Tag: Events

Funding Freeze on University of Maine System Lifted

Senator Susan Collins of Maine said the pause on federal agriculture funding for her state’s public colleges and universities has been lifted, WMTW reported Wednesday.

The Department of Agriculture froze all spending Tuesday as part of an investigation into the institutions’ compliance with Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools. USDA launched the investigation shortly after a heated exchange between Maine’s Democratic governor and President Trump in late February.

The state’s flagship institution, the University of Maine, requested clarification Wednesday on the status of USDA’s Title IX compliance review and the extent of the pause. Collins also consulted the Trump administration about the freeze. Relief followed quickly after.

“This USDA funding is critically important not only to the University of Maine but to our farmers and loggers,” Collins said in a statement. “Now that funding has been restored, the work that the university does in partnership with the many people and communities who depend on these programs can continue.”

The system has nearly $63 million in active grants from the Agriculture Department and is expecting $35 million to be paid out for ongoing statewide education, research and extension activities, a system spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed.

“Since our flagship’s founding as Maine’s land grant 160 years ago, funding from USDA has enabled us to strengthen and grow the state’s natural resource economy, sustain rural jobs and communities, and support hands-on 4-H youth development opportunities,” system chancellor Dannel Malloy and University of Maine president Joan Ferrini-Mundy said in a joint statement. “The University of Maine System was thrilled to learn from Senator Collins that the USDA has agreed to lift its plan to temporarily pause our federal funding, which has been an unnecessary distraction from our essential education, research and extension activities that benefit Maine and well beyond.”

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March 14, 2025
Columbia Sanctions Students Who Occupied Campus Building

Columbia University handed down sanction decisions for student protesters who occupied Hamilton Hall in April of last year, the university announced in a statement Thursday.

The sanctions come as the university faces crippling attacks from the Trump administration over its handling of the protests last year, including the loss of $400 million in federal funding, which could lead to mass layoffs and program cuts.

The university has not released the names of affected students, nor more details about how many will be expelled or suspended.

The punishments, determined by the university judiciary board, are unusually harsh, ranging from multiyear suspensions and expulsions to temporary degree revocations for graduates, according to the email. While occupying the building—which students renamed Hind Hall in honor of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers—students damaged property and broke windows.

Last year, only a few of the students who occupied the building were punished, and most remained in good standing with the university, according to documents the university gave to Congress last year. Of the 22 students who occupied the hall, only three received sanctions, the most severe being short-term suspension. At the time, Columbia said the disciplinary process was “ongoing for many students.”

University spokespeople told Inside Higher Ed that the decisions were the culmination of a months-long investigation. For all other student protests last spring, the judiciary board “recognized previously imposed disciplinary action,” according to the email.

Last weekend, Columbia graduate and legal U.S. permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil was arrested and threatened with deportation for his role in the pro-Palestine protests. Yesterday, Khalil sued the university, along with Barnard College, for allegedly sharing private student disciplinary records with members of Congress and other third-party groups.

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March 14, 2025
Layoffs Gut Federal Education Research Agency

Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic first forced schools and colleges into remote learning, researchers, policymakers and higher education leaders may no longer have access to the federal data they need to gather a complete picture of how those disruptions have affected a generation of students long term—or hold states and colleges accountable for the interventions they deployed to address the fallout.

That’s because the National Center for Education Statistics, the Education Department’s data-collection arm that’s administered surveys and studies about the state of K-12, higher education and the workforce since 1867, is suddenly a shell of itself.

As of this week, the NCES is down to five employees after the department fired nearly half its staff earlier this week. The broader Institute of Education Sciences, which houses NCES, also lost more than 100 employees as part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to eliminate alleged “waste, fraud and abuse” in federal funding.

The mass firings come about a month after federal education data collection data took another big blow: In February, the department cut nearly $900 million in contracts at IES, which ended what some experts say was critical research into schools and fueled layoffs at some of the research firms that held those contracts, including MDRC, Mathematica, NORC and Westat.

Although Trump and his allies have long blamed COVID-related learning loss on President Joe Biden’s approval of prolonged remote learning, numerous experts told Inside Higher Ed that without some of the federal data the NCES was collecting, it will be hard to draw definitive conclusions about those or any other claims about national education trends.

‘Backbone of Accountability’

“The backbone of accountability for our school systems begins with simply collecting data on how well they’re doing. The fact that our capacity to do that is being undermined is really indefensible,” said Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. “One could conceive this as part of an agenda to undermine the very idea of truth and evidence in public education.”

But the Education Department says its decision to nearly eliminate the NCES and so many IES contracts is rooted in what it claims are the agency’s own failures.

“Despite spending hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds annually, IES has failed to effectively fulfill its mandate to identify best practices and new approaches that improve educational outcomes and close achievement gaps for students,” Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the department, said in an email to Inside Higher Ed Thursday.

Biedermann said the department plans to restructure IES in the coming months in order to provide “states with more useful data to improve student outcomes while maintaining rigorous scientific integrity and cost effectiveness.”

But many education researchers disagree with that characterization of IES and instead view it as an unmatched resource for informing higher education policy decisions.

“Some of these surveys allow us to know if people are being successful in college. It tells us where those students are enrolled in college and where they came from. For example, COVID impacted everyone, but it had a disproportionate impact on specific regions in the U.S. and specific social and socioeconomic groups in the U.S.,” said Taylor Odle, an assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

“Post-COVID, states and regions have implemented a lot of interventions to help mitigate learning loss and accelerate learning for specific individuals. We’ll be able to know by comparing region to region or school to school whether or not those gaps increased or reduced in certain areas.”

