Tag: Events

National Institute on Transfer Prepares to Close

For over two decades, the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students has bridged two worlds—the researchers who study transfer students and the campus staff who work with them. Located at the University of North Georgia, NISTS has gathered these groups for annual conferences, disseminated resources and research, and doled out awards for groundbreaking work.

Now, university leaders say they can no longer afford to fund NISTS. At the end of October, NISTS, at least in its current form, will shutter.

The institute “has made a lasting impact in improving transfer policy and practice nationwide,” and “its research has informed how colleges and universities support transfer student success,” university officials said in a statement.

But “unfortunately, due to ongoing budget constraints and a realignment of institutional priorities, the university is no longer able to financially support the Institute,” the statement read. “We are proud of the Institute’s legacy and the many partnerships it has built, and we remain committed to serving transfer students through our academic programs and student success initiatives.”

Janet Marling, NISTS’s executive director, said that over the past year, institute staff tried but ultimately couldn’t find a new permanent home for their work—at least for now. She hopes that other organizations will carry on parts of the institute’s work, including its conferences and programs, and house its research and resources so transfer professionals can continue to benefit from them.

“We have heard, time and time again, there just isn’t anyone else providing the resources, the community, the networking, the translation of research to practice in the transfer sphere in the way that NISTS is doing it,” Marling said.

‘A Terrible Loss’

NISTS prides itself on taking a unique approach, connecting staff who span the transfer student experience—from admissions professionals to advisers to faculty members—in an effort to holistically improve transfer student success. Transfer practitioners and researchers worry NISTS’s closure will have ripple effects across the field.

Alexandra Logue, professor emerita at the CUNY Graduate Center, said the transfer process inherently involves multiple institutions working together, including, in some cases, across state lines; about a quarter of transfer students choose to go to a four-year college or university in another state.

Logue appreciated that NISTS conferences offered a rare “chance for people from all the different states in the country to come together” to coordinate and swap best practices. Such programs also allowed transfer researchers like her to share their findings with staff working directly with transfer students on campuses.

“The research that we do is pointless if it isn’t put into practice,” Logue said.

While other organizations are doing powerful work to improve transfer student outcomes, NISTS played a major role in bringing new visibility to transfer students’ needs by making them a singular focus, said Stephen Handel, a NISTS advisory board member.

The institute “added a legitimacy to a constituency of students that often got forgotten,” Handel said. “NISTS was completely focused on that constituency alone, and that’s what made it unique.”

Eileen Strempel, also on the advisory board, said she got involved with NISTS when she served as an administrator at Syracuse University and sought to create a strategic plan to improve transfer outcomes—an area she hadn’t done much work in before.

“I felt like, oh, wow, there’s a brain trust already for me, the neophyte, the learner who doesn’t know very much about transfer at all,” she said. She called the closure “a terrible loss.”

She said NISTS leaders often asked conference participants how many of them had never attended a convention focused on transfer students before; Each year, most hands went up.

“To me, what that moment always crystallized was the important role that NISTS had” in helping practitioners figure out “how they could learn from other colleagues, that they didn’t need to recreate the wheel,” Strempel said.

Those lessons have had downstream effects on students.

Each practitioner came out better equipped “to help hundreds, if not thousands of students,” Strempel said.

Marling said one of the most exciting parts of the work was seeing its impact on students across the country. For example, she watched graduates of NISTS’s post-master’s certificate program in transfer leadership and practice go on to make meaningful changes on their campuses, such as establishing new transfer partnerships with other institutions or revamping training for advisers to improve transfer students’ experiences.

She said she feels “profoundly sad” about NISTS shuttering at University of North Georgia, but she also believes NISTS will live on in some form because of the “tremendous outpouring of support and concern” that followed the announcement of its closure.

“I’m very hopeful that the spirit of NISTS will continue,” whether that’s as an institute elsewhere or “within the many, many transfer champions that are working in higher education across the country. I’m really excited to see how individuals and institutions take what they’ve learned from NISTS and continue to grow their focus on transfer students and continue to provide equitable opportunities for these students.”

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October 27, 2025
3 Arrests Made at University of Michigan Protest

The arrests were made on the campus in Ann Arbor on Wednesday evening.

Courtesy of the University of Michigan.

Three pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested on the University of Michigan campus Wednesday, MLive Media Group, a local news organization, reported.

The TAHRIR Coalition, a campus student group, led the protest in response to an event held by the university’s Students Supporting Israel chapter, which featured several Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

Melissa Overton, the university’s deputy chief of public safety and security, told MLive that the individuals arrested were not affiliated with the university. She said the protesters blocked the exit to an underground parking garage and refused to move when ordered to.

They were charged with resisting and obstructing police, attempting to disarm an officer, disorderly conduct, and outstanding warrants, Overton said. The case has been forwarded to a prosecutor, she noted.

