Tag: Events

Humanities Students Participate in Faculty-Led Research

On-campus engagement is one metric that can predict student success, but external factors including needing to work, caretaking responsibilities or living off campus can hinder students’ participation in activities.

At Stony Brook University, part of the State University of New York system, institutional data showed retention rates lagged for students in the humanities and social science disciplines. In response, leaders created several programs to incentivize students in those majors to build relationships with others in their field and engage in hands-on work.

Three Stony Brook leaders—Tiana De Jesus, lead academic success advisor and retention specialist; Richard Tomczak, director of faculty engagement; and Jennifer Rodriguez, associate director of the student success and retention center—shared details of the program and initial results at NASPA’s Student Success in Higher Education conference in Denver last month.

The background: The Undergraduate Retention Initiatives and Success Engagement (U-RISE) office houses a variety of innovative retention supports, including a research lab, called SSTAR, and re-engagement advising.

One of the more recent projects the staff at SSTAR—short for Student Success Through Applied Research—have taken on is addressing gaps in retention for non-STEM students.

University data pointed to six majors in the humanities and social sciences with the lowest retention rates as well as relatively high admission rates of students with lower grade point averages from high school.

Research shows that students who are engaged on campus are more likely to feel a deep sense of belonging and establish meaningful relationships with peers and faculty, as well as develop career skills. Students who have a strong sense of belonging in their major program are also more likely to have higher retention rates and levels of faculty connection.

SSTAR team members sought to foster relationships between students and their instructors, improve students’ academic readiness and provide financial support to ensure equitable retention for students across socioeconomic groups.

A National Picture

Research from the Student Experience in the Research University Consortium at the University of California, Berkeley, found fewer students participating in faculty-led research post-pandemic compared to their peers enrolled in 2019, showing a gap in experiential learning opportunities.

One of the more common reasons why students are unable to take on research roles is a lack of pay or needing to work for pay. A significant number of colleges have established financial aid for students to receive a stipend for participating in unpaid or underpaid experiential learning opportunities, ensuring the inability to pay does not prevent participation.

To accomplish these goals, campus leaders created three interventions: research assistantship positions in faculty-led research, a first-year seminar for academic preparation and paid on-campus jobs for humanities students.

In focus: This past spring, Stony Brook hired 12 first-year students out of an application pool of over 100 to serve as research assistants. Each student was matched with a faculty member from one of a variety of departments, including English, art, history, linguistics and Asian and Asian American studies. Research assistants committed to eight to 10 hours of work per week and were paid a stipend. Funding came from the provost’s office.

The projects varied; one English and sociology student analyzed TikTok videos of social activists to challenge stereotypes, while an English and psychology student trained artificial intelligence on European literature from the 1700s, according to a university press release.

The impact: Across interventions, students who participated in the programs were more likely to say they feel connected to their peers, see the value of their degree and intend to persist, according to pre- and post-survey data.

Many students said the experiences helped open their eyes to the career and research opportunities available to them in their field and made them feel faculty were more accessible to them. Of the students who participated in the three interventions, 92.8 percent enrolled as a sophomore the following year, compared to 91.8 percent of their peers who didn’t participate, surpassing the university’s 92 percent retention goal. Students also had higher cumulative GPAs, showing a correlation between engagement and academic achievement.

An unexpected finding was that before participating in the program, many students said they felt stigmatized for their major choice (Stony Brook is a majority of STEM learners), but afterward they felt more connected to those in similar fields, even if not in their exact major.

In the future, researchers hope to recruit a larger number of students and expand their work to other humanities and social sciences majors.

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July 18, 2025
Navajo Nation Considers Higher Ed Funding Boost

A month after President Donald Trump proposed slashing some $105 million in federal funding for tribal colleges next year, the Navajo Nation is considering legislation that would provide $30 million in recurring annual funding for tribal colleges and scholarships, Native News Online reported Thursday.

