Tag: Events

USF Ditches Search Firm That Helped U of Florida Pick Ono

SP&A previously helped UF select Santa Ono, a former University of Michigan president.

Bryan Bedder/Stringer/Getty Images

The University of South Florida has dropped SP&A Executive Search as the firm leading its presidential search, The Tampa Bay Times reported Tuesday. The move comes after the Florida Board of Governors rejected the candidate that SP&A had helped the University of Florida pick for its top job: former University of Michigan president Santa Ono, whom the UF board unanimously approved.

Ono’s rejection came after conservatives mounted a campaign opposing him, citing his past support of diversity, equity and inclusion and his alleged failure to protect Jewish students.

After that failed hire, Rick Scott, a Republican U.S. senator representing Florida, blamed SP&A, telling Jewish Insider that the firm didn’t sufficiently vet Ono.

SP&A describes itself on its website as a “boutique woman- and minority-owned executive search firm.” Scott Yenor—a Boise State University political science professor who resigned from the University of West Florida’s Board of Trustees in April after implying that only straight white men should be in political leadership—highlighted that description in an essay he co-wrote, titled “How did a leftist almost become president of the University of Florida?”

“We can only speculate about how the deck was stacked,” Yenor and Steven DeRose, a UF alum and business executive, wrote. “SP&A colluded with campus stakeholders, especially faculty, when they were retained. Together, they developed the criteria necessary to hire a Santa Ono.”

They also pointed out that SP&A was leading the USF search. SP&A didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Wednesday.

USF didn’t provide an interview or answer written questions. In a June 20 statement, USF trustee and presidential search committee chair Mike Griffin said the university was now using the international firm Korn Ferry.

“We value the expertise of our initial search consultant and thank them for their engagement,” Griffin wrote.

Source link

July 3, 2025
Religion’s Ever-Shifting Role in American Higher Education

Religion, particularly Protestantism, was central to the mission of the country’s first universities. Chapels were constructed at the center of campuses. University presidents, often devout, worried over the salvation of their students.

James W. Fraser’s new book, Religion and the American University (Johns Hopkins University Press), offers a detailed history of how religion’s role in higher ed has been upended again and again by transformative events, including the discovery of evolution, the emergence of biblical criticism, the Industrial Revolution and the advent of the modern-day research university.

It outlines how religion cropped up in students’ lives in new ways as they continued to grapple with moral and ethical questions and as various denominations and faiths vied for their attention and adherence. The book charts how the academic study of religion developed, how campus chaplains and religious student groups diversified along with student bodies, and how religious differences on campuses created new learning opportunities and tensions.

Fraser, a professor emeritus of history and education at New York University and a United Church of Christ minister, argues that while much of academe pushes religion to its periphery, today’s students are still concerned with questions of spirituality and meaning.

Fraser spoke with Inside Higher Ed about the new book. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Your book details massive changes in the role of religion in higher ed, from Protestant-dominated universities to institutions with more diverse student bodies and chaplaincies, and from religion-centric to more secularized. You describe a shift away from the idea of colleges that “transmitted knowledge” to colleges that “created new knowledge” as research universities came about. What do you think higher ed has gained or lost in these transitions?

A: There is no question that the transition from the old-fashioned teaching college to the research university has done a couple of really important things, not only for students but for society. One is that being able to invite students to be fellow researchers in the pursuit of knowledge is always a much better pedagogical approach than “You will learn this, and you will learn that,” and people can learn it and forget it pretty quickly.

I also think for all of us who criticize the research university, we have to remember all of the extraordinary accomplishments. Human life is twice as long because of medical research. Food supplies are much more plentiful because of agricultural research. Educational studies have helped more and more students learn how to read. The list goes on and on. The breakthroughs of the research university are huge.

In terms of what is lost, I think the clearest issue is in some ways described by Julie A. Reuben in The Making of the Modern University. The intellectual developments have gotten so much stronger than … attention to issues of meaning, purpose and belonging … Attention to issues of spirituality and faith have been marginalized significantly, and there’s certainly a norm in the research university now that scientific research—what you can count—counts the most. And what you care about and what you value count less. And that I find very problematic.

Q: You discuss in the book how today’s students have a deep interest in meaning-making and spirituality, if not religion, per se. Do you think it’s part of a college’s role to address that, and if so, how should institutions go about it?

A: I think it better be a part of colleges’ role, and I would say that for a couple of reasons. One is, asking questions of meaning, purpose, belonging, questions of faith, questions of morality, are pretty essential if we’re going to maintain and protect our democracy and our society in the 21st century. And if we simply say institutions are going to do this very specific kind of research and are going to teach professional skills, and we’re going to evaluate universities by how much money the students make when they graduate, we stop teaching about things that will sustain our society and will sustain human beings in the future. That’s a huge loss. The second issue is, I just think it’s stupid for universities to disregard student interest when it’s there. If students are interested in these things, we should find ways to talk about it.

I also think—and this is an issue explored in the book a lot—it’s often in the extracurricular areas that the students are able to pursue these [questions]. They pursue them with chaplains, they pursue them with their own individual groups, whether it’s Baháʼí Fellowship or InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. They find other ways … But I don’t think that lets faculty off the hook to develop the kinds of courses [that] let it be done as part of the regular academic curriculum. That’s what we do as professors, and that’s something we ought to offer our students. I think it’s cheap letting ourselves off the hook when we say, “Oh well, they’ll find it elsewhere.”

Q: In the book, you repeatedly highlight a tension within religious communities as to whether to invest in and urge students toward explicitly religious colleges or whether to prioritize building up religious infrastructure at unaffiliated colleges—like chaplains, Hillels and other religious student organizations. Do you think that tension plays out today, and if so, in what ways?

A: I think it plays out very much today. There are people who feel like their young people will only be safe in religious institutions. And there are other people who say, “No, let’s go to the best college we can find. Let’s go to the best state university we can find.”

I have a bias. I favor the religious groups that are finding ways to make a place for themselves in the larger universities. As a conclusion of this book, I talk about Baylor University, which is trying so hard to do both—to both be a religious school and a Research-1 university. And I wish them luck. I admire them. And I think it’s going to be more difficult than they think it’s going to be.

But I think that for many universities … religion finds its own place on the margins, and that can be with chaplains, that can be with student groups. But students care about these issues, and they’re not going to disappear.

Q: The book touches on the beauties of campus religious diversity but also some of the challenges, including the ways that campuses have been rocked by the October 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Since then, campus antisemitism has been a flash point for the Trump administration’s dealings with higher ed and institutions have been penalized for how they’ve handled pro-Palestinian protests. Having watched how these issues played out, is there anything you would have added to the book on the topic?

