” one of this year’s participants said.
Gonzaga University, Spokane, Wash.
College holiday greetings love to get a little bit meta. In this greeting, Gonzaga president Katia Passerini realizes she has forgotten to write a poem for this year’s holiday video. Luckily, student Alexis Sandoval just so happens to have a Christmas poem prepared, saving the day. Different members from the campus community, from a security leader to the university chaplain, recite the poem, bidding viewers to “rejoice in faith, carry peace and love into a happy New Year.”
Moraine Valley Community College, Palos Hills, Ill.
In this feel-good sketch, President Pamela Haney tries to bake a sweet treat for the college’s leadership team, but is missing a few key ingredients, including kindness and dedication. Luckily, teams from across the campus come to the rescue, bringing Haney everything she needs to finish making the cake. As one administrator says, “it’s amazing what we can do when we all work together.”
Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass.
This year, the women’s liberal arts college celebrated 150 years since it welcomed its first class in 1875. As part of that celebration, the holiday video this year compiled archival footage and images submitted by alumni of winters on campus over the past century-and-a-half. The video, which features students sledding, ice skating, skiing and playing in the snow, is set over a song composed for the Class of 1948’s junior class show, which bemoans leaving Wellesley’s campus behind.
Community College of Philadelphia
“My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music is everyone’s favorite non-Christmas Christmas song. Why has it entered the holiday songs zeitgeist? Who can say for sure, but I think we’re all glad it has. This particular rendition by CCP students and faculty sets the classic tune against a hip-hop beat and features a sick guitar solo.
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Uh-oh—President Peter Mohler is supposed to be helping write Christmas cards, but he’s nowhere to be found! This cheeky sketch shows that he’s shirking his responsibilities to do much cooler and more fun things, like play video games with students or shoot hoops with Big Al, the institution’s elephant mascot. Luckily, when his colleagues finally find him, he’s already finished the holiday cards. Crisis averted!
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
“What’s one Tulane memory you hope never melts away?” this video asks a gaggle of sweater-clad Tulane students. More than one note a once-in-a-lifetime Gulf Coast blizzard that shocked and delighted Tulane students this past January, with one saying it was “like a dream.” Others mention friends, sports championships and exploring the city of New Orleans.
Ask just about any federally funded researcher to describe 2025, and they use words like chaotic, demoralizing, confusing, destabilizing and transformational.
“It’s been a very destabilizing year [that’s made] people question the nation’s commitment to research,” Heather Pierce, senior director for science policy at the Association of American Medical Colleges, told Inside Higher Ed.
She expects 2026 to be a year of rebuilding and standard setting.
Speaking of the National Institutes of Health, which calls itself the world’s largest public biomedical research funder, Pierce said the research community is expecting more major regulation and written policy changes in 2026, which will shed more light on how grants will be funded, how much the federal government will invest in the research enterprise and what priorities will emerge from this administration.
If the administration’s attacks on federally funded research in 2025 are any indication, the federal government of 2026 will likely be just as willing to advance its conservative ideological agenda by controlling universities through the nation’s research enterprise. And while the administration may not let up in the new year, courts stymied some of its most sweeping changes in 2025 and may continue to be an obstacle in the new year.
Soon after President Donald Trump started his second term in January, the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Education and numerous other federal agencies that collectively send billions in research dollars to universities, began freezing and terminating hundreds of grants. Many of the targeted grants—including projects focused on vaccines, climate change, and health and education disparities among women, LGBTQ+ and minority communities—were caught in the crossfire of Trump’s war against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and so-called woke gender ideology.
Not only would the terminations lead to the loss of jobs, staff and income, a lawsuit filed by a group of NIH-funded researchers in April predicted that “scientific advancement will be delayed, treatments will go undiscovered, human health will be compromised, and lives will be lost.”
The true damage comes from the betrayal, the sense of uncertainty and the loss of trust researchers have—or had—vis-à-vis with the federal government. That’s really hard to quantify.”
Scott Delaney, cofounder of Grant Witness
Terminated federal grants encompassed a wide range of research projects. Some of the casualties included funding to study the erosion of democracy, the effectiveness of work study, dementia, COVID-19, cancer and misinformation. Others supported teacher-training programs and initiatives designed to attract more underrepresented students into STEM fields.
