Tag: Events

  • The Importance of Early Career Planning (opinion)

    The Importance of Early Career Planning (opinion)

    It’s never too early, but it can be too late. This simple phrase has transformed our advising sessions with graduate students and postdocs, resonating deeply with those navigating the uncertain waters of career transitions. As career advising experts who have guided countless individuals through this journey, we have seen firsthand the power of early career planning and the pitfalls of procrastination.

    Today’s graduate students and postdocs are navigating more than just personal uncertainty. They are facing a rapidly shifting professional landscape influenced by political and societal forces beyond their control. The value of advanced degrees is being questioned in public discourse; funding cuts, hiring freezes and massive layoffs are affecting job prospects; and visa restrictions continue to impact international scholars. These trends are unsettling, but they underscore the same truth: Proactive, flexible career planning is necessary.

    The path from graduate school or a postdoctoral position to a fulfilling career is rarely a straight line. We understand; we both hold Ph.D.s and were postdocs ourselves. Yet, many students and early-career researchers delay thinking about their next steps, often until the pressure of impending graduation or the end of an appointment looms large. This delay can turn the exciting question of “What’s next?” into the anxiety-inducing “What now?”

    One common fear we encounter in our advising sessions is the fear of the unknown, and now more than ever, our best advice remains the same: Start sooner rather than later. When harnessed properly, this fear can become a powerful motivator for early career planning. If you build in time to explore your options, test possibilities and develop a flexible plan, you will be far better equipped to navigate unforeseen changes.

    Crucially, starting early does not mean locking yourself into one path. It means giving yourself enough time to adapt, explore and build a more informed and confident future, even if that future changes along the way.

    Your Hidden Advantage

    As graduate students or postdocs, you are in a unique position: You are essentially being paid to learn and become experts in your field. Beyond your specific area of study, you also have access to a wealth of resources at your research institutions designed to support your professional development. These resources include:

    • Career services: Do not wait until your final year to visit the career office. Start early and make regular appointments to discuss your evolving career goals and strategies. Career service professionals can help you save precious time and effort and remain advocates for you in your career-exploration journey. Many of us know exactly how you are feeling because we have been there, too!
    • Workshops and seminars: Attend professional and career-development workshops offered by your institution. These often cover crucial topics like résumé writing, interview preparation or networking strategies.
    • Alumni networks: Leverage your institution’s alumni network. Alumni can provide valuable insights into various career paths, and many are eager to help current graduate students and postdocs navigate the job search process.
    • Professional associations: Join relevant professional associations in your field. Many offer graduate students and postdocs memberships at reduced rates and provide access to job boards, conferences, networking events and leadership opportunities.
    • International student and scholar services: If you are on a visa, connect early with your institution’s international center. These offices can offer critical guidance on work authorization options, strategies for transitioning from an academic-sponsored visa to another type of professional visa (such as the H-1B visa) and long-term planning toward permanent residency. They can also connect you with immigration attorneys and employer resources to help you advocate for yourself throughout the process.

    Now is the time to take action. This month, schedule an appointment with your institution’s career services office (trust us, we are excited to meet and help you) and/or attend a networking event or workshop outside your immediate field of study.

    If your plan involves stepping beyond the academic landscape, do not underestimate the power of building your professional network, as referrals and recommendations play a growing role in hiring decisions. The relationships you build now, through informational interviews, mentorship and community engagement, can become invaluable sources of insight, opportunity and support throughout your career.

    The Perils of Procrastination

    Waiting until the final months of your program or position to begin your job search is a recipe for stress and missed opportunities. Early preparation not only reduces anxiety but also allows you to explore multiple career paths, build necessary skills and make meaningful connections.

    As career professionals, we see the impact of procrastination all the time: rushed applications, unclear goals, missed deadlines and tremendous stress. In our own career-exploration journey, we have been fortunate to experience the opposite. Our approach to prepare early opened doors to valuable opportunities and reduced the pressure to find just any job at the end of our postdoc. That contrast is a big reason why we now advocate so strongly for starting career planning before urgency sets in, even if you are still figuring out where you want to go.

    So what does early preparation look like?

    If you already have a strong idea of your next career step, whether it is to become faculty at a R-1 institution or secure an R&D position in industry, you should begin preparing at least a year before your intended transition. This gives you time to identify target roles, network meaningfully, develop your application materials and be ready when opportunities arise.

    If you are still unsure about what your next career step is, start your exploration journey as soon as possible. Identifying careers of interest, scheduling informational interviews, developing your professional network in the areas of interest and learning or building new skills take time. Remember that the earlier you begin, the more options you will be able to explore. Career planning is not just for people with a clear path—it is also how you find your path.

    Another critical reason to start early? Networking. Building professional relationships is one of the most powerful tools in your career exploration and job search tool kit, but it takes time. The best networking conversations happen when you are genuinely curious and not urgently seeking a job. If you wait until you are in crisis mode, panicked, pressed for time and desperate for a position, that energy can unintentionally seep into your conversations and make them less effective. By starting to connect with people well before you are actively applying for jobs, you can ask better questions, get clearer insights and build authentic relationships that may open doors later on.

    The International Perspective

    International graduate students and postdocs are navigating career planning under especially difficult circumstances. The experience of working and building a life in another country already comes with challenges, what with being far from home, managing complex visa systems and building support networks from scratch. With the current increasing political scrutiny, shifting immigration policies and rising uncertainty around international education, the pressure has only grown.

    We want to acknowledge that this is not just a logistical issue—it is also an emotional one. For many international scholars, the stress of career planning is compounded by fears about stability, belonging and being able to stay in the country to which you have contributed so much. These are not easy conversations, and they should not be faced alone.

    That is why early, informed and strategic planning is especially important. With the right tools, guidance and support system, you can better navigate the uncertainty and advocate for your future.

    • Use your resources. Connect early and often with your university’s international student or scholar office. They can clarify visa timelines, regulations and documentation requirements.
    • Get legal support. Consult with a qualified immigration attorney who can help you understand your options and advocate for you.
    • Network with intention. Seek out events, professional associations and communities that are welcoming to international scholars. These relationships can lead to valuable advice, referrals or even job opportunities.

    While visa policies and political rhetoric may be out of your control, the way you prepare and position yourself is not. Planning ahead can help you reduce uncertainty, take advantage of time-sensitive opportunities and build a support system to help you succeed wherever your career takes you.