Without uniform federal data to ground comparisons of pandemic-related and other student success interventions, it will be harder to hold education policymakers accountable, Odle and others told Inside Higher Ed this week. However, Odle believes that may be the point of the Trump administration’s assault on the Education Department’s research arm.

“It’s in essence a tacit statement that what they are doing may potentially be harmful to students and schools, and they don’t want the American public or researchers to be able to clearly show that,” he said. “By eliminating these surveys and data collection, and reducing staff at the Department of Education who collect, synthesize and report the data, every decision-maker—regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum—is going to be limited in the data and information they have access to.”

Scope of Data Loss Unclear

It’s not clear how many of the department’s dozens of data-collection programs—including those related to early childhood education, college student outcomes and workforce readiness—will be downsized or ended as a result of the cuts. The department did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for clarity on exactly which contracts were canceled. (It did confirm, however, that it still maintains contracts for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the College Scorecard and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.)

A now-fired longtime NCES employee who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation said they and others who worked on those data-collection programs for years are still in the dark on the future of many of the other studies IES administers.

“We’ve been out of the loop on all these conversations about the state of these studies. That’s been taking place at a higher level—or outside of NCES entirely,” said the terminated employee. “What these federal sources do is synthesize all the different other data sources that already exist to provide a more comprehensive national picture in a way that saves researchers a lot of the trouble of having to combine these different sources themselves and match them up. It provides consistent methodologies.”

Even if some of the data-collection programs continue, there will be hardly any NCES staff to help researchers and policymakers accurately navigate new or existing data, which was the primary function of most workers there.

“We are a nonpartisan agency, so we’ve always shied away from interpreting or making value judgments about what the data say,” the fired NCES worker said. “We are basically a help desk and support resource for people who are trying to use this data in their own studies and their own projects.”

‘Jeopardizing’ Strong Workforce

One widely used data set with an uncertain future is the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study—a detailed survey that has followed cohorts of first-time college students over a period of six to eight years since 1989. The latest iteration of the BPS survey has been underway since 2019, and it included questions meant to illuminate the long-term effects of pandemic-related learning loss. But like many other NCES studies, data collection for BPS has been on pause since last month, when the department pulled the survey’s contract with the Research Triangle Institute.

In a blog post the Institute for Higher Education Policy published Wednesday, the organization noted that BPS is intertwined with the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, which is a comprehensive nationwide study designed to determine how students and their families pay for college and demographic characteristics of those enrolled.

The two studies “are the only federal data sources that provide comprehensive insights into how students manage college affordability, stay enrolled and engaged with campus resources, persist to completion, and transition to the workforce,” Taylor Myers, assistant director of research and policy, wrote. “Losing these critical data hinders policy improvements and limits our understanding of the realities students face.”

That post came one day after IHEP sent members of Congress a letter signed by a coalition of 87 higher education organizations and individual researchers urging lawmakers to demand transparency about why the department slashed funding for postsecondary data collection.

“These actions weaken our capacity to assess and improve educational and economic outcomes for students—directly jeopardizing our ability to build a globally competitive workforce,” the letter said. “Without these insights, policymakers will soon be forced to make decisions in the dark, unable to steward taxpayer dollars efficiently.”

Picking Up the Slack

But not every education researcher believes federal data is as vital to shaping education policy and evaluating interventions as IHEP’s letter claims.

“It’s unclear that researchers analyzing those data have done anything to alter outcomes for students,” said Jay Greene, a senior research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at the right-wing Heritage Foundation. “Me being able to publish articles is not the same thing as students benefiting. We have this assumption that research should prove things, but in the world of education, we have very little evidence of that.”

Greene, who previously worked as a professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, said he never used federal data in his assessments of educational interventions and instead used state-level data or collected his own. “Because states and localities actually run schools, they’re in a position to do things that might make it better or worse,” he said. “Federal data is just sampling … It’s not particularly useful for causal research designs to develop practices and interventions that improve education outcomes.”

Other researchers have a more measured view of what needs to change in federal education data collection.

Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University, has previously called for reforms at IES, arguing that some of the studies are too expensive without enough focus on educators’ evolving priorities, which as of late include literacy, mathematics and how to handle the rise of artificial intelligence.

But taking a sledgehammer to NCES isn’t the reform she had in mind. Moreover, she said blaming federal education data collections and researchers for poor education outcomes is “completely ridiculous.”

“There’s a breakdown between knowledge and practice in the education world,” Lake said. “We don’t adopt things that work at the scale we need to, but that’s not on researchers or the quality of research that’s being produced.”

But just because federal education data collection may not focus on specific interventions, “that doesn’t mean those data sets aren’t useful,” said Christina Whitfield, senior vice president and chief of staff for the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.

“A lot of states have really robust data systems, and in a lot of cases they provide more detail than the federal data systems do,” she said. “However, one of the things the federal data provides is a shared language and common set of definitions … If we move toward every state defining these key elements individually or separately, we lose a lot of comparability.”

If many of the federal data collection projects aren’t revived, Whitfield said other entities, including nonprofits and corporations, will likely step in to fill the void. But that likely won’t be a seamless transition without consequence.

