Tag: Education

The NIH Policy Holding Researchers “Hostage”

Rachael Sirianni is one of the thousands of research scientists whose work has been decimated by the Trump administration’s massive cuts to the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies.

“My lab is crumbling,” said the pediatric brain cancer researcher, who works at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. “Over the course of the last eight months, I’ve had to shutter more than half of my research program.”

At the same time, she has a backlog of papers she’s still trying to get published in journals that are the best fit for her research and career, including several that charge thousands in fees to make the paper free to access. And if she wants her work to comply with a new NIH policy to expedite public access to federally funded research—part of the agency’s effort to restore trust in science, it says—she may have to start paying even more.

The 2024 Public Access Policy, which took effect July 1, requires federally funded researchers to deposit their accepted peer-reviewed article manuscript into an open-access repository, such as the NIH-managed PubMed Central, immediately after a journal accepts it for publication. But researchers are reporting that some journals, including at least several high-impact titles owned by Elsevier, Wiley and Springer—are charging authors anywhere from $2,000 to more than $10,000 in article processing charges (APCs) to make their work immediately accessible.

While researchers can use their NIH grants to pay for APCs, that’s hard for some to justify in such a precarious funding environment.

“If I had full access to the institutional dollars that normally support my research program, or if I really believed that that grant that scored well is eventually going to get funded, I could risk my research dollars on these open-access fees,” Sirianni said. “But because of the trauma that the Trump administration is imposing on scientists across the country, we are faced with impossible decisions. Do we dedicate our money to the experiments? Do we maintain our research personnel? Do we comply with open-access fees?”

Open-access advocates and experts say that predicament is exposing the limits of the government’s ability to rein in the $19 billion scholarly publishing industry, which is fueled by academic incentive structures that reward researchers for publishing frequently in widely cited, prestigious journals. Meanwhile, the publishing industry—which has long opposed immediate open access in part because it threatens subscription-dependent business models—says the rollout of the policy gives them no choice but to charge APCs.

Zero Embargo

The 2024 policy replaces the 2008 Public Access Policy, which allowed publishers to embargo new peer-reviewed federally funded research articles for 12 months before making them publicly available. That embargo period allowed publishers to turn a profit from selling academic libraries subscriptions to exclusive content; authors who wanted to make their papers publicly accessible before the embargo was lifted typically paid an APC.

The government’s goal in lifting the embargo was to promote “equity and advance the work of restoring the public’s trust in Government science, and to advance American scientific leadership,” Alondra Nelson, the former acting director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in a 2022 memo bearing her name. “A federal public access policy consistent with our values of equal opportunity must allow for broad and expeditious sharing of federally funded research—and must allow all Americans to benefit from the returns on our research and development investments without delay.”

Although the Biden administration finalized the policy, the Trump administration is carrying it forward. It was set to take effect across federal agencies on Dec. 31, but NIH director Jay Bhattacharya announced in April that he was implementing it six months ahead of schedule to promote “maximum transparency.”

Although Sirianni supports the spirit of NIH’s new open-access policy, she’s worried that high APCs will deter researchers from submitting their work to influential journals that might otherwise be a good fit, to the detriment of the scientific literature.

“There’s absolutely going to be a lot of work that doesn’t get published or gets published in the wrong journal,” Sirianni said. “This policy is harming scientists. Instead of ensuring that research dollars are invested in providing knowledge to the scientific community and to the public, those dollars will be spent on feeding giant publishing corporations more money.”

‘Not Sustainable’?

However, publishers say the NIH’s zero-embargo policy is forcing them to recoup lost subscription revenue through APCs to sustain operational costs, including article selection, curation, peer and editorial review, publication, archiving, and maintenance.

“We are unable to support approaches that aim to make subscription articles immediately and freely available, which are not sustainable in the long term given they undermine the subscription model on which they depend,” an Elsevier spokesperson said in an email to Inside Higher Ed.

“The best method for addressing issues of cost in publication is through a vibrant, competitive, and dynamic publishing marketplace with maximum author choice, including fee-based public access and read-and-publish agreements,” Carl Maxwell, senior vice president of public policy for the Association of American Publishers, who lobbied against the zero-embargo policy, wrote in an email. “We don’t think it’s a good idea to compel researchers to use a one-size-fits-all open access business model that has the potential to require NIH-funded researchers to pay out of pocket to fund the peer review process, in some cases harming their ability to communicate their research results to the scientific community and the general public.”

Caroline Sutton, CEO for the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, added that researchers’ frustration with the NIH’s new open-access policy “reveals one of the real human impacts of well-intentioned policies that do not fully consider the operational realities of the research ecosystem.”

It also raises long-standing questions about how to sustain that ecosystem.

“Should the responsibility for funding this work lie with the funder? With the research or institutional library? Should publishers not be compensated?” she wrote in an email. “And how can the critical system of checks and balances—which must be resourced—endure if it is not sustainably funded?”

But another sector sustaining the scientific publishing industry is the faculty who produce and peer review research for little to no financial compensation. The most productive are often rewarded instead with tenure, promotion and cachet.

Holding Articles ‘Hostage’

While the NIH policy doesn’t require authors to publish in journals that charge APCs—plenty of reputable, fully open-access journals exist—researchers say where they publish matters to their careers. At most universities, frequently publishing research in prestigious, high-impact journals—including many with hefty APCs—carries more weight with tenure and review committees than publishing in more obscure journals.

But researchers aren’t always clear on a journal’s APC guidelines until they get through the review process and are asked to pay open-access fees to comply with the NIH policy, Rachel Widome, a public health professor at the University of Minnesota, told Inside Higher Ed. She withdrew an article from the Elsevier-owned Sleep Health on how school start times impact adolescents after she realized she’d have to pay a $2,500 fee to upload her accepted manuscript to PubMed Central in compliance with NIH policy.

