Tag: Higher

  • 3 More Campus Leaders Face Congress

    3 More Campus Leaders Face Congress

    For the fifth time since late 2023, congressional Republicans on Tuesday interrogated a group of university leaders about campus antisemitism. But unlike previous hearings, this one was short on fireworks and viral moments, even as the three leaders—Georgetown University interim president Robert Groves; University of California, Berkeley, chancellor Rich Lyons; and City University of New York chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez—faced a grilling over faculty remarks, foreign funding and alleged failures to protect Jewish students from discrimination and harassment.

    While the first hearing, in December 2023, contributed to the ouster of the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, who equivocated on a hypothetical question about calls for the genocide of Jewish students, subsequent sessions have not had the same impact.

    Conducted by the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce, Tuesday’s hearing—titled “Antisemitism in Higher Education: Examining the Role of Faculty, Funding and Ideology”—spanned more than three hours and was interrupted several times by pro-Palestinian protesters, who were quickly removed. In sometimes-heated questioning, lawmakers focused on controversial social media posts by college employees and hypothetical situations, such as whether a faculty union might demand a boycott of Israel in collective bargaining agreements.

    But the campus leaders largely avoided gaffes and appeared to emerge mostly unscathed.

    Here are highlights from Tuesday’s hearing.

    Social Media in the Spotlight

    While past hearings often centered on what happened on campus—particularly at institutions that had pro-Palestinian encampments—at Tuesday’s hearing lawmakers focused more on social media, questioning and condemning posts by professors that were critical of Israel. Some posts also seemed to show support for Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

    Rep. Glenn Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, specifically highlighted a social media post from Georgetown employee Mobashra Tazamal, associate director of a multiyear research project on Islamophobia who allegedly reposted a statement that said, “Israel has been recreating Auschwitz in Gaza for two years.” Thompson asked interim president Robert Groves if he thought it was “appropriate for a Georgetown-affiliated scholar to publicly endorse a statement comparing Israel actions in Gaza to the evil of Auschwitz.”

    Groves made it clear that he rejected the statement and apologized to anyone harmed by it. But he also defended Georgetown officials for not disciplining Tazamal for the post.

    “That’s behavior covered under the First Amendment on social media that we don’t intervene on,” Groves told Thompson in response. “What we do intervene on quickly is behavior that affects our students in the classroom and research-related activities that involve students.”

    Republican lawmakers also asked about posts by Ussama Makdisi at UC Berkeley, zeroing in on one that read, “I could have been one of those who broke through the siege on October 7,” the title of an article sympathetic to the Palestinian plight that praised the “determination and courage” of the attackers.

    Several Republicans pressed Berkeley chancellor Rich Lyons on how he perceived that post and why Makdisi, a Palestinian American scholar who teaches history, was hired in the first place. Lyons, who became chancellor last July, acknowledged his concerns about the post.

    “I believe it was a celebration of the terrorist attack on Oct. 7,” he told lawmakers.

    Despite that acknowledgement, Lyons twice defended Makdisi as “a fine scholar” and said he was hired as the inaugural chair of a new Palestinian and Arab Studies program based on his qualifications. His defense prompted a sharp rebuke from Lisa McClain, a Michigan Republican.

    “I’m sure there’s a lot of murderers in prison that are fine people, too, fine scholars, but they do some pretty nefarious and heinous acts,” McClain responded to Lyons.

    Protest Interruptions

    Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted Tuesday’s proceedings at least four times. Authorities quickly shut down and removed protesters, who were not visible and only faintly audible via live stream.

    The protesters seemed to be targeting City University of New York chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, given that the interruptions occurred when he was speaking or being questioned by Congress. Partial phrases audible over the live stream included “blood on your hands” and “genocidal warmonger.”

    Florida Republican Randy Fine fired back after one such interruption.

    “Shut up and get out of here,” he bellowed at a protester, calling them a “loser” before blaming campus leaders for the disruption. “I hold you all responsible for this. It is the attitude that you have allowed on your college campuses that make people think that this is OK.”

    Stefanik Targets Legal Clinic

    New York Republican Elise Stefanik made headlines in prior hearings when she asked the hypothetical genocide question that tripped up the presidents of Harvard, Penn and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But for the first time in five antisemitism hearings, she did not ask that question. Instead she focused on a legal clinic at the CUNY School of Law

    She expressed concern that the legal clinic, CUNY CLEAR, is representing Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate who was arrested without charge and incarcerated for three months for his role in organizing pro-Palestinian campus protests.

