Tag: Higher

Breaking barriers: advancing ethnic diversity in higher education professional services
This blog was kindly authored by Dr Louise Oldridge, Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University (with research team Dr Maranda Ridgway, Dr David Dahill, Dr Ricky Gee, Dr Stefanos Nachmias, Dr Loyin Olotu-Umoren, Dr Jessie Pswarayi, Dr Sarah Smith, Natalie Selby-Shaw and Dr Rhianna Garrett).

Despite decades of progress in widening participation and diversifying student bodies, UK higher education still faces a stark reality: senior professional services roles remain overwhelmingly white.

Indeed, when the professional body for senior professional services staff (Association of Heads of University Administration – AHUA) embarked on work to ‘shift the dial’ on race, membership had less than 5% global majority colleagues.

While universities champion equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), and the sector has developed levers such as the Race Equality Charter (REC), the lived experiences of ethnically minoritised staff highlight systemic barriers that hinder career progression and perpetuate inequality.

A recent research project funded by AHUA and conducted by the Centre for People, Work & Organizational Practice at Nottingham Business School explored these challenges. Drawing on interviews, focus groups, and institutional data, the project studied the career barriers and enablers for ethnically minoritised professionals in senior roles.

The diversity gap in professional services leadership

University leadership teams have diversified in some areas, for instance among governors, students, and even vice-chancellors, but senior professional services remain largely homogenous.

Recruitment practices, opaque progression pathways, and institutional norms continue to privilege whiteness and middle-class values, leaving talented individuals from minoritised backgrounds sidelined.

With limited institutional data available for the study, it revealed that while representation among lower-grade professional services roles has improved, senior positions tell a different story.

Unlike academic colleagues, there is a stark shift in career management for professional services staff, with our research finding that many institutions are unequipped to track the career trajectories of professional service staff.

Lived experiences: authenticity, masking, and emotional labour

The qualitative insights from interviews and focus groups paint a vivid picture of what it means to navigate professional services as a person of colour. Participants spoke candidly about the emotional labour involved in “code-switching” (altering language, appearance, or behaviour to fit dominant norms) and “masking” aspects of identity to avoid judgment or exclusion.

One participant reflected: “I felt I had to disappear… to succeed, I needed to be someone else.” Others described being labelled as “diversity hires” or facing regular microaggressions that impacted confidence and wellbeing.

Intersectionality compounds these challenges. Participant responses indicated that race intersected with gender, class, disability, and caring responsibilities, creating layered barriers that are often invisible to policy-makers. Women of colour, for instance, reported being undermined due to both race and gender, while those with disabilities faced inflexibility and a lack of empathy.

Performative EDI and the need for structural change

In a blog on the REC for Advance HE, Patrick Johnson calls for institutions to make an authentic commitment to dismantling racial barriers for staff. Institutions can use data to expose disparities and perceptions of the operating culture and environment.

As Patrick notes, it is important that challenges are acknowledged openly and specific actions put in place in response.

That said, participants in this research questioned the depth of their organisation’s commitments. EDI initiatives were described as performative and focused on optics rather than outcomes. As one interviewee put it:

We talk about EDI when we’re going for awards, but it’s not part of our everyday practice.

This disconnect between rhetoric and reality highlights a critical gap: policies alone cannot dismantle systemic inequities.

Ultimately, what is needed is leadership from those in roles which can challenge the structural issue, redefine what it means to be ‘professional’, develop clear career pathways, transparent promotion processes, and accountability mechanisms that move beyond tick-box exercises. REC is a starting point for supporting this process, but cannot be seen either as a panacea or an end in itself.

Five pathways to change

The report offers a roadmap for transformation, organised into five thematic areas:
1. Structural reform and policy change
  Clarify career pathways for professional services staff, audit recruitment practices, embed accountability into EDI policies and ensure progression routes are transparent – such as providing an understanding of ‘typical’ career histories for leadership roles.
2. Representation and inclusion
  Increase diversity at senior levels through targeted development and sponsorship. Avoid tokenism by ensuring ethnically minoritised staff have meaningful influence, not just visibility. This could include clearer succession planning.
3. Development, support, and research
  Invest in mentoring, coaching, and executive development programmes tailored to professional services. This reflects both formal support staff networks and more informal collectives, alongside committing to longitudinal research to track progress. For example, creating an informal network of colleagues across the sector.
4. Cultural change and co-creation
  Move beyond compliance-driven EDI to authentic engagement. Challenge assumptions about professionalism and leadership, and co-create inclusive cultures with staff. This could mean redefining what institutions view as ‘professional(ism)’.
5. Sector-level collaboration and accountability
  Coordinate efforts across professional bodies, share best practice, and ensure transparent reporting. Diversity must be a collective responsibility, and could include sector-wide knowledge exchange, clear metrics and outcomes.
From awareness to action

The report calls for dismantling what research team member Rhianna Garrett describes as ‘the architecture of whiteness’, which underpins institutional norms. This means rethinking recruitment, valuing professional services as integral to university success, and creating spaces where ethnically minoritised staff can thrive without compromising their identity.

As one focus group participant put it:

We recognise there is an issue, but I don’t think we really understand what to do about it – and a big part of that is because things are so white.

For AHUA, and other sector professional service organisations, this report is a call for the sector to deliver systemic, sustained change. The question is not whether higher education can afford to prioritise diversity in professional services leadership; it is whether it can afford not to. It informs our next steps in a Theory of Change workshop to identify meaningful actions moving forward.

