AI research tools such as OpenAI o1 have now reached test score levels that meet or exceed the scores of those who hold Ph.D. degrees in the sciences and a number of other fields. These generative AI tools utilize large language models that include research and knowledge across many disciplines. Increasingly, they are used for research project ideation and literature searches. The tools are generating interesting insights to researchers that they may not have been exposed to in years gone by.
The field of academe has long emphasized the single-discipline research study. We offer degrees in single disciplines; faculty members are granted appointments most often in only one department, school or college; and for the most part, our peer-reviewed academic journals are in only one discipline, although sometimes they welcome papers from closely associated or allied fields. Dissertations are most commonly based in a single discipline. Although research grants are more often multidisciplinary and prioritize practical solution-finding, a large number remain focused on one field of study.
The problem is that as we advance our knowledge and application expertise in one field, we can become unaware of important developments in other fields that directly or indirectly impact the study in our chosen discipline. Innovation is not always a single-purpose, straight-line advance. More often today, innovation comes from the integration of knowledge of disparate fields such as sociology, engineering, ecology and environmental developments, and expanding understanding of quantum physics and quantum computing. Until recently, we have not had an efficient way to identify and integrate knowledge and perspectives from fields that, at first glance, seem unrelated.
“Amidst the urgency of increasingly complex global challenges, the need for integrative approaches that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries has never been more critical. Climate change, global health crises, sustainable development, and other pressing issues demand solutions from diverse knowledge and expertise. However, effectively combining insights from multiple disciplines has long been a significant hurdle in academia and research.
“The Multi-LLM Iterative Prompting Methodology (MIPM) emerges as a transformative solution to this challenge. MIPM offers a structured yet flexible framework for promoting and enhancing multidisciplinary research, peer review, and education. At its core, MIPM addresses the fundamental issue of effectively combining diverse disciplinary perspectives to lead to genuine synthesis and innovation. Its transformative potential is a beacon of hope in the face of complex global challenges.”
Even as we integrate AI research tools and techniques, we, ourselves, and our society at large are changing. Many of the common frontier language models powering research tools are multidisciplinary by nature, although some are designed with strengths in specific fields. Their responses to our prompts are multidisciplinary. The response to our iterative follow-up prompts can take us to fields and areas of expertise of which we were not previously aware. The replies are not coming solely from a single discipline expert, book or other resource. They are coming from a massive language model that spans disciplines, languages, cultures and millennia.
As we integrate these tools, we too will naturally become aware of new and emerging perspectives, research and developments generated by fields that are outside our day-to-day knowledge, training and expertise. This will expand our perspectives beyond the fields of our formal study. As the quality of our AI-based research tools expands, their impact on research cannot be overstated. It will lead us in new directions and broader perspectives, uncovering the potential for new knowledge, informed by multiple disciplines. One recent example is Storm, a brainstorming tool developed by the team at Stanford’s Open Virtual Assistant Lab (OVAL):
“The core technologies of the STORM&Co-STORM system include support from Bing Search and GPT-4o mini. The STORM component iteratively generates outlines, paragraphs, and articles through multi-angle Q&A between ‘LLM experts’ and ‘LLM hosts.’ Meanwhile, Co-STORM generates interactive dynamic mind maps through dialogues among multiple agents, ensuring that no information needs overlooked by the user. Users only need to input an English topic keyword, and the system can generate a high-quality long text that integrates multi-source information, similar to a Wikipedia article. When experiencing the STORM system, users can freely choose between STORM and Co-STORM modes. Given a topic, STORM can produce a structured high-quality long text within 3 minutes. Additionally, users can click ‘See BrainSTORMing Process’ to view the brainstorming process of different LLM roles. In the ‘Discover’ section, users can refer to articles and chat examples generated by other scholars, and personal articles and chat records can also be found in the sidebar ‘My Library.’”
One of the concerns raised by skeptics at this point in the development of these research tools is the security of prompts and results. Few are aware of the opportunities for air-gapped or closed systems and even the ChatGPT temporary chats. In the case of OpenAI, you can start a temporary chat by tapping the version of ChatGPT you’re using at the top of the GPT app, and selecting temporary chat. I do this commonly in using Ray’s eduAI Advisor. OpenAI says that in the temporary chat mode results “won’t appear in history, use or create memories, or be used to train our models. For safety purposes, we may keep a copy for up to 30 days.” We can anticipate these kinds of protections will be offered by other providers. This may provide adequate security for many applications.
Further security can be provided by installing a stand-alone instance of the LLM database and software in an air-gapped computer that maintains data completely disconnected from the internet or any other network, ensuring an unparalleled level of protection. Small language models and medium-size models are providing impressive results, approaching and in some cases exceeding frontier model performance while storing all data locally, off-line. For example, last year Microsoft introduced a line of SLM and medium models:
“Microsoft’s experience shipping copilots and enabling customers to transform their businesses with generative AI using Azure AI has highlighted the growing need for different-size models across the quality-cost curve for different tasks. Small language models, like Phi-3, are especially great for:
Resource constrained environments including on-device and offline inference scenarios
Latency bound scenarios where fast response times are critical.
Cost constrained use cases, particularly those with simpler tasks.”
In the near term we will find turnkey private search applications that will offer even more impressive results. Work continues on rapidly increasing multidisciplinary responses to research on an ever-increasing number of pressing research topics.
The ever-evolving AI research tools are now providing us with responses from multiple disciplines. These results will lead us to engage in more multidisciplinary studies that will become a catalyst for change across academia. Will you begin to consider cross-discipline research studies and engage your colleagues from other fields to join you in research projects?
Ricardo Torres, the CEO of the National Student Clearinghouse, is retiring next month after 17 years at the helm. His last few weeks on the job have not been quiet.
On Jan. 13, the clearinghouse’s research team announced they had found a significant error in their October enrollment report: Instead of freshman enrollment falling by 5 percent, it actually seemed to have increased; the clearinghouse is releasing its more complete enrollment report tomorrow. In the meantime, researchers, college officials and policymakers are re-evaluating their understanding of how 2024’s marquee events, like the bungled FAFSA rollout, influenced enrollment; some are questioning their reliance on clearinghouse research.
It’s come as a difficult setback at the end of Torres’s tenure. He established the research center in 2010, two years after becoming CEO, and helped guide it to prominence as one of the most widely used and trusted sources of postsecondary student data.
The clearinghouse only began releasing the preliminary enrollment report, called the “Stay Informed” report, in 2020 as a kind of “emergency measure” to gauge the pandemic’s impact on enrollment, Torres told Inside Higher Ed. The methodological error in October’s report, which the research team discovered this month, had been present in every iteration since. And a spokesperson for the clearinghouse said that after reviewing the methodology for their “Transfer and Progress” report, which they’ve released every February since 2023, was also affected by the miscounting error; the 2025 report will be corrected, but the last two were skewed.
Torres said the clearinghouse is exploring discontinuing the “Stay Informed” report entirely.
Such a consequential snafu would put a damper on anyone’s retirement and threaten to tarnish their legacy. But Torres is used to a little turbulence: He oversaw the clearinghouse through a crucial period of transformation, from an arm of the student lending sector to a research powerhouse. He said the pressure on higher ed researchers is only going to get more intense in the years ahead, given the surging demand for enrollment and outcomes data from anxious college leaders and ambitious lawmakers. Transparency and integrity, he cautioned, will be paramount.
His conversation with Inside Higher Ed, edited for length and clarity, is below.
Q: You’ve led the clearinghouse since 2008, when higher ed was a very different sector. How does it feel to be leaving?
A: It’s a bit bittersweet, but I feel like we’ve accomplished something during my tenure that can be built upon. I came into the job not really knowing about higher ed; it was a small company, a $13 million operation serving the student lending industry. We were designed to support their fundamental need to understand who’s enrolled and who isn’t, for the purposes of monitoring student loans. As a matter of fact, the original name of the organization was the National Student Loan Clearinghouse. When you think about what happened when things began to evolve and opportunities began to present themselves, we’ve done a lot.
Q: Tell me more about how the organization has changed since the days of the Student Loan Clearinghouse.
A: Frankly, the role and purpose of the clearinghouse and its main activities have not changed in about 15 years. The need was to have a trusted, centralized location where schools could send their information that then could be used to validate loan status based on enrollments. The process, prior to the clearinghouse, was loaded with paperwork. The registrars that are out there now get this almost PTSD effect when they go back in time before the clearinghouse. If a student was enrolled in School A, transferred to School B and had a loan, by the time everybody figured out that you were enrolled someplace else, you were in default on your loan. We were set up to fix that problem.