    Khalil, who was freed last month, has not been accused of a crime and has subsequently sued the Trump administration, alleging he was falsely imprisoned and smeared by the federal government for First Amendment–protected activism.

    “Does it concern you that New York taxpayers are paying the salary for the legal defense fund of Mahmoud Khalil?” Stefanik asked Rodriguez. ”And I’ll remind you who Mahmoud Khalil is: This is the chief pro-Hamas agitator that led to the antisemitic encampments at Columbia, the rioting and violent takeover of Hamilton Hall, the harassment and physical assault of Jewish students.”

    The CUNY chancellor told Stefanik he was not aware CUNY CLEAR was representing Khalil, but that such decisions are “made in the clinics” and at the individual campus level.

    Dems Needle the GOP

    Democratic lawmakers focused less on the presidents on the stand than on the hearing itself. Several cast antisemitism concerns as pretext for the Trump administration’s crackdown on higher education. They also criticized the administration for slashing staff at the Office for Civil Rights, the enforcement arm of the Department of Education tasked with investigating antisemitism and other complaints.

    Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat, argued that Republicans are “weaponizing the real problems of the Jewish community” to attack higher education. She also noted that Republicans have been largely silent about President Donald Trump’s own antisemitic remarks recently.

    Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the Education and Workforce Committee, argued that the Trump administration is not approaching concerns about antisemitism in good faith but rather as a way to exert control.

    “The Trump administration is destabilizing higher education itself, eroding trust, silencing dissent and undermining universities’ ability to promote diversity and critical inquiry, while at the same time sabotaging the Office [for] Civil Rights,” he said in closing remarks. “Who suffers most from this strategy? It’s the students, Jewish and non-Jewish, marginalized and unrepresented. They’re the ones who will be left vulnerable and voiceless. This should not be a partisan debate. It should be about ensuring that our schools are safe, inclusive and intellectually vibrant.”

    However, House Education and Workforce chairman Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican, made it clear that despite criticism from Democrats, such hearings will continue to be held.

    “We need to continue to highlight bad actors in our higher education institutions,” Walberg said.

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  • Free Photo Library Captures Authenticity of Higher Ed

    Free Photo Library Captures Authenticity of Higher Ed

    The library’s photos offer an alternative to generic, staged stock photos of college life.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Allison Shelley/Complete College Photo Library

    Towering, Hogwarts-style academic buildings. Carefree young students posing with generic textbooks in their dorm rooms or throwing a Frisbee on the lawn. Racially balanced study groups composed of stunningly attractive students who may not actually be students at all.

    Those are the types of stock images that news organizations, policymakers, education and research groups, and institutions often use to visually represent what higher education looks like.

    “They have a very specific look and feel,” said Brandon Protas, interim vice president of alliance and engagement, research and innovation at the higher education advocacy group Complete College America. “Students are often posed, looking directly into the camera, and the racial makeup is very intentional.”

    While they may provide organizations with quick options to accompany stories, reports, presentations and campaigns, such photos don’t always represent what college life actually looks like on a particular campus. Portas said they can also reinforce misconceptions about higher education, including the widespread notion that it’s only an option for recent high school graduates who can afford to attend a pricey, residential, four-year institution.

    Although attending college isn’t without cost, many institutions—especially those rarely pictured in the stock photos that run alongside education-related media—are more affordable than the general public may believe. According to a recent survey from Strada, 77 percent of respondents said college is unaffordable, and the majority significantly overestimated how much it costs.

    “When people are saying college is too expensive, they’re probably not thinking about community colleges or states that offer free tuition programs. They’re thinking of really expensive, elite colleges, which aren’t the types of colleges most students are attending,” Protas said. “We want to change how people are seeing and understanding higher education.”

    That’s why CCA created the new Complete College Photo Library, which launched Wednesday. The searchable photo library includes nearly 1,000 photographs of college students at a mix of institution types, including historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, community colleges, tribal colleges, and technical schools. The photos are licensed under Creative Commons and are free for media outlets, researchers and education organizations to use for noncommercial purposes.

    “We took authentic photos of students, faculty and staff on-site to show the reality of students’ lived experiences,” Protas said. “If we can make this the go-to source that people look at first, then that can slowly influence the ecosystem.”

    The library, which is an ongoing project that will be updated with additional images, features photos from seven different campuses across the country, including Bergen Community College, the College of Northern New Mexico, the College of Southern Nevada, Salish Kootenai College, Pasadena City College, Tougaloo College and the University of Indianapolis. At each one, photographer Allison Shelley captured images of actual college students as they balanced their coursework with social lives, jobs and family responsibilities.

