Tag: Events

How Federal Courts Are Blocking Trump’s Higher Ed Agenda

In the nearly seven months since President Trump took office again, academic associations, faculty unions, researchers and other groups have used the legal system to push back on the administration’s efforts to reshape higher education and the federal government.

So far, district and appeals courts have largely suggested that the executive branch’s actions are unconstitutional and ruled in favor of university advocates, handing down preliminary injunctions, restraining orders and a few final judgments that have blocked the Trump administration’s goals. But based on the few cases that have reached the Supreme Court, some higher education experts worry the tide may be turning, and the high court’s conservative majority will ultimately side with the president.

The lawsuits challenged bans on diversity, equity and inclusion programs; the administration’s crackdown on international students; the termination of thousands of grants; and the dismantling of the Department of Education.

“What we’re seeing is that when the administration tries to impose a whole new set of rules and regulations based upon their particular ideology … the courts are saying, ‘Wait’ or ‘No,’ until it gets to the Supreme Court,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a teachers’ union that has filed multiple lawsuits against Trump and notched a few victories.

An Inside Higher Ed analysis of more than 40 lawsuits against the administration that are related to higher ed found that district judges have ruled against the executive branch in nearly two-thirds of the cases. Almost a quarter have yet to be decided. Of those in which a judge has ruled, 18 have been appealed, and only two were overturned. In both instances when the district court was overruled, it had to do with reversing injunctions that prevented the Trump administration from canceling grants based in part on the president’s executive order against DEI. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration in a separate but similar case.

Nine cases have yet to receive a decision from an appeals court.

For more updates on litigation against the administration, go to Inside Higher Ed revamped lawsuit tracker. The searchable database will be updated regularly.

Of the cases Inside Higher Ed analyzed, the most frequent issue at hand was grant cuts, at 14 cases, followed by the Education Department’s reduction in force at eight.

“A lot of the actions the administration is taking are very clearly being defined by the courts as patently illegal. They’re outside of the established law and they exceed executive authority,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education, which has sued the administration several times to challenge a proposed cap on reimbursements for indirect research expenses that would cost universities millions.

Few cases that Inside Higher Ed is tracking have reached the Supreme Court, but so far the justices have overturned lower court rulings in three, allowing the Education Department to proceed with mass layoffs and to cut millions in grants for teacher training. They haven’t reached a decision in the other two cases, which are challenging grant cuts at the National Institutes of Health.

Some worry that rulings from the conservative majority on the Supreme Court could be driven by party alignment more than the law. Fansmith said he was certainly concerned by the court’s rulings so far but was hesitant to call them an “interjection of partisan politics.”

He noted that the rulings have come from the court’s shadow docket. This means they have made their decisions outside of the traditional case procedures with limited briefings, no oral argument and often no detailed explanations.

For example, when it comes to the case challenging the Education Department’s layoffs, Fansmith said that the lawyers he’s talked to are “sort of confounded by the decision.” The justices didn’t offer an opinion on whether the department can legally fire half its employees, but did allow the administration to proceed with the process while the courts work through the case.

“So it’s sort of a split decision in some ways; the merits haven’t yet been resolved finally,” he said.

But the odds of the court making a final judgment that brings back the employees seems unlikely, some legal experts have said. And Weingarten noted that even if they do hear the cases this fall and make a final decision next spring, the damage will have been done.

“The problem is that when you start talking about medical and scientific research, the moment that those things get stopped, there is irreparable damage and it’s hard to recreate them,” she said. “The Trump administration is really hurting what was an anchoring principle of American enterprise and innovation … that research has really been suffocated and used as leverage for the Trump administration to get its ideological whims adopted.”

Still, many different plaintiffs—including Democratic attorneys general—continue to push back against the Trump administration’s agenda.

Massachusetts AG Andrea Joy Campbell, who has challenged the president in multiple suits, believes that Trump and his cabinet have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to use “unlawful abuses of power” to limit academic freedom. And as long as they continue to do so, she added, Democratic leaders will keep taking matters to court.

“State attorneys general have the power to fight back to uphold the rule of law and protect our young people—and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Campbell wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “We’ve achieved significant victories in the vast majority of our cases, and we will continue to hold the line because our children and the future of our democracy depend on it.”

Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal group that has represented plaintiffs in a number of cases, also chimed in, saying the Trump-Vance “assault” on education will continue to be “met with force.”

“These victories show just how essential higher education is to our democracy and why protecting it from political interference will remain a core part of our work,” said Skye Perryman, the group’s president and CEO.

She added that while the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn some cases was “incredibly disappointing,” it’s not the end.

“We win a lot, but if we’re not experiencing some setbacks, we’re not pushing hard enough,” she said.

However, major concerns still loom among many higher education advocates as Trump officials continue to fight back, pushing for lawsuits to reach the Supreme Court and lambasting the district and appellate judges that rule against the executive branch, calling them “activist[s]” for disagreeing with the president.

“There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press conference in May.

Leavitt’s comments were related to court decisions blocking certain immigration policies, but Madi Biedermann, press secretary for the Education Department, has also criticized judges that rule against Trump.

In May, Biedermann called a district court judge who blocked the department’s mass layoffs a “far-left judge,” adding that he “dramatically overstepped his authority” and had “a political ax to grind.”