“When that happens, they’re holding your article hostage,” she said. “Do you start from scratch and submit it to a new journal? It can take six to nine months to go through another review.”

She ended up resubmitting the article to Sleep Health after her NIH grant ended, exempting her from the zero-embargo policy. Although “time has been wasted,” she said the APCs stand to hurt early-career scientists the most. “It’s so critical that they establish a publication record,” Widome said. “If the options of which journals they can submit to are really limited [because of APCs], that hurts their chances of getting her research out and launching her career.”

‘Valuing Prestige’

But those academic incentive structures have also emboldened publishers to levy APCs in response to the NIH’s zero-embargo policy, said Dave Hansen, executive director of the Authors Alliance, a California-based nonprofit that supports authors in disseminating their work.

“So much of the system is wrapped around valuing prestige journals that are published by some of these bigger commercial publishers. That’s really hard for even a big institution like the NIH to nudge researchers away from,” Hansen said, adding that the NIH could de-emphasize prestige factors when evaluating researchers. At the same time, “a lot of publishers recognize that there’s a massive amount of federal funding that they can now demand access to because of this new federal policy.”

The zero-embargo policy isn’t the NIH’s only attempt to regulate the scientific publishing industry. This summer, Bhattacharya proposed capping APCs to weaken the market power of publishers, dilute the scientific elite and “make science accessible not only to the public but also to the broader scientific community, while ending perverse incentives that don’t benefit taxpayers,” he said. But critics say the plan is neither comprehensive enough to dismantle academic incentive structures, nor likely to substantially lower APCs.

And the frustration researchers are experiencing in the early days of the NIH’s new zero-embargo access policy—which was crafted with some of the same goals as the NIH’s proposed APC caps—is already offering support for those predictions.

“The NIH public-access policy applies to a vast amount of research, but it’s also just a percentage of the overall landscape. There are a number of players here, including the funders, researchers, institutions, publishers and libraries,” said Katie Funk, former program manager for PubMed Central, who helped develop the zero-embargo policy.

“Without addressing the whole system, it just causes confusion,” she added. “Larger conversations need to be had about the costs of publishing. It’s not transparent and it’s pervading the whole system.”

(This article has been updated to correct the name of the UMass medical school.)

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December 5, 2025
How Talks Over New Earnings Test Could Ensnare Gainful Employment

Starting next July, colleges and universities’ access to federal student loans will hinge on how much their graduates make after Congress’s new earnings test, known as the Do No Harm standard, takes effect.

This monumental shift in how the federal government holds degree programs accountable is one that’s years in the making. But when Congress passed the law, one key type of degree program was left out—undergraduate certificates.

Lawmakers from both parties have long said holding colleges accountable for cost is critical in order to drive down borrower-default rates and protect students from paying high tuition without a guaranteed return on investment. Yet, the very students and programs Republicans left out of the earnings test are expected to face the worst return on investment, studies show.

Under the so-called Do No Harm test, a program would lose access to federal loans if its average graduate doesn’t earn more than someone with a high school diploma for two out of three consecutive years. And while students enrolled in undergraduate certificate programs only make up about 10 percent of all those receiving federal aid, they account for about half of those who attend programs projected to fail the earnings test, according to research from American University’s Postsecondary Education & Economics Research Center.

For now, a different rule, known as gainful employment, holds certificate programs with a poor return on investment accountable using a similar earnings test and a metric related to a student’s debt. But unlike Do No Harm, the Biden-era gainful-employment rule only applies to certificate programs and for-profit colleges.

According to the Federal Register rule-making notice, the Department of Education and an advisory committee are set to both iron out the details of Do No Harm and rehash the gainful-employment rule during a months-long process known as negotiated rule making. But while the process begins Monday, the initial meeting agenda doesn’t include any discussion about either issue. Instead, the first week of rule making will focus specifically on regulations that expand the Pell Grant to short-term job training programs, and then the committee will break for the holidays.

In the meantime, education experts are left to wonder what the fate of accountability for certificate programs will be—and tensions remain. For-profit institutions remain critical of gainful employment, calling it an uneven playing field. Colleges and universities of all types worry that both metrics are holding them accountable for factors outside of their control. And student and taxpayer advocates stress that it’s important to ensure federal dollars are being put toward programs that pay off.

But when conversations about the accountability measures do kick off, policy experts from all sides agree that the regulations regarding gainful employment, which are not as restricted by the new law, will be the most contentious topic of debate.

“The thing that will take up a lot of oxygen in the room is gainful employment,” said Clare McCann, a former Education Department official who is now the PEER Center’s managing director of policy and operations. “Republicans have come a long way in believing accountability is important. So the desire to settle accountability issues as much as possible, for once and for all, runs pretty deep.”

A Perennial Political Football

Since the Obama administration first established a gainful-employment rule in 2010, Republicans and Democrats have fought over how to hold career education programs accountable.

The first Trump administration made rescinding the Obama-era rule a priority, and then the Biden administration put a stronger iteration in place. This back-and-forth raised speculation that the second Trump administration would once again roll back gainful employment.

However, officials have sent some mixed signals. The administration has pursued deregulation while also opting to defend the Biden rule in court. (A federal judge upheld it earlier this fall.) Further, the Trump administration’s push for greater federal involvement in higher education runs counter to many of its actions in the first term. The Education Department has yet to release its plans for the accountability provisions, fueling uncertainty about the fate of gainful employment.

Key Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the education committee, have said undergraduate certificates were only exempted from the new Do No Harm standard because of the gainful-employment rule. (The senator’s response implies that holding certificates accountable under both standards would be duplicative.)

As it currently stands, gainful employment requires certificate programs at any institution and degree programs at for-profit colleges to pass two tests. The first is similar to the Do No Harm earnings test. The second one, known as the debt-to-earnings ratio, gauges whether the average student earns enough to reasonably pay off their loans. Programs that fail either test are at risk of losing access to all federal student aid, including both loans and the need-based Pell Grant.