“The premise of this award is incompatible with agency priorities,” read a letter the NIH sent to numerous researchers back in March, terminating their active grants. “[R]esearch programs based primarily on artificial and nonscientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”
But it didn’t stop there.
The Trump administration also temporarily froze billions more dollars in federal research grants at a handful of the nation’s wealthiest, most selective institutions, including Harvard University, Columbia University and the University of California at Los Angeles, for allegedly failing to address antisemitism on campus and ignoring the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action, among other allegations. (Most of the universities got their money back after cutting deals with the administration or via court orders.)
Faculty in the University of California system successfully fought the administration’s funding cuts, winning court orders to restore the money.
Justin Sullivan/AFP/Getty Images
And because the NIH, NSF, ED and several other federal agencies also laid off thousands of workers, researchers with questions had far fewer resources to help them navigate changes to application and award processes.
By some estimates, the government disrupted upward of $17 billion in NIH grants alone this year, according to Scott Delaney, a former lawyer and Harvard University epidemiologist who the university laid off as a result of grant terminations.
Earlier this year, he cofounded Grant Witness, a website that has been tracking grant cancellations at the NIH, NSF and the Environmental Protection Agency. While both the NIH and NSF have since restored thousands of grants, Delaney said those and other restorations won’t be enough to repair the now-fractured relationship between faculty and federal funding agencies.
“The true damage comes from the betrayal, the sense of uncertainty and the loss of trust researchers have—or had—vis-à-vis with the federal government. That’s really hard to quantify,” he told Inside Higher Ed this month. “In the years ahead, there will be folks who don’t want to plan long-term research projects because they don’t know if their funds are going to get summarily yanked out from underneath them; folks who don’t want to continue their careers in academic research or train in academic research; trainees who would have had training grant support who don’t now and go do something else. And some researchers will just leave the country.”
In addition, some of the Trump administration’s research funding proposals have stoked worry this year about the long-term sustainability of the nation’s academic research enterprise.
Numerous agencies—including NIH, NSF and Department of Energy—have attempted to cut university reimbursement rates for indirect research costs. Higher education and science advocates characterized such policies as “shortsighted and dangerous,” and said it would hamper university budgets, hurt the economy and stymie scientific progress. Although federal courts have since blocked the rate caps, the mere anticipation of such policy changes led some universities—including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University—to freeze hiring and, in some cases, graduate admissions.
But by September, the NIH said it was on track to spend its full $47 billion budget by the end of the fiscal year that month.
However, the NIH awarded 3,500 fewer competitive grants this year with the biggest declines at the Institutes of minority health, nursing, human genome, alcohol abuse and alcoholism and mental health, according to The New York Times. Those changes are part of the White House’s plan to streamline scientific funding by eliminating wasteful spending and cutting “woke programs” that “poison the minds of Americans.”
The cuts to federal agencies and research spurred protests in the spring.
As 2025 fades into 2026, the federal research funding picture isn’t looking as bleak—at least not on the surface.
A flurry of litigation from universities, individual researchers, trade associations and labor unions prompted several federal agencies to reinstate some research grants.
All things considered, 2025 “could have been worse, but it was still awful,” Delaney said, noting that there are still thousands of grants in limbo at the NSF, DOE and numerous other agencies beyond the NIH.
“So many people fought so hard—some of them sacrificed their jobs inside these federal agencies—and they succeeded in many ways. To tell a story that doesn’t include both their sacrifice and their success discredits what was a Herculean and heroic effort for scientists, many who have never spoken up in a political way before this year,” he added. “But it’s also important to emphasize that this fight isn’t over, and we need to keep fighting. It can get worse.”
‘Not Insulated From Politics’
Katie Edwards, a social work professor at the University of Michigan, is one of the researchers who sued the NIH. In March, the agency canceled six grants she was using to research mental health and violence prevention among marginalized young people, including Indigenous and LGBTQ+ youth. Valued at $10 million, the grants supported roughly 50 staff, community collaborators and trainees and put them all at risk of losing their jobs.