Weingarten, on the other hand, says it’s Trump and the conservative Supreme Court that are thwarting academic freedom and violating constitutional rights for political power.

What we’ve seen is “more the sign of an autocrat that tries to control as opposed to people who believe in freedom,” she said. “It’s all very, very dangerous for the future of America.”

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August 12, 2025
Peer Mentors Help Students Navigate Health Graduate Programs

As a first-year student at Emory University, Leia Marshall walked into the Pathways Center to receive advice on her career goals.

She was a neuroscience and behavioral biology major who thought she might go to medical school. But after meeting with a peer mentor, Marshall realized she was more interested in optometry. “I didn’t really know a lot about the prehealth track. I didn’t really know if I wanted to do medicine at all,” she said. “Getting to speak to a peer mentor really affected the way that I saw my trajectory through my time at Emory and onwards.”

Emory opened the Pathways Center in August 2022, uniting five different student-facing offices: career services, prehealth advising, undergraduate research, national scholarships and fellowships, and experiential learning, said Branden Grimmett, associate dean of the center.

“It brings together what were existing functions but are now streamlined to make it easier for students to access,” Grimmett said.

The pre–health science peer mentor program engages hundreds of students each year through office hours, advising appointments, club events and other engagements, helping undergraduates navigate their time at Emory and beyond in health science programs.

The background: Prehealth advising has been a fixture at Emory for 20 years, led by a team of staff advisers and 30 peer mentors. The office helps students know the options available to them within health professions and that they’re meeting degree requirements to enter these programs. A majority of Emory’s prehealth majors are considering medicine, but others hope to study veterinary medicine, dentistry or optometry, like Marshall.

How it works: The pre–health science mentors are paid student employees, earning approximately $15 an hour. The ideal applicant is a rising junior or senior who has a passion for helping others, Grimmett said.

Mentors also serve on one of four subcommittees—connect, prepare, explore and apply—representing different phases of the graduate school process.

Mentors are recruited for the role in the spring and complete a written application as well as an interview process. Once hired, students participate in a daylong training alongside other student employees in the Pathways Center. Mentors also receive touch-up training in monthly team meetings with their supervisors, Grimmett said.

Peer mentors host office hours in the Pathways Center and advertise their services through digital marketing, including a dedicated Instagram account and weekly newsletter.

Peer-to-peer engagement: Marshall became a peer mentor her junior year and is giving the same advice and support to her classmates that she received. In a typical day, she said she’ll host office hours, meeting with dozens of students and offering insight, resources and advice.

“Sometimes students are coming in looking for general advice on their schedule for the year or what classes to take,” she said. “A lot of the time, we have students come in and ask about how to get involved with research or find clinical opportunities in Atlanta or on campus, so it really ranges and varies.”

Sometimes Marshall’s job is just to be there for the student and listen to their concerns.

“Once I met with a student who came in and she was really nervous about this feeling that she wasn’t doing enough,” Marshall said. “There’s this kind of impostor phenomenon that you’re not involved in enough extracurriculars, you’re not doing enough to set you up for success.”

Marshall is able to relate to these students and help them reflect on their experiences.

“That’s been one of my favorite parts of being a peer mentor: getting to help students recognize their strengths and guide them through things that I’ve been through myself,” she said.

In addition to assisting their classmates, peer mentors walk away with résumé experience and better career discernment, Grimmett said. “Often our students learn a lot about their own path as they’re in dialogue with other students. It’s a full circle for many of our peer mentors.”

“It’s funny to think about the fact that our role is to help others, but it really helps all of us as peer mentors as well,” Marshall said. “We learn to connect with a variety of students, and I think it’s been really valuable for me to connect with the advisers myself and get to know them better.”

If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.

This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Branden Grimmett’s name.

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August 12, 2025
Community College Accreditor Adopts ROI Metric

The accreditor’s new public-facing dashboards will include data on how long it takes for graduates from different programs to recover educational costs.

Nuthawut Somsuk/iStock/Getty Images

The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges is launching new tools to give members of the public more insights into student outcomes at the institutions under its purview.

Those tools include dashboards with different student achievement data points as well as a new metric to gauge return on investment. Like the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission, ACCJC is planning to measure ROI using price–to–earnings premium. Developed in part by Third Way and the College Futures Foundation, the earnings premium tracks how long it takes for graduates from different programs to recover educational costs.

The accreditor wrote in a white paper on different value metrics that the earnings premium is an “approachable and understandable way for students and their families to discuss the value education adds to earnings potential. It also allows for institutions, reviewers, and policy makers to contemplate a measurable target and drive improvement.”

ACCJC chair Kathleen Burke said in a news release that a key takeaway from developing the white paper and dashboards is that federal policy leaders want institutions to demonstrate their value.

“These efforts by ACCJC help policy makers and the public understand the incredible value proposition offered by ACCJC member institutions,” Burke added.

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August 12, 2025
Hack at Columbia University Hits 870K People

A recent hack of Columbia University’s computer system compromised the personal information of hundreds of thousands of people, including students and applicants, new documents show. Over all, about 870,000 individuals were affected by the breach.