    Know Your Path to Success

    Many students and postdocs have a clear vision of their desired career but lack understanding of how to get there. For example, many aspiring faculty underestimate how important it is to gain teaching experience or to have early conversations with their supervisor about which projects they can pursue independently for their future research statements. Similarly, those aiming for roles in industry or policy may overlook essential skills such as project management, stakeholder communication or regulatory knowledge until they begin applying and realize the gap.

    Career paths are often shaped by more than just qualifications. They are influenced by relationships, timing, self-awareness and luck, but especially by the ability to recognize and act on opportunities when they arise. That is why we often reference “planned happenstance,” a career-development theory by John Krumboltz, which encourages people to remain open-minded, take action and position themselves to benefit from unexpected opportunities. It is not about having a rigid plan, but about preparing enough that you can pivot with purpose.

    Here are three practical strategies to help you do just that:

    1. Conduct informational interviews: Speak with professionals in your target roles for invaluable insights into their day-to-day realities and career paths. Ask about those hidden requirements—the transferable skills and experiences crucial for success, but not necessarily listed in job descriptions. Use this knowledge to identify and address skill gaps early in your academic journey.
    2. Perform skill audits: Regularly assess your skills against job descriptions in your desired field and identify gaps you need to address through coursework, volunteer experiences or side projects.
    3. Seek mentorship: A good mentor can provide guidance, open doors and help you avoid common pitfalls in your career journey. Consider building a network of mentors rather than relying on a single person; different mentors can support different aspects of your professional growth. Your career services office is a great place to start!

    Early planning gives you the ability to shape your own narrative, develop key experiences intentionally and take advantage of unexpected opportunities. Do not wait to be ready to start; start now, and readiness will come.

    Start Here: A Career Planning Checklist

    Career planning does not have to be overwhelming. Small steps, taken consistently, can lead to powerful outcomes, whether you are in year one of a Ph.D. program or year four of a postdoc. Use this checklist to begin or re-energize your professional development journey.

    This month, try to:

    • Schedule a career advising appointment—even if you’re “just exploring.”
    • Attend one workshop or seminar outside of your research area.
    • Reach out to someone for an informational interview (a colleague, alum or speaker whose path interests you).
    • Identify one skill you want to build in the coming months and one way to begin (e.g., take a course, volunteer, shadow someone).
    • Join or re-engage with a professional association or community.

    By starting your career planning early, you are not just preparing for a job: You are laying the foundation for a fulfilling career. Small, consistent efforts can lead to significant results over time. The resources available to you as graduate students and postdocs are invaluable, but only effective if you use them. Do not wait for your future to happen; start building it today!

    Ellen Dobson, G.C.D.F., is the postdoctoral and graduate program manager at the Morgridge Institute for Research, where she leads professional and career-development programming for early-career researchers. Drawing on her experience as a Ph.D., postdoc and staff scientist, she is dedicated to helping graduate students and postdocs explore fulfilling career paths through supportive, practical guidance.

    Anne-Sophie Bohrer is the program manager for career and professional development in the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs at the University of Michigan. In this role, she leads the development of programs to support postdoctoral fellows from all disciplines.

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  • Who Benefits Most From New Admission Tactic? (opinion)

    Who Benefits Most From New Admission Tactic? (opinion)

    I am not currently on a 12-step program of any kind, but recently I felt the need to seek forgiveness for a transgression committed 50 years ago. This summer is the 50th anniversary of the release of Jaws, the movie that redefined the definition of blockbuster and made a whole generation think twice before stepping into the ocean for a quick dip.

    I took my little sister to see Jaws that summer, having already seen it. As big brothers do, I waited until the exact moment when the shark leaps out of the water while Roy Scheider is casually ladling chum into the ocean behind the boat and either grabbed or pinched her. All to make the movie-watching experience more realistic, of course.

    A recent article in The Washington Post explored why, despite three sequels, Jaws never became a money-making franchise in the way that Star Wars or the Marvel movies have. The obvious reason is that Steven Spielberg elected not to be involved after the original movie. Thus, while I find myself humming John Williams’s simple but ominous theme music every time I read the latest news, the only thing I remember from any of the other three movies is the tagline for Jaws 2: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.”

    I thought about that tagline from a college admission perspective last week when I learned that Cornell College (the one in Iowa, not the Ivy) has launched what is either an innovative financial aid initiative or a gimmick.

    As detailed by several other publications, Cornell College emailed 16,000 soon-to-be high school seniors in its inquiry pool. Nothing unusual about that. What was different about this email was that it included a link to a personalized estimated financial aid package. Sending out financial aid offers/estimates to students who haven’t applied for financial aid or admission is the new twist in what Cornell calls its “Save Your Seat” initiative.

    If you are wondering how Cornell was able to send an estimated aid package to students who haven’t completed a FAFSA, the college started by mining ZIP code data for its inquiry pool. The nine-digit ZIP+4 code in student addresses provides precise information about where they live and allows Cornell to guesstimate a family’s economic circumstances. It might therefore be more accurate to say that the estimated financial aid package is individualized rather than personalized, because there is an element of geographic or ZIP code profiling taking place. The ZIP+4 information is supplemented by aggregated data provided by College Raptor, the consulting firm engaged by Cornell, along with historical internal data on financial aid packages.

    There are some kinks to work out and questions to be considered, of course. How will Cornell factor in Pell Grants and other governmental financial aid? Will the college make up the difference if the student’s Student Aid Index turns out to be higher than Cornell’s estimate? Apparently Cornell did some testing using applicants from last year and found that the estimates were reliable in the vast majority of cases.

    The Save Your Seat financial aid package for every student includes a $33,000 National Academic Scholarship covering nearly half of Cornell’s list price. To guarantee access to the aid, Cornell is asking students to apply by the end of this month and submit an enrollment deposit by Sept. 1. As The Chronicle of Higher Education explains, “students who apply by the end of July and submit a deposit by September 1 are guaranteed to receive the $33,000 scholarship, plus any institutional need-based grants for which they might qualify, based on their estimate. They will also get first dibs on housing and first-year seminars. (Those who deposit by November 8 will get the same deal, minus the guaranteed need-based grants and priority registration for the seminars.)”