“For many trainees—especially those who are LGBTQ+ or people of color—the message they internalized was painful: that research on their communities is ‘ideological’ or expendable,” Edwards wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “The emotional toll of fighting for and protecting staff, reassuring community partners, and trying to navigate a constantly shifting federal landscape has been immense.”
Fighting for Public Health Research
April: A group of NIH researchers, a public health advocacy organization and a union representing more than 120,000 higher education workers sued the NIH for terminating more than $2.4 billion in grants.
August: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a vote of 5 to 4 that any legal challenges to the grant terminations should be litigated in the Court of Federal Claims, not the federal district court system they’ve been moving through for months.
Edwards
University of Michigan
Although her grants have since been reinstated—albeit some with reduced dollar amounts, administrative delays and anti-DEI language in the notice of award—and her team has resumed their work, this year has forever changed her perspective on research.
“This year made clear that science is not insulated from politics—and that researchers must be prepared to defend not only their projects, but the people those projects exist to serve,” Edwards said. “Federally funded research with marginalized communities requires constant vigilance, strong partnerships, and collective resistance. We cannot simply adjust our science to political winds when real communities rely on this work.”
But not every researcher who appealed a grant termination got their money back.
In March, the Education Department informed Judith Scott-Clayton, a professor of economics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, that it was cancelling her six-year grant to examine the impact of receiving federal work-study funding on enrollment and persistence among low-income students four and a half years into the grant.
Teachers College appealed the decision in April, but the government rejected it in September, stating that Education Department grants were specifically excluded from Columbia University’s settlement with the Trump administration. Support from a private foundation allowed Scott-Clayton and her team to resume their research this November, but she told Inside Higher Ed that the disruptions to research have been “extremely unsettling and demoralizing.”
And she’s not certain that 2026 will be any better.
“Even though I believe in the value of what I do, self-doubt can flare up when an authority as significant as the federal government formally declares your work to be a waste of resources,” she said. “I am not sure what the future of our field looks like if our federal government no longer values research evidence. And I am not sure what our society looks like if the federal government can make decisions so arbitrarily without any consequences or constraints.”
New Year, Old Concerns
This year is ending with unresolved questions about what the Trump administration’s research policies will ultimately be, and how much the federal government will fund research. Pierce at the Association of American Medical Colleges said she expects next year will provide answers.
Joanne Padrón Carney, chief government relations officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), said “I think the [the Energy Department’s] Genesis mission and the prioritization of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies is going to be a key driver in—I guess you could say—filling in the cracks of the foundation of the research enterprise that has been kind of hit by this earthquake in the past year.”
The National Institutes of Health has cut staff and is eyeing other changes to how it funds research.
Wesley Lapointe/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The continuing resolution that ended the historically long federal government shutdown in November expires Jan. 30, and Congress is leaving town for the holidays without passing funding bills for some major science funding agencies, including the NIH, NSF and Energy.
Trump proposed slashing about $5.2 billion from the NSF. But House appropriators have suggested cutting $2.1 billion, while senators only put forth axing $60 million, according to an appropriations debate tracker from the AAAS. And while the president proposed cutting nearly 40 percent from the NIH—$18.1 billion—the House and Senate have instead suggested increasing its funding by roughly $1 billion, the tracker shows. That pushback from Congress is promising, advocates say.
And colleges and universities are still waiting for federal research funding agencies to set indirect cost reimbursement caps, after litigation blocked their plans to set the limit at 15 percent. The forthcoming OMB guidance setting those caps is also supposed to help agencies implement Trump’s controversial August executive order directing “senior appointees” to take charge of awarding, denying, reviewing and terminating new and already awarded grants. Among other changes, that order also said grants can’t “promote” racial preferences or “the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic,” and that they “should be given to a broad range of recipients rather than to a select group of repeat players.”
Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya took over the National Institutes of Health and has pledged to support what the administration calls “gold standard science.” He’s become a vocal supporter of the Make America Healthy Again agenda, which focuses more on chronic diseases.
Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Further, the NIH is eyeing ways to reduce how much of its grant dollars researchers can use to pay scientific journals to publish their work. The proposed options ranged from limiting how much could be spent per publication or capping the percentage of a grant that can go toward publishing fees overall, to no longer funding publication costs whatsoever. The NIH said in the summer that it planned to make whatever policy it chose effective early next year, but it only recently released the public comments, and an agency spokesperson said he couldn’t provide a definitive implementation timeline.