The university provided draft notices to officials in Maine and California that it intends to send to affected parties in their states, according to the state attorneys general’s websites. Both states require that their residents be swiftly informed of any breach that includes their data, according to Bloomberg, which reported on the notices.

The notices said a technical outage disrupted some of the university’s IT systems in June, which led university leaders to suspect a possible cybersecurity attack. An investigation revealed that a hacker had taken files from Columbia’s system in May.

The stolen data includes any personal information prospective students provided in their applications or current students gave Columbia over the course of their studies, including their contact details, Social Security numbers, birthdays, demographic information, academic history, financial aid information, insurance details and health information. No patient data from the Columbia University Irving Medical Center seems to have been compromised, according to the notices. The university encouraged those affected to monitor account statements and credit reports to keep an eye out for any fraudulent activity. It also offered them two years of free credit monitoring and identity restoration services from a financial and risk advisory firm.

“We have implemented a number of safeguards across our systems to enhance our security,” the letters read. “Moving forward, we will be examining what additional steps we can take and additional safeguards we can implement to prevent something like this from happening again.”

A public statement from the university’s Office of Public Affairs last week said that since June 24, Columbia has seen no evidence of any further unauthorized access to the university’s system. Starting Aug. 7, the university promised to begin notifying affected students, employees and applicants on a rolling basis via mail.

“We recognize the concern this matter may have raised and appreciate your ongoing patience during this challenging time,” the statement read. “Please know we are committed to supporting the University community.”

A Columbia official previously told Bloomberg that the hacker seemed to be trying to further a “political agenda.” The investigation into the matter also found that the hacker was “highly sophisticated” and “very targeted.”

The alleged hacker, who got in contact with Bloomberg, gave the news outlet 1.6 gigabytes of data, claiming it contained decades’ worth of applications to Columbia. That application data included New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who applied to Columbia but didn’t get in.

Bloomberg confirmed with eight Columbia students and alumni, who applied between 2019 and 2024, that the information about them contained in the data was accurate. They verified that details such as their university-issued ID codes, citizenship statuses and admissions decisions were all correct. The data provided to Bloomberg didn’t contain names, Social Security numbers or birth dates.

The person claiming to be the hacker, who didn’t provide their name, texted Bloomberg that the purpose of the stolen data was to prove the university continued affirmative action in admissions after the 2023 Supreme Court ruling against such practices. They claimed to have hacked about 460 gigabytes of data total from the university—including 1.8 million Social Security numbers of employees, students and their family members—after spending more than two months ensuring their access to Columbia’s computer systems.

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August 12, 2025
The Growing Problem of Scientific Research Fraud

When a group of researchers at Northwestern University uncovered evidence of widespread—and growing—research fraud in scientific publishing, editors at some academic journals weren’t exactly rushing to publish the findings.

“Some journals did not even want to send it for review because they didn’t want to call attention to these issues in science, especially in the U.S. right now with the Trump administration’s attacks on science,” said Luís A. Nunes Amaral, an engineering professor at Northwestern and one of the researchers on the project. “But if we don’t, we’ll end up with a corrupt system.”

Last week Amaral and his colleagues published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. They estimate that they were able to detect anywhere between 1 and 10 percent of fraudulent papers circulating in the literature and that the actual rate of fraud may be 10 to 100 times more. Some subfields, such as those related to the study of microRNA in cancer, have particularly high rates of fraud.

While dishonest scientists may be driven by pressure to publish, their actions have broad implications for the scientific research enterprise.

“Scientists build on each other’s work. Other people are not going to repeat my study. They are going to believe that I was very responsible and careful and that my findings were verified,” Amaral said. “But If I cannot trust anything, I cannot build on others’ work. So, if this trend goes unchecked, science will be ruined and misinformation is going to dominate the literature.”

Luís A. Nunes Amaral

Numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, have already written about the study. And Amaral said he’s heard that some members of the scientific community have reacted by downplaying the findings, which is why he wants to draw as much public attention to the issue of research fraud as possible.

“Sometimes it gets detected, but instead of the matter being publicized, these things can get hidden. The person involved in fraud at one journal may get kicked out of one journal but then goes to do the same thing on another journal,” he said. “We need to take a serious look at ourselves as scientists and the structures under which we work and avoid this kind of corruption. We need to face these problems and tackle them with the seriousness that they deserve.”

Inside Higher Ed interviewed Amaral about how research fraud became such a big problem and what he believes the academic community can do to address it.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Q: It’s no secret that research fraud has been happening to some degree for decades, but what inspired you and your colleagues to investigate the scale of it?

A: The work started about three years ago, and it was something that a few of my co-authors who work in my lab started doing without me. One of them, Jennifer Byrne, had done a study that showed that in some papers there were reports of using chemical reagents that would have made the reported results impossible, so the information had to be incorrect. She recognized that there was fraud going on and it was likely the work of paper mills.

So, she started working with other people in my lab to find other ways to identify fraud at scale that would make it easier to uncover these problematic papers. Then, I wanted to know how big this problem is. With all of the information that my colleagues had already gathered, it was relatively straightforward to plot it out and try to measure the rate at which problematic publications are growing over time.

It’s been an exponential increase. Every one and a half years, the number of paper mill products that have been discovered is doubling. And if you extrapolate these lines into the future, it shows that in the not-so-distant future these kinds of fraudulent papers would be the overwhelming majority within the scientific literature.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Q: What are the mechanisms that have allowed—and incentivized—such widespread research fraud?