    So what should we make of Save Your Seat? Is Cornell College on to something, or is this another marketing gimmick intended to differentiate Cornell from the mass of small liberal arts colleges? (Its one-course-at-a-time curriculum already distinguishes it.)

    I applaud Cornell for trying to introduce some transparency about cost up front. We know that affordability is both a major concern and a major impediment for many families in considering colleges, and particularly private colleges. Having a way to estimate cost early in the college search rather than at the very end is potentially a huge step forward for college admission. Cornell’s initiative might be thought of as an updated version of the net price calculator, with someone else doing the calculations for you. Save Your Seat might also be seen as the next iteration in the direct admission movement.

    But let us stop for a moment to acknowledge that Cornell’s new initiative, while more transparent, isn’t truly transparent. It does nothing to illuminate the high-cost, high-discount model that higher education relies on.

    There are good reasons for that. There have been several colleges that have tried to lead a movement to reset tuition, substantially reducing their sticker price but also substantially reducing discounts. They learned two things. The first was that they were willing to lead, but other colleges were not willing to follow.

    The bigger issue is that they learned that families are more than happy to pay lower tuition but are not happy to lose their “merit” scholarships. As it turns out, merit scholarships are among the least transparent and most misunderstood contrivances in college admission—perhaps deliberately so.

    Just last week, I spoke with someone who was surprised that a nephew had been admitted to college and then shocked when he received a merit scholarship. That conversation brought to mind a phone call I had with the mother of one of my students years ago. The son was a good kid but not a strong student, and he had just received merit scholarships to two different colleges. I finally figured out that the point of her call was to ask what was wrong with the two colleges that were awarding her son merit scholarships.

    The $33,000 National Academic Scholarships offered to every Save Your Seat email recipient might be thought of as the higher education equivalent of Oprah’s “You get a merit scholarship! You get a merit scholarship!” Cornell is far from alone in giving a discount to most or all students, but the potential pickle in which it finds itself is a situation where it tells students they are not admitted after already telling them they have won a merit scholarship.

    That is far from the biggest ethical issue raised by the new plan. If the move toward greater financial aid transparency, at least in theory, is a positive step, asking students to apply by the end of July and deposit by September is anything but.

    When the National Association for College Admission Counseling was forced to abandon key aspects of its code of ethics as part of a consent decree with the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice, there were fears that college admission might deteriorate into a lawless Wild West, with colleges coming up with new strategies and incentives to coerce vulnerable students into decisions they weren’t ready to make. Thankfully that hasn’t happened to the degree predicted.

    Cornell’s decision to tie the Save Your Seat financial offers to an earlier application and enrollment deadline represents another leap forward in the acceleration of the college admission process. Who thinks that’s a good idea for students? It ignores the fact that many high school counseling offices are closed during the summer and won’t be able to send transcripts (perhaps Cornell will use self-reported grades). It is also significantly earlier than the provision in the now-defunct NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice prohibiting an application deadline before Oct. 15. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

    It’s not clear to me why the earlier deadlines are necessary for the program to work. It’s clear that there are benefits for Cornell, but students should be allowed to choose where to go to college thoughtfully and freely, without coercion or manipulation. Whose seat is being saved here?

    Jim Jump recently retired after 33 years as the academic dean and director of college counseling at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Va. He previously served as an admissions officer, philosophy instructor and women’s basketball coach at the college level and is a past president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. He is the 2024 recipient of NACAC’s John B. Muir Excellence in Media Award.

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  • Despite Reservations, Florida BOG Approves New Accreditor

    Despite Reservations, Florida BOG Approves New Accreditor

    Plans for a new accreditor, announced by Florida governor Ron DeSantis in June, are becoming a reality.

    The Florida Board of Governors voted Friday afternoon to create a controversial new accrediting agency, in coordination with five other state university systems. The decision came after about an hour of heated discussion between board members and the State University System of Florida’s chancellor regarding details of the plan.

    Chancellor Raymond Rodriguez argued that the new accreditor, called the Commission for Public Higher Education, would eliminate the bureaucracy that comes with existing accrediting agencies and focus specifically on the needs of public universities.

    “The Commission for Public Higher Education will offer an accreditation model that prioritizes academic excellence and student success while removing ideological bias and unnecessary financial burdens,” he said. “Through the CPHE, public colleges and universities across the country will have access to an accreditation process that is focused on quality, rooted in accountability and committed to continuous improvement.”

    But before voting in favor of the motion, board members repeatedly pushed back, arguing that the plans for starting an accreditor from scratch were half-baked. They raised a litany of questions about how the CPHE would work in practice.

    Some wanted to hash out the details of the would-be accreditor’s governance structure before voting. According to the CPHE business plan, the Florida governing board would incorporate the accreditor as a nonprofit in Florida and serve as its initial sole member, using a $4 million appropriation from the Florida Legislature for start-up costs. (Other systems are expected to put in similar amounts.) A board of directors, appointed by all the university systems, would be responsible for accrediting decisions and policies.

    But multiple BOG members worried that the roles of the governing board and board of directors were not clearly delineated.

    “With us as the sole member, it appears, or could appear, to stakeholders that the accreditor lacks independence from the institution being accredited,” said board member Kimberly Dunn.

    Alan Levine, vice chair of the Board of Governors, called for a clear “proverbial corporate veil” between the two in corporate documents.

    “Our role is not to govern or direct the activities of this body,” Levine said of CPHE. “It has to be independent or it won’t even be approvable by the Department of Education.”

    Board member Ken Jones pressed for greater detail on the governing board’s “fiduciary or governance obligation to this new entity.”

    “I’m in support of this … I really believe this is the right path,” he said. “I just want to be sure that we all go in, eyes wide-open, understanding what is our responsibility as a BOG? … We’re breaking new ground here, and we’re doing it for the right reasons. But I want to be sure that when the questions come—and I’m sure they certainly will—that we’ve got the right answers.”

    Members asked questions about the accreditor’s future cybersecurity and IT infrastructure, as well as its associated costs. Some asked whether accreditors have direct access to universities’ data systems and raised concerns about potential hacking and the board’s liability; they were given reassurance that colleges themselves report their data. Some board members also asked for budget projections of what CPHE would cost.

    “I have an internal, unofficial estimation around the funds and revenues, but nothing I’d be prepared and comfortable to put forward publicly,” said Rachel Kamoutsas, the system’s chief of staff and corporate secretary, who fielded questions about the initiative.