The Health, Education and Human Services Committee of the 25th Navajo Nation Council passed the proposal earlier this week, but it still has to get the approval of the full council. If it does, Diné College, Navajo Technical University and the Office of Navajo Nation Scholarship and Financial Assistance would each get $10 million a year beginning in 2027, potentially indefinitely.

The plan would more than double the current funding allocations for those institutions, which receive a total of $12.4 million from the Navajo Nation. Each one would be required to put at least 1 percent of the $10 million allocation toward support for Diné language teacher programs, institutional endowments and K–12 education pipeline efforts.

According to Council Delegate Andy Nez, who sponsored the legislation, fewer than half of Navajo students who apply for scholarships through ONNSFA get one.

“This legislation provides a stable source of funding that directly supports our students and institutions, while investing in the longevity of learners and Diné speakers,” he told Native News Online. “We are moving beyond limited five- or 10-year grants to a consistent, annual allocation. This ensures funds go directly to the institutions and scholarship office without delay.”

(This story has been updated to correct the amount of federal funding cut.)

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July 18, 2025
New Michigan Law Essay Prompt Asks Applicants to Use AI

The prompt is one of 10 options for a supplemental essay.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Gazanfer and InspirationGP/iStock/Getty Images

In 2023, the University of Michigan Law School made headlines for its policy banning applicants from using generative AI to write their admissions essays.

Now, two admissions cycles later, the law school is not only allowing AI responses but actually mandating the use of AI—at least for one optional essay.

For those applying this fall, the law school added a supplemental essay prompt that asks students about their AI usage and how they see that changing in law school—and requires them to use AI to develop their response. (Applicants may write up to two supplemental essays, selected from 10 prompt options in total.)

“TO BE ANSWERED USING GENERATIVE AI: How much do you use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT right now? What’s your prediction for how much you will use them by the time you graduate from law school? Why?” the prompt asks.

Sarah Zearfoss, senior assistant dean at the University of Michigan Law School, said she was inspired to include such a question after hearing frequent anecdotes over the past year about law firms using AI to craft emails or short motions.

Indeed, in a survey released by the American Bar Association earlier this year, 30 percent of all law firms reported that they use AI tools; among law firms with over 100 employees, the share is 46 percent.

But many have been derailed by the same well-documented hallucinations that have plagued other AI users. Judges have sanctioned numerous lawyers over the past several years because their use of AI resulted in filings riddled with imaginary cases and quotations. That makes it all the more important to evaluate whether prospective students are able to use AI tools responsibly and effectively, the law school believes.

“That is now a skill that … probably not all legal employers, but big law firms, are looking for in their incoming associates,” Zearfoss said in an interview. “So I thought it would be interesting: If we have applicants who have that skill, let’s give them an opportunity to demonstrate it.”

Michigan Law still disallows applicants from using AI writing tools when they compose their personal statements and for all other supplemental essay questions, which Zearfoss hopes will allow her to compare applicants’ writing with AI’s assistance to their writing without it.

Is AI Inevitable for Lawyers?

Frances M. Green, an attorney with Epstein Becker & Green, P.C., who specializes in AI, told Inside Higher Ed that she believes the ability to use and engage with AI will eventually become a required skill for all lawyers. That doesn’t mean just using it to write court filings but also understanding how to manage the use of AI-generated evidence—say, the notes of a physician who uses AI technology to listen to and summarize appointments, rather than old-fashioned, handwritten doctors’ notes.

“I believe lawyers who use AI will replace lawyers who don’t,” she said. “I think that is very, very true. And judges even, in some jurisdictions, are encouraging the use of artificial intelligence tools.”

Even so, Green noted that she doesn’t really like how Michigan’s question is phrased, because applicants may be inclined to over- or understate how much they use AI based on what they think the admissions officer is looking for.

But Melanie Dusseau, an English professor at the University of Findlay in Ohio and a critic of AI, questioned the prompts’ utility in actually evaluating if a student is well-suited for law school.