Erek Mirque, a member of TAHRIR, told MLive that the arrests came as a surprise and that he was unaware of any confrontation with officers before the arrests.

“We did not expect the situation to escalate the way that it did,” he said.

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October 27, 2025
Students Share Feelings of Belonging on Campuses

Seven in 10 college students say most or nearly all students on their college campus feel welcomed, valued and supported, according to a July 2025 survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab.

The data, collected from over 260 two- and four-year colleges across the country, paints a relatively rosy picture of students’ sentiments on campus this fall against the backdrop of free speech restrictions, tense protests and cutbacks to programs that serve students from racial minorities.

While respondents indicated the average student is welcome at their institution, they were less confident about whether they themselves fit in academically or socially.

Fewer than one-third of respondents said they have an “excellent” or “above average” sense of social belonging on campus; 42 percent reported “average” feelings of belonging. Additionally, 38 percent of students said they had an “excellent” or “above average” sense of academic fit at their institution, while just under half said they had an average sense of academic fit.

Survey data also pointed to positive sentiments about personal and academic inquiry. When asked how encouraged and supported they felt to explore different perspectives and challenge their beliefs, a majority of students indicated they feel “somewhat” (45 percent) or “very” supported (35 percent) on campus.

A Warm Welcome

Campus climate, or the perception of how much respect and inclusion students feel on campus, is tied to learning; research shows that students who face discrimination are less likely to succeed academically. Research has also found that students of color are less likely than their white peers to report feeling at home at college.

Inside Higher Ed’s Student Voice survey found minor variance among racial groups in reporting a generally positive campus climate. White students (75 percent) and Asian American or Pacific Islander students (73 percent) were most likely to indicate “most” or “nearly all” students are welcome on campus, compared to Hispanic (71 percent) or Black (68 percent) respondents. Seventy percent of “other” students, which Generation Lab classifies as students of two or more races or who come from outside the U.S., had positive reviews on campus climate.

Adult and two-year students were more likely to say nearly all students are welcome on campus (24 percent) than the average respondent (20 percent), which could reflect the diverse student bodies at two-year institutions and the preferences of adult learners to enroll in two-year or online institutions.

By comparison, students who had considered leaving college were less likely to say “most” or “nearly all” students are welcomed (64 percent) compared to all respondents (73 percent) or students who had never considered dropping out (77 percent).

Three percent of survey respondents wrote in other responses, indicating they completed their classes online and therefore could not speak to the campus climate.

Academic Success and Belonging

The survey also asked students to rank their own sense of social belonging and academic fit on a scale of poor to excellent.

Across racial demographics, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students were most likely to rate their social belonging as high (33 percent), followed by white and international students (30 percent each), Black students (25 percent), and Latinos (22 percent).

On academic fit, white students had the highest ratings; 43 percent of respondents said their fit was “excellent” or “above average,” followed by AAPI (42 percent), Black students (33 percent) and Latino students (30 percent).

Students who had considered leaving college were much more likely than their peers to report they had a “poor” sense of belonging (15 percent versus 6 percent).

First-generation students were more likely to rate their sense of academic fit and social belonging as “below average” or “poor” (17 percent and 37 percent, respectively) compared to their continuing-generation peers (13 percent and 28 percent).

DEI Cutbacks

Inside Higher Ed’s survey also asked students whether federal actions to limit diversity, equity and inclusion have impacted their experiences. The most popular response was “no real impact on my experience” (37 percent), and a handful of students wrote in that they anticipated greater impact after returning to campus this fall. This view held across racial groups, with the greatest share of respondents saying it hasn’t impacted their experience.

About 20 percent of students said the changes to DEI on campus have “somewhat negatively impacted my experience” and 16 percent indicated “I don’t feel impacted, but my peers have been negatively impacted.”

Nonbinary students were most likely to say it’s severely negatively impacting their experience (39 percent).

Ten percent of respondents said they are somewhat or significantly impacted in a positive manner by the changes.

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October 27, 2025
Oral Exams and “MTV Unplugged”

Oral exams are making a comeback, and I’m mostly here for it.

A few weeks ago, we had a faculty professional development day on campus. One of the sessions was devoted to faculty greatest hits, defined loosely as teaching techniques that people are proud of and were willing to share with their colleagues. The session was terrific over all, but the one I haven’t been able to stop thinking about was from a professor who decided to fight AI-enabled cheating by giving oral exams.

For context, the class in which he started using oral exams was conducted over Zoom. That made it particularly difficult to prevent students from accessing unauthorized sources during tests. When the apparent cheating hit a level he hadn’t seen before, he resorted to oral exams to force students to rely only on themselves.

He reported that the exams took about 15 minutes per student, so with a relatively small class, the logistics weren’t prohibitive. As he told it, it became clear quickly which students had mastered the material and which were just lost.