A: I mentioned it in one paragraph in the end because it was just going to press, but I would have done a lot more with the challenges that religious diversity [brings]. We live in a world where the Trump administration is attacking diversity, and yet religious diversity is a kind of diversity. Chaplains are telling me they’re feeling tensions about that.

I think the violence, particularly since the Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s response in Gaza, has set student against student in a way that is going to take decades to recover. Whether you’re a Jewish chaplain or a Muslim chaplain or a chaplain of some other faith, trying to deal with that, with that kind of student pain and student anger and student lashing out and student response, is making it very difficult. Discussions about religion are more difficult than they were two years ago.

And the same is true for religious studies. We’ve seen several examples of religious studies professors who have gotten in trouble. One got in trouble for showing a picture of the Prophet Muhammad in class when some interpretations of Islam say you can’t do it. Another professor lately, who The New York Times profiled, got fired. She was a Jewish professor, but she was outspoken in defense of Gaza, the Palestinian population, and she got fired for it. These things are going to happen. And the pressure on universities—a couple of chaplains have told me they feel like the administration is looking over their shoulders in a way that was not true two years ago and asking, “What are you saying to the students? What are they praying about? Why do we need this kind of disruption?”

I was talking to one of my [former] students, a current chaplain, and he said that this last year has been the most difficult of his decades in chaplaincy. I think that’s not rare.

Q: You focus a sizable chunk of the book on the role of religion at public universities, which aren’t necessarily the first institutions that come to mind when we think about higher education and religion. Why was it important to you to include these institutions and make them a focus?

A: The obvious answer is the majority of American students go to public universities, by far. And to do a study of any aspect of American higher education that ignores public universities is simply silly. I’ve read some other studies that I thought were very thoughtful about religion that didn’t include public universities, and I thought, “But that’s where the students are. We’ve got to do that.”

The second issue is, I found public universities’ relationship with religion very interesting and far more complicated than I thought. In the 1880s, University of Illinois expelled a student for not attending chapel. As late as the eve of World War II in 1939, a quarter of state universities had chapel services—not always required, but they offered them. So, state universities were … pretty much generic Protestant institutions until really the 1960s, 1970s. Faculty culture wasn’t particularly religious in the way it was in the 19th century, but the campus culture and the campus assumptions were.

The other thing I found is that there’s a wily religious life on state university campuses of one sort or another. It’s often led by chaplains working around the margins, and they feel marginalized, but they’re also very effective working around the margins … I was intrigued.

[For example,] I was intrigued by the University of Nevada, Reno, a public university barred by the state Constitution from supporting religion, but it fosters dialogue. I wish more universities were willing to do that. They hosted a conversation on the role of women in religion [in partnership with a local synagogue]. A public university cannot take a stand—we favor this or we favor that—but they don’t need to be afraid of hosting conversations on a variety of topics … That engages with the community. I think universities hold back from engaging with communities on all sorts of issues, but they certainly hold back from engaging with religious communities.

Source link

July 3, 2025
University Autonomy Stems From Corporate Rights (opinion)

In an April 21 article entitled “We Haven’t Seen a Fight Like Harvard vs. Trump in Centuries,” Steven Brint wrote that the ongoing dispute between Harvard University and the federal government is “the most important showdown between state power and college autonomy since 1816, when the New Hampshire Legislature attempted to convert Dartmouth College into a public entity.”

While the Dartmouth College case, which the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1819 in Dartmouth’s favor, looms large in American history, universities have, prior to and since that decision, regularly fought for their rights—their corporate rights.

Today, we call this institutional academic freedom. But, as Richard Hofstadter wrote in his portion of The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (1955), co-authored with Walter Metzger, “academic freedom is a modern term for an ancient idea.” That ancient idea holds that university freedom is based on corporate rights, which is why Hofstadter begins with a section subtitled “Corporate Power in the Middle Ages.” Recovering that old idea could not be more important today.

It is no exaggeration to say that, in spring 2025, we may have entered the nadir of American academic freedom. Austin Sarat rightfully urged us, even before then, to find new ways to guard academic freedom “against external threats.” Now, in the face of ongoing hostility from both state and federal governments, it is imperative that universities deploy the full range of arguments at their disposal, including those based on their forgotten corporate rights. In other words, it’s time for universities to invoke their corporate rights. Allow me to explain.

Corporateness is the university’s hidden superpower. While every university is constituted differently, they are all corporations, regardless of whether they present themselves as public or private. That is because “corporation” is a general legal term denoting a unity at law.

“Incorporation,” David Ciepley has written, “is a powerful tool.” Corporations can sue and be sued in their own names, hold property, enter contracts, use their own seals and legislate. Importantly, the university’s corporateness bears no necessary relationship to its current autocratic constitution, whereby, according to Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn, universities are “ruled by external lay governing boards vested with the panoply of powers customarily granted to corporations, including the power to adopt, amend, and revoke its basic rules of institutional governance.” Thus, we can use the university’s corporateness to rebuff external attacks, while also working, as Arjun Appadurai wrote recently, “to break the unilateral power of boards of trustees.”

The university’s cherished autonomy springs from its corporate rights. In the U.S., these rights were first articulated in a now-forgotten line of cases starting with the 1805 North Carolina Supreme Court case Trustees of University of North Carolina v. Foy, a decision issued more than a century before the American Association of University Professors’ famous 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure—and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1957 discovery of a theretofore unknown academic freedom right in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Like Dartmouth College, these cases were about corporate rights. But, unlike Dartmouth College, they concerned universities we now consider public; they were decided by state supreme courts, rather than by the U.S. Supreme Court; and, when they implicated constitutional rights, they implicated rights protected by state constitutions, rather than by the federal one.

What I call the corporate theory of academic freedom explains why the rights that originally protected the American scholarly enterprise, including in the Dartmouth College case, were corporate rights by emphasizing that universities are, by law, corporations. (It’s actually in the name itself: “university,” derived from the Latin universitas, simply means “corporation.”)

Rather than an individual right, academic freedom is, properly understood, what Stanley Fish called “a guild concept.” More specifically, it is a concept belonging to the incorporated guild of professors and students (and others). This theory bases academic freedom not on freedom of speech—a troublesome basis for academic freedom—but on the university’s corporate rights. These corporate rights, not infrequently finding expression in constitutions, are also sometimes constitutional rights. By substituting corporate rights for freedom of speech, we turn a foundation of sand into stone.