    The answers didn’t seem to fully satisfy the governing board.

    “I do think the chancellor and team have a lot of work to do to continue to educate this board, to be blunt,” said BOG chair Brian Lamb, “because a lot of the questions that we’re asking—forecast, IT, infrastructure, staffing—every last one of those are appropriate.”

    He emphasized to other board members, however, that voting in favor of the motion would jump-start the process of incorporating the new accreditor and provide seed money for it. But, he added, “not a penny is going anywhere until we have an agreed-upon document on how this money will be spent.”

    Accreditation expert Paul Gaston III, an emeritus trustees professor at Kent State University, raised similar questions in an interview with Inside Higher Ed.

    “The credibility of accreditation really is directly related to whether the public can accept it is an authoritative source of objective evaluation that is in the public interest,” he said. “And the question that I would ask as a member of the public is, how will an accreditor that is created by and that is answerable to the institutions being evaluated achieve that credibility?”

    Despite all the pushback, the BOG ultimately voted unanimously to approve the measure. Now CPHE can file for incorporation, establish its Board of Directors and set out on the multiyear process of securing recognition from the Department of Education.

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  • Fla. Board of Governors to Vote on Creating New Accreditor

    Fla. Board of Governors to Vote on Creating New Accreditor

    Gov. DeSantis has called the current system an “accreditation cartel.”

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Joe Raedle/Getty Images | ricul/iStock/Getty Images 

    The governing board of the State University System of Florida is set to vote Friday on whether to form a new accrediting agency focused on public universities, known as the Commission for Public Higher Education. While some accreditation experts say the move could be a positive development, they also worry it may lead to undue political influence in the accreditation process.

    If the vote goes as planned, the Florida governing board will create the proposed agency along with five other public university systems: the University System of Georgia, University of North Carolina system, University of South Carolina, University of Tennessee system and the Texas A&M University system.

    “The launching of a new institutional accreditor is a major undertaking, and CPHE’s Founding University Systems have not undertaken it lightly,” reads the business plan for the Commission for Public Higher Education. “Growing dissatisfaction with current practices among the existing institutional accreditors and the desire for a true system of peer review among public institutions have led to this endeavor.” The plan accuses some existing accreditors of “bureaucratic bloat, delays, and increased costs.”

    University of North Carolina system president Peter Hans dropped the news in May that UNC was in talks with other public university systems to launch a new accrediting agency—an idea Inside Higher Ed discovered they’d been discussing for at least a year. The project has taken on distinct political undertones; last month Florida governor Ron DeSantis announced the effort in a speech largely focused on what he calls “woke ideology.”

    “What we’ve seen develop is an accreditation cartel,” he said in his address. “And the accreditors by and large are all singing from the same sheet of music, and it’s not what the state of Florida wants to see reflected in its universities in many different respects.”

    According to the business plan, the new agency “will laser-focus on student outcomes, streamline accreditation standards, focus on emerging educational models, modernize the accreditation process, maximize efficiency without sacrificing quality, and ensure no imposition of divisive ideological content on institutions.”

    How It Would Work

    The Commission for Public Higher Education would be incorporated as a nonprofit organization in Florida, initially funded by a $4 million appropriation from the Florida State Legislature, according to the business plan. Other involved higher ed systems are expected to cough up similar funds. A board of directors representing each of the founding systems would oversee the new accreditor.

    The goal is to accredit six institutions by next summer and secure Department of Education recognition by June 2028, according to the business plan. (A new accreditor typically has two years to prove it is operating in accordance with federal regulations to receive federal approval.)

    In the meantime, higher ed institutions pursuing accreditation from CPHE can retain their current accreditors, the plan notes. Later, when CPHE gains department recognition, they can adopt CPHE as their primary accreditor.

    Accreditation experts say that the time frame is doable but optimistic if the Department of Education maintains the rigor of its current recognition process for new accreditors.

    “The timeline proposed by Florida seems aggressive since in the past, it usually took the [Education Department] more time to approve new accreditors,” Cynthia Jackson Hammond, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, wrote in a statement to Inside Higher Ed.

    But the Trump administration has shown interest in making it easier for new accreditors to form. President Trump signed an executive order in April that spoke of “recognizing new accreditors” among other reforms.

    Mixed Views

    Jackson Hammond said CHEA isn’t against new accreditors, as long as they go through the standard recognition process and show they’re following federal regulations for ensuring institutions’ quality. But she and her colleagues have qualms about the idea of state-sponsored accrediting bodies like the Commission for Public Higher Education.

    “CHEA does not believe that states are likely to be effective accreditors,” she wrote. “Historically, states have not had the staff, experience, or knowledge necessary to create a higher education accreditor. It is critically important that higher education reflects an impartial and unbiased accrediting review process that is focused on student learning outcomes. To date, there has not been a state that has accomplished this.”

    Robert Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, worries the structure of the new accrediting agency may make unbiased evaluations more challenging, given the involvement of state policymakers.

    State university systems are “essentially run by the governors and their appointees,” said Shireman, who was a deputy under secretary at ED during the Obama administration. So “it really detracts from the independence of public institutions from political meddling. This feels like it’s part of an effort for closer political control over colleges and that would just embroil them in culture war issues and sort of the political issue of the day.”

    But he doesn’t rule out the potential positives of having an accreditor focused on public universities. He said such an agency could emphasize college access and affordability in ways that accreditors that oversee private colleges don’t.

    As state higher ed systems, “they’re all government actors,” he said. In an ideal scenario, “they can work together [to say], ‘Let’s be affordable. Let’s make sure students get served.’”

    Jamienne Studley, former president of the WASC Senior College and University Commission, also emphasized that agencies that accredit “like-type” institutions can benefit from their similarities—“as long as the federal oversight of agencies is consistent, the standards are solid and their application is rigorous.”

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  • Senate Rejects Trump’s Cuts to NSF, Other Science Agencies

    Senate Rejects Trump’s Cuts to NSF, Other Science Agencies

    Sen. Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, proposed sending $9 billion to the National Science Foundation.

    Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

    Signs that Congress intends to push back on the Trump administration’s wholesale slashing of federal budgets emerged during a Senate meeting Thursday that kicked off the annual appropriations process.

    Since January, the Trump administration has sought to significantly downsize the federal government via mass layoffs and spending cuts. Additionally, the administration has canceled grants and withheld funding despite laws that require agencies to spend money as directed by Congress.