Oral exams aren’t exactly a new technology, but they have a new appeal. Readers of a certain generation may remember MTV Unplugged. It was a concert show in which performers had to use only nonelectric instruments. Stripped of synthesizers and Auto-Tune, some musicians thrived and some really struggled. (I remember my roommates and I laughing ourselves silly at Duran Duran’s effort on Unplugged. By contrast, Nirvana’s was so good that the performance came out later as an album.)

Oral exams are similar; when the student doesn’t have any of the usual crutches, you get a cleaner sense of what they actually know. Now that the illicit crutches are ubiquitous, forcing students to unplug is more useful than ever.

I’ll admit breaking into a cold sweat at the memory of my own oral exams in grad school, but those were long, high-stakes and conducted by a group. In retrospect, though, part of what made that so difficult was that I’d never had an oral exam up to that point. I hadn’t had any practice. And if I’m being honest, the professors hadn’t had much practice, either. That was a hell of a time to start.

From the administrative side, I can imagine a few potential concerns with oral exams. I’m hoping that my wise and worldly readers can help.

The first and most basic one is that most of us don’t have much experience designing oral exams. I’ve never seen a workshop on design principles for orals. (They may exist, but I’ve never seen or heard of one.) To be fair, most of us were never taught how to construct written exams, either, but at least most of us have experience there. In the absence of serious attention to ways to construct oral exams, I’d have a concern about validity.

The second is about grade appeals. If the exam is lost to history, how does a student reasonably contest a grade? I don’t mean to encourage appeals, but there needs to be some way for a student to press a case when they feel wronged. Presumably the exams could be recorded, but there, too, we’d need serious and enforced rules governing access to the recording and when it would need to be deleted.

Finally, there’s a basic issue of stage fright. A student freezing up could be clueless, or they could be paralyzed with fear. It would be a shame to fail a student who actually knows their stuff because they got nervous and went into vapor lock. Presumably this issue would fade if oral exams became a lot more common, but the first wave is likely to run into this one repeatedly. Test anxiety is bad enough for written exams; combine it with stage fright and some capable students will struggle.

Still, none of these strike me as dispositive.

Wise and worldly readers, have you found ways to ensure that oral exams are well designed? How do you handle recording? And what do you do about student stage fright? I’d love to hear at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com. Thanks!

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October 24, 2025
“The Myth of Political Correctness,” 30 Years Later

On Oct. 24, 1995, Duke University Press published my first book, The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education. Looking back 30 years at my book, it can be dispiriting to see how everything today seems the same, only worse. “Political correctness” has been replaced by “woke” as the smear of the moment, but otherwise almost every word of my book could be republished today, with a thousand new examples to buttress every point.

Sometimes the title of the book confused people who mix up a “myth” with a “lie.” As I noted 10 years ago, “When I called political correctness a ‘myth,’ I was never denying the fact that some leftists are intolerant jerks, and sometimes their appalling calls for censorship are successful. My point was that even though political correctness exists, the ‘myth’ about it was the story that leftists controlled college campuses, imposing their evil whims like a ‘new McCarthyism’ or ‘China during the Cultural Revolution.’ In reality, then and now, the far greater threat to freedom on campus came from those on the right seeking to suppress opposing views.”

I had been inspired to write the book by Dinesh D’Souza; I reviewed his best-selling 1991 book, Illiberal Education, for my column in the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. If D’Souza, a recent college graduate, could publish such a terrible book full of misinformation, then surely I could write a better book. So I did.

But the publishing market was much more interested in the endless parade of conservatives bemoaning the “PC police” and “tenured radicals” than a refutation of these flawed arguments. My book, which I started to write as a graduate student in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago (home to Saul Bellow, Allan Bloom and Edward Shils), was rejected by more than 50 publishers before I was able to persuade Stanley Fish (whom I had encountered as the editor of Democratic Culture, the newsletter of Gerald Graff and Gregory Jay’s Teachers for a Democratic Culture) to publish it at Duke. My editor (and now also an Inside Higher Ed columnist) was Rachel Toor, who helped to make some sense of my ideas.

In the end, my book failed to shift the debate about academic freedom—not because it was wrong or the facts were refuted, but because it was ignored. From my perspective, I was correct about everything and nobody learned anything from me. And I’ve been writing essentially the same thesis, over and over again, in a second book and essays and hundreds of blog posts.

Looking back at my first book, I think its claims have been proven largely correct over the past three decades (but I might be biased). At the core of the book were the chapters on the “Myth of PC” (examining how many of the leading anecdotes about repression often weren’t accurate) and “Conservative Correctness” (showing the many examples of repression from the right that were ignored by the media and campus critics of PC).