It might prove difficult for some in the university to embrace a term they associate only with business corporations, but corporate rights have been, and still can be, used to protect universities. In this connection, it might help to recall the many corporations that are not business corporations, including municipal corporations, nonprofit corporations (often euphemized as “organizations”), church corporations and university corporations.

At a moment when the U.S. Supreme Court seems keen on granting corporate rights to business corporations, one might wonder why business corporations should get all the rights. With state and federal governments increasingly targeting universities, we simply cannot afford to leave these arguments on the table. Understanding and utilizing these neglected corporate rights cases requires shifting our focus, on the one hand, from private to public universities, and, on the other hand, from federal to state courts (where Dartmouth College began).

While the federal government’s recent attacks on Columbia and Harvard have captured headlines across the country, state legislatures continue to menace public universities. Although these universities have, through centuries of experience, become highly familiar with governmental intrusion, they have become less adept at repulsing it than they once were. As a result, one recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education could observe that “it’s well understood that public colleges are in the thrall of their state lawmakers.” The corporate theory of academic freedom challenges this understanding.

Consider two post–Dartmouth College cases about universities we call public today. The first is an 1887 Indiana Supreme Court case about Indiana University. The second is an 1896 Michigan Supreme Court case about the University of Michigan. Each case furnishes ideas about how to address academic freedom’s most vexing and persistent challenge: protecting public universities from state legislatures.

In an 1887 case called Robinson v. Carr, the Indiana Supreme Court considered what interest rate applied to a fund established by the Indiana Legislature for Indiana University. The statute that established the university fund indicated that any loan made from the university fund would carry a 7 percent interest rate. The trustees of Indiana University, who were established as a “body politic” by the Indiana Legislature, could then use the interest to cover annual university expenses. But a later statute repealed laws concerning certain funds, including “public funds,” and applied an 8 percent interest rate instead. The question as to which interest rate applied therefore turned on whether the university fund was a “public fund.” If it was a public fund, an 8 percent rate would apply; if it was not, the 7 percent rate would remain.

The Indiana Supreme Court concluded that the university fund was not a public fund because “the university, although established by public law, and endowed and supported by the state, is not a public corporation, in a technical sense.” The court meant by this that the Board of Trustees “has none of the essential characteristics of a public corporation.” The university was “not a municipal corporation,” and “its members are not officers of the government, or subject to the control of the legislature in the management of its affairs.”

The court reasoned, “That the university was established under the direct authority of the state, through a special act of the legislature, or that the charter contains provisions of a purely public character, nor yet that the institution was wisely established, and is and should be perpetually maintained at the public expense, for the public good, does not make it a public corporation, or constitute its endowment fund a public fund.” In the final analysis, “the legal status of the state university being that of a technically private, or at most a quasi public, corporation, the university fund, of which it is the sole beneficiary, is therefore not a public fund, within the meaning of the law.” In short, the court’s careful analysis under the corporate framework led it to conclude that the university’s legislative establishment and public funding did not make it public.

Less than a decade after Robinson, the Michigan Supreme Court decided a case called Regents of the University of Michigan v. Sterling. There, the court had to decide whether the Michigan Legislature could require the University of Michigan Board of Regents to relocate its homeopathic medical college from Ann Arbor to Detroit. The Michigan regents had refused to comply with the Legislature’s relocation law, and Charles Sterling, a private citizen, then asked the Michigan Supreme Court to order the Regents to comply.

The court denied Sterling’s request, noting that, “under the [Michigan] constitution of 1835, the legislature had the entire control and management of the university and the university fund. They could appoint regents and professors, and establish departments.” But, after the university languished under this governance model, the people of Michigan withdrew the power of the Legislature to control the university. To that end, the 1850 Michigan Constitution ordained that “the board of regents shall have the general supervision of the university, and the direction and control of all expenditures from the university interest fund.”

The court offered three “reasons to show that the legislature has no control over the university or the board of regents.” First, both entities “derive their power from the same supreme authority, namely, the constitution,” and, “in so far as the powers of each are defined by that instrument, limitations are imposed, and a direct power conferred upon one necessarily excludes its existence in the other, in the absence of language showing the contrary intent.”

Second, the Board of Regents “is the only corporation provided for in the constitution whose powers are defined therein”—whereas “in every other corporation provided for in the constitution it is expressly provided that its powers shall be such as the legislature shall give.” Third, “in every case except that of the regents the constitution carefully and expressly reposes in the legislature the power to legislate and to control and define the duties of those corporations and officers.”

Because the constitution entrusted “the general supervision” of the university to the regents, “no other conclusion … is possible than that the intention was to place this institution in the direct and exclusive control of the people themselves, through a constitutional body elected by them.” The people of Michigan had entrusted the university’s governance to the regents directly, thereby removing the university from the Legislature’s purview. As a result, the Legislature could no longer govern the university.

These 19th-century cases, together with many other state cases like them, contain resources that universities can use to meet today’s extraordinary challenges. (Edwin D. Duryea lists many, but not all, of these cases in the first appendix to his 2000 monograph, The Academic Corporation: A History of College and University Governing Boards.) Indeed, the cases remain relevant today. The Montana Supreme Court’s 2022 decision affirming the Montana regents’ “exclusive authority to regulate firearms on college campuses” borrowed, with slight alterations and no attribution, one of the aforementioned passages from Sterling.

Harvard’s battle with the federal government is truly momentous, but it is one of many that American universities—public and private—have consistently waged for centuries. When these universities rose up to defend their corporate rights, state supreme courts across the country often affirmed those rights. The time has come to assert those rights once again. As state governments, along with the federal government, apply new and in some ways unprecedented pressure, universities can no longer ignore their powerful claims to corporate rights. Continuing to do so may incur costs none of us are willing to pay.

Michael Banerjee, a 2019 graduate of Harvard Law School, is a doctoral candidate in jurisprudence and social policy at the University of California, Berkeley, where his dissertation focuses on universities’ corporate rights.

Source link

July 2, 2025
Vermont’s Dual-Enrollment Cybersecurity Certificate

High school juniors and seniors in Vermont can attempt a 12-credit cybersecurity certificate through a Champlain College and NuHarbor Security partnership.

With the cost of a college degree rising, more young people are considering alternative forms of postsecondary education.

Data from ECMC Group found that fewer high school students today (52 percent) are considering attending a four-year college compared to their peers in 2020 (71 percent), and a number are weighing community college or career and technical education instead (25 percent). Nearly half of respondents to ECMC’s survey said their ideal post–high school education should last three years or fewer.