“At least in the short term, there’s going to be a real issue of how to vet those different solutions and determine which is the highest-quality, efficient and most useful response to the information vacuum we’re going to experience,” Whitfield said. And even if there’s just a pause on some of the data collections and federal contracts are able to resume eventually, “there’s going to be a gap and a real loss in the continuity of that data and how well you can look back longitudinally.”

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March 14, 2025
Residential Communities Centered on Race, LGBTQ Closed for 2025

In the wake of federal and state bans on diversity, equity and inclusion, several colleges and universities are eliminating the option for students to live in culture-based housing starting next fall—a trend that could signal increased attacks on certain student resources that went largely untouched under previous state-level DEI bans.

The University of Iowa confirmed to Inside Higher Ed that it will be ceasing operations of three of its living-learning communities: All In, for LGBTQ students; Unidos, for Latino students; and Young, Gifted and Black, for Black students. North Carolina State University will also shut down two culture-based dorms—called Living and Learning Villages at NCSU—dedicated to Native American and Black students, as first reported in The Nubian Message, the college’s Black student-led newspaper.

In both cases, the institutions will no longer offer the residential communities starting next semester. Both NCSU and Iowa are retaining other learning communities focused on academic majors and other interests.

The cancellations come in the wake of President Donald Trump’s crusade against all things even tangentially related to diversity, equity and inclusion. A Feb. 14 Dear Colleague letter from the Department of Education stated that federal law prohibits the use of race in relation to a variety of campus programs and activities, including housing, going beyond the restrictions set by most statewide anti-DEI legislation.

In the aftermath of that letter, many universities—including some private institutions and institutions in solidly blue states—began scrubbing words related to DEI from their websites and shuttering DEI offices. But only a handful of institutions have gotten rid of the housing communities, which have often been lauded for strengthening students’ sense of belonging on campus. (Belonging is associated with higher rates of retention and mental well-being, multiple studies have found.)

A spokesman for the University of Iowa did not say what led to the decision to close the three living-learning communities. Iowa passed legislation last year banning diversity, equity and inclusion offices on college campuses. The university also announced Thursday that it would be permanently shuttering its DEI office, which it had rearranged and renamed to the Division of Access, Opportunity, and Diversity as a result of last year’s legislation.

NCSU did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment but told The Nubian Message that the changes were “part of the university’s ongoing review of compliance with executive actions issued by the federal government and UNC System policy.”

Another institution, the University of Florida, has removed the option to sign up for any of its nonacademic learning communities for next semester, including those dedicated to Black, first-generation, international, LGBTQ+ and out-of-state students, plus one for students in the arts. According to The Alligator, the university’s student paper, the university also changed language on its housing website from describing the learning communities as “interest-based communities” to “academic-based communities.”

In an email to the campus community, the institution said the change was related to the university’s housing master plan.

“The University of Florida’s Housing & Residence Life is unwavering in our commitment to providing community-orientated facilities where residents are empowered to learn, innovate and succeed. As we enter a 10-year Housing Master Planning process, all programmatic offerings are being evaluated to ensure we continue to provide a premiere on-campus living experience,” the message read. “As a result, we are pausing all activities associated with non-academic Living Learning Communities.”

But some students have expressed concern that the elimination of the communities focused on identity may actually be related to Trump’s anti-DEI push or existing Florida anti-DEI legislation.

“Cancelling the activities of marginalized LLCs follows a long history of UF stripping protections from vulnerable students,” reads a petition calling on the university to reverse its decision. “It is clear that this latest attack on safe housing is only part of a larger plan to transform the UF campus into a space that is no longer safe for marginalized groups. LLCs will not be the last protection to be targeted.”

A Best Practice to Support Students

The Young, Gifted and Black learning community debuted in 2016 in response to a proposal by a group of students, The Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa’s student newspaper, reported at the time.

The university’s housing website says that students living in YGB “will be challenged to understand the various experiences among the African/Black diaspora, encouraged to learn and develop critical thinking skills outside the classroom, relate your passions to your academics and better Iowa’s Black Community through campus involvement.” Students who live on the floor are also required to take a course on African American culture.

Sandrah Nasimiyu, an Iowa alumna, lived in the community in the 2019–20 academic year—though, of course, her time there was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. Her happiest memories in college took place in the residence hall, she told Inside Higher Ed, from debriefing with her floor mates after a long day of classes to a memorable game night when her friends tried, unsuccessfully, to teach her to play spades.

“I was already at a [predominantly white institution]. We live in Iowa—I had grown up in the suburbs and really wanted to have some form of community,” she said. “Where you put your head at night, where you’re going to spend the most time, you have to feel comfortable … when I stepped off that floor, I was in an environment I see all the time that wasn’t made for me.”

Nasimiyu is still friends with several people she met in the brief time she lived there. Sometimes, she recalled, Black students who didn’t live on YGB would tell her that they struggled to make Black friends on campus; Black people make up just 2.8 percent of the student body at Iowa.

LGBTQ+ and culture-based residence halls have come under fire from conservatives before; in 2023, the conservative campus group Young Americans for Freedom criticized Lavender Living Learning Community, the LGBTQ+ dorm at UF, for “segregating” students and “bombarding” them with leftism because its residents were encouraged to take a course on social justice. Right-wing news sources like Campus Reform and The Daily Caller, too, have discredited affinity housing as segregation.