About 1.4 million students annually use federal aid to attend undergraduate certificate programs, and without gainful employment, advocates worry they are at risk of enrolling in programs that fail to provide a positive return on investment.

New data from the Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank, showed that while two out of every three programs projected to fail the gainful-employment tests would also fail Do No Harm, about 400 programs could squeeze by, passing the new earnings test while failing the gainful-employment debt-to-earnings ratio. Those programs represent about $528 million in annual Pell Grant disbursements.

“Someone who wanted to take a lot of Pell money by setting up a bad program … could set up a program, which may not require students to take out loans but still is not worth their time or that Pell Grant money,” said Peter Granville, a Century Foundation fellow and author of the report. “That’s a crack which we’re concerned bad actors could go in and use to game the system.”

Advocates like Granville urge the department to not touch gainful employment. Meanwhile, most institutional representatives Inside Higher Ed spoke with said they’d like to see more clarity in the policy proposals about how the Do No Harm test will work and are advocating for at least some changes to make gainful employment more fair. During public comment, the trade association Career Education Colleges and Universities, which represents for-profits, called on ED to “take the opportunity to fully rescind” the gainful-employment rule.

But one institutional representative who will serve as a member of the negotiating committee said that while institutions may want to see changes made to the gainful-employment rule, it seems highly unlikely that it will be fully rescinded the way it was during Trump’s first term.

“Whether it’s the department or negotiators, I think anyone coming in and trying to say, ‘There should just be nothing that applies to nondegree programs,’ seems pretty inconsistent with the language coming out of Congress,” the representative said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect his good faith in negotiations. “It also just seems like it would be a really challenging position to defend.”

Some Potential Changes

So if the department doesn’t try to roll gainful employment back entirely, could they change the regulations in other ways? Experts, advocates and institutions have several ideas if they do.

Advocates for for-profit institutions have argued for years that all programs should be subject to the gainful-employment rule. But one policy expert, who asked to speak anonymously since the department has yet to release its proposals, said that stripping gainful employment down to the bare bones to directly mirror the Do No Harm test seems unlikely.

“Congress left out undergraduate certs, and that’s the only fair reading of the law. So … presumably you can’t do the exact same thing as the Do No Harm measure for undergraduate certs,” the source said.

Instead, the expert hopes that the department will do what it can to better level the playing field while maintaining accountability for certificate programs. One way of doing that, the source suggested, is to lower the ages of adults with high school diplomas that are used in comparison and extend the time before earnings are measured.

Currently under gainful employment, the earnings premium test compares the income of certificate and degree holders three years after graduation to adults ages 25 to 34. That means a 21-year-old with a certificate in phlebotomy could be compared to a 34-year-old flight attendant.

The Do No Harm test is expected to use data for the same age group and compare it to students four years after they graduate, but since the gainful-employment rule has other stipulations like the debt-to-earnings ratio and the higher penalty of losing Pell Grants, the expert said they would “like to see a better, more reasonable comparison group.”

Other potential changes on the table could include eliminating the debt-to-earnings test but keeping the Pell-eligibility penalty for both certificate and for-profit programs or opting to maintain gainful employment for certificate programs while for-profit programs would only be subjected to the Do No Harm test. But, for each policy expert that proposed one of these ideas, another suggested that it could lead to legal challenges.

In general, policy experts said, until the issue papers are published, it will be difficult to predict what the Trump administration plans to do.

Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, will be serving on the negotiating committee. He said he understands the argument that it’s not fair to hold for-profit institutions to a higher standard, but he wants to ensure “the strongest accountability that we can possibly get.”

“As the taxpayer representative, I certainly find it compelling … because if we have weaker accountability, then we’re losing more money on Pell Grants and student loans,” he said. “But ultimately, it will come down to what they decide to propose in the issue papers.”

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December 5, 2025
An Unjust Suspension in Oklahoma

University of Oklahoma officials suspended graduate teaching assistant Mel Curth from teaching on Sunday after a student, Samantha Fulnecky, complained about getting a failing grade on an assignment. The incident has sparked a lot of debate about whether Fulnecky’s essay, which repeatedly invoked the Bible and denounced transgender people (including, reportedly, her instructor) as “demonic,” deserved a poor grade for its lack of academic rigor or if Fulnecky was unjustly punished for her religiously motivated political opinions.

However, this debate about grading obscures the far more important question at hand about academic freedom: Should instructors be suspended from their classes without due process and proof of misconduct?

The answer is clear, and everyone—liberal or conservative, anti-trans or pro–trans rights—should agree with this basic concept: No instructor should be suspended from teaching without being found guilty of misconduct. This is a fundamental tenet of justice: innocent until proven guilty.

Banning an instructor from the classroom is one of the most serious violations of academic freedom because it so clearly abridges the freedom to teach. It prohibits a teacher entirely from expressing their ideas in the classroom. It deprives students of the opportunity to hear from their teacher. And it sends a chilling message to the entire campus that expressing the wrong ideas can be punished without due process. Instructors should only be removed from classes when they are committing irreparable harm to students—for example, by physically endangering them, or by refusing to teach their classes. But there is no irreparable harm in a grade dispute, because grade appeals allow students to receive a just result. Grading disputes do not justify emergency action.

Let us consider the worst-case scenario here: The instructor gave a lousy grade to a student who called them (and all trans people) “demonic.” It might be deserving of a grade appeal and measures taken to protect the student from unfair grading. However, we have no evidence of any general misconduct or bias in grading. We have one public complaint from a particularly obnoxious student and no other allegations of any wrongdoing.

An instructor who gives a wrong grade on an assignment to one incredibly offensive student may have fallen short of our ideals for a teacher. But even if this allegation was thoroughly investigated and definitely proven, it would not by itself justify removing an instructor from teaching as a punishment. It certainly cannot justify an interim suspension without proof of misconduct.