A new offering from Champlain College in Vermont allows high school students to earn a certificate in cybersecurity before graduation, providing both career exploration and workforce development. The 12-credit certificate equips students with college-ready skills and a pathway to an evolving career.

The background: The new program, CyberStart, builds on Champlain’s Virtual Gap Program, launched in summer 2020, which allows traditional-aged college students to complete 15 weeks of classes and an internship course remotely before formally enrolling.

In Vermont, high school students can participate in two college-level courses at no cost. But statewide trends show the students most likely to engage in dual enrollment live in larger towns, have access to a college campus or are enrolled at a high school with an integrated dual-enrollment program, said Adam Goldstein, program director of CyberStart and academic director of the Leahy Center for Digital Forensics and Cybersecurity at Champlain. Most of the programs available to rural high school students consisted of asynchronous courses.

“We saw a need for something in the middle, where students had the ability to be remote, but to have that synchronous element where they were meeting with other students and working directly with faculty members,” Goldstein said.

Survey Says

A 2023 report from the American Council on Education found that 41 percent of high school seniors said the pandemic changed their thinking on their choice of future career, and one in four students changed their view on what college major to pursue.

How it works: CyberStart is a partnership between Champlain and cybersecurity group NuHarbor Security, designed to give high school students a peek into that work. Champlain also offers certificates for a working adult population, but CyberStart is modeled a little differently, relying on NuHarbor to identify which skills students need to be successful in an entry-level position.

All Vermont high school juniors and seniors are eligible to participate if they meet dual-enrollment requirements.

The program consists of 12 credits over four courses: two introductory courses and two internship experiences. The first internship course is led by Champlain faculty and includes other college students at the Leahy Center. The second is orchestrated by NuHarbor and has students work alongside cyber professionals, finessing their workplace skills.

Courses take place synchronously with a Champlain instructor and follow a flipped classroom model, requiring students to complete readings or lectures prior to meeting and reserving class time for active learning, activities and collaboration among students. Courses are supported by a current student who serves as a mentor.

A digital focus: CyberStart’s curriculum is built for someone with no prior experience, making it an accessible pathway for students with an interest in STEM. It also provides introductory college courses for students still exploring their career ambitions.

“We feel that almost anybody in any discipline they want to go into could benefit from a cybersecurity class,” Goldstein said. “Regardless of where they head into the digital age, having an understanding of cybersecurity is a really, really critical skill set.”

According to the Boys and Girls Club of America’s fall 2024 Youth Right Now survey, over half of high school students are interested in taking science-related courses after they graduate (57 percent), and 48 percent are interested in a STEM-related job in the future.

Champlain’s program is intentionally structured as an on-ramp for students who want to launch into a career or postsecondary education, allowing them to build professional skills in an emerging field or kick-start their college education. Students who complete the certificate are also given conditional acceptance to Champlain, and high-performing students may be eligible for scholarships.

“I think it can open up students’ eyes to the possibilities that maybe they weren’t initially thinking of, whether it is a workforce track and thinking about future training and experience or thinking about college and how that can ultimately have a very valuable return on investment,” Goldstein said.

The initiative also provides students, particularly those in rural areas, with greater insight into career opportunities available to them in the region or remotely.

State of play: Since launching the program in 2024, Champlain has established relationships with dozens of teachers and high schools across the state, Goldstein said. CyberStart is also available at Vermont’s centers for technology education.

Some students in the program’s first cohort have continued into a second year or transitioned into a STEM discipline in higher education after graduating high school; many have chosen to pursue cybersecurity.

The success of CyberStart may provide a model for similar programs in other fields, Goldstein said, such as computer science and data or digital humanities.

Get more content like this directly to your inbox. Subscribe here.

Source link

July 2, 2025
Austin Community College Joins Fight Against DOJ and Texas

Civil rights groups have been piling on to intervene in the recent Texas court case that ended in-state tuition for noncitizens living in the state. Now Austin Community College and a Texas undocumented student are joining the effort to defend the now-defunct law.

College officials worry they’ll lose students and revenue if undocumented students’ tuition prices suddenly skyrocket. Austin Community College is the first Texas college to try to join the lawsuit.

The Texas Dream Act, which allowed noncitizens who grew up in the state to benefit from in-state tuition, was overturned last month after the Department of Justice sued Texas over the law. The state didn’t fight back and instead sided with the DOJ mere hours after the legal challenge. A week later, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a Latino civil rights organization, filed a motion on behalf of a group of Texas undocumented students to intervene in the lawsuit. The group argued the swift resolution of the DOJ’s legal challenge denied those affected any chance to weigh in, so the students should become intervenors, or a party to the case, and have their day in court.

Other groups quickly followed MALDEF’s lead. Since last week, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the Texas Civil Rights Project, Democracy Forward and the National Immigration Law Center have joined the fight, representing the activist group La Unión del Pueblo Entero, the Austin Community College District’s Board of Trustees and Oscar Silva, a student at University of North Texas. The groups filed emergency motions on their behalf to intervene in the lawsuit and get relief from the judgment that killed the law. If these legal efforts are successful, a case so quickly open and shut by Texas and the DOJ could be reopened.

Austin Community College board chair Sean Hassan said in a news release from the Texas ACLU chapter that college officials deserved to have their say on the policy shift.

“Employers and taxpayers are looking to community colleges to produce a sufficient number of highly skilled graduates to meet workforce needs,” Hassan said. “If legislation or court decisions will impact our ability to meet these expectations, we should have a seat at the table to help shape responsible solutions. The action by our board asks the court to ensure our voice is heard.”

Calculating the Costs

In court filings, Austin Community College leaders argue that the institution will lose revenue because of the abrupt end of the Texas Dream Act. They estimated that about 440 students will see their tuition rates quadruple, and as a result, hundreds of students will stop out and prospective students will avoid enrolling in the first place. College leaders also argued in the motion to intervene that the need for scholarships will rise, putting extra financial pressure on the community college.

They cited other potential costs as well, including setting up new processes to identify and notify noncitizen students of tuition rate changes and ramping up public relations efforts so the college can continue to “market itself as an accessible, inclusive, and affordable institution for all Texas high school graduates,” despite the policy change.

“The loss of these students will have a cascading effect on campus life, academic programs, and student support services,” Austin Community College chancellor Russell Lowery-Hart said, according to court filings.

The motion also detailed how Silva, the student, would likely have to withdraw from his joint bachelor’s and master’s program at the University of North Texas if he lost his in-state tuition benefits. He was expected to graduate next spring. Silva has lived in Texas since the age of 1 and attended Texas K–12 schools.