What made our database unique at that time was that when a school sent us enrollment data, they had to send all of the learners because they actually didn’t know who had a previous loan and who didn’t. That allowed us to build a holistic, comprehensive view of the whole lending environment. So we began experimenting with what else we could do with the data.
Our first observation was how great a need there was for this data. Policy formulation at almost every level—federal, state, regional—for improving learner outcomes lacked the real-time data to figure out what was going on. Still, democratizing the data alone was insufficient because you need to convert that insight into action of some kind that is meaningful. What I found as I was meeting schools and individuals was that the ability and the skill sets required to convert data to action were mostly available in the wealthiest institutions. They had all the analysts in the world to figure out what the hell was going on, and the small publics were just scraping by. That was the second observation, the inequity.
The third came around 2009 to 2012, when there was an extensive effort to make data an important part of decision-making across the country. The side effect of that, though, was that not all the data sets were created equal, which made answering questions about what works and what doesn’t that much more difficult.
The fourth observation, and I think it’s still very relevant today, is that the majority of our postsecondary constituencies are struggling to work with the increasing demands they’re getting from regulators: from the feds, from the states, from their accreditors, the demand for reports is increasing. The demand for feedback is increasing. Your big institutions, your flagships, might see this as a pain in the neck, but I would suggest that your smaller publics and smaller private schools are asking, “Oh my gosh, how are we even going to do this?” Our data helps.
Q: What was the clearinghouse doing differently in terms of data collection?
A: From the postsecondary standpoint, our first set of reports that we released in 2011 focused on two types of learners that at most were anecdotally referred to: transfer students and part-time students. The fact that we included part-time students, which [the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System] did not, was a huge change. And our first completion report, I believe, said that over 50 percent of baccalaureate recipients had some community college in their background. That was eye-popping for the country to see and really catalyzed a lot of thinking about transfer pathways.
We also helped spur the rise of these third-party academic-oriented organizations like Lumina and enabled them to help learners by using our data. One of our obligations as a data aggregator was to find ways to make this data useful for the field, and I think we accomplished that. Now, of course, demand is rising with artificial intelligence; people want to do more. We understand that, but we also think we have a huge responsibility as a data custodian to do that responsibly. People who work with us realize how seriously we take that custodial relationship with the data. That has been one of the hallmarks of our tenure as an organization.
Q: Speaking of custodial responsibility, people are questioning the clearinghouse’s research credibility after last week’s revelation of the data error in your preliminary enrollment report. Are you worried it will undo the years of trust building you just described? How do you take accountability?
A: No. 1: The data itself, which we receive from institutions, is reliable, current and accurate. We make best efforts to ensure that it accurately represents what the institutions have within their own systems before any data is merged into the clearinghouse data system.
When we first formed the Research Center, we had to show how you can get from the IPEDS number to the clearinghouse number and show people our data was something they could count on. We spent 15 years building this reputation. The key to any research-related error like this is, first, you have to take ownership of it and hold yourself accountable. As soon as I found out about this we were already making moves to [make it public]—we’re talking 48 hours. That’s the first step in maintaining trust.
That being said, there’s an element of risk built into this work. Part of what the clearinghouse brings to the table is the ability to responsibly advance the dialogue of what’s happening in education and student pathways. There are things that are happening out there, such as students stopping out and coming back many years later, that basically defy conventional wisdom. And so the risk in all of this is that you shy away from that work and decide to stick with the knitting. But your obligation is, if you’re going to report those things, to be very transparent. As long as we can thread that needle, I think the clearinghouse will play an important role in helping to advance the dialogue.
We’re taking this very seriously and understand the importance of the integrity of our reports considering how the field is dependent on the information we provide. Frankly, one of the things we’re going to take a look at is, what is the need for the preliminary report at the end of the day? Or do we need to pair it with more analysis—is it just enough to say that total enrollments are up X or down Y?
Q: Are you saying you may discontinue the preliminary report entirely?
A: That’s certainly an option. I think we need to assess the field’s need for an early report—what questions are we trying to answer and why is it important that those questions be answered by a certain time? I’ll be honest; this is the first time something like this has happened, where it’s been that dramatic. That’s where the introspection starts, saying, “Well, this was working before; what the heck happened?”
When we released the first [preliminary enrollment] report [in 2020], we thought it’d be a one-time thing. Now, we’ve issued other reports that we thought were going to be one-time and ended up being a really big deal, like “Some College, No Credential.” We’re going to continue to look for opportunities to provide those types of insights. But I think any research entity needs to take a look at what you’re producing to make sure there’s still a need or a demand, or maybe what you’re providing needs to pivot slightly. That’s a process that’s going to be undertaken over the next few months as we evaluate this report and other reports we do.
Q: How did this happen, exactly? Have you found the source of the imputation error?
A: The research team is looking into it. In order to ensure for this particular report that we don’t extrapolate this to a whole bunch of other things, you just need to make sure that you know you’ve got your bases covered analytically.
There was an error in how we imputed a particular category of dual-enrolled students versus freshmen. But if you look at the report, the total number of learners wasn’t impacted by that. These preliminary reports were designed to meet a need after COVID, to understand what the impact was going to be. We basically designed a report on an emergency basis, and by default, when you don’t have complete information, there’s imputation. There’s been a lot of pressure on getting the preliminary fall report out. That being said, you learn your lesson—you gotta own it and then you keep going. This was very unfortunate, and you can imagine the amount of soul searching to ensure that this never happens again.
Q: Do you think demand for more postsecondary data is driving some irresponsible analytic practices?
A: I can tell you that new types of demands are going to be put out there on student success data, looking at nondegree credentials, looking at microcredentials. And there’s going to be a lot of spitballing. Just look at how ROI is trying to be calculated right now; I could talk for hours about the ins and outs of ROI methodology. For example, if a graduate makes $80,000 after graduating but transferred first from a community college, what kind of attribution does the community college get for that salary outcome versus the four-year school? Hell, it could be due to a third-party boot camp done after earning a degree. Research on these topics is going to be full of outstanding questions.
Q: What comes next for the clearinghouse’s research after you leave?
A: I’m excited about where it’s going. I’m very excited about how artificial intelligence can be appropriately leveraged, though I think we’re still trying to figure out how to do that. I can only hope that the clearinghouse will continue its journey of support. Because while we don’t directly impact learner trajectories, we can create the tools that help people who support learners every year impact those trajectories. Looking back on my time here, that’s what I’m most proud of.
While many students experience growing pains in the transition from high school to college, today’s learners face an extra challenge emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. Many students experienced learning loss in K-12 as a result of distance learning, which has stunted their readiness to engage fully in academia.
Three faculty members in the communications division at DePaul University noticed a disconnect in their own classrooms as they sought to connect with students. They decided to create their own intervention to address learners’ lack of communication and self-efficacy skills.
Since 2022, DePaul has offered a two-credit communication course that assists students midway through the term and encourages reflection and goal setting for future success. Over the past four terms, faculty members have seen demonstrated change in students’ self-perceptions and commitment to engage in long-term success strategies.
The background: Upon returning to in-person instruction after the pandemic, associate professor Jay Baglia noticed students still behaved as though their classes were one-directional Zoom calls, staring blankly or demonstrating learned helplessness from a lack of deadlines and loose attendance policies.
“We were seeing a greater proportion of students who were not prepared for the college experience,” says Elissa Foster, professor and faculty fellow of the DePaul Humanities Center.
Previous research showed that strategies to increase students’ collaboration and participation in class positively impacted engagement, helping students take a more active role in their learning and classroom environment.
The faculty members decided to create their own workshop to equip students with practical tools they can use in their academics and their lives beyond.
How it works: Offered for the first time in fall 2022, the Communication Fundamentals for College Success course is a two-credit, five-week course that meets for two 90-minute sessions a week, for a total of 10 meetings. The class is housed in the College of Communication but available to all undergraduate students.
The course is co-taught and was developed by Foster and Kendra Knight, associate professor in the college of communication and an assessment consultant for the center for teaching and learning. Guest speakers from advising and the Office of Health Promotion and Wellness provide additional perspective.