A: There are paper mills that produce large amounts of fake papers by reusing language and figures in different papers that then get published. There are people who act as brokers between those that create these fake papers, people who are putting their name on the paper and those who ensure that the paper gets published in some journal.

Our paper showed that there are editors—even for legitimate scientific journals—that help to get fraudulent papers through the publishing process. A lot of papers that end up being retracted were handled and accepted by a small number of individuals responsible for allowing this fraud. It’s enough to have just a few editors—around 30 out of thousands—who accept fraudulent papers to create this widespread problem. A lot of those papers were being supplied to these editors by these corrupt paper mill networks. The editors were making money from it, receiving citations to their own papers and getting their own papers accepted by their collaborators. It’s a machine.

Science has become a numbers game, where people are paying more attention to metrics than the actual work. So, if a researcher can appear to be this incredibly productive person that publishes 100 papers a year, edits 100 papers a year and reviews 100 papers a year, academia seems to accept this as natural as opposed to recognizing that there aren’t enough hours in the day to actually do all of these things properly.

If these defectors don’t get detected, they have a huge advantage because they get the benefits of being productive scientists—tenure, prestige and grants—without putting in any of the effort. If the number of defectors starts growing, at some point everybody has to become a defector, because otherwise they are not going to survive.

Q: [Your] paper found a surge in the number of fraudulent research papers produced by paper mills that started around 2010. What are the conditions of the past 15 years that have made this trend possible?

A: There were two things that happened. One of them is that journals started worrying about their presence online. It used to be that people would read physical copies of a journal. But then, only looking at the paper online—and not printing it—became acceptable. The other thing that became acceptable is that instead of subscribing to a journal, researchers can pay to make their article accessible to everyone.

These two trends enabled organizations that were already selling essays to college students or theses to Ph.D. students to start selling papers. They could create their own journals and just post the papers there; fraudulent scientists pay them and the organizations make nice money from that. But then these organizations realized that they could make more money by infiltrating legitimate journals, which is what’s happening now.

It’s hard for legitimate publishers to put an end to it. On the one hand, they want to publish good research to maintain their reputation, but every paper they publish makes them money.

Q: Could the rise of generative AI accelerate research fraud even more?

A: Yes. Generative AI is going to make all of these problems worse. The data we analyzed was before generative AI became a concern. If we repeat this analysis in one year, I would imagine that we’ll see an even greater acceleration of these problematic papers.

With generative AI in the picture, you don’t actually need another person to make fake papers—you can just ask ChatGPT or another large language model. And it will enable many more people to defect from doing actual science.

Q: How can the academic community address this problem?

A: We need collective action to resist this trend. We need to prevent these things from even getting into the system, and we need to punish the people that are contributing to it.

We need to make people accountable for the papers that they claim to be authors of, and if someone is bound to engage in unethical behavior, they should be forbidden from publishing for a period of time commensurate with the seriousness of what they did. We need to enable detection, consequences and implementation of those consequences. Universities, funding agencies and journals should not hide, saying they can’t do anything about this.

This is about demonstrating integrity and honesty and looking at how we are failing with clear eyes and deciding to take action. I’m hoping that the scientific enterprise and scientific stakeholders rise to that challenge.

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August 12, 2025
Eliminating Testing Requirements Can Boost Student Diversity

Some colleges have changed their standardized test policies in recent years.

The percentage of underrepresented minority students increased in some cases after universities stopped requiring applicants to submit standardized test scores, according to a study published Monday in the American Sociological Review.

The findings come in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted many colleges and universities to rethink their testing policies; some went test-optional or test-blind while others doubled down. But starting long before the pandemic, critics have argued that consideration of standardized test scores often advantages white and wealthier applicants.

The study examined admissions patterns at 1,528 colleges between 2003 and 2019. During the 16-year time frame, 217 of those colleges (14.2 percent) eliminated standardized testing requirements. But researchers found that simply eliminating testing requirements didn’t guarantee a more diverse student body.

The institutions that eliminated the requirements but still gave significant weight to test scores during the application process didn’t increase their enrollment of underrepresented students in the three years after the change. However, colleges that reduced the weight of test scores showed a 2 percent increase in underrepresented student enrollment.

Additionally, researchers found that increases in minority student representation were less likely at test-optional colleges that were also dealing with financial or enrollment-related pressures.

Greta Hsu, co-author of the paper and a professor at the University of California, Davis, Graduate School of Management, said in a news release that “although test-optional admissions policies are often adopted with the assumption that they will broaden access to underrepresented minority groups,” their effectiveness depends “on existing admissions values and institutional priorities at the university.”

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August 12, 2025
Baylor Sues Boston U for Copyright Infringement

Baylor University has lodged a legal complaint to lock down its use of interlocking letters.

In its complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas Waco Division on Friday, Baylor accused Boston University of unauthorized use of an interlocking “BU” mark in its school merchandise, club sports and branding guidelines.

Baylor owns the right to use the interlocking BU on a variety of items including clothing, tumblers, umbrellas and stationery. It alleges federal trademark infringement, false designation and unfair competition.