“The Texas Dream Act means everything to me,” Silva said in the ACLU of Texas news release. “This law has made my education possible. Without it, college would’ve been out of reach for me as a first-generation college student.”

The motion comes after Wynn Rosser, commissioner of higher education for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, sent out a June 18 memo directing colleges and universities to determine which of their students are undocumented and need to be charged higher tuition starting this fall.

Trouble Over Timelines

Texas, the DOJ and civil rights groups have since been haggling over how fast the U.S. District Court should move in response to the new motions.

The civil rights groups want a decision soon. But, in a joint submission to the court on June 30, the Trump administration and Texas argued emergency motions were uncalled-for and the legal proceedings shouldn’t be expedited, though they acknowledged the intervenors raised issues “which merit response.”

“Expediting responses to intervenors’ motions would only serve [to] put the United States and Texas at a disadvantage, having to brief and respond to intervenors’ myriad of arguments in a drastically shorter timeframe than would otherwise be necessary, and would do nothing to help intervenors expedite any potential relief,” the response read.

But the civil rights groups representing Austin Community College and other intervenors weren’t having it. On July 1, they asked that the court deny the request.

The attorneys argued that the state and the federal government moved quickly to resolve the DOJ’s lawsuit and end the Texas Dream Act, but “when asked to respond on an expedited basis to the consequences of their actions and the imminent harm raised” by the motions, “the parties balk, insisting that the court should postpone its consideration of these motions until well past the point when the looming harms become irreversible.”

That same day, Judge Reed O’Connor gave the Trump administration and Texas until July 14 to respond to the motion to intervene, which aligns with their requested timeline. He also delayed briefings on the motions to stay the judgement and for relief until he rules on the motion to intervene.

As this fight plays out in Texas, the DOJ is targeting other states that offer in-state tuition benefits to undocumented students. Last month the Trump administration filed similar lawsuits in Kentucky and Minnesota, which have yet to be resolved.

Source link

July 2, 2025
Penn Agrees to Trump’s Demands, Will Strip Trans Athlete’s Awards

The university plans to “apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Kyle Mazza/Anadolu/Getty Images | Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

The University of Pennsylvania will concede to the Trump administration’s demands that the university “restore” swimming awards—and send apology notes—to female competitors who lost to a trans athlete, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced Tuesday.

The department previously found that Penn violated Title IX for allowing a trans woman to compete on a women’s sports team—presumably referring to Lia Thomas, who rose to national attention while competing on Penn’s women’s swim team three years ago.

To end the investigation, the administration demanded in part that Penn apologize to cisgender women whose swimming awards and honors were “misappropriated” to trans women athletes. Multiple Title IX advocates lambasted the department’s demands, arguing the agency was misusing the landmark gender-equity law to punish trans students and their institutions.

Penn is one of multiple higher education institutions and K–12 schools that the administration has targeted for allowing trans women to play on women’s sports teams, in accordance with NCAA policy at the time. But it appears to be the first institution of higher education to reach a resolution agreement over the issue since Trump took office.

“Penn remains committed to fostering a community that is welcoming, inclusive, and open to all students, faculty, and staff,” Penn president J. Larry Jameson said in a statement Tuesday. “I share this commitment, just as I remain dedicated to preserving and advancing the University’s vital and enduring mission. We have now brought to a close an investigation that, if unresolved, could have had significant and lasting implications for the University of Pennsylvania.”

Separate from the department’s investigation, the White House paused $175 million in funding to the university because Penn “infamously permitted a male to compete on its women’s swimming team,” an official said in March. It’s not clear if the funding will be restored or when.

Jameson stressed in the statement that the university was in compliance with Title IX and all NCAA guidelines at the time that Thomas swam for Penn’s women’s team from 2021 to 2022. But, he said, “we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules. We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”

Title IX advocates have emphasized that trans athletes are not, in fact, explicitly forbidden from playing on women’s sports teams under the current Title IX regulations, which were finalized under the previous Trump administration and are the same ones that were in effect when Thomas was competing.

In addition to stripping Thomas’s awards, Penn agreed to ED’s demands to make a public statement that people assigned male at birth are not allowed in Penn’s women’s athletic programs or its bathrooms and locker rooms, according to the department’s news release. The institution must also promise to adopt “biology-based definitions for the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ pursuant to Title IX” and Trump’s February executive order banning trans athletes from playing on the team that aligns with their gender.

That statement also went up Tuesday. In it, the university promised to follow Trump’s trans athlete ban, as well as the executive order he signed that withdraws federal recognition of transgender people, with regard to women’s athletics.

In the department’s announcement, Paula Scanlan, one of Thomas’s former teammates who has since led the crusade against trans women athletes, said she was “deeply grateful to the Trump Administration for refusing to back down on protecting women and girls and restoring our rightful accolades. I am also pleased that my alma mater has finally agreed to take not only the lawful path, but the honorable one.”

Shiwali Patel, senior director of safe and inclusive schools at the National Women’s Law Center, criticized the agreement in a statement Tuesday as a “devastating and shameful outcome.” She blamed Penn’s “utter failure” as well as the department’s “continued manipulation of Title IX.”

“The Trump administration’s attacks on civil rights protections, including Title IX, and obsession with undermining bodily autonomy is the real harm to women and girls, unlike transgender athletes who want to compete in sports alongside their peers and pose no threat to women’s sports, contrary to Trump’s lies,” Patel said in the statement. “In fact, their inclusion benefits all women and girls. We will continue to support Lia Thomas and her peers and their right to compete.”

Source link

July 1, 2025
A Multiday In-Class Essay for the ChatGPT Era (opinion)
A successful humanities course helps students cultivate critical, personally enriching and widely applicable skills, and it immerses them in the exploration of perspectives, ideas and modes of thought that can illuminate, challenge and inform their own outlooks.

Historically, the out-of-class essay assignment has been among the best assessments for getting students in humanities courses to most fully exercise and develop the relevant critical thinking skills. Through the writing process, students can come to better understand a problem. Things that seem obvious or obviously false before spending multiple days thinking and writing suddenly become no longer obvious or obviously false. Students make up their minds on complex problems by grappling with those problems in a rigorous way through writing and editing over a sustained period (i.e., not just writing in a blue book in one class session).

Unfortunately, since ChatGPT became widely available, out-of-class writing assignments keep becoming harder to justify as major assessments in introductory-level humanities courses. The intense personal engagement with perspectives and cultural artifacts central to the value of the humanities is more or less bypassed when a student heavily outsources to AI the generation and expression of ideas and analysis. As ChatGPT’s ability to write convincing papers goes up, so does the student temptation to rely on it (and so too does the difficulty for professors of reliably detecting AI).