(from left to right) Jay Baglia, Elissa Foster and Kendra Knight developed a short-form course to support students’ capabilities in higher education and give them tools for future success.
Aubreonna Chamberlain/DePaul University
Course content includes skills and behaviors taught in the context of communication for success: asking for help, using university resources, engaging in class with peers and professors, and learning academic software. It also touches on more general behaviors like personal awareness, mindfulness, coping practices, a growth mindset, goal setting and project management.
The demographics of students enrolled in the course vary; some are transfers looking for support as they navigate a university for the first time. Others are A students who wanted an extra course in their schedule. Others are juniors or seniors hoping to gain longer-term life skills to apply to their internships or their lives as professionals and find work-life balance.
Throughout the course, students turned in regular reflection exercises for assessment and the final assignment was a writing assignment to identify three tools that they will take with them beyond this course.
What’s different: One of the challenges in launching the course was distinguishing its goals from DePaul’s Chicago Quarter, which is the first-year precollege experience. Baglia compares the college experience to taking an international vacation: While you might have a guidebook and plan well for the experience beforehand, once you’re in country, you face challenges you didn’t anticipate or may be overwhelmed.
Orientation is the guidebook students receive before going abroad, and the Communication for Success Class is their tour guide along the way.
“I think across the country, universities and college professors are recognizing that scaffolding is really the way to go, particularly with first-generation college students,” Baglia says. “They don’t always have the language or the tools or the support or the conversations at home that prepare them for the strangeness of living on their own [and navigating higher education].”
A unique facet of the course is that it’s offered between weeks three and seven in the semester, starting immediately after the add-drop period concludes and continuing until midterms. This delayed-start structure means the students enrolled in the course are often looking for additional credits to keep their full-time enrollment status, sometimes after dropping a different course.
The timing of the course also requires a little time and trust, because most students register for it later, not during the course registration period. Baglia will be teaching the spring 2025 term and, as of Jan. 10, he only has two students registered.
“It has not been easy convincing the administrators in our college to give it some time … Students have to register for this class [later],” Baglia says.
The results: Foster, Knight and Baglia used a small grant to study the effects of the intervention and found, through the data, a majority of students identified time management and developing a growth mindset as the tools they want to keep working on, with just under half indicating self-care and 40 percent writing about classroom engagement.
In their essays, students talked about mapping out their deadlines for the semester or using a digital calendar to stay on top of their schedules. Students also said they were more likely to view challenges as opportunities for growth or consider their own capabilities as underdeveloped, rather than stagnant or insufficient.
The intervention has already spurred similar innovation within the university, with the College of Science and Health offering a similar life skills development course.
Course organizers don’t have plans to scale the course at present, but they are considering ways to collect more data from participants after they finish the course and compare that to the more general university population.
The Teacher in the Machine: A Human History of Education Technology (Princeton University Press) will be published this May. I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy. It is too early to interview the author, the University of Virginia’s Anne Trumbore, about the book, as you will not be able to get your hands on it for a few months. I can’t help myself, though.
Like Anne, I am also a practitioner-scholar, working in and writing about the intersection of technology, learning and higher education change. While The Teacher and the Machine covers much of the same ground as my first co-authored book, Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education(JHUP, 2020), I learned much of what I didn’t know from reading Anne’s book.
As the publication of The Teacher in the Machine approaches, I’ll share a full (highly positive) review. Until then, to help build anticipation about the book’s launch and also get to know its author better, I thought the best place to start is a Q&A.
Q: Tell us about your current role at Darden (UVA) and the education and career path that you have followed.
A: I’m currently the chief digital learning officer, where I lead a team that designs, develops and delivers education that enables career mobility for learners at all ages and stages. I arrived at this stage through a pretty circuitous path that included time as a journalist and obituary writer, a copywriter for motion picture advertising, a writing teacher at SFSU and Stanford, and then a lateral hop into ed tech. My education path was somewhat more straightforward: straight to undergrad from high school. But my graduate degrees were driven by career aspirations and occurred decades apart. (I resemble a lot of the learners we are helping now in that regard.)
Oddly enough, my “unmarketable” undergrad degree in semiotics and my graduate work in writing and teaching writing got me hired full-time at Stanford, working on an adaptive grammar program that provided asynchronous personalized instruction and creating curriculum for and teaching at Stanford Online High School. That led to a role on the early team at Coursera, with a focus on working with university professors using (and developing) online peer review, which morphed into a role on the founding team at NovoEd, developing designs for social and project-based learning at scale. Then I pivoted back to higher ed with a role at Wharton, where I established Wharton Online.
The questions I was trying to answer there, most of which revolved around maximizing the effectiveness of, and revenue for, online education in business topics, led me to UVA. Its Darden School of Business had just received a transformational gift to establish the Sands Institute for Lifelong Learning, which is where I saw the puck going at the intersection of higher education and technology. I earned an education doctorate at Penn GSE during my time at Wharton because the questions I began asking about what we were doing and why were not easily answered within the confines of the business school.
Q: In The Teacher and the Machine, you tell the story of the birth and evolution of massive open online courses within the context of the history of educational technology. What are the lessons from the history of ed tech that we in higher education should absorb as we make decisions about the future of online education and AI for teaching and learning?
A: The main takeaway is that innovation in ed tech is particularly reliant upon ignorance of its history for a couple of main reasons: Innovation drives adoption (no one wants to invest in an “old” idea), and the idea of using technology to make education both more efficient and democratic consolidates power in the hands of the disrupters, who are almost always businessmen and scientists educated at the most elite universities in the world.
I believe that once you understand the history of ed tech and its intertwined beginnings with artificial intelligence, universities can be more clear-eyed about their business partnerships with ed-tech companies and their purchasing decisions, which are usually not driven by evidence-backed research. We also have the opportunity to be more thoughtful about our motives in distributing education “to the masses” and ask ourselves who this strategy benefits and why it is attractive to venture capital.
Finally—and this is a point you and a few others have made extremely well—it’s incumbent upon higher ed institutions to be informed about the innovation narrative that gets circulated, which enriches the same set of people and institutions over and over again. I have to believe that if we have a greater understanding of the history and the motives of the major players in ed tech, we can also ask better questions of our ed-tech providers and partners so that we can create educational experiences that provide more returns to learners than ed-tech investors.
Q: You are not only a student of higher education and digital learning, you are also a practitioner. How did your role throughout your career as a participant in the creation and development of MOOCs and other online learning initiatives impact how you write about that history in The Teacher in the Machine?
A: The closest metaphor I can think of is that it felt like putting together a 2,000-piece puzzle of a photograph I was in: I knew what it would look like, but I had to break down and examine all the pieces and then reassemble. The questions I asked of the events were less about what happened and more about why did it happen that particular way? What were the conditions that produced our actions? Living the history also provided opportunities to fill in the gaps that some more traditional records leave out.
I’m thinking especially of the daily minor decisions that were made under pressure that drove the history in unplanned directions, as well as the personalities of the main players. Experiencing these elements of the story and being able to report firsthand is one of the benefits to being in the circus ring instead of in the seats. Another is that you can directly see the audience, which provides a different lens than a more traditional history. Hopefully, the narrative benefited from the inside-out point of view.
You walk into the conference networking event, feeling alone, aware of the steady chatter throughout the room. You look to find someone you might know, you sense your breath growing faster and you experience that all-too-familiar pit in your stomach. You walk deeper into the room, taking a few grounding breaths, and notice others standing alone. You approach another conference attendee, feeling as if you are stepping outside of your body, and in your friendliest tone you introduce yourself and ask, “Where did you travel in from?”
You did it! You initiated small talk with a stranger.
Small talk is a mode of communication that occurs throughout the world, but not every culture engages in small talk to the same degree. In some cultures, it is expected, and in other cultures it can be perceived as inappropriate or rude. In addition to cultural context, one’s perception of small talk and propensity for engaging in it can be influenced by factors including, but not limited to, personality traits, degree of social comfort, mental health and wellness, past experiences, and the setting of the conversation. Small talk can also present specific challenges to language learners, neurodivergent individuals, people who are unaccustomed to talking with strangers and many others.