Despite contrasting school colors—red and white for Boston University and green and gold for Baylor—Baylor says in the complaint that Boston University’s use of the interlocking BU allows it “to trade on and receive the benefit of goodwill built up at great labor and expense by Baylor,” and to “gain acceptance for its goods and services not solely on his own merits, but on the reputation and goodwill of Baylor, its Interlocking BU, and Baylor’s products and services.”

This is not the first time the institutions have locked horns over the logo. In 1987, Baylor applied to register the use of the interlocking letters, but Boston opposed the effort and the colleges agreed to co-exist under the “BU” mark.

Boston later removed its opposition, and for 30 years Baylor held the key to the interlocking BU until 2018, when it discovered three hats in Boston’s campus spirit store displaying the mark in “identical and/or confusingly similar” ways. Baylor said it communicated its objection in 2021, but Boston did not stop branding with the logo. Instead it has expanded its use, according to Baylor, which included images of a serving tray, blanket and sails for club sports, all bearing the locked-up letters, in the complaint.

Baylor wants Boston to destroy all merchandise, packaging and signage bearing the interlocking BU. It’s seeking to recover its legal costs and any other relief the court deems appropriate.

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August 12, 2025
Why Write About Grad, Postdoc Career Development? (opinion)

As a higher education professional with a background in writing and rhetoric, I frame my work in career and professional development in terms of communication, such as helping trainees translate their skills to the language of employers, convey complex research to audiences beyond their fields and forge professional selves through the written and digital texts they produce. By training, I often think about how texts produce effects on readers and the design choices writers make to engage those audiences.

At a time when higher education faces great adversity, I find myself reflecting on the value of writing about career and professional development work in a venue such as “Carpe Careers”: Why write about graduate and postdoc career and professional development? How does this writing translate the impact of our work to different audiences? In this piece, I outline what we do when we write about graduate and postdoc career and professional development and why we should keep writing about this work.

Writing to Empower Graduate and Postdoctoral Scholars

As career and professional development leaders, we sometimes feel frustrated that the impact of our work seems limited to one institution or program. For example, we might be the office of one at our institution and concerned about the scalability of advising appointments or low attendance at workshops. Writing about best practices for career and professional development can expand the reach of our advice to online audiences worldwide.

For example, “Carpe Careers” writers have penned more than 400 pieces that address key career exploration skills like job search strategies, building an authentic personal brand and identifying transferable skills. In addition to equipping graduate and postdoctoral trainees with strategies for landing fulfilling jobs, we present essential advice for navigating academia, such as how to communicate with faculty mentors, deliver effective presentations and cultivate professional references.

These essential topics continue to be necessary and relevant to new generations of graduate and postdoctoral readers because they make visible the hidden curriculum of academia and the world of work. Our work gives learners the tools to navigate these spaces with confidence, supplementing the efforts of mentors, coaches and instructional workshops. Likewise, when we write about professional development, we attend to the holistic flourishing of graduate and postdoctoral scholars by centering topics such as mental well-being on the job search, coping with the culture shock of career transitions or the power of rest. We not only give learners practical advice for the next steps in their careers but also cultivate virtual community and belonging for graduate and postdoctoral trainees facing common challenges and pursuing similar goals.

Writing to Support Fellow Practitioners

When we write about career and professional development, we put our own spin on old chestnut topics by drawing on our backgrounds, identities and experiences. For example, this recent piece reframes professional networking as a form of evidence-gathering and scientific research, leveraging the authors’ training in science. Putting our own spins on standard topics of career transitions and exploration can help us create a distinct personal professional brand as practitioners: How have we synthesized our own stories and the wisdom of others to support current graduate and postdoc trainees? What do we want to be known for as graduate and postdoc career development leaders?

Beyond enriching individual professional identities, when we write about graduate and postdoc career and professional development, we also reflect on how our work with graduate and postdoctoral trainees is changing and identify opportunities for innovation, from the pros and cons of using generative AI tools for career-related activities to advice for supporting international job seekers. We likewise showcase innovative approaches to implementing career and professional development for graduate and postdoctoral learners, such as how to tailor experiential learning, alumni mentoring and badging programs to these populations.

By reflecting on our practice and how we have adapted to challenges, this writing becomes a form of professional development for us, as it enriches the dynamic fields of graduate and postdoc career and professional development and extends our conversations from professional organizations and conferences to wider, virtual communities of practitioners. For instance, recent “Carpe Careers” pieces have highlighted administrative postdoc and “meta” postdoc roles as entry points to career development and related academic administrative work, defining new positions through the perspectives of those who hold these inaugural roles and shaping the futures of work in our fields. When we address practitioners as an audience, writing about career and professional development creates a virtual community of practice where we highlight emerging trends and offer support for one another’s professional growth.

Writing to Engage Stakeholders

Writing for fellow graduate and postdoc career practitioners elevates our work and sets the stage to convey its value to stakeholders, such as faculty and senior administrators whose support is crucial for campus career and professional development initiatives. The external recognition from a piece in a venue such as “Carpe Careers” can lead to greater internal recognition for our programs and offices. For example, when I wrote a “Carpe Careers” post on professional thank-you notes for Thanksgiving week 2024, a University of Pittsburgh newswire service highlighted it in a newsletter, and a vice provost invited me to present on writing thank-yous at a faculty retreat.