Imagine if a Christian student with a Jewish instructor had referred to Jews as a “demonic” force. Would we be so quick to denounce the teacher who objected to such vile hatred and regarded it as unworthy of academic work? It’s only the hatred of trans people that sparks a very different reaction today. But even if the instructor’s response was understandable, it still could be wrong. Still, the determination by a body of faculty experts about whether it was wrong has not yet been determined, and until it is, a suspension is unjustified.

Incredibly, this violation of basic rights by the University of Oklahoma was denounced by conservatives as inadequate. State Sen. Shane Jett (R-Shawnee), chair of the Oklahoma Freedom Caucus, declared, “Placing the instructor on leave is not sufficient. It’s another weak and cowardly response.” The Freedom Caucus called for “cuts to state funding for higher education institutions until free speech and religious liberty are verifiably protected so conservatives are no longer targeted.”

The conservatives clamoring for blood in Oklahoma should question whether they really want to endorse the idea of administrators suspending any professor accused of saying or doing something that upsets a student.

As I have long argued, interim suspensions violate academic freedom by suppressing speech without proof of misconduct. It’s time for people on all sides in all cases to condemn interim suspensions on a universal, consistent and principled basis.

If the Oklahoma TA is found to be guilty of violating academic standards after a fair hearing, and if the determination of academic experts is that she made a terrible mistake and is incapable of learning from it, then a suspension from teaching could be justified. But academic freedom requires due process, and we fundamentally betray it when we punish people before finding them guilty of misconduct.

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December 5, 2025
Breaking barriers: advancing ethnic diversity in higher education professional services
This blog was kindly authored by Dr Louise Oldridge, Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University (with research team Dr Maranda Ridgway, Dr David Dahill, Dr Ricky Gee, Dr Stefanos Nachmias, Dr Loyin Olotu-Umoren, Dr Jessie Pswarayi, Dr Sarah Smith, Natalie Selby-Shaw and Dr Rhianna Garrett).

Despite decades of progress in widening participation and diversifying student bodies, UK higher education still faces a stark reality: senior professional services roles remain overwhelmingly white.

Indeed, when the professional body for senior professional services staff (Association of Heads of University Administration – AHUA) embarked on work to ‘shift the dial’ on race, membership had less than 5% global majority colleagues.

While universities champion equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), and the sector has developed levers such as the Race Equality Charter (REC), the lived experiences of ethnically minoritised staff highlight systemic barriers that hinder career progression and perpetuate inequality.

A recent research project funded by AHUA and conducted by the Centre for People, Work & Organizational Practice at Nottingham Business School explored these challenges. Drawing on interviews, focus groups, and institutional data, the project studied the career barriers and enablers for ethnically minoritised professionals in senior roles.

The diversity gap in professional services leadership

University leadership teams have diversified in some areas, for instance among governors, students, and even vice-chancellors, but senior professional services remain largely homogenous.

Recruitment practices, opaque progression pathways, and institutional norms continue to privilege whiteness and middle-class values, leaving talented individuals from minoritised backgrounds sidelined.

With limited institutional data available for the study, it revealed that while representation among lower-grade professional services roles has improved, senior positions tell a different story.

Unlike academic colleagues, there is a stark shift in career management for professional services staff, with our research finding that many institutions are unequipped to track the career trajectories of professional service staff.

Lived experiences: authenticity, masking, and emotional labour

The qualitative insights from interviews and focus groups paint a vivid picture of what it means to navigate professional services as a person of colour. Participants spoke candidly about the emotional labour involved in “code-switching” (altering language, appearance, or behaviour to fit dominant norms) and “masking” aspects of identity to avoid judgment or exclusion.

One participant reflected: “I felt I had to disappear… to succeed, I needed to be someone else.” Others described being labelled as “diversity hires” or facing regular microaggressions that impacted confidence and wellbeing.

Intersectionality compounds these challenges. Participant responses indicated that race intersected with gender, class, disability, and caring responsibilities, creating layered barriers that are often invisible to policy-makers. Women of colour, for instance, reported being undermined due to both race and gender, while those with disabilities faced inflexibility and a lack of empathy.

Performative EDI and the need for structural change

In a blog on the REC for Advance HE, Patrick Johnson calls for institutions to make an authentic commitment to dismantling racial barriers for staff. Institutions can use data to expose disparities and perceptions of the operating culture and environment.

As Patrick notes, it is important that challenges are acknowledged openly and specific actions put in place in response.

That said, participants in this research questioned the depth of their organisation’s commitments. EDI initiatives were described as performative and focused on optics rather than outcomes. As one interviewee put it:

We talk about EDI when we’re going for awards, but it’s not part of our everyday practice.

This disconnect between rhetoric and reality highlights a critical gap: policies alone cannot dismantle systemic inequities.

Ultimately, what is needed is leadership from those in roles which can challenge the structural issue, redefine what it means to be ‘professional’, develop clear career pathways, transparent promotion processes, and accountability mechanisms that move beyond tick-box exercises. REC is a starting point for supporting this process, but cannot be seen either as a panacea or an end in itself.

Five pathways to change

The report offers a roadmap for transformation, organised into five thematic areas:
1. Structural reform and policy change
  Clarify career pathways for professional services staff, audit recruitment practices, embed accountability into EDI policies and ensure progression routes are transparent – such as providing an understanding of ‘typical’ career histories for leadership roles.
2. Representation and inclusion
  Increase diversity at senior levels through targeted development and sponsorship. Avoid tokenism by ensuring ethnically minoritised staff have meaningful influence, not just visibility. This could include clearer succession planning.
3. Development, support, and research
  Invest in mentoring, coaching, and executive development programmes tailored to professional services. This reflects both formal support staff networks and more informal collectives, alongside committing to longitudinal research to track progress. For example, creating an informal network of colleagues across the sector.
4. Cultural change and co-creation
  Move beyond compliance-driven EDI to authentic engagement. Challenge assumptions about professionalism and leadership, and co-create inclusive cultures with staff. This could mean redefining what institutions view as ‘professional(ism)’.
5. Sector-level collaboration and accountability
  Coordinate efforts across professional bodies, share best practice, and ensure transparent reporting. Diversity must be a collective responsibility, and could include sector-wide knowledge exchange, clear metrics and outcomes.
From awareness to action

The report calls for dismantling what research team member Rhianna Garrett describes as ‘the architecture of whiteness’, which underpins institutional norms. This means rethinking recruitment, valuing professional services as integral to university success, and creating spaces where ethnically minoritised staff can thrive without compromising their identity.