As Dr Andrew Young, Chief Operating Office, The London School of Economics and Political Science, and AHUA project sponsor states:

The evidence in this report should make all of us in higher education uncomfortable. Change will only happen when we stop celebrating statements of intent and start measuring outcomes.
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December 5, 2025
Higher education postcard: Falmouth University
Falmouth is a long way from nearly everywhere else, if you’re travelling by land. This is a very salient fact. It means that if you’re in Falmouth, then Falmouth is where you first look for anything.

And so the Falmouth School of Art, which looks to have started sometime in 1867 or 1868, must have been very welcome to the town and the county.

The classes, which had been held in the municipal offices as part of a school of art and science, had outgrown their space and in 1901 the foundation stone was laid for a new building, in Arwenack Avenue. This would house just the art school.

The observant amongst you will have noticed by now that the postcard is a general view of Falmouth. This is an occupational hazard when trying to find a #HigherEducationPostcard of an institution in a picturesque place, or one with other famous buildings. It is why, for example, its hard to find a postcard of SOAS, when UCL and Senate House are nearby. But, the card does include Arwenack Avenue, on which the new school was located: it is, I think, somewhere in the red circle in the image below:

The school was a private venture, and it was not until 1938 that the local education authority took over running the school. (Needless to say, this is a very unusual situation: pretty much all of the other similar schools I’ve looked at were brought into local authority control in the late 1890 or early 1900s.) The school was initially under the control of the principal of the Truro School of Art: not a merger, but one person running two schools.

In the 1950s the college moved to new premises just up the hill from Arwenack Avenue. This was Kerris Vean, a large house built in 1875. It also had room to expand, and is still part of the university’s Falmouth campus today.

In the 1960s the school had about 120 students, although many of these were part time. This did not prevent it being accepted (after a reassessment) as a suitable location for the National Advisory Council for Art Education’s diploma in art and design, which was the primary qualification available at that time. Teachers included Barbara Hepworth; the school also conducted entrance examinations for the Slade School at UCL and the Royal College of Art. Staff numbers increased to 25, and more space was provided by the local education authority.

In the 1970s the CNAA recognised the school for a BA(Hons) in Fine Art. There was now residential accommodation for 57 students. And as anyone who has ever managed an institution with an art school will recognise, this scale was difficult – lots of space, not many students to fill it, a relatively high number of staff, and tight funding.

The school faced down a threat of closure in 1984, and in 1987 it merged with Cornwall College’s art and design provision to become the Falmouth School of Art and Design. Its range of subjects broadened to include design and journalism, and in 1988 it became a corporation independent of the local authority.

In 1995, recognising the breadth of its provision, the college became Falmouth College of the Arts, offering degrees validated by University of Plymouth. It became University College Falmouth in 2005; took over Dartington College of Art’s provision in 2008, and in 2012 became Falmouth University.

Here’s as always, is a jigsaw of the card. The card has not been posted, so I can’t be sure, but I would guess that it dates from the 1960s.

Why Falmouth University and not the University of Falmouth? I was asked last week whether there was a reason for “University of X” or “X University”. Looking at the legal names of universities in the UK (and some, for example Durham, have a trading name Durham University, and a legal name University of Durham) it seems that the pattern is as follows:
- The norm is “University of X”
- In Wales the default in English is “X University”, perhaps to match the preposition-less pattern in Welsh, where, for example, Cardiff University is Prifysgol Caerdydd (but nota bene University of South Wales, not South Wales University)
- If a university is named after a person or a thing it is “X University” – for example Brunel University
- If the place name is qualified in some way, it is “X University” – for example Buckinghamshire New University, Birmingham City University
- If the place is small, it is “X University” – for example Cranfield University, Keele University
- If the place is a sub-unit of a larger place, it is “X University” – for example Aston University – except when in London – for example University of Greenwich.
Is this a firm set of rules? Probably not, unless the Privy Council office has some tucked away in a file. Is it universally true? Again, no: and one counterexample to the above is Falmouth University. And this is why I chose to do Falmouth this week.

Also, notably, when I shared this analysis on social media, the most sensible response was that I was overthinking it. Which was probably true!
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December 5, 2025
FTC Claims the ABA Is a Monopoly

The Federal Trade Commission accused the American Bar Association of having a “monopoly on the accreditation of American law schools” in a letter to the Texas Supreme Court at a time when the state is considering minimizing the ABA’s oversight of legal education.

In April, the Texas Supreme Court announced it was looking into eliminating ABA requirements for licensure. Justices wrote in a tentative opinion in the fall that the ABA “should no longer have the final say on whether a law school’s graduates are eligible to sit for the Texas bar exam and become licensed to practice law.” It also invited the public to comment on a proposal to potentially undercut the ABA as an accreditor for Texas law schools.

FTC officials Clarke Edwards and Daniel Guarnera signaled support for potentially moving away from ABA accreditation in a nine-page letter submitted to the Texas Supreme Court on Monday. In addition to claiming the ABA was a monopoly, they argued it had “rigid and costly requirements” and that it mandates “every law school follow an expensive, elitist model of legal education.”

The two FTC officials also accused the ABA of driving up the costs of law school.