Merriam-Webster Dictionarydefines small talk as “light or casual conversation: chitchat.” (Seeing the word “chitchat” immediately brought me back to kindergarten, when my teacher, Mrs. Barker, would frequently say, “Kay, stop your chitchat.”) Cambridge Dictionarydefines small talk as, “conversation about things that are not important, often between people who do not know each other well.” The emphasis on “not important” can give the impression that small talk is useless, however, within the U.S cultural context, small talk holds great importance in connecting individuals and laying the foundation for more substantial communication. Think of small talk as the gateway to more meaningful conversations.
When done well, small talk relies on improvisation and adaptability, allowing for a flow of information and often uncovering unexpected insights and mutual interests. When I think of small talk I think of it as jazz, with each person riffing off the other to create a connection and to also make meaning in the moment. Effectively engaging in small talk by establishing commonalities can open a door for a future collaboration, expand your professional network, build rapport leading to a career or academic opportunity, enhance confidence and ease tension in an interview.
Do you wish that small talk felt less awkward and more meaningful? Apply these strategies to reduce your small talk stress and to contribute to your career success:
Get curious. Harness your curiosity as you engage in small talk. Take the scenario we began with: Someone might ask, “Where did you travel in from?” because they are generally interested in meeting people from different parts of the country or world. Someone else might ask this question as a gateway to finding a future collaborator from a specific country or academic institution. Don’t just ask questions for the sake of chatting, but rather ask about topics in which you are genuinely interested. This approach will make engaging in small talk more enjoyable and valuable to you, and your interaction will feel authentic to the person with whom you are speaking.
Listen actively. As the other person responds to your question, try to refrain from planning what you will next ask, but rather focus on absorbing what they are sharing. Consider reflecting an aspect of something they mentioned. For example, if in response to “Where did you travel in from?” they say, “I flew in from Greece last night, and this is my first time in the States; I’m a Ph.D. student at the University of Crete,” you might empathize with their journey and ask how long they are visiting. After further discussion, you might feel inclined to offer to host the individual if they plan to travel around. Your one question, the one that initiated the small talk exchange, could even lead to a lifelong professional relationship.
Consider the context. The definition of small talk in the Cambridge Dictionary refers to a “conversation about things that are not important.” I would challenge you to not dismiss small talk as trivial but rather leverage it for more meaningful conversation. When thinking about the setting in which you are engaging in small talk, you can guide the conversation toward greater meaning. It would be odd if the individual attending the networking event at the conference opened the conversation with their name and asked, “What do you think about the weather?” This question would seem very disconnected from the event and purpose of the networking session. However, if the individual were waiting outside at an uncovered bus stop, it might be natural to strike up a conversation about the weather. Having an awareness about the context and setting will lead to an authentic conversation.
Have go-to questions. While you don’t want to arrive at every occasion with a script of possible questions, it can be a good exercise to reflect on the things about which you are genuinely curious. When attending a conference networking event, you may be interested in hearing about individuals’ career paths, learning about their research, gaining their advice, etc. In developing questions, focus on ones that are open-ended, where the response requires more than a yes or no. You might ask, “Which conference sessions are you most interested in attending?” Maybe that seems unimportant to you or even a bit superficial, but hearing about the other individual’s interest might inspire you to attend a session you would not have initially chosen. As the conversation unfolds, so will the opportunities to guide the conversation toward more meaningful topics, and you might next ask, “What research projects are you currently working on?”
Practice. It is likely that you have attended interview preparation and practice sessions but far less likely that you have attended a small talk training. This is not your fault. My plea to my fellow career development practitioners is this: If we know that many individuals approach small talk with feelings of discomfort or dread, and we also recognize that it is an important skill that leads to positive career outcomes, then we need to actively train and create opportunities for our students and postdocs to practice small talk in low-stakes settings. Consider building small talk into your interview preparation offerings, add a small talk learning module to an upcoming campus networking event, collaborate with your campus’s English language learning program to incorporate small talk activities and reinforce the many places and spaces where your students and postdocs are already engaging in small talk. An example would be when a student comes in for an appointment and asks, “How was your weekend?” By asking they might learn, for instance, that you were recently in Miami, a city on the top of their list of places to visit. In this exchange you could draw attention to how the student effectively engaged in small talk, reinforcing that it is a skill they already possess.
Know what topics not to lead with. In the U.S. cultural context, it is safe to say that you would not want to lead small talk with questions about politics, religion, finances, health or overly personal topics. Aspects of these topics might be categorized as sensitive or controversial and can create tension and lead to misunderstanding. Through engaging in small talk, you should be building a foundation of connection that can facilitate greater openness toward engaging in more meaningful topics. That said, maybe you are at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting—in that context, it would be common for the small talk to include politics. The setting and context can serve to guide the topics and direction of the small talk.
In academia, where emphasis on depth and scope of knowledge is highly valued, small talk can be easily viewed as a burden and overlooked as a necessary competency. But by applying a few small talk communication strategies, you will find that it can open doors and enhance career success. If you have yet to do so, embrace small talk as a skill worth developing, and get out there and chitchat. The effects on your professional life could be both profound and long-lasting.
Kay Gruder is the associate director of graduate student and postdoc career programs and services at the University of Connecticut. She is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium, an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.
Colleges can be hot spots for debate, inquiry and disagreement, particularly on political topics. Sometimes institutional leaders weigh in on the debate, issuing public statements or sharing resources internally among students, staff and faculty.
This past fall, following the 2024 presidential election, college administrators were notably silent. A November Student Voice survey found a majority (63 percent) of student respondents (n=1,031) said their college did not do or say anything after the election, and only 17 percent released a statement to students about the election.
A more recent surveyfrom Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found this aligns with students’ preferences for institutional response.
Over half (54 percent) of respondents (n=1,034) to a December Student Voice survey said colleges and universities should not make statements about political events, such as the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. One-quarter of students said they weren’t sure if institutions should make statements, and fewer than a quarter of learners said colleges should publish a statement.
Across demographics—including institution size and classification, student race, political identification, income level or age—the greatest share of students indicated that colleges shouldn’t make statements. The only group that differed was nonbinary students (n=32), of whom 47 percent said they weren’t sure and 30 percent said no.
Experts weigh in on the value of institutional neutrality and how college leaders can demonstrate care for learners without sharing statements.
What’s the sitch: In the past, college administrators have issued statements, either personally or on behalf of the institution, to demonstrate care and concern for students who are impacted by world events, says Heterodox Academy president John Tomasi.
“There’s also an element, a little more cynically, of trying to get ahead of certain political issues so they [administrators] couldn’t be criticized for having said nothing or not caring,” Tomasi says.
Students Say
Even with a majority of colleges and universities not speaking out after the 2024 election, some students think colleges are still being supportive.
The November Student Voice survey found 35 percent of respondents believed their institution was offering the right amount of support to students after the election results, but 31 percent weren’t sure.
The events of Oct. 7, 2023, proved complicated for statement-issuing presidents, with almost half of institutions that published statements releasing an additional response after the campus community or others pushed back. Initial statements, according to one analysis, often lacked caring elements, such as the impact to students or health and well-being of university community members in the region.
A growing number of colleges and universities are choosing to opt out of public political conversations at the executive level, instead selecting to be institutionally neutral. Heterodox Academy, which tracks colleges’ commitments to neutrality, saw numbers rise from a dozen in 2023 to over 100 in 2024.
Some students are experiencing political fatigue in general, says Vanderbilt University chancellor Daniel Diermeier, particularly relating to the war in Gaza. “This dynamic of ‘which side are you on, and if you’re not with me, you’re against me’ was troubling to many students and was exhausting and had a detrimental impact on the culture of learning, exploration and discussion.”
Vanderbilt University has held a position of neutrality for many years, part of a free expression policy, which it defines as a “commitment to refrain from taking public positions on controversial issues unless the issue is materially related to the core mission and functioning of the university.”
College students aren’t the only group that want fewer organizations to talk politics; a November survey by Morning Consult found two-thirds of Americans believe companies should stay out of politics entirely after the 2024 presidential election and 59 percent want companies to comment neutrally on the results.
However, an earlier survey by Morning Consult found, across Americans, 56 percent believe higher education institutions are at least somewhat responsible for speaking out on political, societal or cultural issues, compared to 31 percent of respondents who say colleges and universities are not too or not at all responsible.
Allowing students to speak: Proponents of institutional neutrality say the practice allows discourse to flourish on campus. Taking a position can create a chilling effect, in which people are afraid to speak out in opposition to the prevailing point of view, Diermeier says.