As one focus group participant put it:

We recognise there is an issue, but I don’t think we really understand what to do about it – and a big part of that is because things are so white.

For AHUA, and other sector professional service organisations, this report is a call for the sector to deliver systemic, sustained change. The question is not whether higher education can afford to prioritise diversity in professional services leadership; it is whether it can afford not to. It informs our next steps in a Theory of Change workshop to identify meaningful actions moving forward.

As Dr Andrew Young, Chief Operating Office, The London School of Economics and Political Science, and AHUA project sponsor states:

The evidence in this report should make all of us in higher education uncomfortable. Change will only happen when we stop celebrating statements of intent and start measuring outcomes.
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December 5, 2025
Higher education postcard: Falmouth University
Falmouth is a long way from nearly everywhere else, if you’re travelling by land. This is a very salient fact. It means that if you’re in Falmouth, then Falmouth is where you first look for anything.

And so the Falmouth School of Art, which looks to have started sometime in 1867 or 1868, must have been very welcome to the town and the county.

The classes, which had been held in the municipal offices as part of a school of art and science, had outgrown their space and in 1901 the foundation stone was laid for a new building, in Arwenack Avenue. This would house just the art school.

The observant amongst you will have noticed by now that the postcard is a general view of Falmouth. This is an occupational hazard when trying to find a #HigherEducationPostcard of an institution in a picturesque place, or one with other famous buildings. It is why, for example, its hard to find a postcard of SOAS, when UCL and Senate House are nearby. But, the card does include Arwenack Avenue, on which the new school was located: it is, I think, somewhere in the red circle in the image below:

The school was a private venture, and it was not until 1938 that the local education authority took over running the school. (Needless to say, this is a very unusual situation: pretty much all of the other similar schools I’ve looked at were brought into local authority control in the late 1890 or early 1900s.) The school was initially under the control of the principal of the Truro School of Art: not a merger, but one person running two schools.

In the 1950s the college moved to new premises just up the hill from Arwenack Avenue. This was Kerris Vean, a large house built in 1875. It also had room to expand, and is still part of the university’s Falmouth campus today.

In the 1960s the school had about 120 students, although many of these were part time. This did not prevent it being accepted (after a reassessment) as a suitable location for the National Advisory Council for Art Education’s diploma in art and design, which was the primary qualification available at that time. Teachers included Barbara Hepworth; the school also conducted entrance examinations for the Slade School at UCL and the Royal College of Art. Staff numbers increased to 25, and more space was provided by the local education authority.

In the 1970s the CNAA recognised the school for a BA(Hons) in Fine Art. There was now residential accommodation for 57 students. And as anyone who has ever managed an institution with an art school will recognise, this scale was difficult – lots of space, not many students to fill it, a relatively high number of staff, and tight funding.

The school faced down a threat of closure in 1984, and in 1987 it merged with Cornwall College’s art and design provision to become the Falmouth School of Art and Design. Its range of subjects broadened to include design and journalism, and in 1988 it became a corporation independent of the local authority.

In 1995, recognising the breadth of its provision, the college became Falmouth College of the Arts, offering degrees validated by University of Plymouth. It became University College Falmouth in 2005; took over Dartington College of Art’s provision in 2008, and in 2012 became Falmouth University.

Here’s as always, is a jigsaw of the card. The card has not been posted, so I can’t be sure, but I would guess that it dates from the 1960s.

Why Falmouth University and not the University of Falmouth? I was asked last week whether there was a reason for “University of X” or “X University”. Looking at the legal names of universities in the UK (and some, for example Durham, have a trading name Durham University, and a legal name University of Durham) it seems that the pattern is as follows:
- The norm is “University of X”
- In Wales the default in English is “X University”, perhaps to match the preposition-less pattern in Welsh, where, for example, Cardiff University is Prifysgol Caerdydd (but nota bene University of South Wales, not South Wales University)
- If a university is named after a person or a thing it is “X University” – for example Brunel University
- If the place name is qualified in some way, it is “X University” – for example Buckinghamshire New University, Birmingham City University
- If the place is small, it is “X University” – for example Cranfield University, Keele University
- If the place is a sub-unit of a larger place, it is “X University” – for example Aston University – except when in London – for example University of Greenwich.
Is this a firm set of rules? Probably not, unless the Privy Council office has some tucked away in a file. Is it universally true? Again, no: and one counterexample to the above is Falmouth University. And this is why I chose to do Falmouth this week.

Also, notably, when I shared this analysis on social media, the most sensible response was that I was overthinking it. Which was probably true!
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December 5, 2025
Vaibhav Rustagi, Glion Institute of Higher Education

What do you like most about your job?

Meeting the new generation/face of hospitality. The opportunity to empower this new generation to realise their full potential. Building bridges between academia and industry, and watching students grow into confident, purpose-driven professionals, is deeply fulfilling.

Describe a project or initiative that you’re currently working on that excites you.

We’re focusing on bringing the industry even closer to our students: turning London itself into a living classroom. With the world’s leading hospitality brands, luxury groups, and innovators all here, Glion London is uniquely placed to connect education with real-world opportunity. Our aim is to make every student’s journey a true immersion into the beating heart of the industry.

What’s a piece of work you’re proud of – and what did it teach you?