“The ABA’s standards for accreditation appear to go far beyond what is reasonably necessary to assure adequate preparation for the practice of law in Texas, increasing the cost of a legal education. The current rule therefore likely causes Texas to forgo admitting many potentially qualified lawyers who could provide needed legal services to the Texas public,” they wrote.

Monday’s letter reflects rhetoric from President Donald Trump and his allies who have taken aim at accreditors in recent years. Trump blasted the ABA in an April executive order, accusing it of discrimination for its diversity, equity and inclusion standards. (The ABA suspended DEI standards for accreditation in February, before the executive order.)

The ABA did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

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December 4, 2025
House Republicans Accuse Truman Scholarship of Liberal Bias

House Republicans held a hearing Wednesday broadcasting long-standing conservative allegations of a left-wing bias in the small, prestigious Truman Scholarship program. Witnesses called by the GOP said the winners disproportionately espouse causes such as promoting racial justice and fighting climate change—and wind up working for Democrats and left-leaning organizations—while few recipients profess interest in conservative aims.

But rather than counter the allegations, Democrats and their invited witness largely called the proceedings a distraction from the issue of college unaffordability, which they accused the GOP of exacerbating.

The Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development hearing reflected a trend in conservative criticism of higher ed: allegations of favoritism toward liberals and left-leaning thought within very exclusive programs, including certain Ivy League institutions. The Trump administration’s sweeping research funding cuts for particular universities—and the congressional grillings of university presidents during antisemitism hearings before Trump retook the White House—have targeted institutions that only a fraction of Americans attend.

“The Truman Scholarship represents an appropriation of $3 million a year, and directly impacts just 50 to 60 students annually,” said Democratic witness Ashley Harrington, senior policy counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “The cuts to the higher education safety net made in the One Big Beautiful Bill are of far greater consequence to the millions of Americans who have never even heard of the Truman Scholarship.”

“I hope today’s conversation can shift toward making our entire higher education system more affordable and accessible for all students,” Harrington said, “instead of having a narrow, partisan dialogue about the very few who receive this elite scholarship.”

Republicans and their witnesses—one from a conservative-leaning media outlet and two from conservative-leaning think tanks—didn’t take her up on that invitation. Jennifer Kabbany, editor in chief of The College Fix, said her outlet has been researching liberal bias in the Truman Scholarship for 10 years and argued that its recipients hold a lot of sway.

“They’re lobbying, they’re working for lawmakers, they’re consulting, they’re working for very influential, liberal-leaning law firms,” Kabbany said. “And so they’re having a big influence on our nation’s conversation and what legislation is brought forth. This isn’t just a $3 million scholarship—this is the direction of our country.”

The scholarship, which provides junior undergraduates up to $30,000 for a “public service–related” graduate degree, was founded as a memorial to the namesake Democratic president. Congress passed legislation creating it in 1974, and Republican president Gerald Ford signed the bill into law the next year.

Lawmakers didn’t invite anyone from the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation to testify. Rep. Burgess Owens, the Utah Republican who chairs the subcommittee, told Inside Higher Ed he didn’t know why no one from the foundation appeared. Audra McGeorge, communications director for the Education and Workforce Committee, said the full committee chooses witnesses.

“We provided an opportunity for the Truman Scholarship program to respond to the Committee’s concerns” outlined in a letter last year citing a report on the program from the American Enterprise Institute, McGeorge said. “Since they chose not to engage with us on those issues, we did not see a productive path in repeating the outreach. So we sought out researchers who have examined this issue fairly.”

The minority Democratic party gets to choose only one witness. Raiyana Malone, a spokesperson for the committee’s Democrats, said, “We really wanted to focus on the Big Ugly Bill cuts to higher education,” so they chose Harrington.

The report from AEI, a conservative-leaning think tank, said that, of the 182 Truman winners between 2021 and 2023, just six espoused interest in a traditionally “conservative-leaning” cause. While numerous winners cited an interest in topics such as immigrants’ rights or racial justice, none professed interest in protecting the rights of the unborn or defending the Second Amendment, the report said.

Frederick Hess, AEI’s director of education policy studies and co-author of the report, said the Truman Foundation began hiding past news releases and reduced the amount of biographical information on its website to prevent the replication of such studies. In an email, Tara Yglesias, the foundation’s deputy executive secretary, said its 2025 scholar listing had returned to a format used in the early 2000s partly because “scholars, particularly those working in national security and similar areas, had made requests that we not post their biographical information publicly. Additionally, significant staff time was required to keep the biographies current, even for the short time they were visible.”

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat, criticized the fact that the report’s other author, Joe Pitts, didn’t disclose in the report that he was a failed applicant for the scholarship. Bonamici called Pitts “disgruntled,” which Pitts rebutted on X.

The scholarship foundation didn’t provide Inside Higher Ed an interview Wednesday or answer some specific emailed questions. Terry Babcock-Lumish, its executive secretary, wrote in an email that while no one from the foundation was invited to testify, “We welcome Members of Congress’s assistance in raising awareness of our opportunity and hope they will encourage the colleges and universities in their districts to nominate qualified candidates.” She said it’s “a merit-based scholarship program committed to identifying aspiring leaders throughout the United States, regardless of ideology.”

“Unless candidates apply, we cannot select them,” she wrote.

While the Republican witnesses shared their specific issues with the program’s recruitment and selection process—including not seeking out candidates from traditionally conservative campuses—they and the Republican subcommittee members also traced the alleged liberal bias to the left-leaning nature of academe in general.