    Those artistic choices were meant to reflect the reality that for many college students, school is just one part of life. An estimated 20 percent of students are caregivers or parents, while learners over the age of 25 make up about one-third of all postsecondary students.

    The collection includes shots of students sitting in traditional lecture halls, meeting with their advisers, playing chess, walking to class, reading to their children and getting hands-on training in a variety of different technical fields.

    CCA’s selection of those institutions was designed to reflect a cross-section of geographic locations and institution types.

    And the types of institutions students attend also varies: More than 40 percent attend community colleges, which enroll higher numbers of Black and Hispanic students compared to other institutions. Moreover, HBCUs enroll 10 percent of all Black students in the United States, while HSIs enroll more than 65 percent of all Hispanic undergraduates.

    In addition to widening representation of institution types and student experiences, CCA’s project could also provide a model for how the higher education sector should portray itself during a moment of political and public scrutiny, said Nathan Willers, director of internal communications at the University of Denver, whose research has focused on authenticity in higher education marketing.

    “For a lot of institutions that have limited creative resources, they may be going to something like Shutterstock because they don’t have a lot of other options,” he said. A model like CCA’s library, however, shows how colleges can prioritize using photos that “look like real students in a real classroom with levels of diversity that are appropriate to the institution.”

    Over the past decade, colleges have made a dramatic swing from clamoring to portray themselves as bastions of racial and ethnic diversity—some have even been caught doctoring photos to create such an illusions—to dismantling their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts to comply with President Trump’s recent orders to root out any mention of DEI in education.

    When it comes to promoting a commitment to diversity and inclusion nowadays, “we really have to show and not tell, for better or worse,” Willers said. “This kind of a project helps inform institutions on how to show that effectively.”

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  • We Can’t Ban Generative AI but We Can Friction Fix It (opinion)

    We Can’t Ban Generative AI but We Can Friction Fix It (opinion)

    As the writing across the curriculum and writing center coordinator on my campus, faculty ask me how to detect their students’ use of generative AI and how to prevent it. My response to both questions is that we can’t.

    In fact, it’s becoming increasingly hard to not use generative AI. Back in 2023, according to a student survey conducted on my campus, some students were nervous to even create ChatGPT accounts for fear of being lured into cheating.  It used to be that a student had to seek it out, create an account and feed it a prompt. Now that generative AI is integrated into programs we already use—Word (Copilot), Google Docs (Gemini) and Grammarly—it’s there beckoning us like the chocolate stashed in my cupboard does around 9 p.m. every night.

    A recent GrammarlyGO advertisement emphasizes the seamless integration of generative AI. In the first 25 seconds of this GrammarlyGO ad, a woman’s confident voice tells us that GrammarlyGO is “easy to use” and that it’s “easy to write better and faster” with just “one download” and the “click of a button.” The ad also seeks to remove any concerns about generative AI’s nonhumanness and detectability: it’s “personalized to you”; “understands your style, voice and intent so your writing doesn’t sound like a robot”; and is “custom-made.” “You’re in control,” and “GrammarlyGO helps you be the best version of yourself.”  The message: Using GrammarlyGO’s generative AI to write is not cheating, it’s self-improvement. 

    This ad calls to my mind the articles we see every January targeting those of us who want to develop healthy habits. The ones that urge us to sleep in our gym clothes if we want to start a morning workout routine. If we sleep in our clothes, we’ll reduce obstacles to going to the gym. Some of the most popular self-help advice focuses on the role of reducing friction to enable us to build habits that we want to build. Like the self-help gurus, GrammarlyGO—and all generative AI companies—are strategically seeking to reduce friction by reducing time (“faster), distance (it’s “where you write”) and effort (it’s “easy”!). 

    Where does this leave us? Do we stop assigning writing? Do we assign in-class writing tests? Do we start grading AI-produced assignments by providing AI-produced feedback? 

    Nope. 

    If we recognize the value of writing as a mode of thinking and believe that effective writing requires revision, we will continue to assign writing. While there is a temptation to shift to off-line, in-class timed writing tests, this removes the opportunity for practicing revision strategies and disproportionately harms students with learning disabilities, as well as English language learners.  