The remaining chapters also still seem on target: “The Cult of Western Culture” (why multiculturalism isn’t taking over colleges and silencing traditional works, and Shakespeare isn’t being banned); “The Myth of Speech Codes” (colleges have always had speech codes, often worse ones using the arbitrary authority of a dean, and what we need are codes that protect free speech); “The Myth of Sexual Correctness” (sexual assault is a serious problem, and feminists often face suppression); and “The Myth of Reverse Discrimination” (white men are not the victims of campus oppression and the “fairy tale of equal opportunity” is false)

Michael Hobbes did an excellent episode of You’re Wrong About in 2021 on political correctness that featured some of the ideas from my book. My position, then and now, is more nuanced than Hobbes’s view of PC as a pure right-wing moral panic. The panic was there, but so were real cases of repression—on both the left and the right.

The cartoonish right-wing belief that colleges had become Maoist institutions of oppression against conservatives prompted too many on the left (and the center) to counter that everything was fine on campus. In truth, free expression has been in serious danger, both against conservatives who were sometimes censored and against leftists who also faced repression. As bad as things seemed in 1995, the repression is far worse today and clearly aimed at the left—and yet the delusions about the PC police on campus are more widespread than ever.

Even in the face of the worst campus repression in American history, many conservatives continue to recite the old, tired myth of political correctness and leftist control of higher education—a myth repeated so often for so long has become a truth in the minds of many.

The worst strategic mistake progressives made in the past three decades was to abandon the cause of free speech. Too many leftists believed in the myth of political correctness; they heard the complaints about free speech and accepted the right-wing argument that only conservatives were being silenced and concluded that free speech was a right-wing plot. They imagined that tenured radicals controlled colleges because everybody said so, and so they clung to the delusion that they could support censorship and it wouldn’t be used against them.

When conservatives demanded free speech on campus, the left should have vigorously agreed and established strong protections for free expression on campus. Instead, they let the right win a propaganda war by pretending to be battling for free speech against the social justice warriors. And they lost the opportunity to make free speech a core principle established in higher education.

The war on political correctness succeeded because the enemies it targeted were weak, disorganized leftists who were not, in fact, plotting to destroy conservatives. By contrast, today the right wants to demolish higher education like it’s the East Wing of the White House, and it is willing to use its vast power to do that.

As bad as the skepticism on the left about free speech was, the right’s abandonment of free speech is much worse, both in the degree of rejection and in the impact it has on campuses. It didn’t matter if a leftist argued against free speech because they had essentially no power, on campus or off, to impose their ideas. They had no legislators joining their demands and no donors threatening to turn off the campus money spigot.

Critics of PC had many advantages on their side: Enormous money poured into building organizations and ideas that built the myth of PC, funding groups like the Federalist Society and the National Association of Scholars, and paying individual authors such as Bloom and D’Souza to write and publicize their books. A new media ecosystem of talk radio and the internet spread the myth of PC. And the war on PC recruited principled liberals and even progressives who objected to the excesses of the left.

It will be difficult for progressives to build anything similar. Wealthy donors tend to fund conservative groups, or prefer to put their names on fancy campus buildings. Universities are anxious to create free speech centers, but usually only the kind that conservatives support.

Few conservatives are willing to speak out against the Trump regime. And many centrists and liberals who have spent a generation obsessing about the PC police find it difficult to suddenly turn around and recognize the repression from the right that they’ve been ignoring for decades. A letter condemning the Trump administration’s compact signed by principled conservatives such as Robert George and Keith Whittington is a good start toward building an ideological coalition against right-wing censorship that matches what the right did against the “PC police.”

Today, we face the worst attack on academic freedom in American history, one that combines the overwhelming external power of state and federal governments, used for the first time to target free speech, and the internal power of a campus bureaucracy devoted to suppressing controversy.

Unlike political correctness—which often relied upon exaggerated accounts of dubious examples with marginal injustices—there are so many clear-cut cases of terrible repression and extreme violations of due process and academic freedom that it’s difficult for anyone to keep track of them all. The litigation strategy developed by the right of suing every censor is an important step. Telling and retelling the stories of campus censorship today is critical. So is organizing events, on and off campus, about the repression happening today, and challenging those on the right who defend their side’s censorship.

It’s not easy to find solutions when faced with this extraordinary censorship, with unprecedented dismissals and restrictions on speech. But the right-wing attack on political correctness, now over three decades old, offers liberals and progressives a guidebook for how to do it. Quote their words. Demand their reforms. Agree with them and confront their hypocrisy when they reject every free speech policy they’ve been demanding for the past three decades.

The myth of political correctness is still alive 30 years later, invoked to deny and justify the repression from the right. Understanding how the culture wars brought us to this point of authoritarianism is essential to leading us toward the goals of academic freedom and free expression on campus.

John K. Wilson was a 2019–20 fellow with the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement and is the author of eight books, including Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies (Routledge, 2008), and his forthcoming book The Attack on Academia. He can be reached at [email protected], or letters to the editor can be sent to [email protected].