“On the campus level, those that are deciding who gets put to the regional committees, I mean, they’re professors,” said Kabbany, of The College Fix. “And we all know, 30 to one, professors are liberals, so they’re obviously going to advance candidates who have beliefs and pet causes that they love … It’s really systemic.”

A few Republicans, including Owens, said Congress should end the program.

“The Truman committee and this entire process is anti-conservative,” Owens said in his closing remarks. He said, “This has been a pipeline for Democrats, no question about it … I don’t think it’s fixable.”

Rep. Mark Harris, a North Carolina Republican, said, “It’s deeply ironic to me that taxpayers who also never attended college, just like [President] Truman himself, are now forced to fund elite postgraduate degrees for a handpicked few. In my opinion, the federal government has no business running a scholarship program at all.” (According to the Truman Library, Harry S. Truman attended a business college for one year before dropping out to help with his father’s business.)

Two Republicans—current New York gubernatorial candidate Elise Stefanik and Rep. Randy Fine, a staunchly pro-Israel Florida Republican who has said, “We have a Muslim problem in America”—accused the program of fostering antisemitism. “This, to me, is beyond liberal bias,” Fine said. “This is a flat-out embrace of Muslim terror and [represents] the fact that U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used to fund terrorists.”

Fine, who is Jewish, said, “I have zero desire to reform the Truman fellowship. I’m not interested in borrowing $3 million from my children and grandchildren to give it to people who would like to kill them, so I believe we should shut down the program.” (Fine also made a point to say he wasn’t asking questions of Adam Kissel, a Republican witness, because of Kissel’s connection to the Heritage Foundation, which many conservatives accuse of tolerating antisemitism.)

Stefanik, who is on the scholarship foundation’s board, cited a 2025 Truman scholar who “publicly espoused support for Hamas,” adding, “We need to address this rise in antisemitism with some of the recipients.”

Eva Frazier, the Truman recipient whom Stefanik has publicly named in the past, told Inside Higher Ed in an email, “Congresswoman Stefanik’s comments followed a long pattern of politicians attempting to scare students into silence for speaking out about the Palestinian cause, but we refuse to be intimidated by such attacks.”

Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican and chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, said the alleged Truman Scholarship issues are “illustrative of so much that goes on.”

“We’re seeing a bias in opposition to the American idea,” he said. “That isn’t liberal or conservative—it’s American.”

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December 4, 2025
One State’s Collaborative Efforts to Improve Transfer
Recent “Beyond Transfer” articles have garnered a lot of attention and discussion among many in the transfer world, including those of us involved in transfer work in Virginia. The reactions to these articles demonstrate just how complex transfer is, and while we may not all agree, the importance of the work is undeniable. One state has taken steps to reduce the complexity and clarify transfer for students and colleges.

The article “The Transfer Credit Myth: How Everything We Know About Excess Credits May Be Wrong,” while narrow in scope, highlighted several important aspects of transfer that should be reiterated: Early and consistent academic planning support is imperative. Additionally, we know program changes, prerequisites and financial aid exhaustion can have serious implications to progress whether a student transferred or not. Furthermore, as highlighted in a response article, we cannot forget about state- and system-level policies that may impact these efforts, for better or worse.

In recognition of these complexities, Virginia passed legislation in 2018 to improve transfer, which addressed three elements: general education, transfer pathways and a state transfer tool. In response and through a collaborative effort between the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) and two- and four-year institutions, the Transfer Virginia initiative was born. Its goal is to remove barriers while improving credit efficiency, reducing time to transfer and boosting degree-attainment rates.
- General education: A two-year institutional general education package, known as the Uniform Certificate of General Studies (U.C.G.S.), was created to apply to lower-level general education at all Virginia public four-year institutions and many participating private four-year institutions.
- Transfer pathways: Common curricula have been developed to provide the foundation for the transfer pathways—or student-facing transfer guides—which are created with the goal of mapping associate degree curricula, including the U.C.G.S., to baccalaureate degrees to strengthen credit efficiency and applicability. Each guide includes a curricular section showing the student exactly what to take at both the two-year institution and the remaining requirements at the four-year institution for a true 2+2. There is also a “Transfer Guidance” section that includes information about the college/university, major, admission—including guaranteed admission—as well as important dates, deadlines and links, serving as a one-stop shop for transfer information. There are currently over 500 transfer guides, representing over 30 pathways to four-year institutions, with approximately 150 to 200 guides submitted each year. These work very well when a student has identified a transfer plan. For those who would like to explore further, these and many other resources are available in the portal.
- State transfer tool: The Transfer Virginia portal, officially launched in 2021, is designed to be a robust repository to assist students at any point in their higher education journey, including dual enrollment. The portal provides standardized information for more than 60 Virginia colleges—two-year and four-year, public and private—all in one place. Users can compare institutions, explore program listings, find colleges offering their major, see how their coursework transfers, create a portfolio and connect with transfer specialists directly.
For states looking to effect change, a good place to start is identifying commonalities between general education curriculum at both two- and four-year institutions to craft a statewide pathway. However, the work cannot be done in silos. Collaboration and commitment from the two- and four-year institutions and state administrative agencies is vital. For Virginia, legislation ignited the initiative, but the teamwork between all stakeholders keeps the momentum going.
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December 4, 2025
New Program for College Students’ Executive Functioning Skills
Since the COVID-19 pandemic forced many schools to move instruction online, some students have struggled to regain or even learn the interpersonal and organizational skills they need to succeed in college.