Beyond our campuses, when we write about graduate and postdoctoral career development, we communicate the value of our efforts to stakeholders outside higher education, such as employers, policymakers and the public. As Celia Whitchurch observed, graduate and postdoc career and professional development work occupies a third space in higher education amid academic, student affairs and administrative functions, so it is often overlooked and less understood than more conventional academic or student life initiatives.

Writing about our work situates it—and by extension the experiences of graduate and postdoctoral scholars—in the wider ecosystems of higher education and the workforce. This writing can educate stakeholders who are less familiar with the work of career and professional development, highlighting our contributions to graduate and postdoctoral learners’ success, and thereby helping us advocate for greater visibility and resources. When we write about graduate and postdoc career and professional development, we underscore the value of our work and its impacts on trainees, higher education and the wider society.

Writing for and as Change

Writing about graduate and postdoc career and professional development positions us as change agents, championing trainees’ holistic success and envisioning what our field could be. In this writing, we hold space for courageous conversations in difficult times, such as supporting learners through recent disruptions, reflecting on activism as a form of professional development and highlighting the entrepreneurial potential of our trainees amid economic uncertainty. Whether we address learners, fellow practitioners or broader stakeholders, when we write about career and professional development, we let ourselves dream about our careers and those of trainees, not only advocating for change but also modeling what change looks like through our advice, our programmatic innovations and our support for the broader enterprise of higher education.

In short, writing about graduate and postdoc career and professional development is an affirmation of advanced degrees, higher education and the work of practitioners who support these learners’ long-term professional flourishing. This writing can be rewarding, as it scales up the impact of our advice, enriches professional communities and elevates the profile of career and professional development work. It can be bold, as it envisions and embodies positive change in our areas of practice. For “Carpe Careers” readers who are writers, why do you write about graduate and postdoc career and professional development? For “Carpe” readers who are considering writing about their work, when will you start?

Katie Homar is the assistant director of the Office of Academic Career Development, Health Sciences, at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium—an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.

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August 11, 2025
Scoring the AP English Exam: A Diary (opinion)

Each May, hundreds of thousands of high school students from across the United States take the Advanced Placement exam for English Literature and Composition. Each June, hundreds of high school and college English instructors gather for a week to score them. The three-hour exam consists of two parts: a multiple-choice section and a section with three essays (analyses of poetry and fiction and a literary argument essay).

This year, for the third time, I was one of the essay graders. What follows are my unvarnished thoughts from the week, presented anonymously—because I might want to get invited back to grade again.

Day 1

My plane to Salt Lake City is delayed, so I arrive at my hotel well after midnight. My assigned roommate is fast asleep. We have the option of staying in a single room, but only if we pay half.

The alarm goes off at 7. My roommate and I introduce ourselves as he exits the shower. He is ready to go well before me. He’s a first-timer.

I head over to the convention center. At 8 a.m. sharp, hundreds of us gather in a large auditorium for orientation. The chief reader—a professor at a Baptist college—seems a genial enough person. He goes over the week’s game plan via PowerPoint (“read every essay like it’s your first”), makes sundry bureaucratic announcements and introduces the other managers (“assistant readers,” “table leaders,” etc.). Peals of applause burst out frequently, lending the proceedings a summer camp air. To cap things off, the chief reader puts up photos of his dog.

The reading room—the size of an airplane hangar, with cement floors and high ceilings hung with banks of fluorescent lights—is divided into four or five sections of probably around 100 people each. Each section is enclosed by black curtains supported by metal rods. Readers are grouped eight to a table, each with a laptop.

I admit I’m not in the most chipper mood after the short night’s sleep. The enthusiastic vibe can’t help, either. I grab a cup of free coffee (very low quality), take my seat and introduce myself to the woman seated next to me, a high school teacher from Texas. Then our peppy table leader comes over. “Hi, yeah, sorry, would you mind putting your coffee on the floor? We’re trying to be careful with the laptops.” I sigh and glance around to see other tables with coffee cups and bottles on them. I put my cup on the floor. We spend much of the first day training—watching videos, practicing on sample essays, tuning our brains to AP standards.

Day 2

As I sit in the reading room, time crawls; with no windows it could be 3 in the morning for all I know. The novelty has worn off and the grind has set in. Is this what a real job is like? I improvise a routine to manage the boredom: Along with the scheduled 15-minute breaks in the morning and afternoon, every 30 or 40 minutes I get up to walk around, check my phone, stare into space.

The other readers seem to be mostly high school teachers. They seem well adapted to the AP regimen, and to regimentation. Many wear T-shirts with pro-literacy or pro-reading themes. I’d estimate that about two-thirds of the scorers are women. That fits with the service-heavy load female professors typically shoulder at most universities.

We are served three free meals a day, buffet-style, all you can eat. There’s a strange symmetry with our daily work—all the exams you can score from a never-ending supply. As my waistline expands, I feel my brain shrinking. The buffet lines are staffed by an army of food service workers, mostly Hispanic or Asian, who bring out metal trays and various tureens from mysterious kitchens for our breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as the coffee and snacks for our scheduled breaks. The working class works for us, the petit bourgeois, as we help classify the next generation as either part of the future lower middle or upper middle class.