    However, on Thursday a subcommittee that oversees the budgets for the Justice and Commerce Departments as well as related science agencies proposed only a small cut to the National Science Foundation budget next fiscal year—a far cry from the $5 billion reduction that President Donald Trump wants to see.

    Instead, NSF will get just over $9 billion, a $16 million cut, said Sen. Jerry Moran, the Kansas Republican who chairs the subcommittee. The bill also sends about $10 million more to the National Weather Service and boosts funding for National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

    Although the science funding received bipartisan support, a fight over funding for the new Federal Bureau of Investigations headquarters could tank the legislation. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat and vice chair of the subcommittee, objected to the Trump administration’s decision to move the headquarters to another building in Washington, D.C., rather than moving forward with a plan approved during the Biden administration to build a facility in Maryland. (Congress previously appropriated money for a new headquarters and set the criteria for the site selection.)

    After the Senate appropriations committee approved an amendment on Thursday from Van Hollen related to the headquarters, some Republicans on the committee changed their vote on the legislation and the panel recessed instead of making a final decision on whether to advance it.

    “I think it’s sad that one issue is sinking a bill that was bipartisan,” said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican and chair of the full appropriations committee.

    Still, Van Hollen said earlier in the meeting that there was “a lot of good news” in the legislation.

    “We were able to make smart and targeted investments to help keep our community safe, keep our country safe, to advance U.S. leadership in science and innovation and to support growth and prosperity of the American economy. We were able to protect agencies and programs like NASA science and STEM, [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and] NSF.”

    Higher education groups and research advocacy organizations had warned that slashing NSF’s budget by more than half would be catastrophic and set U.S. research back by decades. The Trump administration sought to end funding for STEM training and NSF’s education programs and significantly reduce the money available for scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships.

    The committee didn’t release any other information about the budget bill such as the text or a summary, so it’s not clear what the line-item budget for NSF looks like. The available details come from what lawmakers said at Thursday’s meeting.

    Van Hollen and Moran said that NASA would get about $24.5 billion to boost space exploration, whereas the administration has requested $18.8 billion.

    The additional $10 million for the National Weather Service would go toward restaffing an agency that’s lost about 17 percent of its head count—or 600 employees—due to buyouts and layoffs. NWS’s parent agency, NOAA, lost about 11 percent of its staff. The Trump administration requested about $91 million more for NWS and to cut NOAA’s budget by about $1.8 billion.

    After the government imposed significant reductions in force across federal agencies, lawmakers wrangled over details in the proposal that ensure NWS has enough personnel to continue functioning. The bill requires the agency to be fully staffed, but it doesn’t specify what that means aside from requiring the agency have enough employees to fulfill its statutorily required mission. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, didn’t think that language was strong enough to protect NWS and wanted to set the minimum staffing levels at the number of employees as of Sept. 30, 2024.

    “My judgment and the judgment of a lot of people who work at the National Weather Service is that ‘to fulfill the statutory mandate’ gives a fair amount of room to assert that the current staffing levels and the current layoff process fulfills the statutory mandate,” he said. “It’s clear to me that this administration has already made the judgment that the National Weather Service has too many human beings.”

    Moran said he and Schatz shared the “same desire,” but he didn’t want to specify a number. Other Republicans pointed out that NWS staff has fluctuated over the years. In fiscal year 2024, the agency had about 4,300 full-time employees, according to budget documents. Republicans voted down Schatz’s amendment.

    Moran noted earlier in the meeting that the language in the budget bill should protect NWS employees from furloughs or future reductions in force and end a hiring freeze.

    “This bill protects key science missions that are fundamental to furthering our understanding of the Earth and better stewards of our natural resources, and supports critical programs, not only to drive discovery, but to safeguard the Earth from natural disasters,” Moran said.

    Congress has until Sept. 30 to pass the 12 appropriations bills that make up the federal budget or else the government could shut down. Democrats and some Republicans also want to use this process to reassert Congress’s authority in spending decisions.

    “The challenges we face and the threats to this very process are greater than ever before with the president and administration intent on ignoring the laws that we write and seizing more power for themselves,” said Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington and vice chair of the appropriations committee.

    “But at the end of the day, I do believe these bills are all a good compromise starting point, delivering critical resources to continue key programs and make targeted new investments—rejecting some of the truly harmful proposed cuts by the president and steering clear of the extreme partisan policies he’s requested.”

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  • Rates of Admitted Students Who Are Black, Hispanic Have Decreased

    Rates of Admitted Students Who Are Black, Hispanic Have Decreased

    The researchers aimed to show demographic changes across the entire “admissions pipeline.”

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    In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to ban affirmative action in college admissions, no one knew exactly what the impact on Black and Hispanic enrollment might be going forward. In fall 2024, the numbers varied substantially by institution; Inside Higher Ed’s analysis of 31 institutions’ enrollment data showed massive drops in Black and Hispanic enrollment at some institutions and less drastic decreases—and even slight increases—at others.

    But enrollment data only tells part of the story. A new report from the Urban Institute, which uses data from 18 colleges and universities, highlights how the demographics of college applicants—and admits—shifted after the court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While the share of applicants who were Black or Hispanic increased from fall 2023 to fall 2024—by 0.47 and 0.65 percentage points, respectively—the portion who were admitted decreased.

    It marked the first time since at least 2018 that the share of admitted students who were Black had declined; Hispanic students hadn’t seen a drop since 2021, when the share of applicants also declined. White students’ share of applicants, admitted students and enrolled students has shrunk every year since 2018, a trend consistent with the declining number of white high school graduates (and of white Americans in general). White graduates are also the only group that consistently make up a larger percentage of admitted students than applicants.

    Jason Cohn, a higher education and workforce research associate for the Urban Institute and one of the report’s authors, said that these numbers shed more light on the impacts of affirmative action than enrollment figures alone.

    “We’ve seen a lot of enrollment numbers in news articles here and there since last fall. In some cases, they stay the same; in some cases, they change. But I think what these data are showing is that that’s not fully reflective of what might actually be happening,” he said. “One of the big takeaways for me is just how much can be hidden if you only look at the enrollment numbers and aren’t seeing what’s happening in the rest of the admissions pipeline.”