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October 24, 2025
A Study Abroad Life Design Course for Transfers

For many college students, connecting their interests to career and life goals can be a challenge. Transfer students may find it especially difficult because they lack familiarity with the campus resources available to help them make those connections. A course at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management aims to help these students chart their path, in part by sending them on an international trip.

The Design Your Life in a Global Context course encourages transfer students to apply design thinking principles to their college career and beyond and organizes a short study abroad trip led by a faculty member. The experience, mostly paid for by the institution, breaks down barriers to the students’ participation and aims to boost their feelings of belonging at the university.

The background: Since 2022, all students in the Carlson School of Management undergraduate program have been required to complete an international experience. The goal is to motivate them to be globally competent, to support their development as business leaders and to create collaboration with international colleagues, according to the school’s website.

Study abroad experiences have been tied to personal and professional development. A recent survey of study abroad alumni by the Forum on Education Abroad found that 42 percent of respondents indicated studying in another country helped them get their first job.

For U of M’s business school students, these experiences are made possible by funding from the Carlson Family Foundation, which provides scholarships through the Carlson Global Institute and the Learning Abroad Center.

In addition to Design Your Life in a Global Context, the university offers Design Your Career in Global Context, which sends students on a similar short study abroad experience.

The framework: Design Your Life in a Global Context meets once a week throughout the fall semester and then culminates in a 10-day trip to Japan, a country instructor Lisa Novak selected because of its unique focus on work-life balance and well-being.

“If you’re familiar with the concepts of ikigai, it’s all about finding one’s purpose and aligning what you love, what the world needs, what you’re good at and what you can be paid for,” said Novak, director of student engagement and development at the Carlson School. “We’re going to be learning about this concept while we’re abroad.”

Because transfer students, like first-year students, can face challenges acclimating to their new campus and connecting with peers, the class is designed in part to provide them with resources and instill a sense of belonging within their cohort.

In addition, the course helps students apply life design principles to their whole lives, modeled after Stanford University’s design thinking framework.

“Through the class, we equip students with the tools and strategies to design their college and career experience that aligns with their values, interests, strengths, needs and goals,” Novak said.

Going abroad: During the 10-day trip, students explore Tokyo and Okinawa.

They visit Gallup’s Tokyo office to learn about the Clifton strengths assessment and the research the organization is doing in Japan. In Okinawa, students learn from residents living in a “blue zone,” an area of the world where people live the longest and have the fewest health complications.

“We learn about some of the factors that contribute to longevity in that area of the world and then connect that back to designing one’s life and a life of purpose,” Novak said.

In addition to class content, the trip offers students an opportunity to participate in intercultural learning and experience international travel that may be unfamiliar.

Before they leave for Japan, Novak and her colleagues from the Carlson Global Institute support students with travel logistics, including securing a passport, creating a packing list and navigating currency exchange.

“I also bring in different food from the area,” Novak said. “We call it ‘taste of Japan.’ I have different candy or snacks from Japan and they get to experience the culture a little bit in that way and get excited about what we’re doing.”

Novak also leads guided reflections with students before, during and after the trip to help them make sense of their travels and how the experience could shape their worldview.

“I just hope that they recognize that the world and business are increasingly global and connected,” Novak said. “Being able to navigate difference and build connections and have conversations with people that are so different than you is a powerful learning experience.”

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October 24, 2025
How Universities Are Responding to Trump’s Compact

In the weeks since Trump officials asked university leaders to give feedback on their plan to ensure that colleges are adhering to the administration’s priorities, several of those leaders and others in higher ed have made clear that the proposal is a nonstarter—at least in its current form.

So far, leaders at 11 universities have publicly said they won’t sign the current draft of the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” according to an Inside Higher Ed database. Two others have said they are providing feedback. Universities will be added to the map and table below as they make public statements.

The wide-ranging proposal would require universities to ban consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, freeze tuition, commit to not considering transgender women to be women and shut down departments that “punish, belittle” or “spark violence against conservative ideas,” among other provisions. Trump officials say universities that sign on could get access to some benefits such as preferential treatment for grant funding. But those that don’t want to adhere to the agreement are free to “forego [sic] federal benefits.”

Trump Officials’ Letter to Universities

Higher ed leaders and observers see the compact as the Trump administration’s blueprint for overhauling America’s colleges and universities. Trump officials view it as an opportunity for the “proactive improvement of higher education for the betterment of the country.” Critics have urged institutions to reject the proposal, arguing it undermines institutions’ independence and carries steep penalties.

Nine universities were initially asked Oct. 1 to give “limited, targeted feedback” by Oct. 20 on the document that Trump officials said was “largely in its final form.” President Trump said in mid-October that any college that wants to “return to the pursuit of Truth and Achievement” could sign on but didn’t explain how interested institutions could do so. No college has publicly taken Trump up on his offer. The administration is reportedly planning to update the document in response to the feedback and send out a new version in November.