Being part of the team at Hult International Business School that scooped the excellence award for best Business School Careers Strategy from AMBA and BGA in 2020. It taught me about the importance of connecting with alumni, who in turn came back to Hult to recruit for internal opportunities within their organisations.

What’s a small daily habit that helps you in your work?

I work in a different place every day. Glion London is split across three floors, and not least because I only joined the institution in September, I like to sit with different people to listen and understand their roles and how we can all work even more effectively in a team dynamic.

What’s one change you’d like to see in your sector over the next few years?

For hospitality to be recognised as the glamorous and sexy profession that it is, and the opportunities in related areas such as consulting, private equity, sales, operations management and education. Also for prospective students to fully realise the transferrable skills for life that studying programs in this area provide.

What idea, book, podcast or conversation has stayed with you recently?

‘The Knowledge Project Podcast’ by Shane Parrish: thoughtful discussions on how we think, decide, and learn better. ‘The Empire Podcast’ would be another.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone starting out in this field?

In hospitality, that you have to start from the bottom. You can’t run a restaurant without having washed plates. In education, the importance of soft skills – critical thinking, problem-solving, customer service, ownership, creativity and so on.

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December 4, 2025
One State’s Collaborative Efforts to Improve Transfer
Recent “Beyond Transfer” articles have garnered a lot of attention and discussion among many in the transfer world, including those of us involved in transfer work in Virginia. The reactions to these articles demonstrate just how complex transfer is, and while we may not all agree, the importance of the work is undeniable. One state has taken steps to reduce the complexity and clarify transfer for students and colleges.

The article “The Transfer Credit Myth: How Everything We Know About Excess Credits May Be Wrong,” while narrow in scope, highlighted several important aspects of transfer that should be reiterated: Early and consistent academic planning support is imperative. Additionally, we know program changes, prerequisites and financial aid exhaustion can have serious implications to progress whether a student transferred or not. Furthermore, as highlighted in a response article, we cannot forget about state- and system-level policies that may impact these efforts, for better or worse.

In recognition of these complexities, Virginia passed legislation in 2018 to improve transfer, which addressed three elements: general education, transfer pathways and a state transfer tool. In response and through a collaborative effort between the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) and two- and four-year institutions, the Transfer Virginia initiative was born. Its goal is to remove barriers while improving credit efficiency, reducing time to transfer and boosting degree-attainment rates.
- General education: A two-year institutional general education package, known as the Uniform Certificate of General Studies (U.C.G.S.), was created to apply to lower-level general education at all Virginia public four-year institutions and many participating private four-year institutions.
- Transfer pathways: Common curricula have been developed to provide the foundation for the transfer pathways—or student-facing transfer guides—which are created with the goal of mapping associate degree curricula, including the U.C.G.S., to baccalaureate degrees to strengthen credit efficiency and applicability. Each guide includes a curricular section showing the student exactly what to take at both the two-year institution and the remaining requirements at the four-year institution for a true 2+2. There is also a “Transfer Guidance” section that includes information about the college/university, major, admission—including guaranteed admission—as well as important dates, deadlines and links, serving as a one-stop shop for transfer information. There are currently over 500 transfer guides, representing over 30 pathways to four-year institutions, with approximately 150 to 200 guides submitted each year. These work very well when a student has identified a transfer plan. For those who would like to explore further, these and many other resources are available in the portal.
- State transfer tool: The Transfer Virginia portal, officially launched in 2021, is designed to be a robust repository to assist students at any point in their higher education journey, including dual enrollment. The portal provides standardized information for more than 60 Virginia colleges—two-year and four-year, public and private—all in one place. Users can compare institutions, explore program listings, find colleges offering their major, see how their coursework transfers, create a portfolio and connect with transfer specialists directly.
For states looking to effect change, a good place to start is identifying commonalities between general education curriculum at both two- and four-year institutions to craft a statewide pathway. However, the work cannot be done in silos. Collaboration and commitment from the two- and four-year institutions and state administrative agencies is vital. For Virginia, legislation ignited the initiative, but the teamwork between all stakeholders keeps the momentum going.
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December 4, 2025
New Program for College Students’ Executive Functioning Skills
Since the COVID-19 pandemic forced many schools to move instruction online, some students have struggled to regain or even learn the interpersonal and organizational skills they need to succeed in college.

To rectify that, the University of Mary Washington created a new four-week program this fall to help incoming students hone their planning and social skills. Called LaunchPad, the program aims to help ease students’ transition into higher education, provide them with life-management skills and connect them with peers and supportive staff.

What’s the need: Data shows that current traditional-aged college students are less likely than previous cohorts of students to be prepared for postsecondary education. A 2024 report from ed-tech provider EAB found that students increasingly struggle with resiliency and conflict resolution and are less likely to be involved in campus organizations or social opportunities.

Surveys show that students are interested in receiving additional support to help them get organized and learn to manage their time. A study from Anthology, also published in 2024, found that 40 percent of students feel overwhelmed and anxious about their academic workload, and a quarter say they lack time-management skills. Similarly, a 2023 survey by Inside Higher Ed found that one-third of respondents want help planning their schedules and managing their time, such as a through a deadline organizer.

At the University of Mary Washington, “many students struggle with organization, time management and involvement, especially post-pandemic,” said April Wynn, director of the first-year experience. “LaunchPad provides structured support in these areas.”

How it works: LaunchPad teaches students executive functioning and socialization skills, including how to maintain a schedule, track deadlines, employ technology, communicate effectively and respond to adversity, according to a university press release.

Starting the first week of class, students are invited to participate in a LaunchPad session, beginning with syllabus organization and then in subsequent week moving on to Microsoft basics, campus involvement and time management.

Each week, students could opt in to a LaunchPad activity to help them develop practical life skills.

University of Mary Washington

Teaching the tech tools is essential because students often enroll with more experience using Chromebooks than Microsoft products, Wynn noted. Students also received a physical planner during the syllabus session, marking upcoming deadlines at the start of the term to help them prepare.