Recent polls have shown today’s college students are hesitant to share their political opinions, often electing to self-censor due to fears of negative repercussions. Since 2015, this concern has grown, with 33 percent of respondents sharing that they feel uncomfortable discussing their political views on campus, compared to 13 percent a decade ago.
Part of this hesitancy among students could be an overstepping on behalf of administrators that affirms the institution’s perspective on issues one way or another.
“I hear from students that they want to be the ones making the statements themselves … and if a president makes a statement first, that kind of cuts off the conversation,” says Tomasi, who is a faculty member at Brown University.
A majority of campus community members want to pursue learning and research, Diermeier says, and “the politicization that has taken hold on many university campuses … that is not what most students and faculty want.”
Institutional neutrality allows a university to step back and empower students to be political agents, Tomasi says. “The students should be platformed, the professors should be platformed, but the university itself should be a neutral framework for students to do all those things.”
Neutral, not silent: One distinction Tomasi and Diermeier make about institutional neutrality is that the commitment is not one of silence, but rather selective vocalization to affirm the university’s mission.
“Neutrality can’t just be the neutrality of convenience,” Tomasi says. “It should be a neutrality of a principle that’ll endure beyond the particular conflict that’s dividing the campus, because it celebrates and stands for and flows from that high ideal of university life as a community of imperfect learners that does value intellectual pluralism.”
Another area in which universities are obligated to speak up is if the issue challenges the core mission of an institution. Examples of this could include a travel ban against immigration from certain countries, a tax on endowments, a ban on divisive topics or scrutiny of admissions practices.
“On issues that are core to the academic mission, we’re going to be vocal, we’re going to be engaged and we’re going to be advocates,” Diermeier says, and establishing what is involved in the core mission is key to each institution. “Inside the core doesn’t mean it’s not controversial—it just means it’s inside the core.”
So what? For colleges and university leaders considering how to move forward, Diermeier and Tomasi offer some advice.
Start with the mission in mind. When working with learners, practitioners should strive to advance the mission of seeking knowledge and providing a transformative education, Diermeier says. For faculty in particular, it’s important to give students “room to breathe” and to be exposed to both sides of an argument, because there’s power in understanding another position, even if it’s not shared.
Create space for discourse. “It’s expected that the groups that are organized and vocal, they’re more in the conversation and claiming more of the space,” Diermeier says. “It’s our responsibility as leaders of universities to make sure that we are not being unduly influenced by that.” Students should be given the opportunity to engage in free speech, whether that’s protesting or counterprotesting, but that cannot dictate administrative decisions. Vanderbilt student organizations hosted debates and spaces for constructive dialogue prior to the election, which were well attended and respectful.
Lean into the discomfort. Advancing free speech and scholarship can be complicated and feel “unnatural,” Tomasi says, because humans prefer to find like-minded people and others who agree with their views, “but there’s something pretty elevated about it that’s attractive, too,” to students. Colleges and universities should consider how promoting discourse can help students feel they belong.
Provide targeted outreach. For some issues, such as natural disasters, colleges and universities can provide direct support and messaging to impacted students. “It’s just so much more effective and it can be targeted, and then the messages are also more authentic,” Diermeier says.
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What’s the biggest problem facing college students today? Cost is a big concern, of course, for good reason. But many would point to something equally troubling—misperceptions about the value of college degrees. That’s no surprise when reasonable questions are raised about whether graduates are job-ready—and if too many jobs unnecessarily require diplomas.
There has long been a paper ceiling that penalizes applicants who lack degrees. And more companies are now taking a closer look at so-called STARs—people Skilled Through Alternative Routes.
The group Tear the Paper Ceiling says that 61 percent of Black workers, 55 percent of Hispanic workers, 66 percent of rural workers and 62 percent of veterans are considered STARs. They have learned valuable work skills through military service, certificate programs, on-the-job training and boot camps. But too often, they’ve been shut out unfairly.
I applaud the work of this national group and their partners. The equity barriers to jobs are real. Only half of working-age people have a quality degree or other credential beyond high school, even as millions of jobs go unfilled in part because applicants lack the required background or credentials. It only makes sense to make sure we’re not leaving behind talented but uncredentialed neighbors.
But to take a deeper look is to understand this isn’t only about expanding opportunity and filling today’s open jobs, but the jobs that an increasingly tech-driven, interconnected world will demand in coming years. Skills-based hiring is a good idea, but it won’t on its own come close to solving the nation’s human talent crisis. Increasing higher educational attainment by making sure many more people get better credentials—credentials of value—is the key.
Foundation of Growth
Higher education has always been about producing graduates who are ready to start careers, not just jobs. This matters because a person who is a good applicant for a position now could face challenges moving to better and higher-paying positions because they lack the foundation for career growth fostered in postsecondary programs.
The American Association of Colleges and Universities has surveyed executives and hiring managers eight times since 2006. The most recent survey, from 2023, found that 80 percent of employers strongly or somewhat agree that college prepares people for success in the workforce. Getting a degree is certainly worth the time and money, respondents suggested, as the survey “found a strong correlation between the outcomes of a liberal education and the knowledge and skills employers view as essential for success in entry-level jobs and for advancement in their companies.”
There will always be conflicting data points in times of change. For example, the push for skills-based hiring, including at the federal level, is opening doors to a broader array of good jobs that historically required a college degree. However, research by Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute shows that college graduates still have an advantage when it comes to getting jobs with higher salaries and better benefits.
It turns out that employers aren’t committing to skills-based hiring at the level that recent headlines might suggest. The Harvard–Burning Glass report tracked more than 11,000 jobs where a bachelor’s degree was no longer required in the job description. It found only a 3.5-percentage-point increase in the share of non-degree-holders hired into those roles—a decidedly underwhelming number suggesting the buzz about skills-based hiring may be more hype than trend.
The Lifelong Payoff
This and other signs reinforce the enduring value of degrees: A recent report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce found that 72 percent of jobs in the United States will require post–high school education or training by the year 2031. The center also found:
People with bachelor’s degrees earn, on average, $1.2 million more over their lifetime than those with only a high school education.
Of the 18.5 million annual job openings we expect in the coming years, more than two-thirds will require at least some college education.
Earnings for people without degrees have been growing over the past decade, but so has pay for degree holders. Even as people without degrees earn more, they are still not catching up with those with diplomas.
Durable Skills Matter
Employers often say they’re looking for “durable” skills, such as critical thinking, communication and problem-solving.
Someone looking to hire an entry-level software developer might consider a candidate with skills in Python or other programming languages developed through informal learning. Many gifted techies are self-taught or developed skills through coding boot camps or working at start-ups, for example.
But a college graduate with similar skills might stand out because of their experience working in groups to complete projects, their communication and presentation skills, analytical thinking, and other traits fostered in college classes.
The catch: Across the board, we need better definitions of what our credentials mean. What defines a credential of value, exactly, and how do we make sure that the people obtaining credentials can do the work of the future?
Certainly, our fast-moving, tech-driven economy increasingly rewards nimble problem-solvers. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs report, employers estimate that 44 percent of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years.
“Cognitive skills are reported to be growing in importance most quickly, reflecting the increasing importance of complex problem-solving in the workplace,” the report said. “Surveyed businesses report creative thinking to be growing in importance slightly more rapidly than analytical thinking.”
There are many implications to this change. Embedded in the education pay premium is a fairness issue when it comes to who goes to college and how we support them. The Georgetown center has long reported on the value of a college degree and the persistent opportunity gaps for women and people of color.
The Change-Ready Nation
Whatever the impact of skills-based hiring on the nation’s labor shortage, we shouldn’t stop there. Addressing the long-standing inequities in higher education and the workforce means ensuring that these skills-based pathways include opportunities for all workers, especially when it comes to pursuing further education and training even after they enter the workforce.
Skills-based hiring and the push for increasing attainment aren’t countervailing forces. They’re aimed at ensuring that the nation grows and applies the talent it needs to be prepared for the human work of the 21st century, and to achieve the civic and economic benefits that people with good-paying jobs bring to their communities.
In the end, this is about more than the job readiness of our students. We’re talking about the change readiness of our entire nation in a rapidly evolving economy. It makes sense to revamp job requirements to meet workforce demands, but there’s no denying we’ll need the best-educated country we can build if we’re going to deliver opportunity and economic prosperity fairly for everyone.
Since winning the election, Trump has yet to offer more details on how he will fulfill the policy promises he’s made.