Just this week, Science published a memo showing that NSF is scaling back its reviews of grant proposals, citing its “significantly reduced” workforce and a need to expedite approvals and denials to address a “significant backlog of unreviewed proposals and canceled review panels” from the government shutdown. The memo also said NSF program officers are “expected to maximize their use of available automated merit review tools, especially tools that identify proposals that should be returned without review.”
And the NIH ordered staff last Friday to start using a “computational text analysis tool” to scan current and new grants for words and phrases that may mean they’re misaligned with NIH priorities. Staff were told to look out for terms such as “health equity” and “structural racism.” How this and the NSF policy changes will work in practice remains to be seen.
The educational improvement research field also awaits word on the future of the congressionally required Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which the administration gutted early this year amid its ongoing push to dismantle the larger Education Department. IES is the federal government’s central education data collection and research funding agency. Education secretary Linda McMahon hired a special adviser to “re-envision” it, but the plan hasn’t been released.
Overall, Pierce said 2026 “will continue to be a challenging year, especially for those researchers, institutions and trainees that have seen their grants terminated.” But she noted medical research is marked by passion for improving the nation’s health.
The suspect wanted in connection to a mass shooting at Brown University that killed two students and injured nine was found dead in a storage unit in Salem, N.H., authorities said at a news conference Thursday night.
They identified Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, as the man they say barged into an engineering classroom at Brown last Saturday and opened fire on students attending a review session. Valente died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“We are 100 percent confident that this is our target and that this case is closed from a perspective of pursuing people involved,” Rhode Island attorney general Peter Nerhona said.
Officials said they believed Valente was also connected to the murder of MIT nuclear physicist Nuno Loureiro earlier in the week. The same rental car had been spotted near Brown and outside Loureiro’s home, authorities said.
Loureiro was shot at his home Monday night and died at the hospital the next day. His home in Brookline, Mass., is about 50 miles from Brown. Authorities said that in the 1990s, Valente had attended the same university in Lisbon as Loureiro.
Brown President Christina Paxson said at the press conference that Valente had been a student at Brown in the early 2000s but withdrew. She noted that he was a physics student and had likely spent a lot of time in the Barus and Holley science building, where Saturday’s shooting took place.
Paxson wrote in an update Friday that the students injured Saturday were all improving; three had been released from the hospital and six remained in stable condition.
Officials said Valente entered the U.S. in 2000 on a student visa; he became a lawful permanent resident in 2017.
On Friday, the Trump administration announced it was suspending the green card lottery program through which Valente entered the country in 2017. The Diversity Immigrant Visa program, or DV1, allows some 50,000 people a year from low-immigration countries to participate in a random selection process for entry to the U.S.
Valente “entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem wrote on X. “This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country. … At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing [United States Citizenship and Immigration Services] to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
This story was updated 12/19 with news about the condition of the injured Brown students and the Trump administration’s pause on a visa lottery program.
For nine years, Inside Higher Ed published an annual list of predictions known as the In-and-Out List, before taking a four-year hiatus. That ends now. In the last edition, IHE staff called 2020 “a year from hell” and a “rough year for higher ed.”
As another year looms, colleges and universities are bracing for yet more upheavals as they try to navigate the new normal. Time—and 2026—will tell whether the sector is resilient enough to do so.
Below, we look at the rollercoaster that was 2025 and offer our own very loose predictions for what may lie ahead. Happy 2026.
This blog was kindly authored by Isabelle Bambury, Managing Director UK and Europe at Studiosity, a HEPI Partner
New research highlights a vital policy window: deploying Artificial Intelligence (AI) not as a policing tool but as a powerful mechanism to support student learning and academic persistence.
Evidence from independent researcher Dr Rebecca Mace, drawing on data generated by a mix of high, middle and low-tariff UK universities, suggests a compelling, positive correlation between the use of ethically embedded ‘AI for Learning’ tools and student retention, academic skill development and confidence. The findings challenge the predominant narrative that focuses solely on AI detection and academic misconduct, advocating instead for a clear and supportive policy framework to harness AI’s educational benefits.