Having experimented very extensively with ChatGPT, I have found that, at least when it comes to introductory-level philosophy courses, the material that ChatGPT can produce with 10 minutes of uninformed prompting rivals much of what we can reasonably expect students to produce on their own, especially given that one can upload readings/course materials and ask ChatGPT to adjust its voice (the reader should try this).

And students are relying on it a lot. Based on my time-consuming-and-quickly-becoming-obsolete detection techniques, about one in six of my students last fall were relying on ChatGPT in ways that were obvious. Given that it should take a student no more than 10 extra minutes on ChatGPT to make the case no longer obvious, I have to conclude that the real number of essays relying on ChatGPT in ways that conflict with academic integrity must be at least around 30 percent.

It is unclear whether AI-detection software is sufficiently reliable to justify its use (I haven’t used it), and—at any rate—many universities prohibit reliance on it. Some instructors believe that making students submit their work as a Google Doc with track-changes history is an adequate deterrent and detection tool for AI. It is not. Students are aware of their track-changes history—they know they simply have to type ChatGPT content instead of copying and pasting it. Actually, students don’t even have to type the AI-generated content: There are readily available Google Chrome extensions that take text and “type” it at manipulable speeds (with pauses, etc.). Students can copy/paste a ChatGPT essay and have the extension “type” it into a Google Doc at a humanlike pace.

Against this backdrop, I spent lots of time over the last winter break familiarizing myself with Lockdown Browser (a tool integrated with learning management software like Canvas that prevents access to and copying/pasting from programs outside of the LMS) and devising a new assignment model that I happily used this past semester.

It is a multiday in-class writing assignment, where students have access through Lockdown Browser to (and only to): PDFs of the readings, a personal quotation bank they previously uploaded, an outlining document and the essay instructions (which students were given at least a week before so they had time to begin thinking through their topic).

On Day 1 in class, students enter a Canvas essay-question quiz through Lockdown Browser with links to the resources mentioned above (each of which opens in a new tab that students can access while writing). They spend the class period outlining/writing and hit “submit” at the end of the session.

Between the Day 1 and Day 2 writing sessions, students can read their writing on Canvas (so they can continue thinking about the topic) but are prevented from being able to edit it. If you’re worried about students relying on ChatGPT for ideas to try to memorize/regurgitate (I don’t know how worried we should be about students inevitably trying this), consider introducing small wrinkles to the essay instructions during the in-class sessions (e.g. “your essay must somewhere critically discuss this example”).

On Day 2, students come to class and can pick back up right from where they left off.

A Day 2 session looks like this:

One can potentially repeat the process for a third session. I had my 75-minute classes take two days and my 50-minute classes take three days for a roughly 700-word essay.

This format gives students access to everything we want them to have access to while working on their essays and nothing else. While it took lots of troubleshooting to develop the setup (links behave quite differently across operating systems!), this new assignment model offers an important direction worthy of serious exploration.

I have found that this setup preserves much of what we care about most with out-of-class writing assignments: Students can think hard about the topic over an extended period of time, they can make up their minds on some topic through the process of sustained critical reflection and they experience the benefits and rewards of working on a project, stepping away from it and returning to it (while thinking hard about the topic in the background all the while).

Indeed, I have talked with several students who noted that they ended up changing their minds on their topic between Day 1 and Day 2—they (for instance) set out to object to some view, and then they realized (after working hard through the objection on Day 1 and reflecting on it) that what they now wanted to do was defend the original view against the objection that they had developed. Perfect: This is exactly the kind of experience I have always wanted students to have when writing essays (and it’s an experience that students don’t get with a one-day blue-book essay exam).

Because the setup documents each day’s work, it invites wonderful opportunities for students to reflect on their writing process (what are they seeing themselves prioritizing each session, and how/why might they change their approach?). The opportunities for peer review at different stages are also robust.

For those interested, I have made a long (but time-stamped) video that illustrates and explains step by step how to build the assignment in Canvas (it also discusses troubleshooting steps for when a device isn’t getting into Lockdown Browser). The video assumes very minimal knowledge of Canvas and Lockdown Browser, and it describes the very specific ways to hyperlink everything so that students aren’t bumped out of the assignment or given access to external resources (in Canvas—I cannot currently speak to other LMS platforms). The basic technical setup for the assignment is this:
- Create a Canvas quiz for Day 1, create an essay question, link to resources in the question (PDFs must be uploaded with the “Preview Inline” display option to work across devices), require a Lockdown Browser with a password to access it, then publish the quiz.
- Post arbitrary, weightless grades for Day 1 after the first writing session so that students can read (but not edit) what they wrote before Day 2 (students cannot read their submitted work until you post some grade for it).
- Create a Canvas quiz for Day 2 just like Day 1, but this time, in the essay question, link to the Day 1 Canvas quiz (select “external link” rather than “course link,” and copy/paste the Day 1 Canvas quiz link).
As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, a successful humanities course helps students cultivate critical, personally enriching and widely applicable skills, and it immerses them in the exploration of perspectives, ideas and modes of thought that can illuminate, challenge and inform their own outlooks. The research I have done over the past three years tells me I can no longer be confident that an intro-level course that nontrivially relies on out-of-class writing assignments can be a fully successful humanities course so understood. Yet a humanities course that fully abandons sustained essay assignments deprives students of the experience that best positions them to fully exercise and develop the skills most central to our disciplines. Something in the direction of this multiday in-class Lockdown Browser essay assignment is worthy of serious consideration.
Source link
July 1, 2025
3 Questions for Karina Kogan of Education Dynamics

In the small world of higher education, Karina Kogan and I know many of the same people. An introduction from one of these colleagues got Karina and me talking, and out of those conversations came this Q&A. I asked if Karina would be willing to share some thoughts about her company, EducationDynamics; her role (VP of partnership development); and her career advice for other aspiring leaders in her industry.

Q: How does EducationDynamics work with colleges and universities for online and other academic programs? Where does EducationDynamics fit into the ecosystem of companies that partner with universities?

A: That’s a great question and one I love answering, because this space is full of players, but not all of them are moving higher education forward. At EducationDynamics, we focus on the institutions that are ready to take bold steps forward. Not just in marketing or enrollment, but in how they grow strategically, strengthen their brand and generate revenue in a way that’s built to last.