“A law school application is a showcase of a student’s language abilities, their passion for lively rhetoric, logic, and captivating narrative. Do reviewers want to know how well future lawyers can prompt a bot [to] turn its beige copyslop into something compelling, or how well they can write? And which would be more important in a law school application?” she wrote in an email. “Since LLMs are fawning sycophants, at least tonally, I would imagine that future lawyers would do better to polish their persuasive writing chops without automation.”

Zearfoss is not a prolific AI user herself; once she decided she wanted to include an essay option related to AI, she recruited the help of another Michigan Law professor, Patrick Barry, who teaches a course on lawyering in the age of AI, to help compose the question itself.

She expects the essays will reveal uses of and perspectives on AI that she never would have been exposed to otherwise.

“I’m always excited when an essay teaches me something, but I don’t really expect that—it’s sort of a bonus, right?” she said. “But I think with this particular prompt, I assume a high percentage of the essays will be teaching me something.”

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July 18, 2025
Republicans Denounce Georgetown Professor for Post on Iran

On June 22, the United States bombed Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities. Observers wondered whether it was the start of another lengthy, destructive American war in the Middle East.

Hours later, a conservative social media account with more than 4.3 million followers highlighted one response—allegedly from a Georgetown University professor. According to a screenshot the Libs of TikTok X account posted, Jonathan Brown, the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization, had written on X, “I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops.”

Tagging the university’s X account, Libs of TikTok summarized it this way: “Professor at Georgetown University @Georgetown says he hopes Iran strikes a US base.”

What transpired is becoming a familiar story in U.S. higher education: Conservatives denounce a faculty member’s speech, members of Congress join in and eventually pressure a prestigious university’s president to publicly denounce and punish the scholar.

In his own June 22 X post, Congressman Randy Fine, a Florida Republican whom Gov. Ron DeSantis previously wanted to lead Florida Atlantic University, noted that Georgetown interim president Robert M. Groves was scheduled to testify before the House Education and Workforce Committee, which he did on Tuesday.

“This demon had better be gone by then,” Fine wrote of Brown. “We have a Muslim problem in America.”

A June 23 Iranian strike that appeared symbolic did mark the end of the conflict. President Trump said Iran had forewarned the U.S. about the coming attack on a U.S. base in Qatar, allowing Americans to avoid any casualties. But, unlike that fight’s swift end, the battle over Brown’s social media post has dragged on.

At the House committee’s hearing this week, former committee chair Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, asked Groves about Brown, who works in Georgetown’s respected School of Foreign Service. “Is this person really suited to be educating the next generation of American diplomats?” she said.

Groves didn’t respond that this was a personnel matter he couldn’t discuss. Like former Columbia University president Minouche Shafik did in front of the same committee last year, he discussed actions the university was taking regarding his employee.

“Within minutes of our learning of that tweet, the dean contacted Professor Brown, the tweet was removed, we issued a statement condemning the tweet, Professor Brown is no longer chair of his department and he’s on leave, and we’re beginning a process of reviewing the case,” Groves said.

“You are now investigating and disciplining him?” Foxx asked.

“Y-yes, Congresswoman,” Groves said.

He responded differently to a question from another Republican about Georgetown employee Mobashra Tazamal, an associate director of an Islamophobia research project who allegedly reposted a statement that said, “Israel has been recreating Auschwitz in Gaza for two years.” In that case, Groves said he rejected the statement but added, “That’s behavior covered under the First Amendment on social media that we don’t intervene on.”

‘Willful Misreading’

Greg Afinogenov, an associate history professor and president of Georgetown’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said Brown has received “death threats, his family has come under attack and members of the university administration have also criticized him and disavowed him.”

Afinogenov said the university should clarify that Brown’s post was “protected speech.”

The university didn’t provide Inside Higher Ed an interview or answer most written questions Thursday. In an email, a university spokesperson said Brown is no longer chair of the Arabic and Islamic Studies Department. But the spokesperson didn’t say why or whether he violated any policy.