Redefining the AI conversation: from threat to partner
The initial response of higher education institutions to generative AI has been, understandably, centred on fear of disruption. However, this focus overlooks its immense potential to address perennial challenges in the sector, particularly those related to retention and academic preparedness.
Understanding the purpose and pedagogical role of different types of AI – distinguishing between AI for learning, AI for correction, and AI for content generation – is crucial for their responsible and effective use in higher education, shaping institutional policy and student experience.
As Professor Rebecca Bunting, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire, notes in her Foreword to the new research:
The real conversation we should be having is not about whether students should use AI, but how it can be used ethically and effectively to improve learning outcomes for our students.
This sentiment was echoed in a recent webinar discussing the findings, where guest panelists argued that framing AI as a constant threat leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of how students perceive and use the technology.
HEPI’s Director, Nick Hillman OBE, reinforces the policy relevance of this shift in his own contribution to the new report:
The roll-out of AI is a great opportunity to improve all that higher education institutions do.
It is now becoming increasingly clear that AI is a tool for use by humans rather than a simple replacement for humans.
The measurable impact: confidence, skills, and retention
The new research focuses on a specific AI for Learning tool from Studiosity in which the AI acts as a learning partner, prompting reflection and supporting students in developing their own ideas, as opposed to generating content on their behalf.
The quantitative findings are striking:
Retention: There is a positive correlation on retention and progression for students using Studiosity . Students accessing this formative feedback were significantly more likely to continue their studies than those who did not. For high-risk students, in particular, higher engagement with Studiosity correlated with greater persistence. This suggests the tool acts as a ‘stabilising scaffold’, addressing not just academic gaps but also the psychological barriers (like low self-efficacy) that lead to attrition.
Academic skills development: Students showed measurable improvement across academic writing types, with the most significant gains observed in text analysis, scientific reports and essays. Critically, lower-performing students improved fastest, suggesting an equalising effect. This is because the Studiosity tool supports higher-order thinking skills like criticality, use of sources and complexity of language, not just mechanics.
Student voice and belonging: Students frequently said the Studiosity tool helped them ‘articulate their ideas more clearly’ and to ‘say it right’ rather than generating thoughts for them. During one of the focus groups, as one student said, ‘It’s not the ideas I struggled with; it’s how to start writing them down in the right way’. This function, sometimes called academic code-switching, is crucial for students from underrepresented backgrounds and is vital to fostering a sense of academic belonging.
Bridging the policy-practice divide and the need for equity
However, the research revealed a ‘concerning discrepancy’ between student perception and institutional regulation. A ‘low-trust culture’ appears to be developing, driven by vague institutional messaging, which sees students hiding their use of AI even when it is for legitimate support.
Staff often centre their concerns on policy enforcement and ‘spotting misuse’ while students focus on the personal anxiety of unintentionally crossing ‘ill-defined ethical lines’. As one student explained, ‘I would feel so guilty’ even if the AI would make their life easier, a sign that the guilt is ‘not rooted purely in fear of being caught, but in a deeper discomfort about presenting work as their own’.
Moreover, there is a clear equity issue. Paywalled AI tools risk deepening the digital divide and penalising students from lower-income backgrounds. Students with low AI literacy are more likely to be flagged for misconduct because they use AI clumsily, while digitally fluent students can blend AI support more subtly.
Recommendations for an ethical AI strategy
The solution is not to resist AI but to integrate it with intentionality, strategy and clarity. The research offers clear and constructive policy proposals for the sector:
Choose the right tool for the job: Focus on dedicated AI for Learning tools that develop skills and maintain academic integrity, rather than all-purpose content-generating chatbots.
Design clear and consistent policy: Develop nuanced policies that move beyond a binary definition of ‘cheating’ to reflect the complex and iterative ways students are now using AI, ensuring consistency across the institution.
Promote transparency: Educators should disclose their own appropriate AI use to remove stigma and foster a culture of critical engagement, allowing students to speak openly about their support needs.
Prioritise equitable access: Institutions should invest in institutionally funded tools to mitigate the digital literacy and economic divides, ensuring all students – especially those most at risk – have fair and transparent access to academic support.