    Instead, like Grammarly, we can tap into what the self-help people champion and engage in what organizational behavior researchers Hayagreeva Rao and Robert I. Sutton call “friction fixing.” In The Friction Project (St. Martin’s Press, 2024), they explain how to “think and live like a friction fixer who makes the right things easier and the wrong things harder.” We can’t ban AI, but we can friction fix by making generative AI harder to use and by making it easier to engage in our writing assignments. This does not mean making our writing assignments easier! The good news is that this approach draws on practices already central to effective writing instruction. 

    After 25 years of working in writing centers at three institutions, I’ve witnessed what stalls students, and it is rarely a lack of motivation. The students who use the writing center are invested in their work, but many can’t start or get stuck. Here are two ways we can decrease friction for writing assignments: 

    1. Break research projects into steps and include interim deadlines, conferences and feedback from you or peers. Note that the feedback doesn’t have to be on full drafts but can be on short pieces, such as paragraph-long project proposals (identify a problem, research question and what is gained if we answer this research question). 
    1. Provide students with time to start on writing projects in class. Have you ever distributed a writing assignment, asked, “any questions?” and been met with crickets? If we give students time to start writing in class, we or peers can answer questions that arise, leaving students to feel more confident that they are going in the right direction and hopefully less likely to turn to AI.

    There are so many ways we faculty (unintentionally) make our assignments uninviting: the barrage of words on a page, the lack of white space, our practice of leading with requirements (citation style, grammatical correctness), the use of SAT words or discipline-specific vocabulary for nonmajors: All this can signal to students that they don’t belong even before they’ve gotten started. Sometimes, our assignment prompts can even sound annoyed, as our frustration with past students is misdirected toward current students and manifests as a long list of don’ts. The vibe is that of an angry Post-it note left for a roommate or partner who left their dishes in the sink … again!

    What if we were to reconceive our assignments as invitations to a party instead?  When we design a party invitation, we have particular goals: We want people to show up, to leave their comfort zones and to be open to engaging with other people. Isn’t that what we want from our students when we assign a writing project? 

    If we designed writing assignments as invitations rather than assessments, we would make them visually appealing and use welcoming language.  Instead of barraging students with all the requirements, we would foreground the enticing facets of the assignment. De-emphasize APA and MLA formatting and grammatical correctness and emphasize the purpose of the assignment. The Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education framework is useful for improving assignment layout. 

    Further, we can invite students to write for real-world audiences and wrestle with what John C. Bean calls “beautiful problems.” As Bean and Dan Melzer’s Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom (Wiley, 2021) emphasizes, problems are naturally motivating. From my 25 years of experience teaching writing, students are motivated to write when they:

    • write about issues they care about;
    • write in authentic genres and for real-world audiences;
    • share their writing in and beyond the classroom;
    • receive feedback on drafts from their professors and peers that builds on their strengths and provides specific tasks for how to improve their pieces; and
    • understand the usefulness of a writing project in relation to their future goals. 

    Much of this is confirmed by a three-year study conducted at three institutions that asked seniors to describe a meaningful writing project. If assignments are inviting and meaningful, students are more likely to do the hard work of learning and writing. In short, we can decrease friction preventing engagement with our assignments by making them sound inviting, by using language and layouts that take our audience into consideration, and by designing assignments that are not just assessments but opportunities to explore or communicate. 

    How then do we create friction when it comes to using generative AI? As a writing instructor, I truly believe in the power of writing to figure out what I think and to push myself toward new insights. Of course, this is not a new idea. Toni Morrison explains, “Writing is really a way of thinking—not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.” If we can get students to truly believe this by assigning regular low-stakes writing and reinforcing this practice, we can help students see the limits of outsourcing their thinking to generative AI. 

    As generative AI emerged, I realized that even though my writing courses are designed to promote writing to think, I don’t explicitly emphasize the value of writing as mode of discovery, so I have rewritten all my freewrite prompts so that I drive this point home: “This is low-stakes writing, so don’t worry about sentence structure or grammar. Feel free to write in your native language, use bullet points, or speech to text. The purpose of this freewriting is to give you an opportunity to pause and reflect, make new connections, uncover a new layer of the issue, or learn something you didn’t know about yourself.” And one of my favorite comments to give on a good piece of writing is “I enjoy seeing your mind at work on the page here.” 

    Additionally, we can create friction by getting to know our students and their writing. We can get to know their writing by collecting ungraded, in-class writing at the beginning of the semester. We can get to know our students by canceling class to hold short one-on-one or small group conferences. If we have strong relationships with students, they are less likely to cheat intentionally. We can build these bonds by sharing a video about ourselves, writing introductory letters, sharing our relevant experiences and failures, writing conversational feedback on student writing, and using alternative grading approaches that enable us to prioritize process above product. 