To rectify that, the University of Mary Washington created a new four-week program this fall to help incoming students hone their planning and social skills. Called LaunchPad, the program aims to help ease students’ transition into higher education, provide them with life-management skills and connect them with peers and supportive staff.

What’s the need: Data shows that current traditional-aged college students are less likely than previous cohorts of students to be prepared for postsecondary education. A 2024 report from ed-tech provider EAB found that students increasingly struggle with resiliency and conflict resolution and are less likely to be involved in campus organizations or social opportunities.

Surveys show that students are interested in receiving additional support to help them get organized and learn to manage their time. A study from Anthology, also published in 2024, found that 40 percent of students feel overwhelmed and anxious about their academic workload, and a quarter say they lack time-management skills. Similarly, a 2023 survey by Inside Higher Ed found that one-third of respondents want help planning their schedules and managing their time, such as a through a deadline organizer.

At the University of Mary Washington, “many students struggle with organization, time management and involvement, especially post-pandemic,” said April Wynn, director of the first-year experience. “LaunchPad provides structured support in these areas.”

How it works: LaunchPad teaches students executive functioning and socialization skills, including how to maintain a schedule, track deadlines, employ technology, communicate effectively and respond to adversity, according to a university press release.

Starting the first week of class, students are invited to participate in a LaunchPad session, beginning with syllabus organization and then in subsequent week moving on to Microsoft basics, campus involvement and time management.

Each week, students could opt in to a LaunchPad activity to help them develop practical life skills.

University of Mary Washington

Teaching the tech tools is essential because students often enroll with more experience using Chromebooks than Microsoft products, Wynn noted. Students also received a physical planner during the syllabus session, marking upcoming deadlines at the start of the term to help them prepare.

The initiative is supported by a Fund for Mary Washington Impact Grant, which provides donor-funded grants, ranging from $500 to $5,000, to students, faculty and staff for projects. Wynn and Dean of Students Melissa Jones applied for the grant and received $5,000 to fund peer-mentor stipends, day planners, workshops and more.

LaunchPad involves representatives from a variety of campus offices, including the career center, student activities, new student programs, the writing center, campus recreation, housing and residence life, and the Office of Disability Resources.

The impact: The fall 2025 pilot offered 51 hours of programming over four weeks, with 378 student participants and 466 hours of work by staff, faculty and peer mentors, Wynn said. “Student and facilitator feedback was collected at each session, with additional student survey feedback scheduled for December, after they’ve had time to test out what they learned in the program,” she said.

The university is considering a shorter program in the spring semester to capture transfer and other new students, as well as expanding the fall program to six weeks to include major and career advising, Wynn said. “While LaunchPad is geared toward first-year students, we hope to plan it around the fall senior class meeting in the future to provide a refresher for soon-to-be graduates,” Wynn said.
Getting Students Organized

Several other colleges have implemented new programs to help students build executive-functioning skills.

Faculty at DePaul University created a short course in the College of Communication to help students set goals and reflect on their academic progress.

Wake Forest University’s Center for Learning Access and Student Success established a digital syllabus that outlines all assignments and assessments for each class a student is enrolled in, creating a centralized depot for organization.

Dartmouth College created regular programming to help students build time management and organization skills, led by peers to normalize challenges.
How does your college encourage students to be organized and improve their life skills? Tell us more.
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December 4, 2025
Why Close Bucknell University Press? (opinion)

In an Aug. 14 email, Bucknell University provost Wendy Sternberg notified the university community that Bucknell University Press would cease to exist at the end of the academic year. Without consulting BUP’s faculty editorial board, which oversees the press and falls under the auspices of the provost’s office, or Bucknell’s faculty or staff at large, the decision was rendered a fait accompli that blindsided the local Bucknell community as well as past, present and prospective BUP authors, editors and contributors.

As might be inferred, the decision to close a university press has wide-ranging implications for not only the home institution and its reputation within the academic community but for the pursuit of intellectualism and critical inquiry in academia and beyond.

Established in 1968, BUP has operated continuously for nearly 60 years, publishing new work in the humanities and social sciences for specialists, students and general readers. Despite its relatively small size, operating only with 2.5 staff positions and publishing about 20 books per year, Bucknell’s press has continued to punch above its weight, as testimonials from BUP authors, editors and directors, past and present, affirm.

Petitions to prevent BUP’s closure have circulated globally, such as those by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Goethe Society of North America, and the closure has been addressed by venues like Publishers Weekly, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. A petition on campus disseminated by members of BUP’s faculty editorial board gathered signatures from hundreds unaffiliated with the university, as well as more than 125 of the voting faculty members at Bucknell, in what assuredly was a signal to Bucknell administrators and the Board of Trustees to reconsider.

But they have not.

As Sternberg wrote, the university was compelled to close BUP to refocus “university resources on our student-centered mission.” The email moreover claims that BUP’s “primary mission supports the scholarly community, and not Bucknell undergraduates.”

This rationale misunderstands the actual work of university presses, which have long trained students for careers in editing and publishing in academic presses, trade publishers and beyond—as noted by testimonials from Bucknell alumni published by The H-Net Book Channel. It likewise does not see our undergraduates as part of the scholarly community—a head-scratching implication given that Bucknell obtained the Carnegie classification system’s new Research Colleges and Universities designation this year because of its research activity, especially undergraduate research. Even more, it brazenly disregards the reality that faculty research informs classroom teaching.