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October 24, 2025
Rethinking Leadership Development in Higher Ed (opinion)
Higher education is in the midst of a crisis of confidence that has long been building. In this time of volatility, complexity and uncertainty, the steady hand of leaders matters more than ever. Yet academia does—at best—a very uneven job of preparing academic leaders for steady-state leadership, much less for times when the paradigm is shifting. This moment is creating an opportunity to reconsider how we prepare leaders for what will come next.

Why Is Leadership So Uneven in Higher Ed?

A primary reason lies in how we select and develop leaders. In academia, searches for department chair, dean and provost often emphasize top-level scholarly and research credentials and only secondarily consider an individual’s experience, perspective and ability to influence and motivate others to support shared missions. Academics in general do not respond well to directives: They expect to be persuaded, not commanded. Additionally, it is often only after being hired that those in formal positions of authority are provided with leadership-development opportunities to help foster those interpersonal skills—too late for foundational growth.

These approaches to recruiting formal leaders are rooted in flawed assumptions about how leadership works. True leadership is not about commanding compliance but about shaping unit culture through influence. Many leaders fail by not understanding the difference. An effective leader is a person of strong character who can build trusting relationships with others; these skills take time to develop and usually take root even before a person assumes a leadership role.

Another important reason that leadership in higher ed is uneven arises from conceptualizing leadership as a “heroic” individual endeavor. The same skills that help a formal leader to be successful—such as understanding the alignment of their actions with the unit’s mission; strong communication skills, including listening; the ability to navigate conflict, negotiation and conflict resolution; and formulating and articulating clear collective goals— are equally crucial for others to exercise to be fully engaged participants.

Leaders with formal roles and titles play a crucial role in promoting a productive and collegial culture. At the same time, they do not do so alone: It is equally important that participants who are not in formal administrative roles are also seen (and see themselves) as central in shaping these environments, and that they are aware of how their own actions and interpersonal dynamics contribute to their working and learning experiences.

In short, leadership responsibility is not limited to administrators. There are layers of formal leadership roles embedded inside departments and schools, visible whenever faculty members and staff take on responsibilities for shared governance and advisory roles; lead team research or manage grant portfolios; and select (hire), supervise, evaluate and mentor colleagues and other early-career individuals. These faculty and staff are leaders, too, whether or not they see, accept or internalize those roles.

When leadership is viewed simply as an individual attribute rather than a process that emerges from the relationships among people in teams, organizations miss the opportunity to develop cultures of excellence that support integrity, trust and collaboration at all levels. Thus, we argue that leadership ought to be understood as an ongoing process of character development and a responsibility shared by all members of an organization—not something that can be addressed in a one-off workshop, but as an integral dimension of the work.

The Foundations of Leadership: Influence Before Authority

Rather than framing leadership as something only people with formal authority do, a more productive model is to view leadership as influence. By influence we mean modeling the behaviors we seek to share and promote in our groups so that we can better shape the way we solve problems collectively. Leadership is not in essence a position; it is contributing to an ongoing process of shaping culture, norms and behavior within a unit.

Social psychology shows that we influence each other constantly. The more time we spend with people, the more we become like them and vice versa. This means that bad habits can spread as easily as good ones. When everyone is given an opportunity to develop good habits, they are more likely to spread throughout the community. Our character affects how we influence others. We are much more likely to be influenced by a person who demonstrates integrity and curiosity than we are by someone who is demanding and unwilling to listen.

Here are some areas of practice for developing better influence:
- Self-awareness and self-management: Focusing on oneself first helps individuals identify their strengths and areas for growth, while encouraging them to recognize and respect their roles and responsibilities in the current situation. Understanding oneself, one’s values, habits and motivations, is foundational to recognizing how we affect and are affected by those around us.
- Conflict resolution: Healthy debate is foundational to innovation and growth. Developing strong conflict-resolution skills contributes to increased perspective-taking, depersonalizing disagreement and yielding more effective discussion and problem solving.
- Decision-making: Understanding how we make decisions, and more importantly how heuristics influence and bias our decision-making, can help people slow down to make more ethical and effective decisions.
Opportunities for influence are available to everyone, not just those in formal leadership roles. Early-career faculty, staff and students can cultivate influence by setting examples for collaboration, through ethical behavior and by contributing to collective problem-solving. Leadership is not centrally about having authority over others; it is about shaping an environment in which ethical decision-making, respect and shared purpose flourish.

Reimagining Leader Development in Higher Ed

Now more than ever, individuals need support in managing their careers with integrity and purpose—aligning their personal values and goals with those of their institutions. Leadership development should not be viewed as a costly add-on. In fact, it can be integrated into the everyday fabric of academic life through accessible and scalable methods, including:
- Peer-learning cohorts that provide space for discussion and reflection on leadership challenges.
- Guided personal reflections on workplace dynamics, communication and decision-making.
- Structured mentoring programs that cultivate leadership skills through real-world interactions.
- Deliberative conversations around such themes as research ethics, authorship and collaboration to build trust and integrity within teams.
- Conflict-resolution training embedded in routine professional development activities.
Our experience at the National Center for Principled Leadership and Research Ethics shows that even modest efforts—like those above—can spark essential conversations between mentors and mentees, improve communication, and positively influence both unit climate and individual well-being. To support this work, we offer a free Leadership Collection—an online collection of tools, readings and practical exercises for anyone seeking to lead more effectively, regardless of their title or career stage.