    For this study, the researchers partnered with two organizations, the Association of Undergraduate Education at Research Universities and the University of Southern California’s Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice, to solicit data from a diverse group of 18 research universities (which they did not name). Although the sample is small, they said, it’s consistent with similar research conducted by the College Board, whose sample included about 60 institutions, indicating that the data is likely reflective of broader trends.

    It’s difficult to say definitively that the Supreme Court’s decision caused the decline in the share of admitted students from underrepresented backgrounds. That same class of high school seniors faced other barriers, including the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and delays and errors with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Bryan J. Cook, another author of the report and the Urban Institute’s director of higher education policy, noted that colleges in some states had begun rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at that time, including some programs aimed at recruiting students of color.

    “In this particular analysis, we’re not looking to isolate causation, but I think as we continue to look at this type of thing in future years, I think that’ll help us get a little closer,” Cohn said.

    But Robert Massa, a veteran enrollment professional, said he believes the shifts were likely caused in large part by the end of affirmative action.

    “I’m not at all surprised that Black students have increased their representation in the applicant pool and decreased their representation in the accepted pool, because universities are taking careful steps to make sure they don’t use race in and of itself as criteria in the admissions process,” he said.

    (Edward Blum, the president of SFFA, the anti–affirmative action nonprofit that was the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case, told Inside Higher Ed in an email that the organization has no opinion on the study.)

    The researchers plan to dig deeper into the data, analyzing other demographic information, including gender and family income, as well as academic variables such as the standardized test scores and grade point averages of the applicants and admitted students at these institutions.

    One possible hiccup for future research: The report also showed that post-SFFA, the share of applicants who chose not to identify their race increased, from 3.2 percent in 2023 to 5.1 percent in 2024. If that upward trend continues, Cohn said, it might make it “more difficult, over time, to unpack these trends and see who’s being served by the higher education system.”

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  • Satirical Essay on Restructuring Humanities (opinion)

    Satirical Essay on Restructuring Humanities (opinion)

    The administration at U of All People has suffered long enough with the underperforming School of Social Sciences and Humanities. Its various departments, programs and whatnot have grown arcane to the point where the students themselves no longer understand the difference between, say, philosophy and psychology, save that both begin with the letter p. And since many students no longer engage in reading or writing without the aid of AI, we should stop supporting distinct majors that encourage both. Consequently, we are restructuring the school to reflect the current dictates of academic administration.

     Here are some issues we have made up to justify the restructuring:

    • There has been a recent decrease in enrollment, or at least there ought to have been.
    • These are perilous times for the humanities, and smushing them together will help.
    • Merging departments will make the infrastructure more economical, particularly if we do away with pesky department offices and office staff.
    • Just saying the word “interdisciplinary” makes us feel connected to the 21st century.

    SSSH currently includes English, history, philosophy, religion, sociology, anthropology, modern languages, linguistics, political science, psychology, classics and several others that may have escaped our notice. However, we have hired a consultancy firm that can list them all. Already, the consultants have put together a PowerPoint presentation advising what they have inferred we want.

    The restructuring will feature programs such as philohistenglish-religiosophy (PHER), anthrosociopsychology (ASP) and perhaps two other smushes with better acronyms. The new, flexible majors may be grouped under the Program for (Somewhat Limited Freedom of) Speech, the Program for Global Awareness of What Trouble We’re In and the Program That Resembles a Grab Bag From a Kids’ Party. Instead of a bunch of quarrelsome department heads and a dean, a triumvirate of armed SSSH administrators will be responsible for keeping the peace.

    We have already polled the faculty and students in a metric calculated to prove our point: On a scale of one to 10, please rate how dissatisfied you are with the current setup, with one being “very” and 10 being “extremely.” The 12 respondents answered that they were very dissatisfied. Note that we are perfectly willing to listen to suggestions from the faculty and in fact have invited them all to attend a feedback session to take place yesterday at 3 a.m. in the Student Center Ballroom (bring your own flashlight!). However, we urge the faculty not to think outside the box we have placed them in while also being nimble when it comes to downsizing.

    During this process, the SSSH building itself, shabby compared to the shiny new STEM complex, will be restructured, possibly to a multilevel parking garage with spots reserved for U of All People administrators. It has also been suggested that the faculty themselves could use some restructuring, starting with their mouths, which can be sealed through a painless surgical procedure.

    Don’t think of it as a loss of autonomy and shared governance. Consider it a gain for this administration!

    David Galef is a professor of English and the creative writing program director at Montclair State University. His latest book is the novel Where I Went Wrong (Regal House, 2025).

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  • Student-Led Teaching Doesn’t Help Underprepared Students

    Student-Led Teaching Doesn’t Help Underprepared Students

    New research finds peer instruction models may be less impactful for students with lower standardized test scores than their higher-achieving peers.

    miodrag ignjatovic/E+/Getty Images

     

     

     

     

    Introductory STEM courses serve as a gatekeeper for students interested in majors or careers in STEM fields, and students from less privileged backgrounds are often less likely to succeed in those courses.

    As a result, researchers have explored what practices can make a difference in student outcomes in such courses, including creating sections with diverse student populations and offering grade forgiveness for students who performed poorly.

    A recent research article from the University of Texas at Austin examined the role peer instructors play in helping students from a variety of backgrounds. Researchers discovered that students who were enrolled in an interactive peer-led physics course section had worse learning outcomes and grades than their peers in a lecture section taught by an instructor. Students with lower SAT scores were also less likely to achieve a high grade in the student-taught class.

    The research: Historically, instructors teaching STEM courses have delivered content through lectures, with students taking a largely passive role, according to the paper. However, more active learning environments have been tied to higher student engagement and are largely preferred by learners. A May 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed found that 44 percent of respondents said an interactive lecture format helps them learn and retain information best, compared to 25 percent who selected traditional lectures.

    Interactive lectures can include instructors asking students questions throughout the class period or creating opportunities for them to reflect on course material, according to the paper. Peer instruction is touted as an effective means of flipped classroom teaching, requiring students to finish readings prior to class and reserving class time for interactive activities.

    While previous studies show the value of peer-led courses, much of that research focused on selective, private institutions, where students may have more similar backgrounds or levels of academic preparation, according to the authors of the new study.

    So researchers designed a study that would compare apples to apples: They looked at the outcomes for students learning physics in one course section taught by a professor versus one taught by fellow students to see which had a greater impact.