In the more than three months that have passed since Sternberg’s notice of closure, Bucknell University administrators, especially Sternberg and President John Bravman, have been flooded with personal letters and emails cautioning against this myopic decision. Peter M. Berkery Jr., executive director of the Association of University Presses, wrote to the administration in August extending an offer to collaborate on a press review. This offer has gone ignored. Berkery also noted in his letter that a number of universities that have announced their intent to close their presses in recent years ended up reversing course. (Notable reversals include the University of Akron Press, the University of Missouri Press and Stanford University Press, where the university administration threatened to withdraw the press’s $1.7 million annual subsidy before backing away from the plan.)

Berkery added that “in still more cases—including Amherst College, Lever Press, West Point, University of Vermont, the University of Wyoming—institutions of higher education serving a wide remit of students and fields launched new university presses and university imprints, finding that this initiative served their students, faculty, and wider communities in direct and invaluable ways.”

Bucknell administration, however, has remained steadfast in its determination to close BUP and impervious to outcry from the academic community and even alumni. In November, Bucknell faculty approved a motion, presented by myself and three other members of the faculty editorial board, that proposes to evaluate BUP’s future through channels of shared governance that were not previously consulted—even flouted. It calls for the establishment of an ad hoc committee, peopled by Sternberg, the BUP director and several faculty representatives, charged with “determin[ing] a future for the Bucknell University Press that balances fiscal concerns with intellectual and academic values.” The motion stipulates that the committee will present its findings at the February faculty meeting. Of course, the bindingness of these findings remains suspect, as does the future of shared governance nationwide.

Towards the conclusion of Sternberg’s August notice, she wrote, “It is important to note that the door remains open to alternative paths forward for the Bucknell Press at this time. I believe there is great potential for the press to be reimagined in a way that supports undergraduate education — perhaps one that promotes scholarly accomplishments of Bucknell students and faculty and that offers professional preparation for students who seek a career in the publishing world. The academic planning process that is unfolding over this academic year will provide a venue for considering such possibilities.”

While BUP already does these things (as alumni and faculty attest), and this reimagining seems to again misunderstand the premise and goals of a university press, the motion approved by the faculty seeks to make good on Sternberg’s claim to envisage “alternative paths forward” to keep BUP’s doors open, even if such a statement is merely administrative lip service.

Though the prospective closure of BUP may appear a blip on the radar of a fast-changing landscape of higher education, it is yet another warning bell signaling the erosions of shared governance on campuses nationwide. Indeed, the American Association of University Professors’ Policy Documents and Reports (colloquially known as the Redbook) details how the “business-ification” of the university has caused ruptures within shared governance that have ultimately alienated faculty and pitted administrators versus faculty in what may appear a power vacuum: “The involvement of faculty in governance is not a grab for power, special pleading, or partisanship, but action in the best interests of the academic institutions themselves.”

Shared governance, the Redbook continues, promises to be a “potential force for fairness and equity for parties that are too often assumed to be at odds.” But fairness and equity can only be achieved at places like Bucknell if shared governance is preserved and stakeholders are consulted and considered in good faith.

Even more, as the motion passed by the faculty makes clear, while some may believe a university press to be a bespoke ornament, BUP has long been integral to the service and scholarship completed by Bucknell faculty and deeply connected to the institution’s intellectual history. And this is to say nothing of the ways that BUP has dedicated itself to supporting the intellectual and creative careers of academics around the globe for the last 60 years. In a moment in time marked by the determination to unravel both shared governance and academic freedom on college campuses, BUP can’t help but seem part of a larger zeitgeist of academia’s uncertain, seismic shifting.

Yet there’s something distinct about the Bucknell situation in that it is entirely self-inflicted. Bucknell is not buckling under pressure from the federal government; neither has it been singled out for an ultimatum/gilded carrot (depending on how one sees it) like those extended under the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” It has not suffered higher taxes on its endowment, nor the retraction of large-scale federal funding. The austerity mentality hawked by the administration is one based on a larger trend in which humanistic and social scientific inquiry is deprivileged and the ethos of the liberal arts abandoned, even at those places that seek to brand themselves as such. BUP has become the sacrificial lamb that was meant to succumb to its slaughter silently.

If BUP had represented an insolvent or derelict agent on campus or within the academic community, perhaps the publicity arising from its intended closure would not set about such shock waves. However, that is not the case. Instead, the intention to shutter BUP is a thermometer, if not a klaxon (to mix metaphors), that lays bare a reality in which university presses and the intellectual enterprises they champion are repeatedly under threat. We must not acquiesce to these demanded erasures.

Jeremy Chow is the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair in the Humanities and associate professor of English at Bucknell University and chair of the Bucknell University Press faculty editorial board.

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December 4, 2025
The Great American University Shakedown

With each new resolution agreement, it becomes clearer that the Trump administration intends to base the government’s relationship with higher education on extortion. In its recently cut deal, Northwestern University will pay the Treasury $75 million in exchange for about $800 million in congressionally approved research funding it had already secured. NU now joins Columbia on the list of institutions that have paid fees to the federal government—Columbia’s deal included a $200 million payment to the Treasury over three years.