As we filter back into the reading room after lunch, the chief reader addresses us over a PA system, thanking us for returning on time, reminding us to score carefully, regaling us with a choice quote or two.

Day 3

I breakfast with my roommate and a few of his reading-table mates. He really is the nicest person. They invite me to karaoke later. A few drinks would be nice, though I can’t fathom singing after this kind of work.

I read (or scan, actually) more than 100 essays per day. On average, one or two offer something insightful or fluent. The rest either scrape by, or don’t. Many in fact are aborted on takeoff—a sentence or two, maybe a phrase, sometimes nothing at all. Probably 10 to 15 percent are these kind of no-show efforts. It makes me wonder why these students take this test. Do they get extra class credit for merely showing up? To quote from a favorite Scorsese movie, “Qui bono?”

I continually hear the crinkling of candy and other snacks—provided free by AP, and replenished daily—being unwrapped. This is in addition to the free, all-you-can-eat meals and snacks during breaks.

The assistant reader hovers around the tables in our section like a wary exam proctor, watching us for who knows what. This afternoon, the third day of the reading, the computers go down. With nothing to do, I pull out my phone and start reading an article on the author of a literary selection our exams are based on. My friendly table leader comes over. “Let’s please put away our phones.” I scoff and return to reading the article. A few minutes later the assistant reader sidles up to me. “Please put away your phone.” Before I can reply she has moved away.

The silent whistle finally blows at 5. We stream out of the reading room and down the long corridors of the convention center like mill workers at the end of the day shift. We enter the dining hall or drift outside into the sunny and warm late afternoon. I head straight to the hotel fitness center, the stress of the day evaporating with each set, recharging for another day, just like my Motorola plugged into the hotel room nightstand.

Later that evening my roommate returns to our room (“karaoke was great!”) and asks me if I want to go tomorrow night. I beg off again (I plead achoraphobia—fear of public singing).

Day 4

Salt Lake City—capital of the Beehive State. At lunch I skip the dining hall and make a beeline outside to get some much-needed air and sun. I make my way to Temple Square, the Mormon Vatican. Groups of tourists mix in with groups of name-tagged believers. The temple itself is swaddled in scaffolding. I watch the giant cranes convey building materials to men 10 stories up. A plaque on the Brigham Young Monument records the names of the original 1847 Mormon pioneers. One of them is my great-great-great-great-grandfather.

Of course, working as an AP exam reader is entirely voluntary. I need extra money this year to pay off some taxes. Scorers make $30 an hour. With overtime—we get paid time and a half on days six and seven—I’ll make about $2,000, before taxes.

After the 5 o’clock whistle, I go back to the hotel room and blast rock music from the TV so I can feel something (The Strokes’ “Room on Fire” and Greta Van Fleet’s “From the Fires”). The day’s strain melts away.

Day 5

Every few days we are tested to make sure we are scoring “accurately.” “Calibration” involves scoring a set of six sample exams—and if you score them as an “expert” reader would, you pass. If you don’t, you get sent to remediation. A few members of my table seem genuinely worried. When I arrive to our table this morning (I am always the last to arrive) my neighbor, the high school teacher from Texas, greets me with some tension in her voice: “We’re calibrating today!” I score my set like I don’t give a damn, and pass. One of my table mates disappears for a couple hours.

In the afternoon the chief reader makes his most serious announcement—apparently someone has been posting photos of the reading on social media, which is a big no-no. AP has to preserve the “integrity” of its tests, of course. Its Lloyd’s of London–type image is key to that integrity, it seems.

Most essays are painfully incoherent, ungrammatical. Many, as previously mentioned, are incomplete.

Still we read them, one after another—we scorers are the English teachers of the future, in the wet dreams of the likes of Elon Musk. All of us readers are in our field because we love reading—and here we are, scanning endless variations on a single passage from a single novel, our love being milked to a slow death, dairy cows once impregnated with passion now tightly corralled into an assembly line and hooked up to machines.

Like the character Thomas Bradshaw in the brief excerpt the AP essays are based on (from the novel The Bradshaw Variations by Rachel Cusk), most of the essays leave us wanting. We will never see the wife for whom Thomas is waiting in the kitchen; we will never experience their reunion, or the development of their relationship. Like Thomas, we marinate in limbo. Like the static but frantic figures on Keats’s Grecian urn, we chase, we desire, but never consummate.

Day 6

The other members of my table pass around a greeting card for everyone to sign for our table leader. They also take up cash donations for a gift. I sign the card.

The computer servers crash and scoring comes to a halt. I have a feeling of relief, like for extra recess or a snow day.

Day 7

Over the course of the week, I’ve given a perfect score to just a handful of exams. Is this how we’re educating the best and brightest, these college students of the near future? Are the vaunted humanities—assailed for years from without—rotting from within? I get a few exams in which the student does not offer an essay, but instead a rant about the meaninglessness of the AP exam itself. These could be mere excuses, but the voices that emerge from these exams are funny, searching, thoughtful.

“Look beneath the façade of affable confidence and seamless well-adjustment that today’s elite students have learned to project, and what you often find are toxic levels of fear, anxiety and depression, of emptiness and aimlessness and isolation,” William Deresiewicz wrote in Excellent Sheep. “We all know about the stressed-out, overpressured high school student; why do we assume that things get better once she gets to college?”