We want to help institutions stop doing what they’ve always done. We need to serve modern learners, which takes a fundamentally different approach. These students are focused on cost, convenience and career outcomes. They’re not influenced by tradition alone and they don’t respond to disconnected efforts that don’t reflect who they are or where they’re headed.

That’s why we start with research. We don’t push a standard playbook or a prebuilt product. We look at the market, the student behavior, the school’s position, and we use those insights to build strategy that aligns with their enrollment priorities while also reinforcing the institution’s brand and reputation. Because those things are not separate anymore. A school’s ability to grow its revenue is directly connected to how it is perceived in the market. If your brand lacks clarity or credibility, students move on.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen how much student expectations have changed. They’re more in control of their academic path than ever and they defy outdated categories like traditional or nontraditional. At the same time, reputation has become a major factor in their decision-making. That’s why, in 2024, we brought the RW Jones Agency into the EDDY family. They’ve built a national reputation for helping institutions shape perception, elevate their voice and lead through complexity. Bringing that expertise into our ecosystem has allowed us to connect performance with purpose in a way that’s truly differentiated.

And we don’t just build the plan. We execute. We run the campaigns, manage enrollment outreach and support student engagement. It’s a full life cycle approach from awareness to enrollment to retention with everything working together and accountable to outcomes. That’s what it takes to grow in today’s market. It’s not about lead volume alone. It’s about attracting the right students, setting the right expectations and making sure the institution delivers on its promise.

As for where we fit in the ecosystem? Well … honestly, we don’t fit the mold and we’re not trying to and that’s intentional. Most institutions are still working with a handful of disconnected partners, each focused on one piece of the puzzle. That model no longer works. We bring brand, communications, marketing and enrollment strategy together, because when those areas are aligned, the institution grows in a way that’s both measurable and meaningful.

I’ve been in higher ed for more than 20 years, and this moment feels different. There’s real urgency, but also real openness to change. Our new CEO, Brent Ramdin, has brought a clear and future-facing vision that’s aligned our team and elevated our work. He understands where this sector is headed and what it will take to succeed there.

Q: Tell us about your role at EducationDynamics. What are your primary responsibilities and accountabilities? What career path brought you to your current leadership position within the company?

A: I serve as vice president of partnerships at EducationDynamics, and in many ways, it’s the role I’ve spent my entire career building toward. My focus is on developing strong, strategic relationships with colleges and universities across the country where I work closely with institutional leaders and our internal teams to craft unique solutions that help schools not only meet but exceed their enrollment goals.

It’s a highly collaborative role and one that demands both strategic insight and real operational follow-through. Every institution is different, so the work is never one-size-fits-all. I spend my time listening deeply, understanding the nuances of each partner’s challenges and helping shape the path forward, always with the modern learner in mind.

My career in higher ed started more than 20 years ago at the University of Phoenix, where I held several leadership roles over the course of more than a decade while simultaneously expanding my leadership development through structured curriculum. That experience gave me a strong foundation in enrollment strategy, team leadership and cross-functional execution. From there, I served as chief partnerships officer at a division of Excelsior University, where I helped institutions launch and scale their first online programs.

That’s what ultimately led me to EducationDynamics, and the transition from the institutional side to the partner side has been both natural and energizing. I understand what it feels like to be inside an institution navigating change, and that perspective helps me show up as a true partner to the schools we work with today.

Q: What advice do you have for early and midcareer professionals interested in eventually moving into a leadership role in a for-profit company in the higher education and digital marketing spaces?

A: I always tell people to be deliberately curious. So, one of the biggest pieces of advice I can offer is this: Develop a deep understanding of both the mission of higher ed and the mechanics of the business side of institutions. The sweet spot in this space, especially in leadership, is being able to translate institutional goals into scalable, market-responsive strategies. That takes more than just technical skill. It takes empathy, agility and a strong sense of purpose.

If you’re coming from the university side, spend time learning how businesses that serve higher ed operate—how they measure success, how they use data, how decisions get made. And if you’re coming from the corporate side, take the time to understand the culture, values and pace of higher education. The people who lead effectively in this space are the ones who can bridge those two worlds with credibility and clarity.

Also, be proactive about expanding your perspective. Step outside your job function. Learn the language of marketing, enrollment, analytics, finance, because in a leadership role, you’ll need to connect all those dots. What’s key for me is I don’t focus on being the expert in the room; I focus on being useful.

I’ve also found that relationships are everything. Build your network early, nurture it often and don’t be afraid to show up for others before you need anything in return. Platforms like LinkedIn have made that easier than ever, but the real value is in the follow-up, the conversations and the genuine connections.

And finally: Get close to the work. The best leaders I know are the ones who stay connected to the impact their work has on students, on institutions and on outcomes that actually matter. That connection is what makes the hard work worth it, and it’s what keeps your leadership grounded in purpose.

So, if I had to sum it up: Keep learning, look for ways to be of service and stay connected. That mindset opens doors, builds trust and prepares you for leadership in any space, especially in one as dynamic as this one.

Source link

July 1, 2025
Harvard “Indifference” to Jewish Students Violates Law

The Health and Human Services Department announced Monday that Harvard University’s “deliberate indifference” regarding discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students violates federal law.

The HHS Office for Civil Rights said Harvard is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on shared ancestry, including antisemitism.

The finding, similar to one HHS announced against Columbia University in May, adds to the Trump administration’s pressure on both Ivy League institutions to comply with its demands. It has already cut off billions in federal funding.

HHS’s Notice of Violation says that a report from Harvard’s own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, combined with other sources, “present a grim reality of on-campus discrimination that is pervasive, persistent, and effectively unpunished.”

“Reports of Jewish and Israeli students being spit on in the face for wearing a yarmulke, stalked on campus, and jeered by peers with calls of ‘Heil Hitler’ while waiting for campus transportation went unheeded by Harvard administration,” the Notice of Violation says.

In a statement, Harvard said it is “far from indifferent on this issue and strongly disagrees with the government’s findings.”

“In responding to the government’s investigation, Harvard not only shared its comprehensive and retrospective Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias Report but also outlined the ways that it has strengthened policies, disciplined those who violate them, encouraged civil discourse, and promoted open, respectful dialogue,” the statement said.

In April, the federal government ordered Harvard to audit academic “programs and departments that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture” and report faculty “who discriminated against Jewish or Israeli students or incited students to violate Harvard’s rules” after the Oct. 7, 2023, start of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The government also ordered Harvard to, among other things, stop admitting international students “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism.”

“HHS stands ready to reengage in productive discussions with Harvard to reach resolution on the corrective action that Harvard can take,” HHS Office for Civil Rights director Paula M. Stannard said in a news release.