The initiative is supported by a Fund for Mary Washington Impact Grant, which provides donor-funded grants, ranging from $500 to $5,000, to students, faculty and staff for projects. Wynn and Dean of Students Melissa Jones applied for the grant and received $5,000 to fund peer-mentor stipends, day planners, workshops and more.

LaunchPad involves representatives from a variety of campus offices, including the career center, student activities, new student programs, the writing center, campus recreation, housing and residence life, and the Office of Disability Resources.

The impact: The fall 2025 pilot offered 51 hours of programming over four weeks, with 378 student participants and 466 hours of work by staff, faculty and peer mentors, Wynn said. “Student and facilitator feedback was collected at each session, with additional student survey feedback scheduled for December, after they’ve had time to test out what they learned in the program,” she said.

The university is considering a shorter program in the spring semester to capture transfer and other new students, as well as expanding the fall program to six weeks to include major and career advising, Wynn said. “While LaunchPad is geared toward first-year students, we hope to plan it around the fall senior class meeting in the future to provide a refresher for soon-to-be graduates,” Wynn said.
Getting Students Organized

Several other colleges have implemented new programs to help students build executive-functioning skills.

Faculty at DePaul University created a short course in the College of Communication to help students set goals and reflect on their academic progress.

Wake Forest University’s Center for Learning Access and Student Success established a digital syllabus that outlines all assignments and assessments for each class a student is enrolled in, creating a centralized depot for organization.

Dartmouth College created regular programming to help students build time management and organization skills, led by peers to normalize challenges.
How does your college encourage students to be organized and improve their life skills? Tell us more.
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December 4, 2025
Why Close Bucknell University Press? (opinion)

In an Aug. 14 email, Bucknell University provost Wendy Sternberg notified the university community that Bucknell University Press would cease to exist at the end of the academic year. Without consulting BUP’s faculty editorial board, which oversees the press and falls under the auspices of the provost’s office, or Bucknell’s faculty or staff at large, the decision was rendered a fait accompli that blindsided the local Bucknell community as well as past, present and prospective BUP authors, editors and contributors.

As might be inferred, the decision to close a university press has wide-ranging implications for not only the home institution and its reputation within the academic community but for the pursuit of intellectualism and critical inquiry in academia and beyond.

Established in 1968, BUP has operated continuously for nearly 60 years, publishing new work in the humanities and social sciences for specialists, students and general readers. Despite its relatively small size, operating only with 2.5 staff positions and publishing about 20 books per year, Bucknell’s press has continued to punch above its weight, as testimonials from BUP authors, editors and directors, past and present, affirm.

Petitions to prevent BUP’s closure have circulated globally, such as those by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Goethe Society of North America, and the closure has been addressed by venues like Publishers Weekly, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. A petition on campus disseminated by members of BUP’s faculty editorial board gathered signatures from hundreds unaffiliated with the university, as well as more than 125 of the voting faculty members at Bucknell, in what assuredly was a signal to Bucknell administrators and the Board of Trustees to reconsider.

But they have not.

As Sternberg wrote, the university was compelled to close BUP to refocus “university resources on our student-centered mission.” The email moreover claims that BUP’s “primary mission supports the scholarly community, and not Bucknell undergraduates.”

This rationale misunderstands the actual work of university presses, which have long trained students for careers in editing and publishing in academic presses, trade publishers and beyond—as noted by testimonials from Bucknell alumni published by The H-Net Book Channel. It likewise does not see our undergraduates as part of the scholarly community—a head-scratching implication given that Bucknell obtained the Carnegie classification system’s new Research Colleges and Universities designation this year because of its research activity, especially undergraduate research. Even more, it brazenly disregards the reality that faculty research informs classroom teaching.

In the more than three months that have passed since Sternberg’s notice of closure, Bucknell University administrators, especially Sternberg and President John Bravman, have been flooded with personal letters and emails cautioning against this myopic decision. Peter M. Berkery Jr., executive director of the Association of University Presses, wrote to the administration in August extending an offer to collaborate on a press review. This offer has gone ignored. Berkery also noted in his letter that a number of universities that have announced their intent to close their presses in recent years ended up reversing course. (Notable reversals include the University of Akron Press, the University of Missouri Press and Stanford University Press, where the university administration threatened to withdraw the press’s $1.7 million annual subsidy before backing away from the plan.)

Berkery added that “in still more cases—including Amherst College, Lever Press, West Point, University of Vermont, the University of Wyoming—institutions of higher education serving a wide remit of students and fields launched new university presses and university imprints, finding that this initiative served their students, faculty, and wider communities in direct and invaluable ways.”

Bucknell administration, however, has remained steadfast in its determination to close BUP and impervious to outcry from the academic community and even alumni. In November, Bucknell faculty approved a motion, presented by myself and three other members of the faculty editorial board, that proposes to evaluate BUP’s future through channels of shared governance that were not previously consulted—even flouted. It calls for the establishment of an ad hoc committee, peopled by Sternberg, the BUP director and several faculty representatives, charged with “determin[ing] a future for the Bucknell University Press that balances fiscal concerns with intellectual and academic values.” The motion stipulates that the committee will present its findings at the February faculty meeting. Of course, the bindingness of these findings remains suspect, as does the future of shared governance nationwide.

Towards the conclusion of Sternberg’s August notice, she wrote, “It is important to note that the door remains open to alternative paths forward for the Bucknell Press at this time. I believe there is great potential for the press to be reimagined in a way that supports undergraduate education — perhaps one that promotes scholarly accomplishments of Bucknell students and faculty and that offers professional preparation for students who seek a career in the publishing world. The academic planning process that is unfolding over this academic year will provide a venue for considering such possibilities.”