    The results: The paper analyzed the learning outcomes of two sections of students in an introductory mechanics course at a large public institution over three years. One section of the course was taught by a peer instructor, mostly in a small-group discussion format. The other section was taught by the professor using interactive lectures.

    Students completed identical homework and midterm exams on the same days and had the opportunity to attend identical tutoring sessions supported by teaching assistants.

    Though the course is designed for physics and astronomy majors, students from other majors participated as well. Each section had between 41 and 82 students, for a total of 367 students taking the course over three years.

    Not only did students in the peer-instruction section have lower grades, but students who had lower SAT scores from high school were less likely to demonstrate learning in fundamental concepts, as well as less likely to earn an A, compared to their peers with similar test scores taught by a professor. However, students with higher SAT scores made smaller gains (less dramatic grade increases or learning demonstrated) in the lecture section compared to students taught by peers, which researchers believe could mean that students with less academic preparation may benefit more from an instructor-led course, while their peers who had a high achievement history in high school could thrive more in a peer-led section.

    The analysis does not provide an explanation for why these differences exist, but researchers theorized that group work or peer dependency could result in some students being less knowledgeable about content matter because they trust others in the class to answer correctly. Creating postdiscussion follow-up questions can lessen this learning gap.

    We bet your colleague would like this article, too. Send them this link to subscribe to our newsletter on Student Success.

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  • Federal Policy Uncertainty Impacting College Budgeting

    Federal Policy Uncertainty Impacting College Budgeting

    Economic uncertainty—the kind that dominated headlines for the first half of 2025—makes long-term financial planning difficult. But nearly two in three college and university chief business officers say that uncertainty surrounding federal policy for higher education is hindering their ability to conduct even basic financial planning. That’s according to Inside Higher Ed’s forthcoming annual survey of CBOs with Hanover Research.

    “Higher education has not faced this level of financial uncertainty in generations,” said Robert Kelchen, chair of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, who reviewed preliminary survey data.

    While recent history offers one comparison—the early days of the pandemic, when uncertainty was similarly “off the charts”—the federal government at that time “quickly stepped in to provide support,” Kelchen continued. Today, by contrast, the federal government “is causing the uncertainty.”

    According to the survey, federal policy uncertainty under the second Trump administration is moderately impacting basic financial planning at 49 percent of institutions represented, meaning that challenges have arisen but CBOs and their colleagues have managed to adapt. Another 14 percent of institutions are severely impacted, meaning basic financial planning has been extremely difficult, leading to major disruptions. This is consistent across sectors.

    The survey was fielded in April and May, with CBOs from 169 institutions, public and private nonprofit, associate to doctoral degree–granting, responding. The full 2025 Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers will be released later this month. It includes additional findings on the second Trump administration’s impact on institutional finances so far, mergers and acquisitions, value and affordability, and more.

    CBOs see federal student aid policy changes as a major risk, with 68 percent citing this as a top federal policy concern from a longer list of options. A distant second: research funding levels, cited by 24 percent of all CBOs. Public institution CBOs are relatively more concerned about research funding, at 36 percent versus 9 percent of private nonprofit peers.

    Questions about the future of federal student aid come on top of last year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid fiasco. And nearly four in 10 surveyed CBOs (38 percent) report having already experienced significant to severe disruptions related to that FAFSA rollout.

    In Kelchen’s assessment, there’s no guarantee that the federal financial aid system will work as intended this fall—especially for colleges that require additional oversight before receiving funds, given recent mass layoffs at the U.S. Education Department. Congress also last week passed what he described as the largest set of changes to federal higher education policy in decades, via the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, with potential “downstream effects for state budgets due to cuts to federal benefits.”

    Throw in cuts to federal research funding and big changes for international students, and colleges’ budgets “are highly uncertain,” Kelchen said.

    Case in point: Michigan State University president Kevin Guskiewicz recently announced a plan to cut spending, including faculty and staff positions. He blamed expectations that the university will receive “less money from the federal government due to research cuts and restrictions on international enrollments, although the magnitude of those impacts is uncertain.” Also at play: increasing operating costs and state budget concerns.

    In another example of uncertainty in action, Val Smith, president of Swarthmore College, announced in late May that the institution’s Board of Managers had been unable to carry out “one of its primary fiduciary responsibilities: approving the college’s operating budget,” at least as usual. Given the “confluence of uncertainties we currently face,” she said at the time, the board moved forward with an interim operating budget for the first three months of the new fiscal year. It plans to revisit and adopt a full operating budget in the fall, “when we expect to have more clarity.”

    To Kelchen, interim budgets such as Swarthmore’s can make sense if revenues are “highly volatile.” So he said he wouldn’t be surprised if other institutions were quietly making similar moves.

    In an additional expression of uncertainty, most surveyed CBOs describe the impact of the second Trump administration’s policies on their institution’s financial outlook—both current and over the next 12 months—as somewhat or very negative.

    Most CBOs report minimal federal funding cuts under Trump so far. A handful do indicate that their funding has been reduced significantly, by more than 10 percent. An additional 11 percent report that funding has been reduced by 5 to 10 percent. And about as many aren’t sure. But the rest say funding has decreased by less than 5 percent or stayed consistent.

    While the ultimate impact of federal policy changes remains to be seen—and will look different at different institutions—strategist Rebeka Mazzone advised frequent collaboration and communication between CBOs and other cabinet-level leaders, “so that you always know what’s happening on a more real-time basis.”

    Also critical: forecasting, or “having a tool that allows you to constantly update the dollars you have so that you understand the impact.” Mazzone, founder of FuturED Finance, said that this real-time process is underused and very different from typical budgeting, in a which a yearlong spending plan is developed based on a particular moment in time. But the “smaller and the more cash-strapped the institution is, the more important the forecast becomes.”

    Fancy software isn’t necessary, she said, as forecasting can happen on a spreadsheet. What matters is “capturing changes and overlaying them on the budget so that you understand where you’re going to end the year, and that helps you to more proactively manage the outcomes.”

    Another important tool? Five-year projections. “If you have lower enrollment this year, that is going to affect you also for the next three years. If you have a higher discount rate this year, that is going to affect you also for the next three years.” So when institutions “suddenly” close, Mazzone said, “it’s not so sudden. They just weren’t using these tools to really understand how bad things were—and how quickly things were heading in the wrong direction.”