Source link

June 30, 2025
College Athletics Enters Uncharted Territory July 1

After years of court battles, a federal judge ushered in a new era for college athletics earlier this month when she approved a settlement in the House v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit, effectively ending the century-old model of student athletes as amateurs.

Now students will be able to earn money for their athletic performance at colleges that opt in to the practice known as revenue-sharing, in which institutions share with players the money made off their teams. Former Division I athletes from the recent past will also share a $2.8 billion settlement to compensate for the financial opportunities they were denied due to now-defunct NCAA rules that prevented them from cashing in on name, image, and likeness deals.

Although the NCAA status quo was undone in an instant, many campus leaders had been planning for months, anticipating the outcome of the ruling.

The era of paid college athletes officially begins July 1. With it comes questions about how the landscape will evolve and concerns about equity issues, as well as what the fallout of the settlement may mean for nonrevenue sports.

A State of Transition

Experts view revenue-sharing as the most consequential part of the settlement.

Institutions that opt in to revenue sharing will have up to $20.5 million to spread among their athletes. The lion’s share of that is expected to flow to football, the top revenue-earning sport, followed by men’s basketball, with the second-highest distribution amounts. The annual revenue-sharing cap will increase gradually to $32 million over the course of a decade.

Jason Montgomery, a partner at the law firm Husch Blackwell, said that one commonly discussed formula would see 75 percent of revenue disbursed to an institution’s football team, followed by 15 percent to men’s basketball, 5 percent to women’s basketball, and the remainder spread across all other sports. But he noted institutions can adjust that formula as they see fit.

At institutions that don’t have a football team, the bulk of the revenue will likely be directed to men’s basketball. And some universities that have top basketball programs are tweaking the formula to direct more money to hoops; the University of Houston, for example, may opt for a formula that directs 23 to 25 percent of revenue to men’s basketball, local media reported.

The back-pay provision is also heavily tilted toward football, which has already prompted an appeal on Title IX grounds, with plaintiffs alleging women are being shorted on damages. The suit, brought by eight former college athletes who competed in soccer, track and volleyball, argues that female athletes are being deprived of more than $1 billion in past damages.

Financial Models

For those opting in to revenue-sharing, a major question looms: Where will the money come from?

Sean Frazier, athletic director at Northern Illinois University and president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics, said financial models will vary by institution.

“You’re going to see a lot more of that innovative way to revenue-share by getting this money from external sources that are not specific to the universities themselves,” Frazier said.

Some colleges are leaning on boosters and TV deals to bankroll revenue-sharing, while others are taking different approaches. Earlier this month, the Florida Board of Governors approved the use of auxiliary funds to pay student athletes, which could flow from college bookstores, student housing, dining, parking fees and other income streams. (That measure is intended to be temporary as colleges develop long-term plans.)

In addition to increasing revenues, colleges are looking for ways to cut costs. Montgomery said one way colleges can do that is by eliminating non-revenue-earning sports—such as swimming and track and field—which some institutions have done, though that move has also been accompanied by other financial challenges for the sector.

Colleges that opt in to the revenue-sharing model don’t have to pay the maximum amount unless they choose to. That could yield scenarios where less resourced institutions pay much less than the $20.5 million cap.

While experts say there is no firm data point yet on how many colleges have opted in to revenue sharing, those numbers are likely to be just a fraction of the NCAA’s member institutions. As of last summer, that number stood at 1,085 institutions, with 355 at the Division I level.

“The vast majority of colleges are not going to be part of this revenue-share,” said Michael McCann, a professor at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law.

Opportunities for Innovation

Frazier compared college athletics in the aftermath of the House settlement to flying a plane while building it. He expects colleges will adjust their approaches as they go.

“It is clunky right now because of the fact that we do not have certain guardrails yet finalized as we go into this. That’s why it’s going to be a little bit of a wait-and-see on some things,” he said.

He urged patience for those trying to navigate the new landscape.

“I would caution [college] leaders to not jump to trends, to not jump to any situation as a quick fix,” Frazier said. “There’s no silver bullet to be able to manage this. We’re going to have to go through a cycle to really understand what the impacts of the House settlement mean.”

McCann expects that colleges will largely pay football players, as they have signaled. Where the money flows, he said, will depend on institutional priorities. If an athletic department is focused on keeping up with rival football teams and landing on television, revenue-sharing money will be invested in football. But he thinks leaders should consider investing in other areas, including women’s sports—which have boomed in recent years, judging from the record viewership for women’s basketball.

“I see an opportunity for schools that opt in to revenue-share to not follow the script of spending most of the money on football players,” McCann said. “I could see some presidents being innovative and saying, ‘Let’s use that money primarily on women’s basketball; let’s try to create a top women’s basketball team, or softball.’ There are opportunities to distribute money in ways that I think are a lot more innovative than simply trying to catch up with all the other football schools.”

The Professional Era

To many experts, this moment amounts to the professionalization of college athletics.

“If this isn’t pay to play, I don’t know what is,” Montgomery said.

To Montgomery’s point, some colleges have hired general managers and other personnel with professional sports experience. Last year Stanford University tapped former star quarterback Andrew Luck, who spent seven years in the NFL, to return to his alma mater as general manager of the football program. Similarly, in March the University of California, Berkeley, hired former NFL player and head coach Ron Rivera as general manager of its football program.

Noting that trend, McCann suggested such programs are “operating as quasi pro teams.”

Federal Legislation?

For years, observers have speculated that Congress might get involved in college athletics. President Donald Trump has raised the possibility of his own involvement as well; in May, he proposed establishing a presidential commission on college sports before backing off the idea.

However, many experts don’t expect federal legislation to emerge.

“It’s a long shot that Congress intervenes,” Montgomery said, arguing that college athletics is not a priority for lawmakers at the moment. At most, he said Congress might codify the House settlement through federal legislation.

McCann agrees. While he believes “there will be bills introduced, and there will be press conferences and a lot of media coverage,” he doesn’t think such efforts will be fruitful.

But Frazier, who describes himself as an optimist by nature, is hopeful that federal legislation could come to pass in the near future, and he stressed the importance of being part of those talks.

“I think at the end of the day, we need to help [Trump], we need to help the federal government understand what will work,” he said. “Because we have a perception issue that college athletics can’t govern itself. We’ve created that perception as an industry, and what we need to do is take it back. What we need to do is to show the folks that have doubted us, that [think] we’ve lost control, that there is control, and the only way you can do that is with experience, leadership and execution.”

Source link

June 30, 2025