While BUP already does these things (as alumni and faculty attest), and this reimagining seems to again misunderstand the premise and goals of a university press, the motion approved by the faculty seeks to make good on Sternberg’s claim to envisage “alternative paths forward” to keep BUP’s doors open, even if such a statement is merely administrative lip service.

Though the prospective closure of BUP may appear a blip on the radar of a fast-changing landscape of higher education, it is yet another warning bell signaling the erosions of shared governance on campuses nationwide. Indeed, the American Association of University Professors’ Policy Documents and Reports (colloquially known as the Redbook) details how the “business-ification” of the university has caused ruptures within shared governance that have ultimately alienated faculty and pitted administrators versus faculty in what may appear a power vacuum: “The involvement of faculty in governance is not a grab for power, special pleading, or partisanship, but action in the best interests of the academic institutions themselves.”

Shared governance, the Redbook continues, promises to be a “potential force for fairness and equity for parties that are too often assumed to be at odds.” But fairness and equity can only be achieved at places like Bucknell if shared governance is preserved and stakeholders are consulted and considered in good faith.

Even more, as the motion passed by the faculty makes clear, while some may believe a university press to be a bespoke ornament, BUP has long been integral to the service and scholarship completed by Bucknell faculty and deeply connected to the institution’s intellectual history. And this is to say nothing of the ways that BUP has dedicated itself to supporting the intellectual and creative careers of academics around the globe for the last 60 years. In a moment in time marked by the determination to unravel both shared governance and academic freedom on college campuses, BUP can’t help but seem part of a larger zeitgeist of academia’s uncertain, seismic shifting.

Yet there’s something distinct about the Bucknell situation in that it is entirely self-inflicted. Bucknell is not buckling under pressure from the federal government; neither has it been singled out for an ultimatum/gilded carrot (depending on how one sees it) like those extended under the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” It has not suffered higher taxes on its endowment, nor the retraction of large-scale federal funding. The austerity mentality hawked by the administration is one based on a larger trend in which humanistic and social scientific inquiry is deprivileged and the ethos of the liberal arts abandoned, even at those places that seek to brand themselves as such. BUP has become the sacrificial lamb that was meant to succumb to its slaughter silently.

If BUP had represented an insolvent or derelict agent on campus or within the academic community, perhaps the publicity arising from its intended closure would not set about such shock waves. However, that is not the case. Instead, the intention to shutter BUP is a thermometer, if not a klaxon (to mix metaphors), that lays bare a reality in which university presses and the intellectual enterprises they champion are repeatedly under threat. We must not acquiesce to these demanded erasures.

Jeremy Chow is the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair in the Humanities and associate professor of English at Bucknell University and chair of the Bucknell University Press faculty editorial board.

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December 4, 2025
The Great American University Shakedown

With each new resolution agreement, it becomes clearer that the Trump administration intends to base the government’s relationship with higher education on extortion. In its recently cut deal, Northwestern University will pay the Treasury $75 million in exchange for about $800 million in congressionally approved research funding it had already secured. NU now joins Columbia on the list of institutions that have paid fees to the federal government—Columbia’s deal included a $200 million payment to the Treasury over three years.

In the grand scheme of things, $75 million is chump change for Northwestern. It’s a fraction of the research funding that was at risk and barely makes a dent in the institution’s $14.3 billion endowment. It’s less than two months’ worth of the up to $40 million the institution said it was paying every month to supplement lost research funding. The payment was, according to interim president Henry Bienen, “the best and most certain method to restore our federal funding, both now and in the future.”

Part of that is likely true. Litigation would have taken years and cost many more millions. But nothing in the agreement precludes the government from leveraging federal research funding to extract certain political wins from the university again. The government didn’t even need evidence Northwestern violated any federal laws to revoke its federal funding. Officials offered no conclusions from the three investigations into antisemitism on campus the Departments of Education, Justice and Health and Human Services launched. With the punitive withholding of federal funds, the institution is being punished before it’s proven guilty. As Andrew Gillen, a scholar at the Cato Institute put it, “Much like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland who said, ‘Sentence first—verdict afterwards.’”

Before this administration, rarely did OCR investigations require institutions to pay money to the government. The resolutions focused mainly on training and improving processes at the university in question. By contrast, the agreements the Trump administration has reached with elite, research-focused universities harm the institution as well as the country. Northwestern, Columbia, Brown and others might have their funding back, but they’re now weighed down by even greater compliance burdens.

Northwestern has to report admissions data on every student who applies, is admitted and enrolls; socialize international students on the norms of campus life; and make sure nobody is wearing a face mask to conceal their identity. After cutting more than 400 jobs in July, Northwestern now has fewer people around campus to take over additional reporting duty. This is how the administration wants our leading research institutions to spend their time. And while U.S. institutions process paperwork and fight to have funding restored, China sprints ahead in artificial intelligence, robotics and innovation.

Precedent for paying fines in government settlements exists for other sectors, but those partly fund solutions to problems. Purdue Pharma, for example, paid local and state governments to fund opioid treatment, prevention and recovery services. In its multibillion-dollar settlement with the U.S. government over cheating on emissions tests, Volkswagen paid billions of dollars to fund clean energy initiatives and electric vehicle charging infrastructure. Even Columbia in its settlement agreed to pay an additional $21 million to compensate employees who may have experienced antisemitism on campus after Oct. 7, 2023. Northwestern’s millions simply disappear into Treasury’s coffers and do nothing to combat antisemitism in higher ed.

NU won’t be the last institution the government attempts to force into a settlement. This summer it demanded UCLA, a public institution, pay $1.2 billion as part of a settlement to unfreeze millions in research funds. Harvard’s heated legal battle for its funding rages on, and research funds remain frozen for Duke and Princeton.

These resolutions are a strong indicator of how the administration wants its relationship with research institutions to be—politically self-serving, one-sided and fear-based. Institutions could choose to fight, but mounting expensive legal battles without millions of research dollars isn’t really a choice at all. The agreements might be an offer universities can’t refuse.

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December 4, 2025