    There are no “AI-proof” assignments, but we can also create friction by assigning writing projects that don’t enable students to rely solely on generative AI, such as zines, class discussions about an article or book chapter, or presentations: Generative AI can design the slides and write the script, but it can’t present the material in class. Require students to include interactive components to their presentations so that they engage with their audiences. For example, a group of my first-year students gave a presentation on a selection from Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, and they asked their peers to check their phones for their daily usage  report and to respond to an anonymous survey.

    Another group created a game, asking the class to guess which books from a display had been banned at one point or another. We can assign group projects and give students time to work on these projects in class; presumably, students will be less likely to misuse generative AI if they feel accountable in some way to their group. We can do a demonstration for students by putting our own prompts through generative AI and asking students to critique the outputs. This has the two-pronged benefit of demonstrating to students that we are savvy while helping them see the limitations of generative AI. 

    Showing students generative AI’s limitations and the harm it causes will also help create friction. Generative AI’s tendency to hallucinate makes it a poor tool for research; its confident tone paired with its inaccuracy has earned it the nickname “bullshit machine.” Worse still are the environmental costs, the exploitation of workers, the copyright infringement, the privacy concerns, the explicit and implicit biases, the proliferation of mis/disinformation, and more. Students should be given the opportunity to research these issues for themselves so that they can make informed decisions about how they will use generative AI. Recently, I dedicated one hour of class time for students to work in groups researching these issues and then present what they found to the class. The students were especially galled by the privacy violations, the environmental impact and the use of writers’ and artists’ work without permission or compensation. 

    When we focus on catching students who use generative AI or banning it, we miss an opportunity to teach students to think critically, we signal to students that we don’t trust them and we diminish our own trustworthiness.  If we do some friction fixing instead, we can support students as they work to become nimble communicators and critical users of new technologies.

    Catherine Savini is the Writing Across the Curriculum coordinator, Reading and Writing Center coordinator, and a professor of English at Westfield State University. She enjoys designing and leading workshops for high school and university educators on writing pedagogy.

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  • Pa. Clinic Run by Students Supports Community Health

    Pa. Clinic Run by Students Supports Community Health

    Experiential learning opportunities provide students with a space to connect in-classroom learning to real-world situations. A student-run clinic at Widener University provides graduate health science professional students with hands-on learning and career experiences while supporting community health and well-being for Chester, Pa., residents.

    The Chester Community Clinic was founded in 2009 for physical therapy services but has since expanded to cover other health and wellness services, including occupational therapy and speech-language pathology. The clinic gives students studying those fields leadership opportunities, experience working with diverse clients and the confidence to tackle their professional careers.

    What’s the need: Before the clinic was established, physical therapy students at Widener would volunteer at a pro bono clinic in nearby Philadelphia. But students pushed for a clinic within Chester, which is considered a primary care health professional shortage area, meaning it lacks enough providers to serve the local population.

    For some patients, a lack of health insurance can impede their ability to receive care. In Pennsylvania, 5.4 percent of residents are without private or public health insurance, roughly two percentage points lower than the national average. The clinic addresses gaps in health care by providing services for free while educating future health science professionals.

    How it works: The clinic is led by a board of 12 to 14 students from each class and supervised by faculty and community members who are licensed physical therapists. Students begin service in their second semester of the program and participate in the clinic until their final clinical placement.

    Most clients are referred by a physician but have been turned away from local PT clinics due to a lack of health insurance or because they exceeded the allotted insurance benefits for PT.

    During appointments, students provide direct physical therapy services to patients, including making care plans, walking them through exercises and creating medical records.

    Over the years, the clinic has expanded to include occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, clinical psychology and social work services. In 2024, Widener included a Community Nursing Clinic to provide pro bono services as well.

    All students studying physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech-language pathology at Widener volunteer at the clinic as part of the program requirements. PT students are required to serve a minimum of three evenings per semester; board members typically serve more hours.

    The clinic’s multifaceted offerings increase opportunities for students to work across departments, engaging with their peers in other health professions to establish interdisciplinary plans for care.

    Free Talent

    Other colleges and universities offer pro bono student services to support community members and organizations:

    • Gonzaga University has a student-led sports consulting agency that offers strategy ideas and tools to sports brands and teams.
    • Utah Valley University students can intern with a semester-long program that provides digital marketing to businesses in the region.
    • American University’s Kogod School of Business has a business consulting group that provides students with project-based consulting experience.
    • Carroll University faculty and students in the behavioral health psychology master’s program run a free mental health clinic for those in the area.