“He retains his faculty appointment,” including his named chair position, the spokesperson wrote.

In a statement the day after Brown’s alleged post, the university said, “We are appalled that a faculty member would call for a ‘symbolic strike’ on a military base in a social media post.”

“The faculty member has since deleted the post and stated that he would not want any harm to befall American servicemembers,” the statement said. “We are reviewing this matter to see if further action is warranted. We take our community’s concerns seriously and condemn language which is deeply inconsistent with Georgetown University’s values.”

In response to a request for an interview and written questions, Brown told Inside Higher Ed in an email, “I am unable to make any public comments at this time.” He previously told Fox News Digital he was “calling for de-escalation” in his post, likening it to the strikes Iran ordered after an American drone strike killed Gen. Qassim Suleimani during Trump’s first term, “with telegraphed warning and no American casualties and no one felt any further need for attacks.”

In a statement, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said that “to frame Dr. Brown’s comment as unpatriotic or violent, as some have done, requires a willful misreading of his intent and of the broader context of the brief U.S.-Iran war.”

“Hoping for a swift end to the war was the clear intent of his message, it was a sentiment shared by many Americans, and it is what ultimately happened: Iran launched a telegraphed strike on a U.S. military base that harmed no one, President Trump declined to respond, and the war ended,” the statement said.

For Afinogenov, the incident bodes ill for faculty rights.

“This procedure of hauling members of university administrations before” a “congressional kangaroo court” harms academic freedom, he said. Administrators should push back against these “smear campaigns,” and Georgetown should articulate a policy to protect faculty and other members of the university community from retaliation for their “extramural speech,” such as on social media, he said.

Over all, Afinogenov said, Brown’s situation is part of an “attack on academic freedom and the independence of universities in general, which we’re seeing across the country.”

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July 18, 2025
UVA Seeks Nominations for Interim President

The University of Virginia is searching for an interim leader.

The University of Virginia is accepting nominations for an interim president to replace former executive James Ryan, who announced his resignation late last month under pressure from the Department of Justice. Ryan officially stepped down last Friday.

The nomination form will remain open to all members of the university community through July 25. Then the board will conduct a series of listening sessions with faculty, staff, division leaders and students.

“The Board of Visitors is committed to working closely with members of our community to hear their perspectives and ensure stability and continuity going forward,” board rector Rachel Sheridan said in a news release. “Shared governance is a core value of this institution and we will uphold it as we pursue the selection of an interim president, as well as our 10th university president after that.”

In the meantime, Jennifer Wagner Davis, the university’s chief operating officer, is serving as acting president.

The Justice Department had accused Ryan and the flagship institution of failing to eliminate all DEI programs on campus, violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin. The letters said that Ryan and his “proxies” had made “little attempt to disguise their contempt and intent to defy these fundamental civil rights.” But the Trump administration has said multiple times that it did not demand Ryan’s resignation verbally or via the letters.

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July 18, 2025
GMU President Responds to Civil Rights Investigation

In a pointed letter to the George Mason University community Wednesday, President Gregory Washington defended his institution against the Trump administration, which launched an investigation last week into the university’s alleged violations of Title VI.

According to an announcement from the Education Department, GMU “illegally uses race and other immutable characteristics in university policies, including hiring and promotion.”

In his letter, Washington vowed to “cooperate fully” with the Office for Civil Rights.

“I can assure you that George Mason has always operated with a commitment to equality under the law, ever since our inception,” he wrote. ”It is simply the Mason way, and in my experience, it has not discriminated based on race, color, national origin, or otherwise. Our diversity efforts are designed to expand opportunity and build inclusive excellence—not to exclude or advantage any group unlawfully.”

He offered a brief history of Title VI—which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in federally funded programs—and the rest of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Then, without naming any names, he essentially accused the Trump administration of willfully misinterpreting the law.