When leadership development is embraced as a core part of academic life—not just a formal program or a luxury for a few—it can become a catalyst for healthier, more purpose-driven institutions.

Conclusion: Leadership Development as a Cultural Foundation

Reserving leadership-development programming only for when people reach formal leadership roles is a missed opportunity to develop broader and more inclusive working cultures. Such cultures emerge from the relationships among the members of a group. Building better relationships starts with personal growth, self-awareness and emotional intelligence for each member. Taking responsibility for one’s own professional growth and for one’s influence on others is also an important kind of leadership.

True leadership, therefore, is not about directing others but about fostering environments in which good habits, strong ethics and meaningful engagement flourish. If universities want to build sustainable cultures of excellence, in which leadership is no longer an individual endeavor but a shared commitment to collaboration, they should start embedding it in professional development and routine practice for all. As uncertainty prevails, budgets are cut and people are navigating deep change, now is the moment to reconsider how we shape leaders in higher education.

Elizabeth A. Luckman is a clinical associate professor of business administration with an emphasis in organizational behavior and director of leadership programs at the National Center for Principled Leadership and Research Ethics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

C. K. Gunsalus is the director of NCPRE, professor emerita of business and research professor at the Grainger College of Engineering’s Coordinated Sciences Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Nicholas C. Burbules is the education director of NCPRE and Gutgsell Professor Emeritus in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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October 24, 2025
ASU Receives $50M Gift to Develop Energy Institute

Arizona State University has received a $50 million donation to launch the Global Institute for the Future of Energy, a collaboration between its Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and the Thunderbird School of Global Management that seeks to promote education and innovation regarding energy production and use.

The gift comes from Bob Zorich, who earned his master’s degree in international management in 1974 from Thunderbird’s predecessor, the American Graduate School of International Management.

“ASU has long been a pioneer in building bold, pragmatic solutions for the future,” said Zorich, founder and managing partner of the Texas-based private equity firm EnCap Investments. “President Michael Crow has taken a visionary and action-oriented approach to positioning the university as a leading center for research, educational excellence and global influence. For these reasons, I was excited to fund the formation of this energy institute at ASU because of the university’s unique ability to scale and reach a global audience.”

Zorich’s gift will help the institute recruit a chair and staff and start developing curriculum for students, executives and the public. In the second year, the institute aims to launch a fellowship and executive-in-residence program, as well as a series of public programs, including lectures, summer camps and a global energy conference.

In addition, some of the funds will support Energy Switch, a point-counterpoint show on Arizona PBS that brings together experts from government, NGOs, academe and industry to debate energy-related topics.

“Energy is central to nearly every facet of our daily lives, and we have to prepare now for an evolving energy future,” Crow said in a statement. “With the rapid growth of AI and other fast-moving innovations, we have a responsibility to ready the next generation of energy leaders and solutions. Bob Zorich’s visionary investment will empower our global understanding of energy, our vital literacy and how we can work together to develop the best paths forward.”

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October 24, 2025
Reading Between the Lines on Compact Responses

Multiple universities have rejected President Trump’s proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, but they have taken different approaches to turning down the commander in chief. Some have declined pointedly, while others struck a more delicate balancing act.

To be sure, leaders of the institutions invited to sign the compact have found themselves squeezed by both internal and external forces, under pressure from the federal government to approve the deal and from faculty and other campus constituents to reject it. Both public and private universities have also faced political pressure from state lawmakers, who in some cases urged them to sign and in others have threatened to strip funding if they do.

Most of the nine universities originally invited to join the compact rejected it on or before the Oct. 20 deadline to provide feedback—well ahead of Nov. 21, the final date for making a decision. Their responses, released to the public, ranged from pointed to demure; in some cases, institutional leaders emphasized their core values in rebutting the proposal, which promised to grant preferential treatment in exchange for freezing tuition, capping international enrollment and suppressing criticism of conservatives, among other demands from the U.S. Department of Education.

The Road to ‘No’

Here are links to each institution’s response, in the order in which they were posted publicly:

Together these statements offer insights into how institutions are responding to an unprecedented demand from the federal government: that they subscribe to President Trump’s culturally conservative vision of higher education in exchange for financial gain.

Key Themes

Experts note that while most institutions declined the deal, some statements stood out more than others.

Brian Rosenberg, president emeritus of Macalester College, highlighted the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s statement as the clearest rejection. Unlike some of the other responses, it doesn’t promise future engagement on the federal government’s concerns and is a clear, resounding no based on MIT’s principles, he said.