Colleges, meanwhile, have mostly adopted a wait-and-see approach to the incoming Trump administration. Over all, reactions to Trump’s election on college campuses were more muted this time around compared to the protests and outcry in 2016.
Trump’s impact on higher education will likely vary according to the type of institution. For instance, for-profits and other colleges are expecting less red tape and oversight from the administration, while historically Black colleges and universities are preparing to educate the administration and Congress about their institutions and their value.
Trump’s Team So Far
He tapped Linda McMahon—former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, co-chair of his transition team and founder of a pro-Trump think tank—to carry out his anti–diversity, equity and inclusion education agenda and shrink the department.
McMahon has yet to receive a confirmation hearing in the Senate, but she’s expected to get the green light. Who else will serve with McMahon in key roles related to higher ed such as the under secretary, assistant secretary of civil rights and chief operating officer for Federal Student Aid is not yet clear.
Trump did nominate former Tennessee commissioner of education Penny Schwinn as deputy secretary Friday. Schwinn, who will likely focus primarily on K-12 policy, was part of former University of Florida president Ben Sasse’s cabinet as vice president for PK-12 and pre-bachelor’s programs.
Trump doesn’t need McMahon and her team in place to get started. While day one of the administration will be filled with much of the traditional pomp and circumstance, the president’s transition team has also said it will include the signing of 200 executive orders, Fox Newsreported Sunday, which would be a record.
It’s not clear how many of those orders will affect colleges and universities, but higher education, which received little attention from Trump in his first term, is expected to rank higher on the administration’s priority list this time around. Actions related to diversity, equity and inclusion programs; transgender students; campus antisemitism; and immigration could be among the first on the docket.
During his first administration, Trump toned down oversight of for-profit colleges, issued new Title IX rules that bolstered due process protections for those accused of assault and appointed a conservative majority to the U.S. Supreme Court, paving the way for justices to later strike down affirmative action in June 2023, among other changes.
Now, just as he did in the first term with Obama’s policies, Trump will likely roll back many of the regulations President Biden put in place. Those include added steps to the process of merging or acquiring colleges, protections for borrowers who were misled by their higher ed institution and an income-driven repayment program that lowered monthly payments for millions of borrowers. Others, however, including gainful employment, might remain in place, as the GOP considers increasing federal oversight of colleges and universities.
Biden’s Team Wraps Up
Trump’s list of potential repeals grew shorter when a federal judge vacated the Biden administration’s Title IX rules. Other lawsuits challenging rules made by the Biden administration are still pending.
Before the holidays, Biden withdrew two debt-relief proposals, half-baked rules on accreditation and state authorization, and a controversial rule regarding the participation of transgender student athletes in women’s sports. The decision forces Trump to start at square one rather than leaving the existing policies open to amendment.
But the president may not even need to act himself on some of these issues as Republicans take the lead in Congress. House Republicans have passed legislation to ban trans women from women’s sports teams nationwide and to crack down on the detention of undocumented immigrants. The immigration bill could also potentially make it more difficult for international students from China and India to study in the U.S. The Senate voted Friday to advance that bill for a final vote, which could come as soon as Monday.
As Donald Trump returns to the White House on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day—with a GOP Congress behind him, a vice president who’s called universities “the enemy” and a WWE powerhouse tapped as his education secretary—it’s fair to say that the only certainty for U.S. higher education is uncertainty.
Trump’s attention to the sector during his first term was fleeting. He didn’t make higher ed a central issue in his protracted campaign for re-election, either, although he did call for axing the Education Department, firing accreditors, deporting campus protesters, eliminating DEI programs and launching a national online university.
His conservative allies have plenty of plans at the ready. Project 2025 has called for radical reform to reduce the federal role in higher ed and hand power to the states. GOP members of Congress will be eager to pass pent-up bills they couldn’t get through in the past four years—some welcome by many in higher ed, others stirring broad alarm.
And while Republicans are raring to reform higher ed, the sector limps into Trump Part II in a weakened state, scarred from plummeting trust in the value of a college education as well as scalding political rhetoric, congressional probes into campus antisemitism, state laws banning DEI programs and dictating curriculum changes, and the politicization of boards and presidencies—not to mention the imminent arrival of the long-dreaded demographic cliff.
It might sound like a grim state of affairs. But the priorities of the new administration and Congress—and how they might affect colleges and universities for both good and ill—are anybody’s guess at this point. So is their ability, or political will, to pass and implement sweeping reforms.
Not everyone is guessing, though. This is academia, after all—experts know things, or at least have highly educated guesses. So we asked a range of prominent leaders and scholars to identify their highest hope and greatest fear for the sector in the second Trump administration. No consensus emerges—again, after all, this is academia. But their collective insights shed some unexpected light on both the challenges and opportunities Trump’s second four years may present.
Some of their fears might not surprise you. But some of their hopes probably will. The responses have been edited for clarity and concision.
Paulette Granberry Russell
President of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education
My highest hope is that the administration respects and upholds the autonomy of higher education institutions and does not attempt to undermine them further.
We have witnessed continual attacks by the states on institutional autonomy, academic freedom and free speech. I hope that federal policy will not extend these attacks through the elimination of critical departments, drastic changes via executive orders or significant reductions in funding to the Departments of Education, Justice and Health and Human Services—agencies whose resources and policies underpin equity, inclusion and access. For institutional leaders, courage and consistency in prioritizing equity, access and opportunity will be crucial to preserving the transformative mission of higher education.
My greatest worry is that inclusive strategies and interventions, many catalyzed by landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX in 1972, will stall—or worse, regress. Federal policy modeled after restrictive state-level legislation would disproportionately harm individuals and communities that have historically faced discrimination. Efforts to dismantle programs aimed at achieving more equitable outcomes—programs that have yielded measurable benefits for generations—would erode the progress made in expanding access and success for underrepresented students. The implications of such rollbacks would extend beyond higher education institutions, threatening the broader economy and society. Diverse, equitable campuses don’t just benefit individual students; they create a pipeline of leaders and innovators essential for a competitive global workforce.
Miriam Feldblum
Executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration
In the coming years, there will undoubtedly be harsh immigration and border policies, increased deportations and some restricted opportunities to stay and work in the U.S. for those with temporary or fragile immigration statuses. Yet my greatest hope is that we recognize, solidify and even expand real opportunities to find common ground, including ways for higher ed institutions and campuses to support these students and other campus members. President Trump recently said that he wants to work to find a way for Dreamers to stay and keep contributing. He has also suggested giving green cards to international student graduates and said he supports H-1B visas. Higher ed leaders and institutions should seize these opportunities for common ground.
My greatest fear, meanwhile, is that America squanders the potential of Dreamers, immigrant-origin and international students through restrictive policies. The U.S. is facing an immense talent imperative to sustain our global economic competitiveness, drive innovation, fill workforce shortages and produce a trained and dedicated workforce. Higher education institutions are essential to meeting these challenges. And immigrant-origin students—including Dreamers and refugees, and other first- and second-generation immigrant students—along with international students make up over a third of all students in higher education. The loss of this talent due to misguided immigration policies, fear and targeted enforcement actions would be self-defeating for our nation’s future.
Barbara Snyder
President of the Association of American Universities
President Trump has repeatedly said he wants to make America great and keep us ahead of China and other competitor nations. I am optimistic that he will support policies and investments that ensure the United States continues to be the world’s leader in scientific research. The president and Congress can secure that position by both increasing our public investments in cutting-edge research and by promoting policies that make it easy for the world’s best and brightest technological and scientific minds to study, work and stay here and advance U.S. innovation and economic growth.
My single greatest fear would be that some might try to convince the president to pull back these investments in America’s greatness and close ourselves off from the global talent and knowledge that has helped make our country great. I hope that he and Congress will resist that shortsightedness and will choose to recommit our country to the government-university research partnership that has made us the world’s strongest and most prosperous country.
Jeremy Young
Director of state and higher education policy at PEN America
Over the past four years, a group of lawmakers and conservative think tanks have waged merciless war on free expression in the higher education sector. Fifteen states have passed laws that censor ideas on college and university campuses, and the new federal administration seems poised to expand this ideological war on higher education into new arenas: weaponizing federal research funding, Title VI enforcement and accreditation to restrict ideas on campus while engaging in endless bullying and jawboning of university leaders to force “voluntary” closures of diversity offices and academic programs.