“Today, we are seeing a profound shift in how Title VI is being applied,” he wrote. “Longstanding efforts to address inequality—such as mentoring programs, inclusive hiring practices, and support for historically underrepresented groups—are in many cases being reinterpreted as presumptively unlawful. Broad terms like ‘illegal DEI’ are now used without definition, allowing virtually any initiative that touches on identity or inclusion to be painted as discriminatory.

“This shift represents a stark departure from the spirit in which civil rights law was written: not to erase difference, but to protect individuals from exclusion and to enable equal opportunity for all.”

He noted that GMU—which enrolls roughly 40,000 students—admits 90 percent of applicants and has more Pell-eligible students than any other institution in Virginia.

The university’s mission “includes the belief that diversity includes thought, background, and circumstance and any attempt to artificially redefine our diversity, as one of race-based exclusivity, is doomed to fail no matter who ends up being excluded,” he wrote.

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July 18, 2025
F-1, J-1 Student Visa Issuances Dropped in May

The U.S. Department of State issued 12,689 fewer F-1 visas in May 2025 compared to the May before, which could forecast a decline in international students able to attend U.S. universities this fall.

Recently published data from the State Department shows a 22 percent drop in F-1 visas issued across the world and a 13 percent decline in J-1 visas.

While visa issuances can help predict international student enrollment trends, they don’t tell the full story, said Rachel Banks, senior director for public policy and legislative strategy at NAFSA, the association of international educators. Still, the trend line isn’t positive.

“We’re not really going to know until we get through September to know everyone who arrives, to know what the enrollment really looks like,” Banks said. “But it’s certainly not encouraging.”

Over the past few months, President Donald Trump has cracked down on international students via arrests, travel bans and revocations of legal status. Those moves and other executive orders could affect the number of F-1 and J-1 visas issued.

In May, the administration said it would revoke visas from Chinese nationals who have ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The number of Chinese nationals issued a F-1 visa in May declined by 15 percent (or about 2,578 students). The State Department also paused visa interviews in late May while the agency developed a policy to screen international students’ social media profiles. Interviews resumed in June once the policy was in place.

The interview pause may have contributed to but cannot fully explain the decline in visa issuances, said Finn Reynolds, head of market research at Lawfully, a legal tech start-up focused on immigration.

The State Department doesn’t publish the number of visa applications or interviews it engages in, which means the decline could be tied to a decreased demand or slower processing by the department, Reynolds added. A May 27 survey by Study Portal found student interest in studying in the U.S. has dropped to its lowest point since COVID-19, with fewer students interested in U.S. programs and instead considering other English-speaking nations such as the U.K. or Australia.

Additionally, the State Department doesn’t share daily visa issuance numbers, meaning the drop could be tied solely to the pause in the final week of May, Banks said. The connection, over all, is unclear.

The data also points to the effect of travel restrictions on students from certain nations. The Trump administration banned visitors from 12 countries and implement heightened restrictions for seven other countries in June. The May numbers show a nearly 150 percent decline in F-1 visa issuances (or 451 visas) and a 105 percent decline in J-1 issuances (157 visas) to citizens from the impacted nations, even before the ban took place.

One factor not reflected in the data is the number of students returning to their institutions who already hold visas. Students don’t need to receive a new visa if they remain in the U.S.; they only need one when traveling in and out of the country. Given the disruption to Student Exchange and Visitor Information System statuses in April, many students chose to remain in the U.S. over their summer break, Banks said.

Reynolds expects to see a further drop in visa issuances for June and July, because social media vetting procedures result in fewer appointment slots.

Students in China, Ghana, India, Japan, Niger and Nigeria have had the most trouble getting appointments, according to NAFSA members.

“We’re halfway through July, and there’s still students who are struggling to get an appointment; that’s troubling,” Banks said.