But advocates for these spaces have long countered that residents of learning communities are rarely, if ever, required to be a certain race or identity. Jason Lynch, a professor of higher education at Appalachian State University and an expert in housing and residential life, said he saw firsthand that a number of non-Black students lived in the Black residential community when he worked in residential life at a previous institution.

Beyond that, though, he noted that the communities “are seen as a best practice, a high-impact practice … LLCs are a direct way to combat loneliness and isolation. We’re going to see a rise in mental health [concerns], especially for these minority communities” if these communities vanish.

Restricting LGBTQ+ Housing

At the same time that some campuses are doing away with LGBTQ+ affinity housing, others are overhauling inclusive housing in other ways. Florida State University recently came under fire for removing an option on its housing application that allows students to indicate that they would like to live in LGBTQ-friendly housing.

Unlike the learning communities, this option doesn’t place students in a particular dorm, but rather attempts to pair the student with someone who would be accepting and welcoming of an LGBTQ+ roommate, Marco Lofaso, an FSU student and member of the campus’s Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter, told Inside Higher Ed. LGBTQ+ housing has been available at FSU since 2021.

But the option was soon reinstated after student backlash—though the university never directly answered why it had been removed, telling the student newspaper, “Florida State University routinely reviews and refreshes campus information and messaging on a regular basis to ensure information is up to date and accurate. During this review, a previously used question was omitted from the returning student housing application for the 2025–26 academic year. A revised version of the question will be included in the new student housing application when it is released Feb. 27.”

FSU did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment.

The state of Utah also recently passed a law targeting trans students that requires any students who live in gender-segregated housing to live in the housing that aligns with their “biological sex.” However, the law doesn’t prevent institutions from offering gender-neutral housing.

At least one institution has updated its housing policies to comply with the law, which passed in February. In an emailed statement, a spokesman for Utah State University said that the institution “strives to create a welcoming environment where all students who live on campus are comfortable so they can focus on succeeding in their studies. Consistent with the new law, USU’s sex-segregated housing will be assigned based on an individual’s biological sex at birth.”

The spokesman added that the university will continue to provide gender-inclusive housing “that meet the needs of all residents and in a manner that treats everyone with dignity and respect.” He did not respond to a question about how the university will determine residents’ biological sexes.

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March 14, 2025
Promoting Student Engagement, Health Innovation With Grants

This past fall, Elon University in North Carolina offered students an opportunity to positively impact the campus community’s well-being through grant-funded projects.

The Andrew G. Bennett ’08 Student Wellness Innovation Grants recognized four student-led projects this winter, which will be implemented over the next year and beyond. The initiative supports student leadership in well-being work and also helps university leadership glean insight into what could impact student health and wellness.

How it works: Funds for the grant were previously endowed to support a safe ride program at the university, but the rise of ride-hailing apps has reduced the need for funding in that area, explains Anu Räisänen, director of HealthEU initiatives. University leaders worked with the donor to realign funds to spur innovation among students.

To be considered, the project had to align with HealthEU goals and address at least one of six dimensions of wellness—community, emotional, financial, physical, purpose and social.

The grant committee—chaired by Räisänen and supported by two graduate apprentices, a counselor and a professor of education—reviewed seven proposals this cycle. Each proposal was submitted by a student as an individual or as part of a group. Students were encouraged to find a department or student organization to co-sign the proposal to promote sustainability and continuation of efforts beyond the individual’s time at the university, Räisänen says.

Prior to submitting an application, students could opt to meet with Räisänen for a consultation to flesh out their idea, including brainstorming campus partners to support the effort after the individual graduates.

Applicants also provided a summary of how funding will be used and the intended impact on the community’s well-being.

The committee accepted and reviewed applications within Qualtrics, grading each proposal with a rubric that weighed feasibility, innovation and impact.

What’s next: Four proposals received $500 each in funding, the maximum amount available, including a puppy yoga event, an arts and crafts service initiative, a peer support program for nursing students, and renovation of the philosophy suite in the Spence Pavilion, an academic building on campus.

There was no one ideal project, and each grantee differed in terms of length of project and target population, Räisänen says.

This spring, students will submit an impact report describing the project status and the effects so far. Grant recipients will also present at HealthEU Day, which celebrates ongoing efforts to promote integrated wellness through fun events and education.

Students still enrolled will be asked to attend, and those who have graduated may provide a video discussing their project and the innovation fund.

“The goal is that students come and share their experience, like they would do with undergraduate research as well, and then we build that momentum” for student interest and engagement, Räisänen says. “The best way to get a message to students is word of mouth; you just need to find the right students to spread the word.”

In the future, Räisänen and her team are considering ways to provide larger grant awards to encourage students to think bigger about ways they could impact well-being on campus.

Seeking stories from campus leaders, faculty members and staff for our Student Success focus. Share here.

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March 14, 2025
More Colleges Freeze Hiring Amid Federal Funding Uncertainty

As the higher education sector grapples with federal funding cuts and other disruptions, a growing number of colleges across the country—from public flagships to Ivy League institutions—are freezing hiring and spending and pausing graduate student admissions.

This week, Brown University, Duke University, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington and others joined the list of more than a dozen colleges that have temporarily paused hiring and vowed to hold off on some discretionary spending.

“It is meant to preserve our financial flexibility until we better understand how changes in federal policy will take shape and can assess the scale of their impact,” Harvard president Alan Garber wrote this week in a message to the campus community. “We plan to leave the pause in effect for the current semester but will revisit that decision as circumstances warrant.”