In conclusion
The report concludes that AI offers a substantial policy opportunity to boost a student’s sense of legitimacy and belonging, directly contributing to one of the sector’s most pressing concerns: student success and retention. Policymakers should now shift their attention from policing to pedagogy. You can access a copy of the full report here.
Studiosity is writing feedback and assessment security to support students and validate learning outcomes at hundreds of universities across five continents, with research-backed evidence of impact.
Over the past several years, I have had the deep privilege of participating in The Way of Remembering (WOR), a spiritually grounded journey to Benin that looks at intergenerational trauma and healing through the lens of African ways of knowing. Benin is a beautiful country and is the birthplace of Vodún (commonly called Voodoo). It is also home to strong oral traditions and healing practices that focus on community connections. As a site deeply scarred by the transatlantic slave trade, Benin holds the weight of immense suffering and also resonates with profound resilience and the capacity for collective healing and growth. I first learned about WOR from a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Omavi Bailey, whom I was mentoring and who later invited me to join him on the trip. The Way of Remembering is designed to help people in the African diaspora reconnect with their ancestral heritage and discover healing methods that address harm passed down through families and communities.
The journey follows five stages: recognition, repentance, reparation, reconciliation, and rehumanization. Indigenous healers I’ve met describe these stages as linked and recurring, each one essential in restoring our shared humanity. Although these stages can be viewed in order, each one connects with and affects the others, showing how healing and growth rarely follow a simple path. Over the years, my experiences there have enabled me to broaden my understanding of trauma, helped me see the power and complexity of healing, and inspired me to think about how these ideas apply to higher education—especially since I am reminded every day that everything is connected.
In Benin (and in other West and East African countries I have visited), I have seen practices that stand apart from the dominant Western approach to trauma, which often looks at individual problems and mechanical fixes. On a recent trip, I asked my mentor, Dr. Erick Gbodossou, what trauma meant to him. He explained that it is “disequilibrium”—not just inside one person’s body but also in their ties to the outside world, community, and nature. In many African philosophies, such as Ubuntu (“I am because we are”), an individual’s wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of the entire group. Any imbalance in one person affects and is shaped by the community. This holistic understanding directly challenges a Western dominant view that focuses only on individual symptoms, ignoring the wider ties that keep us healthy or contribute to our suffering.
I immediately saw how Dr. Gbodossou’s answers connect to higher education, where we often separate knowledge, experiences, and wellbeing. As I am sure many of you can attest, in many academic settings the tendency is to separate disciplines and roles and even mind from body, overlooking the fact that learning is deeply interwoven with emotional, social, and environmental factors. The wonderful Laura Rendón, in her article, “Recasting Agreements That Govern Teaching and Learning: An Intellectual and Spiritual Framework for Transformation,” writes about what she calls “the agreement of separation,” the underlying belief that knowledge, people, and experiences exist in isolated compartments rather than being part of a larger, interconnected whole. She quotes Thich Nhat Hanh, who says, “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” Rendón reminds us that we often operate from a standpoint that breaks teaching and learning into parts—mind versus spirit, teacher versus student—when real learning calls for a more united view. Thich Nhat Hanh’s words urge us to see that our greatest purpose is to awaken to our shared life. Yet in the current model of education, we seem to move further away from that recognition, asking students (and ourselves) to keep pushing through tasks without pausing to notice our connectedness.
Dr. Gbodossou readily brought up education when talking about trauma and healing and went on to explain how education has the potential to perpetuate cycles of trauma or transform them into healing cycles. And to transform them into positive growth cycles, it’s necessary to understand the relational nature of trauma and healing. Realizing this potential in education made me think about how our teaching practices can either isolate or integrate the diverse dimensions of learners’ experiences. When we recognize how learning connects to our relationships, we can create spaces where students feel a sense of connection—to themselves, to each other, and to the world around them; see cultivating those connections as part of how they learn; and recognize how learning can be one step toward healing and repair.