Future policies could also bottleneck the visa pipeline for international students. A proposed rule at the Office of Management and Budget would end duration-of-stay policies and instead implement a fixed date for how long students can remain in country on their visa.

“We’re very concerned that if that were to go through, that sort of adds to further disruptions and hurdles that students have to jump over, that then gives students more reason to say, ‘You know, this seems like a hassle, this seems like I’m not welcome, I’m going to find another opportunity to pursue,’” Banks said.

Enrollment Declines Loom

Colleges and universities are already anticipating declines in their international student populations. The Institute of International Education found that 40 percent of institutions projected declines in their undergraduate population of international students, and 49 percent anticipated a drop in graduate student populations.

A NAFSA survey of about 150 members institutions this summer found 78 percent of institutions predict a decline in both undergrad and graduate international students.

Each year, institutions enroll 1.1 million international students, about 6 percent of all college students in the U.S.

Calculations by The Financial Times, published last week, found that a decline of even 10 percent in international student enrollment would cost U.S. colleges and universities $3 billion in revenue. A significant portion of this loss would be in tuition revenue; a 10 percent drop would result in a $900 million decrease in tuition dollars.

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July 17, 2025
Wins and Losses of the Reconciliation Bill

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act will bring the biggest change to higher ed in a generation.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

It’s been six months since the second Trump administration took office, and in that time it has radically changed the policy around federal student loans, grants and college accountability. With the One Big Beautiful Bill Act now signed into law, Inside Higher Ed’s editor in chief, Sara Custer, spoke with news editor Katherine Knott about what’s in the bill and the outcome of the sector’s efforts to influence the massive piece of legislation.

In a recent episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, they also checked in on Harvard and Columbia’s negotiations with the administration and shared what they’ll be looking out for in the next six months.

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July 17, 2025
China “Will Blow Us Away” if Trump Destroys U.S. Universities

The first Nobel Prize–winning scientist to join a White House cabinet, Steven Chu made history when he became Barack Obama’s energy secretary in 2009. But his move to Washington cost him an incredible $300 million.

“I joined the Nvidia board in 2004, before the company took off, but I had to sell my shares in 2009 when I joined government,” Chu said about his early involvement in the microchip firm that recently became the world’s most valuable company with a $4 trillion capitalization.

“At the time Nvidia was a small graphics company, but there were rules about conflict of interest so I had to sell,” he told Times Higher Education. With Nvidia’s stock rising 22,000 percent in the past decade alone, Chu’s stake would be worth $300 million, he said.

Nvidia’s astonishing rise has amazed the stock market in recent years, but Chu, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997, felt the company had huge promise when he joined.

“When Jenson Huang [Nvidia’s founder] told me about developing this high-level chip, I said, ‘If you do that, this computer will be at the heart of every supercomputer in the world.’ And he did it,” recalled Chu.

Sanguine about his lost wealth, Chu’s main takeaway from Nvidia is not his own misfortune. Instead, he worries that this American success story—co-created by a Taiwanese-born Stanford graduate, employing foreign-born engineering talent—might not have been able to happen today given the double whammy faced by U.S. academia: massive cuts to federal science budgets and an immigration crackdown deterring many students, particularly from China, from applying to U.S. institutions.

“Trump wants to cut science budgets by half or more and reduce the number of foreign postdocs—particularly from China,” explained Chu, speaking earlier this month at the annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in southern Germany.

“That’s a problem because if you go to any major research university, you’ll find about a third of researchers are East Asian.”

Chu’s own parents—born and educated in China before moving to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1940s—are a good example of how this brain gain has worked in America’s favor. “When the Communists took over, they couldn’t go back, but this is how America got many of its best scientists and engineers—as refugees from Germany, Italy and China.”

“That’s true for business, too—many of America’s captains of industry, from Jenson Huang to [ex-Intel boss] Andy Grove and Alexander Graham Bell, were immigrants,” he said.