The first to reject the compact, MIT president Sally Kornbluth highlighted areas of agreement, such as an emphasis on merit in hiring, admissions and more, but she also argued that the proposal was “inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.”

Lisa Corrigan, a communications professor at the University of Arkansas and an expert on rhetoric and political communication, flagged the University of Southern California’s statement as a notable response. She pointed out that while USC highlighted its commitment to promoting civil discourse, as many others did, it also emphasized its “commitment to ROTC and veterans.” (Brown and Arizona were the only other institutions to mention veterans in their responses.)

“I thought USC really did a strong job in articulating exactly what values they are using to guide their decision-making in rejecting the compact,” Corrigan told Inside Higher Ed.

Erin Hennessy, vice president at TVP Communications, flagged both the Dartmouth and Penn statements as notable for different reasons. With Dartmouth, Hennessy said she was struck by the brevity of the statement, which clocked in at about 230 words. And for Penn, she pointed out that it was the only university that did not share the rejection letter it sent to Education Secretary Linda McMahon along with its public statement. Every other institution that rejected the deal posted both a statement and the letter.

(Asked for a copy of its response to the Department of Education, Penn declined to provide it.)

Experts noted a number of other observations from the collective letters and accompanying statements—including how many presidents emphasized merit, which is mentioned in every response except Dartmouth’s. Altogether the word “merit” appears 15 times in the nine published university responses, and “meritocracy” is cited once.

Hennessy posited that the focus on that specific word is an attempt to “push back on the perception of certain folks in the MAGA sphere that believe any program, or any consideration of race or class or ethnic background, is diametrically in conflict with the concept of merit.”

Rosenberg suggested that universities are trying to turn the government’s argument against it. By emphasizing merit, universities are seizing on a “logical inconsistency in the position of the federal government,” he said. While the Trump administration is demanding merit in admissions, hiring and other areas, it also has signaled a willingness to provide preferential treatment on federal research funding based not on merit but a willingness to conform to political priorities.

Many of the responses also mentioned institutional neutrality policies.

USC, Virginia, Vanderbilt and WashU all cited the concept, though only USC and Virginia submitted clear rejections; WashU sent a mixed message, and Vanderbilt has committed only to offering feedback on the proposal. Dartmouth, which also has an institutional neutrality policy, did not mention it.

Both Arizona and Virginia used a similar turn of phrase to reject the compact’s promise of preferential status in exchange for signing, with officials writing, “We seek no special treatment” in connection to advancing their missions.

One word, however, is notably absent among all the responses: Trump. And only Dartmouth referenced political affiliation in its response to the federal government. President Sian Beilock wrote that she did not believe “the involvement of the government through a compact—whether it is a Republican- or Democratic-led White House—is the right way to focus America’s leading colleges and universities on their teaching and research mission.”

WashU’s Muddled Messaging

Though Washington University in St. Louis agreed to provide feedback to the federal government, administrators also appeared to tacitly reject the compact proposal. The university’s initial statement on Monday noted concerns about the compact but stopped short of an outright rejection; Chancellor Andrew Martin wrote that providing feedback does not mean “we have endorsed or signed on” to the proposal.

But in a Tuesday email to faculty members, Martin wrote he “can confirm that we won’t sign the proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education … or any document that undermines our mission or our core values.” Martin added WashU will provide feedback, emphasizing the importance of “having our voice at the table for these potentially consequential conversations.”

WashU, however, has been reluctant to publicly call that a rejection.

Asked by Inside Higher Ed about the authenticity of the email, first published by another news outlet, and whether it amounts to a rejection, a university spokesperson only confirmed it was official.

Corrigan suggested that both WashU and Vanderbilt are trying to buy time “to see which universities are going to be in the next round, if any.” She added, “They want the opportunity to return to the conversation when there’s more political cover for them to potentially say no.”

Institutional Silence

While most universities invited to join the compact responded publicly by the deadline, both the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Kansas have remained silent on the matter.

Neither has issued publicly shared feedback or other statements about the compact, though University of Texas system board leadership initially responded positively to the invitation to join.

“For institutions that haven’t responded publicly yet, the questions I would be asking are, is there division between the president and the board on how to move forward on this? Is there division between the president and the faculty on how to move forward on this?” Hennessy said.

To her, that silence signals that internal negotiations are likely at play, potentially involving debates over strategy, language and other points. She believes nonresponders are more likely to sign the compact and may be “trying to figure out how to make a yes more palatable” to critics.

Rosenberg suggests there are likely legal concerns being discussed.

“Like virtually everything else coming out of the government right now, it’s going to face a legal challenge once someone signs, because the limitations on free speech for members of the community are pretty severe,” he said. “Once someone signs, it’s going to end up in the courts.”

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October 24, 2025