Garber added that Harvard will continue to advocate for higher education in Washington, D.C.

“Expanding access to higher education for all, preserving academic freedom, and supporting our community’s research, teaching, and learning will always be our highest priorities,” he wrote.

Colleges and universities started to curb costs last month after the National Institutes of Health said it plans to cap reimbursements for costs indirectly related to research—a move expected to cost colleges at least $4 billion. A federal judge has since blocked that proposal from moving forward, but the Trump administration has essentially stopped awarding new NIH grants, creating financial uncertainty for many colleges.

The latest wave of freezes comes after the Trump administration announced it was pulling $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University, warning that other universities could see a similar penalty as part of the government’s crackdown on alleged campus antisemitism. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was essentially shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has provided billions to colleges over the years. And the Education Department laid off nearly half its staff, which could cause disruptions for colleges, though the financial impact is not clear.

Congress is also considering proposals to put some colleges on the hook for unpaid student loans and to raise the endowment tax on wealthy institutions, among other ideas that could affect universities’ bottom lines.

Penn officials said this week that while the final impact of the federal changes and cuts isn’t yet clear, the university is already “experiencing reduced funding.” In addition to a hiring freeze, Penn is reducing noncompensation expenses by 5 percent and reviewing all spending on capital projects.

“The scope and pace of the possible disruptions we face may make them more severe than those of previous challenges, such as the 2008 financial crisis or the COVID pandemic,” Penn officials wrote in a letter. “With careful financial management, however, Penn is well-positioned to navigate them.”

At the University of Washington, officials are facing not only the federal policy changes but also potential state funding cuts. Officials have noted that the university is in a good financial position over all but said they need to take proactive measures—such as stopping all nonessential hiring, travel and training—to prepare for any losses.

“These risks together have the potential to jeopardize the full scope of our work, including existing and new research projects, patient care, instruction and basic operations,” university provost Tricia Serio wrote in a blog post.

Other colleges that have paused hiring or instituted other cost-cutting measures this month include Emory University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Vermont.

Beyond hiring freezes, some colleges continue to re-evaluate graduate student admissions, particularly for Ph.D. students who are typically supported by federal grants.

On Wednesday, the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in Worcester rescinded provisional offers of acceptance to students who planned to pursue a doctorate, a spokesperson confirmed to Inside Higher Ed.

“With uncertainties related to the funding of biomedical research in this country, this difficult decision was made to ensure that our current students’ progress is not disrupted by the funding cuts and that we avoid matriculating students who may not have robust opportunities for dissertation research,” the spokesperson said. “All impacted applicants are being offered the opportunity to receive priority consideration without the requirement to reapply, should they wish to join our Ph.D. program in a future admissions cycle.”

Neither current students nor those at the medical school’s other graduate schools are affected.

Iowa State University also rescinded some acceptance offers, The Iowa Capital Dispatch reported, joining other colleges that made similar decisions in the last month.

As the list grows, academics worry about the long-term consequences of the cost-cutting measures. The hiring freezes and disruptions to graduate student admissions have thrown a wrench into the plans of early-career researchers, who are now looking to Europe and the private sector for job opportunities.

Puskar Mondal, a lecturer on math at Harvard and a research fellow, wrote in an opinion piece for The Harvard Crimson that the hiring freeze is “troubling.”

“The hiring freeze isn’t just a financial or administrative issue—it’s something that could have a ripple effect across all disciplines at Harvard,” Mondal wrote. “It could lead to fewer opportunities for students, more pressure on faculty, and a slowdown in research that could take years to recover from. And that’s not just bad for Harvard—it’s bad for all of us.”

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March 14, 2025
Sam Altman’s AI Hype Is Familiar

I think Sam Altman is too young to have been influenced by Rolling Stone magazine, but I feel like he’s learned something about retconning previously expressed hype in order to make room for fresh amazement from how Rolling Stone treated the new albums of the 1980s and 1990s by the Rolling Stones.

By that time, the Stones had established themselves as permanent rock royalty, but their music was undeniably less vital than their late-’60s, early-’70s heyday that produced all-time great work. Music tastes had changed, Mick and Keith were less interested in and less capable of breaking new ground, and so the work understandably suffered next to albums like Exile on Main Street or Sticky Fingers.

Not according to Rolling Stone, which could be relied on to wax rhapsodically about whatever the boys had produced upon the album’s release, declaring it a return to greatness after a previous fallow period. Unfortunately, you can only return to greatness once, so when the next album would arrive, they had to retroactively downgrade the previous album that had been dubbed a near masterpiece.

In 1983, Kurt Loder declared that Undercover “reassembles, in the manner of mature masters of every art, familiar elements into exciting new forms,” giving the album four and a half stars.

Undercover had one minor hit, “Undercover of the Night,” which sounds like second-rate Duran Duran, and has Charlie Watts playing electronic drums, an absolute offense against all that is good and holy. The idea that it is a near-perfect album is, literally, insane.

We move forward to 1989 and the Steel Wheels album, also given four and a half stars, this time by Anthony DeCurtis. The review opens with “Nothing reinvigorates Sixties icons like having something to prove. In the past few years the reverence typically shown both the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan has worn perilously thin. The Stones’ last two albums, Undercover and Dirty Work—not to mention Mick Jagger’s solo recordings—ranged from bad to ordinary” (emphasis mine).