Reflecting on how America “didn’t become a scientific superpower until World War II,” Chu said he believes the 1930s are instructive in other ways. “In this era America took what was innovative and applied it to industry. That allowed places like Ford to take what Volkswagen and Peugeot was doing but do it cheaper, but good enough to work,” he said.

“That is what China is doing to America now—for instance, taking the electric car and making it cheaper and now better. What we did to Europe, China and now Korea are doing to us,” he said.

Traditionally, the U.S. has been able to stay ahead thanks to its education system, in particular its generously funded world-leading research universities. With that system under attack, however, that advantage is weaker, he said. “Something magical happens at Ph.D. level in U.S. universities—we teach creativity. China is trying to learn this … and then apply it to their industrial sector. When they do, they will blow us away.”

Without America’s outstanding universities and with its foreign talent pool diminished, China’s path to global dominance will be immeasurably easier, predicted Chu. “Trump is perfectly willing to destroy institutions that any country in the world would give its eyeteeth for,” he said.

Unusually for a Nobel laureate, Chu’s prize did not mark the peak of his scientific achievements. He led a committee that recommended the creation of ARPA-E, a science agency that has funded more than $4 billion in battery, nanotech and other types of energy research since 2009, generating spin-out companies worth more than $22 billion.

Meanwhile, his time as energy secretary saw further investment, including the funding of an experimental $1 billion carbon-capture plant in Louisiana—a stark contrast to the “drill, baby, drill” priorities of the current administration. Obama also credited his expertise as a major reason why the cleanup after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010—the biggest oil spill in history—was successful.

And there are his brushes with some of the 21st century’s biggest tech companies, even if Nvidia wasn’t the only big fish he missed out on. “I knew [financier] Richard Blum, who said he could get me on the board of Apple— I didn’t say yes because I had a lot of nonprofit activities, but that was 2006, the year before the iPhone was launched,” he reflected.

Not that he thinks the money would have made much difference. “If I was worth a couple of hundred million dollars, would I have stopped doing science and just bought sports cars and houses? I hope not.”

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July 17, 2025
Americans Recognize Nuances of Higher Ed’s Value

While the Trump administration has painted a bleak picture of the higher education sector as a costly enterprise that burdens taxpayers and pushes leftist ideologies, new survey data shows that most Americans—regardless of their political leanings—still value it.

“Increasingly, higher ed is being cast as elite, expensive and not connected with everyday Americans,” said Sophie Nguyen, senior policy manager with the higher education team at New America, the left-leaning think tank that published its annual Varying Degrees survey on Wednesday. “There’s a significant disconnect in the narrative about what higher ed is” and how it’s perceived.

Capturing the American public’s views on the purpose of higher education drove many of the questions Nguyen and her colleagues asked 1,631 respondents in March for the ninth iteration of the survey.

After reaching a low point last year, the data shows that satisfaction with higher education is on the rise: 40 percent of respondents—including 42 percent of both Republicans and Democrats—reported that higher education is “fine as it is,” compared to 36 percent who said the same last year.

“We see a lot of alignment between Democrats and Republicans, something we haven’t heard a lot about,” Nguyen said, describing such data points as “the common ground” colleges can tap into when defending their worth to both consumers and lawmakers.

New America’s findings are in line with a poll Gallup also released Wednesday in partnership with the Lumina Foundation, which shows that 42 percent of Americans surveyed said they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, compared to a low of 36 percent in 2024 and 2023—though it’s still far from the nearly 60 percent confidence peak in 2015. The share of people who reported “very little” or no confidence is also on the decline, falling from 32 percent last year to 23 percent this year. Although Democrats reported much higher confidence in higher education institutions, Republican confidence in both four- and two-year colleges rose by 11 and 12 percentage points, respectively, compared to last year.

Respondents cited the economic and social benefits of higher education, its standing at the forefront of innovation, the quality of education and training—both for jobs and exposure to different viewpoints—as drivers of the uptick in their confidence.