    To Mazzone’s point, while federal policy uncertainty is challenging short-term planning, many institutions now making budget cuts have significant underlying issues.

    What’s Kelchen’s advice for colleges and universities struggling with present uncertainty—including those navigating longer-term financial woes? Prepare multiple budget scenarios “ranging from something close to business as usual to the possibility of losing most federal funding.”

    Institutions will get “some answers on what actual revenues look like as the start of a new academic year draws nearer, but this will take time,” he said. Those in stronger positions can “operate more at business as usual and absorb losses if needed. But if there is underlying weakness, colleges need to budget for the worst right now and hope for something better.”

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  • Avoiding Work Has Always Been Part of College. This Is New.

    Avoiding Work Has Always Been Part of College. This Is New.

    In a recent piece in The New Yorker, “What Happens After AI Destroys College Writing?,” Hua Hsu tells a story that will be familiar to anyone working in higher education: students wrestling—to varying degrees—about when and how to use generative AI tools like ChatGPT in the completion of their schoolwork.

    There is a range of approaches and opinions among students—as there must be, as students are not a monolith—but Hsu centers the piece around “Alex,” an NYU student with a future goal to become a CPA who makes extensive and, to his mind, strategic use of these tools in various aspects of his life, including in writing the emails he exchanged with Hsu to arrange the interview for the piece.

    Alex walks Hsu through his use of Claude to first crunch an article on Robert Wedderburn (a 19th-century Jamaican abolitionist) into a summary, and then, when the summary was longer than he had time to absorb before class, to reduce it to bullet points that he then transcribed into a notebook since his professor didn’t allow computers in class.

    In a more elaborate example, Alex also used it to complete an art history assignment rooted in a visit to a museum exhibition, where he took pictures of the works and wall text and then fed it all into Claude.

    His rationale, as told to Hsu, was “I’m trying to do the least work possible, because this is a class I’m not hella fucking with.”

    At the end of the article, we check in with Alex on his finals. Alex “estimated he’d spent between thirty minutes and an hour composing two papers for his humanities classes,” something that would’ve taken “eight or nine hours” without Claude. Alex told Hsu, “I didn’t retain anything. I couldn’t tell you the thesis for either paper hahhahaha.”

    Hsu then delivers the kicker: “He received an A-minus and a B-plus.”

    I mean this without offense to Hsu, an accomplished writer (New Yorker staff writer and author of the best-selling memoir Stay True) and professor at Bard College, but the piece, for all its specifics and color, felt like very old news—to me, at least.

    The transactional mindset toward education, something I’ve been writing about for years, is on perfect display in Alex’s actions. Generative AI has merely made this more plain, more common and more troubling, since there aren’t even any hoops to jump through in order to fake engagement. Alex is doing nothing (or nearly so) and earning credits from New York University.

    On reflection, though, the story of Alex is even older than I thought, since it was also my story, particularly the line “I’m trying to do the least work possible,” which was very much my experience for significant chunks of my own college experience from 1988 to 1992.

    I earned quite a few credits in my time for, if not doing nothing, certainly learning nothing. Or not learning the subject for which I’d earned the credits, anyway.

    How could I blame a student of today for adopting the attitude that I lived by? With my own students, when I was teaching college, I often made hay from my lackluster undergraduate performance, talking about how I skipped more than 70 percent of my class meetings second semester of freshman year but still received no grade lower than a B.

    In the article, Hsu remarks that “None of the students I spoke with seemed lazy or passive.” The students “worked hard—but part of their effort went to editing out anything in their college experiences that felt extraneous. They were radically resourceful.”

    I, on the other hand, at least when it came to the school part of college, was resolutely lazy and largely passive, except when it came to making sure to avoid courses I was not interested in—essentially anything outside of reading and writing—or that had a mode of assessment not suited to my skills.

    My preferred structure was a lecture or lecture/discussion with in-class essay exams and/or short response papers geared to specific texts. Exams and research papers were to be avoided, because exams required studying and research papers required … research.

    If you let me loose on a reading or a few chapters from a textbook, I had no trouble giving something that resembled a student doing college, even though the end result was very much akin to Alex’s. I didn’t retain anything.

    But hindsight says I learned a lot—or learned enough, anyway, through the classes I was interested in and, perhaps more importantly, the noncurricular experiences of college.

    While there are some similarities between my and Alex’s mindset vis-à-vis college, there is a significant difference. Alex appears to be acting out of an “optimization” mindset, where he focuses his efforts on what is most “relevant,” presumably to his future interests, like employment and monetary earnings.

    I, on the other hand, majored in the “extraneous experiences.” I was pretty dedicated to the lacrosse club, showing up for practice five days a week with games on the weekend, but I also recall a game day following my 21st birthday when I was so hungover (and perhaps still drunk) that you could smell the alcohol oozing from my pores. My shifts in the midfield were half the length of my line mates’.

    (That was the last time I got that drunk.)

    I recall a contest at my fraternity where the challenge was to gain the most weight within an 18-hour period, during which we stuffed ourselves with spaghetti, Italian bread, chocolate pudding and gallons of water until we were sick and bloated. Another time we ground through an entire season of Nintendo Super Tecmo Bowl football over the span of a few days, skipping class if you had a matchup that needed playing. We had a group of regulars who gathered in my room to watch All My Children and General Hospital most weekdays. I am the least successful of that crew by a fair stretch.

    I know that I took courses in economics, geography, Asian studies and Russian history where, like Alex, I retained virtually nothing about the course material even days after the courses, when I crammed for a test or bs’ed my way through a paper to get my B and move on to what I wanted to spend my time on.

    From my perspective as a middle-aged person whose life has been significantly enhanced by all the ways I dodged schoolwork while I was in college, including spending inordinate amounts of time with the woman to whom I have been married for 25 years this August, I would say that missing out on those classes to make room for experiences was the right thing to do.

    (Even though I had no understanding of this at the time.)

    Will Alex look back and feel the same?

    So many questions that need exploring:

    Would Alex be as appalled by my indigence, my failure at optimization, as I am by his ignorance?

    Have we lost our belief that we as humans have agency over this world of technology?

    Is Alex actively deskilling himself, or am I failing to develop the skills necessary for surviving in the world we’ve made for students like Alex?

    I wonder if Alex and I have different definitions of what it is to survive.

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