In the grand scheme of things, $75 million is chump change for Northwestern. It’s a fraction of the research funding that was at risk and barely makes a dent in the institution’s $14.3 billion endowment. It’s less than two months’ worth of the up to $40 million the institution said it was paying every month to supplement lost research funding. The payment was, according to interim president Henry Bienen, “the best and most certain method to restore our federal funding, both now and in the future.”

Part of that is likely true. Litigation would have taken years and cost many more millions. But nothing in the agreement precludes the government from leveraging federal research funding to extract certain political wins from the university again. The government didn’t even need evidence Northwestern violated any federal laws to revoke its federal funding. Officials offered no conclusions from the three investigations into antisemitism on campus the Departments of Education, Justice and Health and Human Services launched. With the punitive withholding of federal funds, the institution is being punished before it’s proven guilty. As Andrew Gillen, a scholar at the Cato Institute put it, “Much like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland who said, ‘Sentence first—verdict afterwards.’”

Before this administration, rarely did OCR investigations require institutions to pay money to the government. The resolutions focused mainly on training and improving processes at the university in question. By contrast, the agreements the Trump administration has reached with elite, research-focused universities harm the institution as well as the country. Northwestern, Columbia, Brown and others might have their funding back, but they’re now weighed down by even greater compliance burdens.

Northwestern has to report admissions data on every student who applies, is admitted and enrolls; socialize international students on the norms of campus life; and make sure nobody is wearing a face mask to conceal their identity. After cutting more than 400 jobs in July, Northwestern now has fewer people around campus to take over additional reporting duty. This is how the administration wants our leading research institutions to spend their time. And while U.S. institutions process paperwork and fight to have funding restored, China sprints ahead in artificial intelligence, robotics and innovation.

Precedent for paying fines in government settlements exists for other sectors, but those partly fund solutions to problems. Purdue Pharma, for example, paid local and state governments to fund opioid treatment, prevention and recovery services. In its multibillion-dollar settlement with the U.S. government over cheating on emissions tests, Volkswagen paid billions of dollars to fund clean energy initiatives and electric vehicle charging infrastructure. Even Columbia in its settlement agreed to pay an additional $21 million to compensate employees who may have experienced antisemitism on campus after Oct. 7, 2023. Northwestern’s millions simply disappear into Treasury’s coffers and do nothing to combat antisemitism in higher ed.

NU won’t be the last institution the government attempts to force into a settlement. This summer it demanded UCLA, a public institution, pay $1.2 billion as part of a settlement to unfreeze millions in research funds. Harvard’s heated legal battle for its funding rages on, and research funds remain frozen for Duke and Princeton.

These resolutions are a strong indicator of how the administration wants its relationship with research institutions to be—politically self-serving, one-sided and fear-based. Institutions could choose to fight, but mounting expensive legal battles without millions of research dollars isn’t really a choice at all. The agreements might be an offer universities can’t refuse.

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December 4, 2025
Hartwick, Duquesne, Iowa State and More

Laurel Bongiorno, vice president for academic affairs and provost at Hartwick College in New York, has been named president of Hartwick, effective July 1, 2026.

David Cook, president of North Dakota State University, has been appointed president of Iowa State University, effective March 1, 2026.

David Dausey, provost of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, will become president of the institution on July 1, 2026.

Terence Finley, vice president and chief operating officer at Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, has been selected president of Corning Community College, part of the State University of New York system, effective Jan. 2, 2026.

Jennifer Glowienka, co–interim president of Carroll College in Montana, has been named president of the college, effective July 1, 2026.

Alan LaFave, president of Valley City State University in North Dakota, has been appointed president of Northern State University in South Dakota, starting in January.

Carolyn Noll Sorg, vice president for enrollment and marketing at John Carroll University in Ohio, has been appointed president of the university, effective June 1, 2026.

Jamilyn Penn, vice president of student services at Highline College in Washington, has been named acting president of the institution, effective immediately.

John Schol, retired bishop of the United Methodists in Greater New Jersey, has been selected as president of Centenary University, effective Dec. 1.

Michael Spagna, interim president of California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, has been appointed president of Sonoma State University, also part of the CSU system, effective Jan. 20, 2026.

Susan Stuebner, interim president of Simpson College in Iowa, has been named the university’s permanent president, effective immediately.

Gregory Tomso, who most recently served as vice president of academic engagement and student affairs for the University of West Florida, will become president of St. Cloud State University, part of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, effective Jan. 5, 2026.

Mary Ann Villarreal, vice president for institutional excellence at the American Association of Colleges and Universities, has been appointed interim president of California State University, Dominguez Hills, effective Jan. 1, 2026.

David Whitlock, interim president of Southeastern Oklahoma State University, has been appointed permanent president of the institution, effective immediately.

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December 4, 2025
Tribal Colleges Brace for Shift to Interior Department

As the U.S. Department of the Interior prepares to take on a greater role in administering federal funding for tribal colleges, institutional leaders fear financial uncertainty and losing long-standing trust with the Education Department.

The grant program is one of dozens the Education Department reshuffled to other federal agencies late last month in yet another effort by Secretary Linda McMahon to trim down its duties and ultimately dismantle the department. Through an interagency agreement, the Department of the Interior will now manage tribal colleges’ Title III funding, while ED retains oversight and policymaking responsibilities, according to an Education Department announcement.

Trump administration officials argue the move makes sense. The Department of the Interior, home to the Bureau of Indian Education, already oversees tribal K–12 schools and two tribal higher ed institutions, Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in New Mexico. The Department of the Interior also already administers higher education scholarships for Native students and other grant funding for tribal colleges.