The author is a professor of English at a regional public university in the eastern United States.

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August 11, 2025
HBCUs Await Trump’s Pick to Lead White House Initiative

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in April promising to “elevate the value and impact” of the country’s historically Black colleges and universities—in part by selecting an executive director for the White House Initiative on HBCUs and a President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs.

But four months later, eight months into his second term, these roles remain unfilled.

Some HBCU advocates say months-long waits are business as usual for these positions, and they remain confident in Trump’s support for HBCUs. Others worry that HBCUs lack their most direct line of communication to the White House at a time of rapid-fire higher ed policy changes.

Since the 1980s, the executive director of the HBCUs initiative, established by President Jimmy Carter, has been responsible for advocating for HBCUs’ federal policy interests. The President’s Board of Advisors offers guidance to government officials about how to better support and strengthen these institutions.

Appointees serve as HBCUs’ “in-house advocates,” said Ivory A. Toldson, a professor of counseling psychology at Howard University and editor in chief of The Journal of Negro Education. He served as deputy director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs from 2013 to 2015 and as executive director from 2015 to 2016 under former president Barack Obama. The director and board have historically sought out federal funding and partnership opportunities for these institutions and “made sure that executive-level priorities were shaped in a way that understood the needs of HBCUs.”

Toldson said there are likely to be “missed opportunities” for HBCUs during the limbo period before an executive director is chosen. He said it’s easy for federal agencies, like the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health, to overlook smaller HBCUs for grants when no one is there to champion them.

“By them not having representation within the federal government, it becomes difficult for them to advocate effectively for their needs,” he said.

Robert Palmer, chair of the education department at Howard, said he worries HBCUs don’t have their “earpiece” to the Trump administration at a time when policy shifts, such as upcoming changes to the student loan program, will affect HBCU students.

The unfilled roles are “quite concerning,” Palmer said. “It almost makes you wonder, is it a priority for him? Because that’s what it signals—that it’s not a priority.”

Mixed Views

Other HBCU advocates don’t see a problem. Lodriguez Murray, vice president of public policy and government affairs at the United Negro College Fund, which represents private HBCUs, said he isn’t troubled by the wait because organizations like his have still been able to have “high-power and high-level discussions” with the White House and Department of Education.

“We’ve been able to get every concern addressed. We’ve been able to get every email returned. We’ve been able to get every meeting request handled,” he said. “The house is not burning down for us. And I have seen no lack of continuity and engagement on our issues at the highest levels.”

He said it’s more meaningful to him that Trump issued an executive order reaffirming the White House Initiative on HBCUs within his first 100 days and fully funded HBCUs in his proposed budget. He’d also rather the administration take its time to pick “the right individuals” to fill these roles.

“There have been many individuals who have had the role of executive director of the White House initiative on HBCUs [who] have fallen below what the expectations are of this community,” Murray said. “And so, if the White House is attempting to find the right person to meet a moment and to meet expectations, that’s fine with me.”

Trump’s pick for executive director during his first term, speaker and consultant Johnathan Holifield, was met with mixed reactions by HBCU supporters because of his lack of prior experience with these institutions. Former president Obama also received criticism for some of his executive director choices, including multiple interim appointments between permanent directors.

Murray said he’s hoping for someone “with the president’s confidence” who can help bring Trump’s plans to support HBCUs to fruition and who can simultaneously “speak truth to power and express to the president the concerns of HBCUs.”

For Toldson, “institutional knowledge of HBCUs” and an “apolitical” approach will be critical to a new executive director’s success to avoid HBCUs getting mired in the anti-DEI crusade besieging other higher ed institutions.

“Regardless of who’s in office, we need representation, and I think that the right representation would be able to balance the needs of the HBCU community with the broader direction of the government,” Toldson said.

Mounting Anticipation

Harry Williams, president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which represents public HBCUs, said the amount of time it takes for presidents to fill these roles has varied historically. HBCUs have often waited months for these appointments, so the current timeline isn’t out of the ordinary, he said. Former president Joe Biden didn’t officially name an executive director until February 2022, a little over a year after his inauguration.

Still, a long wait “creates uncertainty, and it creates anxiety,” Williams said.

“We’ve gotten good information that this is something that will happen, but the timing of it has always been the challenge,” he added. TMCF is reassuring campuses that the administration plans to fill these positions, “but we don’t know exactly when.”

David K. Wilson, president of Morgan State University, said he and other HBCU presidents are eager to get started on making the promises in Trump’s executive order a reality. They were glad to see the order call on federal agencies, businesses and foundations to partner with and invest more in HBCUs.

Wilson said he hopes to see these positions filled soon “so that we can begin to express directly to the White House what some of the opportunities are for continued investment in these institutions.”

“All of them will return unbelievable dividends to the nation,” he added.

Wilson noted that Howard University recently regained Research-1 status, the coveted Carnegie Foundation classification for universities with very high research activity. Other HBCUs, including Morgan State, are poised to follow in the coming years. He wants to see appointees in place who can help maintain that momentum.

“We can’t wait to see now what this next era of HBCU investments under the Trump administration will look like,” he said. “We were on a roll, and now the question is, can we roll faster?”

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August 11, 2025