Viewing things in this more connected way contrasts sharply with the Cartesian model of Western thought, which shaped much of my own study in philosophy and neuroscience. That model often puts the individual first, values objectivity over everything else, and treats the mind and body as separate. African and other Indigenous worldviews, by contrast, invite us to see the world as a network of relationships in which knowledge is shared among groups and passed down through time. They also embrace ideas about how learning does not always happen in a straight line but can unfold in flexible and surprising ways. Again, from this viewpoint, trauma does not affect only one person; it interrupts the bonds among individuals, communities, ancestors, and nature. Healing requires mending these bonds—or even creating new ones—often through rituals that include body and mind and community. Such rituals use beauty, symbols, and group participation to restore balance.
I have been privileged to see and take part in ceremonies and gatherings in Benin, Kenya, Uganda, and Senegal. For many years, I didn’t speak about my experience, because it felt so ethereal, and words often failed me. I realized these ceremonies are not just performances but active interventions that restore social, emotional, and spiritual equilibrium. These practices focus on remembering in a very real sense—not just recalling bits of information stored in the brain but letting the body (seen as an archive) itself serve as a source of healing and integration. Through repeated rhythms, movements, and symbols, people mend memories that feel broken, bringing together everyone involved. Whether they use drumming, dancing, or shared sacred objects, community participants embody an aesthetic that draws everyone together, forging a collective sense of harmony and renewal. What moves me most—and what I have come to value deeply—is the comfort people find in these repeated patterns and symbols, which support the entire community and guide them toward healing by providing familiar rhythms and shared focus.
These ideas have pushed me to explore what they might mean for how we teach. Too often, our classrooms reflect Cartesian separation: not only mind from body, student from teacher, but also rationality from emotion, past from present, us from them. Yet we humans naturally look for connections, meaning, and beauty, and we find comfort in rituals. I could cite dozens of studies from peer-reviewed journals to convince you that rituals improve attention and retention, but many of you already believe in the power of these practices, so I won’t bury you in jargon. From lullabies we hear as children to ceremonies we attend as adults, we are drawn to repetition, symbolic acts, and sensory experiences that help us make sense of the world through connections. We often overlook these in education because they do not seem measurable or directly tied to learning. But I keep thinking about what a Sufi teacher, Kabir Helminski, once said: What if the most important things in life are the things we cannot measure—things like love and empathy? That question lingers in my mind, especially when I think about teaching. These unmeasurable qualities can help address the sense of disconnection that many students feel in academic settings.
Inspired by my time in Benin, I have started imagining what it could look like to bring beauty and ritual into the classroom. By “beauty,” I mean the elements—visual, auditory, or experiential—that awaken a sense of wonder, joy, curiosity, coherence, and common humanity. By “ritual,” I mean repeated, deliberate actions or gestures that bring participants into a collective rhythm and reflective space, grounding the learning experience in shared purpose. Simple things—like opening class with a moment of silence, gratitude, touching the ground, or playing music—can serve as rituals that center students and help them be truly present. Bringing music, art, or movement into our teaching invites students to feel and experience ideas rather than only think about them, showing us that our bodies play an important part in knowledge, remembering, and knowing. Changing the classroom layout—using a circle of chairs, adding a meaningful centerpiece, or displaying student art—can help turn the room into a place for shared experience, not just a one-way delivery of facts. Involving students in creating classroom rituals or decorating the space can also help them feel ownership and belonging. Such involvement gives students a chance to shape their learning environment, which can boost their sense of being valued and included. That is, when our students help design the rituals or artwork, they can feel they are co-creators in the educational process rather than bystanders.
Over several years, I have been refining a classroom ritual that centers on the heart. At the start of each semester, I talk with my students about why they are here, about finding meaning in what they learn, and about how learning engages their minds and bodies. I share research showing that memory is stored in the brain and in other organs. I describe how my Muslim upbringing highlights the importance of the heart. The Arabic word for heart—Qalb—comes from a root meaning “to turn.” We are always turning toward each other, toward the divine, and toward truth. I give each student a small gem in the shape of a heart and invite them to bring their hearts to the learning journey. The heart gems come in different colors and look a bit like yummy candy. Although some students are uncertain at first, they soon discover how this practice sets a warm tone. It also signals that they can speak from the heart in a science class, which might not be what they expect. Sometimes I even greet them by asking, “How’s your heart?” They come to see that this is a real invitation, and it can spark genuine sharing.