It gets better. In 1994, Barbara O’Dair declared in her review of Voodoo Lounge, “Gone are the smooth moves, trend nods and lackluster songcraft of Dirty Work and Steel Wheels, the Rolling Stones’ last two studio discs. The band’s new album, Voodoo Lounge, is ragged and glorious, reveling in the quintessential rock & roll the Stones marked as their own some 30 years ago.”

But this time it’s true, the Rolling Stones really are back!

The popular explanation for all these rave reviews upon a new album’s release is that Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner and Stones lead singer Mick Jagger were close friends. But even that friendship could not stand up against the fact that over time, it became clear that these albums were duds, and so each review had to retroactively throw the previous effort under the bus.

Recently, on the platform I will only ever call Twitter, Sam Altman declared, “We trained a new model that is good at creative writing (not sure yet how/when it will get released). This is the first time I have been really struck by something written by AI.”

This is a strange statement, given that Altman has been relentlessly hyping this technology since its first public appearance in 2022, expressing personal marvel at its smarts, its empathy and now its creativity. One would think he’s been struck repeatedly by what his models produce, but apparently not—this is the first time.

Note that this model is not yet available for public consumption, so we cannot judge for ourselves if it is “good” at creative writing, except I am totally going to judge whether or not it is good at creative writing and say it isn’t.

Despite being well established in the skeptic camp about this technology, I think anyone who reads More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI would come away seeing that I am quite open to experimentation and exploration of this technology where it has the potential to enhance, as opposed to substitute for, human capacities.

But “creative writing” is clearly not an area in which large language models will excel, because I will go to my grave believing that the whole point of writing creatively is to attempt to capture the artistic intention of a single unique intelligence and then to share that intention with other unique intelligences. This challenge, which I have wrestled with over many, many hours of my life, is difficult, fascinating and very much worth doing even if the product of that wrestling never sees the light of day beyond the audience of the original author, which is something I’ve experienced rather often in my career.

Large language models are not unique intelligences. They are highly sophisticated, technologically amazing pattern-matching machines that generate syntax as their outputs. There is no intention behind this generation, therefore there is no creativity at work. It is not writing, not as I understand it, and not as I value it.

I know lots of people who are willing to argue about these things who will say that we’re in the midst of a “new” intelligence, blah blah blah. I’m happy for other people to wrestle with these thought experiments, but I know for a fact that the human experiences of reading and writing the creative work of other unique human intelligences is worth doing no matter what this technology—that cannot and never will work from an intentional place—is capable of.

Look, I imagine some of my frustration is starting to leak through, and I do not wish to outright dismiss those with other perspectives, though I wonder about folks who are not capable of seeing past Altman’s relentless hucksterism by now.

The thing is, thanks to More Than Words being in the world and having the opportunity to talk to lots of different people in lots of different contexts about what I have to say about writing in a world where large language models exist, it’s increasingly clear to me that in many cases, no one is asking for this stuff.

If no one is asking for it, we certainly have no responsibility to give it the time of day when it does arrive just because it’s shiny, new or amazing at the surface level.

The future is ours, not AI’s.

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March 14, 2025
States File Lawsuit Challenging Education Department Cuts

Twenty Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Trump administration for its massive job cuts at the Education Department, seeking to block what they say is “an effective dismantling” of the department.

The suit argues that by eliminating half the staff, the department is essentially abdicating its responsibility to deliver statutorily mandated programs, like federal student aid and civil rights investigations—many of which also affect state programs.

“This massive reduction in force is equivalent to incapacitating key, statutorily-mandated functions of the Department, causing immense damage to Plaintiff States and their educational systems,” the suit reads.

The plaintiffs include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

The lawsuit is at least the eighth to be filed against the Trump administration over its education policies in the past month. Follow Inside Higher Ed’s Trump Lawsuit Tracker for updates on the case.

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March 14, 2025
Three Questions for Duke’s Quentin Ruiz-Esparza

In my co-authored 2020 book, Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education, we wrote about Duke Learning Innovation and Lifetime Education. One of the leaders at LILE is Quentin Ruiz-Esparza, director of digital product strategy and design. I asked Quentin if he’d be willing to answer my questions about his role, organization and career.

Q: Tell us about your role at Duke Learning Innovation and Lifetime Education. What are the big projects, initiatives and services that you collaborate on and lead?

A: My role as a product strategist is a unique and new position within LILE. It reflects LILE’s intention to recenter Duke’s digital education portfolio on a customer-driven strategy. Our approach to developing courses or programs starts by understanding our learners and then designing education that meets their needs.

My team and I develop new digital programs through strategic planning, market research and learning experience design. In strategic planning, I work with Duke’s professional schools and academic units to refine their digital learning strategy. This includes defining their learner audience, crafting a learner-centered value proposition and identifying the right program type. At the same time, I lead market research projects to validate learner and employer demand for program topics and skills. Finally, I oversee a learning experience (LX) design team that collaborates with Duke faculty. Together, the LX design team and faculty create high-quality, inclusive and engaging courses and programs aligned with our goals and market data. I truly couldn’t do this work without them!

I constantly adapt to shifting priorities and opportunities, but I’ll share two major initiatives I am focused on right now. First, I am working with two campus partners—the Office of Climate and Sustainability and the Nicholas School of the Environment—to develop a nondegree portfolio strategy for sustainability education. Our goal is to equip professionals across industries to be leaders in sustainability within their fields and organizations. Second, I am managing a learner demand survey that will help Duke better understand our learners—their educational preferences, motivations and needs. My hope is that this analysis will shape Duke’s future priorities for professional education.