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in the announcement that his department will assume administrative responsibilities “for enhancing Indian education programs, streamlining operations, and refocusing efforts to better serve Native youth and adults across the nation.”

The American Indian Higher Education Consortium said in a statement that it’s monitoring the policy shift and plans to work closely with the Department of the Interior “to ensure stability and continuity” for institutions and their students.

“AIHEC will continue to advocate for approaches that uphold the federal government’s trust and treaty obligations to Tribal Nations and protect the vital role of TCUs in advancing Tribal sovereignty and student success,” the statement read.

Concerns and Questions

Despite reassurances, tribal college leaders are leery of the upcoming change.

Stephen Schoonmaker, president of Tohono O’odham Community College in Arizona, said he understands the logic of the shift, given tribal colleges already have a strong relationship with the Bureau of Indian Education.

But the department also proposed cutting more than 80 percent of tribal colleges’ funding earlier this year, from roughly $127 million last year to about $22 million this year.

Congress didn’t approve the cut, but the proposal “was an existential threat to tribal colleges,” Schoonmaker said.

He believes institutions like his are safest when they have grants coming from multiple federal agencies. That way, if one agency cuts funding, there are still federal dollars flowing in from elsewhere.

“Putting everything under one basket that could be just cut all at once is not reassuring,” he said.

Even though he’s had positive experiences working with the BIE, he said he’s jarred by the uncertainty.

“With this administration, there is a propensity to shuffle things around and make a flurry of proposals, some of which get headway, some of which get dropped almost immediately,” Schoonmaker said, “and it makes it challenging to plan, to ensure for our students and for our employees and for our communities that we serve that the way we’ve been structured, the way that the trust and treaty obligations work … will continue to be honored.”

The administration hasn’t shared a transition plan with tribal college leaders, adding to their worries, said Chris Caldwell, president of the College of Menominee Nation in Wisconsin.

According to Caldwell, tribal college leaders are most concerned about the future of the funding mechanisms and support that has historically come from the Department of Education. “We want to make sure that those are retained or even increased,” Caldwell said.

He also questions how much the BIE will listen to tribal college leaders in its decision-making. For example, its proposal to slash tribal college funding came shortly after a listening session with institutional leaders, he said.

At the same time, he’s buoyed by the fact that bipartisan support not only saved colleges from proposed cuts, but it increased their funding; the Education Department funneled a historic one-time tranche of funds to tribal colleges, redirected from grants for other minority-serving institutions, earlier this year. Contributions from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, including a $10 million gift to the College of Menominee Nation, have also offered some extra stability.

“I have been on roller coasters, but never a roller coaster like this,” Caldwell said. But “I think that strong bipartisan support bodes well for us, even in the midst of this restructuring.”

Twyla Baker, president of Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College in North Dakota, said what’s most concerning to her is that the interagency agreement came as a “total surprise.”

“Tribes, tribal nations, tribal educators should have known about this,” she said. They “should have had input on this well before any type of moves should have been made, before any type of interagency agreements should have been signed … Consultation should have happened and needs to happen quickly if we’re going to continue on this path.”

She also has her doubts about ED shifting responsibilities over to the Department of the Interior. She said tribal college leaders have worked to develop expertise within the Education Department about their institutions and now it feels like that effort was for naught.

“You’re kind of pulling the rug out from under us,” she said. “And that structure, the regularity of how business is done, is going to be dismantled. You can’t just shove it over to somebody else’s responsibility and expect it to work well.”

She worries the transition could affect students if services and resource allocation are interrupted.

“That type of interruption can be pretty untenable for small schools in rural areas, which is what a lot of us are.”

Whatever happens, Baker said the transition is “a diversion of energy that didn’t necessarily have to happen where we could have been just focusing on our missions.”

A Fraught Past

The Bureau of Indian Education has come under fire in the past for its negligent oversight of K–12 schools and the two higher ed institutions in its care.

Members of Congress held a heated hearing last year in which many accused the Bureau of Indian Education of responding slowly or inadequately to student and employee complaints at Haskell Indian Nations University, including reports of sexual assault. Some Kansas lawmakers even proposed removing Haskell from federal control.

The BIE has also historically drawn criticism for poor academic outcomes, limited reporting, inadequate technology and deferred maintenance backlogs at its K–12 schools, ProPublica reported. A 2014 report by Sally Jewell, interior secretary under President Barack Obama, and former Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the BIE a “stain on our Nation’s history.” The report denounced the agency for producing “generations of American Indians who are poorly educated” and promised to undertake reforms.

(Tony Dearman, director of the Bureau of Indian Education since 2016, told ProPublica that the BIE has undergone changes since then, including a more direct process to inspect school buildings, make major purchases and enter into contracts.)

In a statement to Inside Higher Ed, the Department of the Interior described its new responsibilities toward tribal colleges as an “opportunity to better serve Native youth” and emphasized plans to solicit tribal college leaders’ input during the transition.

“As we move forward with efforts to improve the coordination and delivery of Native American education programs, the Bureau of Indian Education will continue to engage closely with tribes and education partners to ensure their perspectives inform our work,” the statement read.

“We value the input we receive from tribes and stakeholders, and we remain dedicated to building a future where Native students have the tools, support, and opportunities they need to thrive for generations to come.”

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December 4, 2025