My fear is that the new administration will carry forward this destructive playbook, actively suppressing politically disfavored viewpoints on campus and destroying the ideological autonomy of higher education institutions. But my hope is that it will step back from the abyss. Scientific discovery, cultural creation, the fostering of critical thinking skills employers seek in new graduates and the promotion of democratic pluralism among the rising generation—these outcomes are only possible if colleges and universities remain places where all ideas are open for debate, not just those the government agrees with.
Ivory Toldson
Howard University professor, editor in chief of The Journal of Negro Education and former executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Under a second Trump administration, my highest hope is for the continued growth and expansion of HBCUs. These institutions have historically enjoyed bipartisan support, and even Project 2025 acknowledges the importance of providing federal support to historically Black and tribal colleges. Compared to many of the highest-ranked predominantly white institutions (PWIs), HBCUs enroll a higher percentage of U.S. citizens, which may shield them from challenges associated with more restrictive immigration policies. Moreover, as race-conscious admissions policies are rolled back, HBCUs could play a critical role in supporting Black students who may be denied opportunities at PWIs, further solidifying their importance in U.S. higher education.
My greatest worry lies in the challenges to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which could leave Black students at PWIs with fewer resources to address persistent issues of equity, access and institutional racism. Without these programs, Black students may face increased racial hostilities with fewer protections and support systems. Additionally, efforts to weaken or eliminate the Education Department could severely threaten funding for lower-income students, particularly through federal student aid programs. Combined with growing anti–higher education attitudes, these threats could place colleges and universities under heightened scrutiny, hurt enrollment and jeopardize the future of higher education as a whole.
Jeremi Suri
Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs and professor of public affairs and history, University of Texas at Austin
Republican politicians love to attack the elitism of higher education, even as they leverage their own elite pedigrees for money and power. Republicans do not really want to destroy higher education; they want to own it for themselves. I expect that the next four years will make this clear and open a wider discussion about who should have access to higher education and how we can broaden it for those who feel left out. So far, Republicans have relied on attacking DEI and “woke” culture, but what do they want to replace it with on college campuses? They cannot go back to the white male–only institutions of the early 20th century. As Republicans are forced to articulate a coherent vision for access in higher education, I expect a more open and useful conversation that will bring us back to discussing diversity and affordability—not largely in terms of race and gender, but in terms of class and geography and family history. This will still be a difficult discussion, but one that might be more substantive, complex and even useful.
Republican politicians have also promoted a new “civics” agenda in higher education, based on an unproven claim that universities have abandoned the subject matter. The push for civics has meant more traditionalism and patriotism, less creativity and criticism. But that is a difficult agenda to take very far. If Republicans want universities to study more Madison, Jefferson and Lincoln, how can they avoid more (not less) study of pluralism, separation of church and state, and civil rights—the core issues for these most traditional historical figures? Republican advocacy for civics education must grapple with the complex questions that many Republicans wish to avoid. A serious discussion of civics in higher education will make this clear in coming years, and it will force these programs to widen their agenda or retreat into niche enclaves on campus. Most donors will prefer the former, which might build bridges with ecumenical faculty and students.
Nicole Smith
Chief economist at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce
My single highest hope is for a renewed focus on workforce development and career readiness. Amid growing debates about the value of higher education, they have remained key priorities on the Trump platform. This focus presents opportunities for higher ed institutions to continue to innovate and expand programs that align closely with labor market demands. Vocational training, apprenticeship programs and technical education have been central to Trump’s agenda, providing a foundation for colleges and universities to build stronger partnerships with industries. This can drive innovation in areas such as competency-based learning, stackable credentials and enhanced internship opportunities. By equipping students with practical skills and clear career trajectories, higher education can continue to reinforce its role as a key driver of economic mobility—a topic sure to be on the minds of leaders in this new administration.
My greatest worry for the sector? Poorer outcomes for historically marginalized students, with no way to record it. Federal support for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, as well as academic research, is likely to be withdrawn entirely under the Trump administration. Efforts to defund or restrict DEI programs—particularly in public institutions—may intensify. These restrictions could also lead to the politicization of academic research, with areas like intergenerational mobility in education and income, gender equity and any evaluations by race or ethnicity potentially seeing funding reductions or shifts in priority. Such changes risk creating substantial obstacles for institutions committed to fostering inclusive environments and conducting research that addresses critical societal issues. For Black professionals in higher education, this presents a dual challenge: preserving DEI efforts in the face of external resistance while defending academic freedom in a climate increasingly marked by skepticism and distrust of research.
Sherene Seikaly
Associate professor at UC Santa Barbara and facilitator of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine network
My highest hope is that the Trump administration does not engage in repression, securitization, censorship and attenuation of higher education. My greatest worry is that the Trump administration will escalate the repression of social movements on campus, and in particular the movement standing with Palestinian liberation and political rights.
Miriam Elman
Executive director of the Academic Engagement Network
With alarming incidents of antisemitism occurring on campuses nationwide and beleaguered Jewish students increasingly reporting that they’re being harassed, bullied and marginalized, Donald Trump’s return to the White House is likely to result in better days ahead. Trump has already warned universities to expect a tougher stance from his administration, including the possible loss of accreditation and federal support, if they fail to address the rising level of antisemitism in their institutions. Under Trump, we may actually see several universities that are deemed in violation of civil rights law get their federal funds fully or partially cut off for not taking antisemitic bigotry and harassment seriously. This will be consequential not only for the affected schools, but will send a strong signal to other universities that antisemitism won’t be tolerated.
Tougher OCR [Office for Civil Rights] settlements are very likely coming down the pike, which is what many Jewish students, faculty and staff are hoping for. But we should be worried that at many schools there soon may no longer be adequate staffing to effectively address and combat antisemitism. With a second Trump administration, a Republican Congress and new Education Department leadership, we’ll see more diversity programs shuttered. For the Jewish community on campus, that’s going to mean a mixed bag. After all, it’s hard to see how antisemitism awareness training and educational programming will be rolled out if the staff needed to organize and facilitate these programs no longer have their jobs. To be sure, some poor DEI trainings exacerbate divisions and have done a terrible disservice to Jews on campus. Done well, though, these programs can benefit Jewish and all campus communities.
Kenneth Stern
Director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate
I worry about a political attack on higher education and its effect on students and the ability of faculty to teach. Are students who are refugees from places like Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and elsewhere going to face deportation? Are we going to see 18-year-olds deported because of how they view the war in Gaza? Will administrators, fearing overly aggressive Title VI cases, opt to suppress speech and academic freedom? No university should tolerate students being harassed or intimidated or bullied. But I fear that the new Congress and administration are going to draw lines not around actual safety but emotional safety, punishing universities that allow demonstrations with political expressions that some detest.
Vice President–elect JD Vance said that, as in Victor Orbán’s Hungary, the U.S. should give universities “a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching.” Funding and endowments may be targeted after Jan. 20, and scholars teaching contentious subjects may be in the crosshairs. Sixty-eight years ago, the Supreme Court in Sweezy v. New Hampshire rejected a legal attack against a Marxist professor, upholding the importance of academic freedom. I don’t like some of what’s being taught today, either, but the remedy is certainly not government-imposed rules on what to think or teach.
Ted Mitchell
President of the American Council on Education and U.S. under secretary of education from 2014 to 2017
We’re encouraged by the emphasis the incoming Trump administration and the new Congress have placed on issues such as transparency and accountability related to student outcomes. This isn’t new, and it isn’t partisan, but meaningful change is long overdue. Finding the right balance between ensuring students have access to postsecondary education while creating meaningful consequences for programs that aren’t serving their students well isn’t easy. But there are a number of thoughtful proposals being discussed that we hope will lead to a real solution in the next two years. As I said in an open letter to President-elect Trump earlier this month, our overriding goal is to provide more opportunity for all Americans.
Given the enormous list of competing priorities a new administration juggles, my biggest worry is that in attempting to pay for major spending cuts and pass tax legislation, the administration and Congress will do the shortsighted thing and enact policies like cuts to student financial aid and research funding—all of which would hurt students, keep them from reaching their full potential and hamper our nation’s economy and security.