Q: Can you help those of us outside Duke understand the history and mission of LILE? What might someone interested in pushing for an institutional approach to promoting learning innovation learn from its organizational structure and capacities?

A: LILE’s history goes back to two different units: Duke Learning Innovation and Duke Continuing Studies. Both had a rich history of exploring new ways to serve learners. Duke Learning Innovation supported faculty to improve teaching through technology, new pedagogical approaches and data and research. Duke Learning Innovation also played a key role in online learning at Duke, launching the university’s partnership with Coursera. Today, Duke’s Coursera portfolio is arguably Duke’s largest effort to increase access to education, with between 40,000 and 50,000 learners actively participating in Duke Coursera courses each month.

Duke Continuing Studies was founded in 1969. Over time, it created educational experiences for learners beyond traditional university students. These included working professionals, middle and high school students, and retirees. Duke Continuing Studies strengthened the university’s ties to the local community while also reaching learners around the world.

In 2022, these two units were brought together under the leadership of Yakut Gazi, Duke’s first-ever vice provost of learning innovation and digital education. I believe that our merger as LILE created two valuable opportunities for the university. First, where continuing education may have been more on the periphery of the university’s work, LILE now advances a central university strategy to educate learners from precollege to postcareer. Second, learning innovation can serve as a catalyst for increased access to education. Collectively, our teams have the expertise to transform Duke’s learning experience, pedagogies, education technologies and business models to enable greater access to education that enriches people’s lives.

In the world today, I believe this work of innovating towards greater educational access is paramount to colleges and universities demonstrating our value and role in society. Expanding access to education is where universities have the greatest opportunity to support social mobility through education, foster leadership across organizations and civil society, and nurture learning that empowers people to address the challenges of our day—from AI to the global climate challenge.

Q: Reflecting on your career path, what advice might you have for early-career educational professionals interested in working toward a leadership position in digital learning?

A: I will share a few ideas that have driven me in my own career. First, take initiative and volunteer to tackle new challenges in your department. Many growth opportunities in my career began with me identifying ways in which I could help leadership achieve their goals or mission. I pitched ideas for how I could help, which allowed me to turn a departmental need into an opportunity to demonstrate my abilities and build greater trust with managers and colleagues.

Second, even if you are happy in your current job, regularly explore job descriptions in your field. This could be looking at open job postings or exploring staff listings at other organizations. When you find more senior roles that interest you—maybe even your dream job—identify the competencies you will need to develop in order to be qualified for that future position. Then, create performance goals in your current role that allow you to cultivate those skills and experience.

Third, do not get lost in your to-do list. On a periodic basis (e.g., monthly or quarterly), identify a couple bigger goals that you want to accomplish in your work. Consider what work is of the highest value to your department or organization. If the goal is rather ambitious, break it down into shorter monthly goals so that you can make consistent progress. Higher-level goal setting like this will allow you to build a résumé of high-impact, strategic accomplishments (versus a list of generic responsibilities).

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March 13, 2025
Religious Freedom as a Defense for DEI?

Last month, amid a Trump administration broadside against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, government officials took aim at Georgetown University’s law school.

“It has come to my attention reliably that Georgetown Law School continues to teach DEI. This is unacceptable,” interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin wrote in a letter.

Martin announced he had launched “an inquiry into this” and asked Georgetown law school officials, “If DEI is found in your courses or teaching in anyway [sic], will you move swiftly to remove it?” He added that students and others “affiliated with a law school or university” that “continues to teach and utilize DEI” would not be hired “for our fellows program, our summer internship” or other jobs.

Martin’s letter, which was sent on Feb. 17 and quickly became public, prompted shock and outrage, with many observers noting that it was a clear affront to First Amendment rights at Georgetown. It also drew a quick—and pointed—response from the law school.

Georgetown Law dean William Treanor invoked both the First Amendment and the tenets of Catholic faith in his March 6 response to Martin, noting that the government cannot control curriculum.

“As a Catholic and Jesuit institution, Georgetown University was founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding,” Treanor wrote in a response that soon spread online. “For us at Georgetown, this principle is a moral and educational imperative. It is a principle that defines our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution.”

Given that multiple institutions have already complied with Trump directives to unwind DEI initiatives, despite numerous outstanding legal questions, Treanor’s response stood out as an uncommon example of a university holding its ground. It also raised a unique question for religiously affiliated institutions: Does religious freedom offer a defense against Trump’s attacks on DEI efforts?

A Faith-Based Defense for DEI

It might. For decades, faith-based colleges and universities have cited religious freedom in decrying federal meddling in their policies and practices.

Some institutions have argued in drawn-out legal battles that they’re exempt from federal rules that chafe against tenets of their faith, such as strictures related to gender and sexual orientation. They’ve similarly asserted in court that whom they hire or fire is within their theological purview. Such legal cases often revolve around the concept of church autonomy doctrine, a legal principle protecting the rights of religious institutions to govern themselves—including their internal operations.

Now, as Treanor’s letter suggests, the same argument could prove a powerful tool for pushing back against the onslaught of anti-DEI directives coming out of the Trump administration. Religious institutions that view diversity, equity and inclusion as core to their faith missions arguably have a layer of legal protection to defend DEI initiatives that their secular peers do not. They could also ostensibly challenge anti-DEI orders in court on religious freedom grounds at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court has displayed a warm disposition toward religious issues.