The Trump administration’s war on higher ed may have played a role, said Courtney Brown, Lumina’s vice president of impact and planning.

“It is possible that we are seeing people in support of the sector because they see so many attacks,” she said. Whatever the reason, she said the new data is positive, and if institutions want to restore confidence to 2015 levels they should consider “how they can build on this moment and show up for students and ensure they’re getting value.”

Like Gallup’s report, New America’s survey revealed partisan divides as well as agreements. Sixty percent of Republicans said colleges are having a negative impact on the country, while 75 percent of Democrats said they’re having a positive impact. But respondents from both parties were much more aligned on questions about specific aspects of higher ed’s value and purpose.

While Republican lawmakers pressure universities into proving their return on investment, the vast majority of Americans, including both Republicans and Democrats, believe higher education should function as more than a transaction. They say it should not only equip students with the skills and knowledge to succeed in their chosen fields (97 percent of Democrats; 98 percent of Republicans), but also help students become informed citizens (97 percent of Democrats; 89 percent of Republicans) and critical thinkers (97 percent of Democrats; 92 percent of Republicans).

“The rhetoric coming from Washington tends to be a caricature of what are some real issues facing college campuses and the sector in general,” Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute who focuses on the economics of higher education, said at a media briefing about New America’s survey. While “there’s room for improvement … it’s unfortunate that the rhetoric is empowering misinformation about what institutions are doing.”

Even as Trump and his political allies move to dramatically cut federal funding for university research—which advocates say will devastate university budgets, local economies and progress toward lifesaving research—88 percent of Republicans and 97 percent of Democrats believe it’s important to some degree that colleges and universities conduct research to expand understanding in various subjects.

Despite political rhetoric that suggests otherwise, American higher education has delivered an array of personal and societal benefits for decades, Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, said during a news briefing on the report.

“Higher ed continues to be the single most powerful socioeconomic catalyst in America, which is associated not only with higher earnings, but longer productive lives, better physical and mental health, resilience, adaptability, and personal development and fulfillment,” she said. “At the societal level, education drives long-term economic growth for local communities and the nation.”

More broadly, it “strengthens our democracy,” because it “tends to mitigate or tame authoritarian tendencies” and “reduces individuals’ sensitivities to potential triggers by providing them with psychological protection in the form of self-esteem, personal security and autonomy,” she said. “It fosters a moral imagination—imagining what it’s like to be in the shoes of another, different from oneself—and interpersonal trust.”

Despite the Trump administration and its allies’ attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, the survey data shows that an overwhelming majority of Republicans and Democrats agree that higher education should create an environment where students of all backgrounds feel supported, provide a platform for exploration of diverse ideas and foster cross-cultural understanding.

Although New America’s survey suggests that most Americans recognize the layered value of higher education, Republican lawmakers have increasingly focused on both controlling the subjects colleges can teach and research and making it harder for students and colleges to access federal funding.

The sweeping policy bill Trump signed into law earlier this month requires colleges to show that their graduates earn more than an adult with only a high school diploma or risk losing access to federal loans. Trump has also proposed billions of dollars in cuts to education funding, including eliminating all federal support for college-access programs that have long helped low-income, first-generation and students with disabilities navigate higher education.

While Republicans and Democrats are divided on who they think should be primarily responsible for paying for college—76 percent of Democrats believe the government should; 67 percent of Republicans believe students should—respondents from both parties cited cost as the single biggest barrier to enrolling in or finishing college.

At the same time, 75 percent of respondents over all (91 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of Republicans) said the federal government should spend more on making college more affordable.

Hironao Okahana, vice president and executive director of the Education Futures Lab at the American Council on Education, said this data offers a ray of optimism for the higher education sector navigating an onslaught of partisan attacks from Republican policymakers.

“The public is seeing higher education as a sector beyond some of the sound bites we’re hearing,” he said. “They’re seeing that it has more nuance and texture, and that there’s not just one way higher education can contribute to society.”

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July 17, 2025