Jim Blew
Co-founder of the Defense Freedom Institute and assistant secretary of planning, evaluation and policy development for the Education Department from 2017 to 2020
I am optimistic that in the wake of the Biden-Harris administration’s management of FAFSA and the student loan portfolio, the incoming administration and Congress will agree on how to fix the broken Office of Federal Student Aid. That will require a new approach, perhaps located outside the department, that shields FSA’s operations from partisan agendas and changes the damaging incentives inherent to a performance-based organization that isn’t held accountable for financial performance. During those talks, I hope they can also align on policy reforms that will help all students access post–high school opportunities for a wide range of high-value career paths.
I’m worried that higher education institutions will misread the moment and try to stonewall efforts to hold them accountable when their students don’t get a good return on their investments or don’t repay their federal loans. If the higher ed lobby isn’t sincerely at the table, there’s a high risk that the resulting policy solutions will be less workable, or unworkable. There’s already a growing sentiment that the student loan portfolio has become a weapon of partisan politics. I wouldn’t test Congress’s patience, or there might be a severe reduction in the use of federal taxpayer funds to help our students afford postsecondary education.
Greg Lukianoff
President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
My highest hope during the second Trump administration is for Congress to pass a bill that defines student-on-student harassment consistently with the speech-protective definition set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education. Campus speech codes, however well intentioned, are routinely used to punish just about any speech that someone on campus doesn’t like. Until a federal judge vacated the Biden administration Title IX rules, the Education Department was forcing schools to use an unconstitutional definition of student-on-student harassment in both the Title IX and Title VI contexts. Properly applied, the Davis standard ensures that institutions protect students against actual discriminatory behavior as opposed to punishing students who merely express controversial viewpoints.
My greatest fear also involves possible legislation. Last Congress, the House of Representatives passed the unconstitutional Antisemitism Awareness Act. While antisemitic harassment is a serious problem on campuses, the AAA’s examples of antisemitism include statements critical of the state of Israel, which is core political speech protected by the First Amendment. Rather than resurrect the AAA, members of Congress can craft constitutional legislation that would address antisemitism on campuses by prohibiting harassment based on religion, confirming that federal law forbids discrimination based on ethnic stereotypes and codifying the Supreme Court’s definition of discriminatory harassment.
David Hoag
President of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities
We aspire to a higher education system that is more affordable, more accessible and more focused on the lifelong value of higher education, particularly within Christian institutions. In 2025, the CCCU hopes that the incoming administration recognizes the invaluable role of faith-based colleges in the United States. These institutions provide educational opportunities and enhance community engagement to the benefit of the entire nation. I am concerned that the current approach seeks to measure higher education through purely transactional, financial metrics, overlooking the holistic value of a liberal arts degree.
Walter Kimbrough
Interim president, Talladega College
My single highest hope is narrow. I hope that the Trump administration will continue to support the bipartisan HBCU fly-in each year in Washington, D.C., started in 2017 by Republicans. HBCUs are one of the few issues that receive overwhelming bipartisan support, and we hope that support continues not just with the meetings, but increased Title III and infrastructure funding, along with Pell Grant growth.
My greatest worry is broad. The attacks on the Department of Education overwhelmingly focus on K-12. But there would be significant harm done to college students and families if some of the proposed changes to the department actually take place. Instead of viewing higher education as the enemy, there is an opportunity to push higher education with resources to be more active in solving the nation’s problems.
Robert Eitel
Co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, senior counselor to the secretary of education from 2017 to 2020 and deputy general counsel from 2005 to 2009
It’s time to bring reason and sanity back to Title IX. In defiance of the law’s text, structure and history, the Biden administration sought to leverage the law to institutionalize gender ideology in schools, colleges and universities. With the 2024 Title IX regulations vacated by a judge in December, I am hopeful that a [Linda] McMahon Education Department will not only vigorously investigate violations of the 2020 Title IX regulations but also take steps to safeguard women’s and girls’ athletics and facilities in educational institutions that receive federal funds.
While expectations are high for the second Trump Education Department, my greatest fear is that the pace of Senate confirmations of crucial subcabinet positions will be too slow. Although the secretary sets the goals, expectations, pace and tone, it is in the principal offices run by assistant secretaries where the nitty-gritty work of policy development, rule making and grants management occurs. Long-term vacancies in these offices would severely disrupt the president’s education agenda.
Heather Perfetti
President of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education
We face an opportunity to bridge perspectives around critical federal policy in ways that advance important dialogue for the benefit of our students, our communities and our global status while ensuring that any regulatory shifts contain a return on investment.
Federal policy, however, must not inhibit higher education activities in ways that are misaligned with the needs of students or the realities of the shifts in the sector. The increasingly diverse student population faces challenges requiring institutions to honor the many individualized approaches that we know help students achieve success along their academic journey. Policies that lack flexibility and diminish innovative approaches will stray from the recognition that institutions hold unique spaces within their communities and are driven by distinct missions. Misaligned policies, however, will make the sector’s challenges more pronounced. Ensuring a deep understanding of today’s accreditation and working with us accreditors will be critical to inform federal policy, as accreditation remains one of the most powerful levers available for influencing change and assuring value in higher education.
Todd Wolfson
President of the American Association of University Professors
We are deeply concerned that the bombastic rhetoric coming from politicians and propagandists will be used as justification to ramp up political interference and censorship in higher education and deepen the ongoing crisis of declining academic freedom, ballooning student debt and access to education for working-class Americans. Without a thriving, inclusive higher education system that serves the public good, the majority of Americans will be excluded from meaningful participation in our democracy and this country will move backward.
Margaret Spellings
President and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center, secretary of education from 2005 to 2009
We are falling short. Many are questioning the value of a college degree. Too many families find higher education out of reach. And our workforce faces a skills mismatch, with more than one million unfilled job openings. No one is questioning that there is room for improvement in higher education. BPC has launched a Commission on the American Workforce, which will convene during 2025 and draft a bipartisan strategy for Congress to nurture talent, expand opportunity and invest in our workforce.
My highest hope is that we can make the future recommendations from our commission a reality as Congress looks at the Higher Education Act, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and Perkins CTE Act.
Brigid Harrington
Higher ed attorney
My highest hope for higher ed over the next four years is that colleges and universities will focus on the tangible benefits of education and tailor their approach to the current American workforce. What does that mean in 2025? Definitely more affordable options. Probably more remote and flexible options. More than likely addressing the needs of students who are not on a traditional post–high school path to a bachelor’s degree.
My greatest worry is that colleges will forget their educational mission in the midst of unprecedented pressure from Congress and the executive branch to bow to politics. Higher education has always been a bastion of the free exchange of ideas, and that should not change. Our students and affiliates are not wallflowers and should be encouraged to engage in robust debate of the issues and to not devolve those discussions into speech that is harassing or, frankly, uneducated.
Johanna Alonso, Jessica Blake, Sara Custer, Susan H. Greenberg, Liam Knox, Josh Moody, Kathryn Palmer, Ryan Quinn and Sara Weissman contributed to this article.
Johns Hopkins University and the California Institute of Technology agreed to settle in a federal antitrust lawsuit that alleges 17 wealthy institutions, known as the 568 Presidents Group, illegally colluded on financial aid formulas and overcharged students for years.
Late Friday, JHU settled for $18.5 million and Caltech for $16.7 million, according to court filings. Both were more recent additions to the group, which was established in 1998. Johns Hopkins joined in November 2021, and Caltech in 2019.
The class action lawsuit was filed in January 2022 and initially implicated Caltech along with Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt and Yale Universities; Dartmouth College; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and the Universities of Chicago, Notre Dame and Pennsylvania.
Johns Hopkins was added to the lawsuit in March 2022.
After Friday’s court filing, 12 of the 17 institutions have settled. Altogether the settlement amounts add up to nearly $320 million. Vanderbilt had the largest settlement: $55 million.
The five remaining defendants in the lawsuit—Cornell, Georgetown, MIT, Notre Dame and Penn—have denied wrongdoing and continue to fight the antitrust case in court. The 568 Presidents Group name is a reference to a carve-out in federal law that allowed member institutions to discuss financial aid formulas with immunity from federal antitrust laws due to their need-blind status. Congress created that exemption following a 1991 price-fixing scandal that involved all eight Ivy League universities and MIT.
The legislative carve-out expired in 2022, and the group subsequently dissolved.
However, plaintiffs have argued that defendants did consider financial circumstances and made decisions based on family wealth and donation history or capacity, often admitting students on “special interest lists” with substandard transcripts compared to the rest of accepted classes.