“It’s not an unreasonable argument,” said Charles Russo, Joseph Panzer Chair in Education and research professor of law at the University of Dayton, a Catholic—but not Jesuit—institution in Ohio. He emphasized that he was speaking on his own behalf, not the university’s.

Church autonomy doctrine is based on the idea that “we have the right to run our institutions consistent with what our beliefs are, and we don’t need people from the outside coming out telling us what we believe,” he added. Most DEI efforts are “certainly consistent with Christian values … to help the underprivileged, the downtrodden, the most in need.”

Jesuit colleges and universities, such as Georgetown, seem the most likely to consider venturing into this legal battleground, given the religious order’s emphasis on social causes. Many Catholic colleges—and Jesuit institutions in particular—were founded to serve burgeoning Catholic immigrant populations. In recent years, Jesuits founded several new institutions designed explicitly to support low-income students; those colleges, like Arrupe College in Chicago, have emphasized efforts to enroll and retain students from underrepresented groups.

But even if some Jesuit institutions do view DEI as central to their faith, it remains to be seen whether they’re willing to call on their religious identities to fight for it.

What Religious Colleges Said

They’re certainly not keen to do so publicly.

Of the 27 Jesuit universities that Inside Higher Ed contacted for this story, only two responded by deadline. Fordham University declined to comment, while Seattle University sent a link to a past statement from President Eduardo M. Peñalver that noted the institution “does not plan to make any immediate operational changes in response to [a Feb. 14 Dear Colleague letter] and will await new regulations or formal administrative guidance.” He added that resulting guidance will be studied carefully and the university will “either comply in a manner consistent with our Jesuit Catholic values … or—if that proves impossible—consider other legal avenues.”

The Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities is also treading carefully.

“The member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities share a mission based on long-standing Catholic religious beliefs and values in the Jesuit traditions, which affirm the equal dignity of every human being and of the human family in all its diversity. As noted by the dean of Georgetown Law, we are all ‘founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical and spiritual understanding,’” an AJCU spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed by email.

AJCU did not answer specific questions sent by Inside Higher Ed.

Raymond Plaza, director of Santa Clara University’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion and chair of AJCU’s Diversity and Equity Network, offered a defense of DEI initiatives. Speaking in his personal capacity, Plaza argued that DEI work has been deliberately misconstrued by its critics.

“DEI is not about divisions or separation, it’s about how can I create a space where people can be their authentic selves and thrive?” Plaza said. “It’s not that this group thrives while the other one doesn’t.”

He emphasized the need to create an environment where all students feel welcome. “At the end of the day, it’s really about how we build community on our campuses,” Plaza said.

A review of university DEI pages shows that many Jesuit institutions cite their religious beliefs in support of such initiatives. Some emphasize social justice and inclusion as tenets of their faith.

“Inspired by the Catholic and Jesuit tradition, our community believes that every human being is a profound gift of God, deserving of both dignity and opportunity,” Creighton University’s website reads. “We thus strive to acknowledge and celebrate diversity at Creighton—building equitable, inclusive, welcoming spaces and relationships that are required for every person to thrive.”

Some institutions even note their antiracism efforts.

“At LMU, the goal of diversity, equity, and inclusion is to actively cultivate an anti-racist institutional climate that supports inclusive excellence and fights systemic oppression,” Loyola Marymount University’s website reads, adding that such values are “intrinsic” to their mission.

But other Jesuit universities appear to have backtracked in the face of Trump’s attacks on DEI.

The University of Scranton, for example, overhauled its DEI page in recent weeks, removing references to systemic racism and the “historically unfair and unjust treatment of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color,” according to an archived page available on the Wayback Machine.

Le Moyne University also removed BIPOC references, identity-based resources and an “oath of diversity and inclusion” from its DEI page, an archive on the Wayback Machine shows. Le Moyne officials also told the student newspaper that the university is considering changing the name of its Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging office due to federal attacks on DEI efforts.

An Untested Strategy

Just because Jesuit institutions aren’t openly using religious freedom as a rationale for preserving DEI, it doesn’t mean the idea is without merit, legal and Catholic higher ed scholars say.

Russo hasn’t seen any religious college call on its faith mission to defend DEI in court—at least not yet. While the idea is “floating around out there, it has not yet made much of a judicial splash,” he said.

Still, he believes it’s a plausible legal argument that could receive a “strong reception” in the Supreme Court, provided colleges aren’t defending practices that directly butt up against the court’s ruling on race-conscious admissions. He believes the overall message of Treanor’s letter to Martin is “on the mark.”

“I don’t think anybody would disagree that helping those most in need, however we describe that, is consistent with Christian values,” Russo said.

Donna Carroll, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, agreed equity is a “mission-critical commitment” for most Catholic higher ed institutions.

“For Catholic colleges and universities, DEI work is a long-held expression of mission and of the Catholic social teaching that anchors it—including a commitment to the dignity of each person, a solidarity with the vulnerable and less advantaged, and a care for the common good,” Carroll wrote to Inside Higher Ed. “All this is foundational to who we are, what and how we teach, and the services that we provide.”

She sees Martin’s inquiry into Georgetown Law School as a disturbing challenge to academic freedom but isn’t sure if there’s a “threshold that might trigger concern about religious freedom” for Catholic institutions.

“With so much uncertainty, it is hard to say,” she said. “And such a determination would require sectorwide discussion.”

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March 13, 2025