When I first came to this country, I took English as a second language during my sophomore year of high school. My teacher asked us to bring an object that mattered to us and, if we felt comfortable, pass it around to our classmates. This simple activity was a beautiful ritual because it honored who we were, let us show a piece of ourselves, and helped the class feel like a real community. It’s something I remembered years later and see as a moment of true validation.
Similarly, in a literature class, for example, a professor might invite students to bring in their favorite book or share a story from their childhood. If possible, have the student pass the book or object around as they explain its significance. This ritual encourages active listening and signals that every voice counts.
By contrast, in a biology lab, taking a moment to acknowledge the natural resources and the history behind modern scientific research can serve as a ritual of gratitude and humility, connecting students to a broader context. These kinds of rituals and practices may be especially important in STEM fields, where teaching can sometimes feel cold or purely analytical. By adding a sense of wonder, reflection, and shared humanity, we remind students that science is not just about data; it’s about people working to understand life and make discoveries that can benefit us all.
I share these ideas to invite my colleagues—whoever you are—to create your own beautiful rituals in your classes and to encourage your students to do the same. There is no single right way. Your rituals might emerge from your cultural traditions or from your curiosity and imagination. Whatever the source, when we welcome these practices, we create a space for students to feel both a deep sense of purpose and a personal connection to each other and what they are learning.
Even small gestures—like starting class by saying thank you or ending with a reflective exercise—can remind everyone that learning is not just something happening in the mind but something we do together as people. Over time, these actions can build a classroom culture that encourages connection instead of isolation, involvement instead of passive listening, and mindfulness instead of simply going through the motions. These steps indeed deepen students’ learning as well as support their emotional health and strengthen the classroom community. Taking a step back to notice how these seemingly small actions can transform the classroom can remind us that teaching is about forming connections as much as it is about sharing knowledge.
Ritual themselves can bring beauty. Beauty is not just a decoration: It can become a source of healing, inviting wonder, joy, and a sense of unity. Bringing beauty into teaching—through ceremonies, art, music, or group storytelling—helps us resist the mechanistic, transactional models of schooling that can stifle creativity and leave emotional and spiritual dimensions of learning and personal growth unaddressed. Instead, we can build a place where students are seen as whole people and where their emotional and cultural backgrounds—and even their pasts and futures—are honored.
Beauty through ritual is especially important for students who bear the weight of intergenerational trauma. When we hold rituals that allow students to share and be witnessed, we help them imagine new narratives that go beyond their trauma, and we plant seeds of possibility for their futures and the future of all of us. The sense of belonging grows into a sense of agency to rewrite their own stories and become part of a greater healing process that stretches across generations.
Of course, it goes without saying that bringing elements of ritual and beauty into the classroom requires care. That is, when I think about these practices, I want to remain mindful of cultural sensitivity, recognizing that practices drawn from specific traditions should be adapted respectfully and, ideally, with guidance from those who uphold those traditions.
My experiences in Benin have taught me so much—above all that yes, education can be a pathway for intellectual growth as much as it can open possibilities and facilitate personal growth and collective healing. I often cry when I leave Benin. The separation feels wounding, and my mentors often remind me that “we are together.” This year especially, I want to be more intentional to take Benin with me into my teaching and to be more intentional about using African epistemology, which emphasizes community wisdom, ancestral insights, and balance with the environment, to rethink how we teach and learn. What if we let rituals anchor these efforts, creating spaces where I and my students can face previous wounds and imagine fresh possibilities?
I believe this more holistic view of education calls us to move beyond a narrow, overly pedantic approach to learning and into a classroom culture where healing is everyone’s responsibility. By adding beauty and ritual to our teaching, we can affirm that education is about so much more than transferring information. Education can restore a sense of wholeness and give us the chance to nurture a more caring and honest story of who we are as a human family. We can plant seeds that will grow long after our time with students is over, watering a shared garden that will bloom for future generations.
Mays Imad is an associate professor of physiology at Connecticut College. Previously, she taught for 14 years at Pima Community College, where she also founded the teaching and learning center. She is a Gardner Institute Fellow for Undergraduate Education, an Association of American Colleges & Universities Senior STEM Fellow, a Mind and Life Institute Fellow, A scholar-in-residence at Georgetown University’s Red House, and a research fellow with the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ) at the University of Stellenbosch.