    The impact: Since the clinic began in 2009, students have provided over 12,000 physical therapy appointments to community members, worth about $1.3 million in costs, according to a 2024 press release from the university.

    A 2017 program evaluation, published in the Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice, found that PT students who served in the pro bono clinic felt more equipped to launch into clinical work. They were prepared to manage documentation, use clinical reasoning and engage in interprofessional communication.

    A 2020 study of the clinic also found that students performed better than expected in cultural competence, perhaps due to their experience engaging with clients from a variety of ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, health literacy levels, religions and languages.

    Both Widener and students in the health science professions continue to support the development of other pro bono clinics. The class of 2015 created The Pro Bono Network, facilitating advancement of student-run pro bono services among 109 member institutions across the country. This past spring, Widener’s annual Pro Bono Network Conference welcomed 250 individuals working at or affiliated with pro bono clinics, and featured 32 student leaders presenting their work.

    How do your students gain hands-on experience and give back? Tell us more.

    This article has been updated to reflect the addition of a pro bono nursing clinic in 2024, not the creation of it, and to identify students as health science professional students, not health professional students.

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  • Tax Policy Belongs in Liberal Arts Curriculum (opinion)

    Tax Policy Belongs in Liberal Arts Curriculum (opinion)

    As congressional Republicans scratched and clawed to pass President Trump’s signature policy effort, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—a sprawling, tax-heavy package celebrated as much for its branding as for its contents—it is notable how few people could explain what exactly was in it. Tax cuts for some, probably. A Social Security bonus, maybe. A gutting of public benefits, almost certainly. What is clear, though, is that the bill’s complexity was always in service of its politics: When no one understands tax policy, it’s much easier to sell whatever story you want.

    That confusion is exactly why we should be teaching tax policy more broadly—not just in sparsely attended law school classes and accounting departments, but in general education curricula and first-year seminars. Tax isn’t just a technical rule-following subject; it’s a civic one. Tax policy shapes everything from fairness and inequality to the functional shape of the state itself. Yet, most students will graduate college without ever being asked to consider what tax is for—much less whom it helps, whom it harms and why it remains so easy to obscure.

    That is precisely the starting point for the course I designed at Drexel University, Introduction to Tax Theory and Policy, which I teach in our innovative undergraduate law major, housed at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law. It’s not a course for aspiring tax attorneys, prospective C.P.A.s or Excel mavens—few of my students intend to practice tax law. They’re interested in criminal or family law, or they’re business majors, future social workers, engineers or undecided second-years. But they’re all taxpayers—and that’s the relevant bit.

    Courses like mine aim to democratize access to legal and policy tools so that all students, irrespective of their major, can become more informed and empowered participants in civic life. In class, we don’t parse tax rates or calculate deductions. No calculators are required, and at no point is anyone expected to consider the straight-line depreciation of an apartment complex. We ask why the system is built the way it is, and we talk about the power that it reflects and protects. We talk about values: what kinds of behavior the tax code encourages or punishes. We talk about trust and legitimacy: What happens when people believe the system is rigged, and what if they’re right? In short, we treat tax not as a set of arcane rules and rates to memorize, but as a lens through which we can better understand the power structures we live under.

    The surprising part (at least to me, when I first taught it and admittedly just hoped I wouldn’t be lecturing to an empty room) is how much students connect with this approach. More than connect with it—they often enjoy it. I’ve received feedback from students that describes the class as life-changing and course reviews that have noted how it changed assumptions regarding what tax even is. High praise from 19- and 20-year-olds.

    The course itself draws on philosophy, political theory, economics and law—but what it really cultivates is a kind of civic literacy. It asks students to think about who they are in relation to the state and how much of their future may be shaped by the tax policy they’ve never been taught to see. For many, it is the first time they’ve encountered taxation not as something to dodge, but as something to question, debate and reimagine in furtherance of their own values.

    In one session, we explore how the tax code is employed as a kind of soft steering wheel in the economy—how it at turns encourages homeownership, subsidizes sports stadiums, directs corporate research and development, and shapes (or even outright creates) the market for electric vehicles. Another week, we explore estate taxes and inheritance: not just who pays, but what it means to redistribute wealth across generations and what happens when we don’t. We read Garrett Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons,” engage in spirited debates about the potential for tax to solve the artificial intelligence copyright debate, and unpack why TurboTax spent two decades fighting free filing.

    Over the course of the class, the question shifts away from what is a tax and toward whose values does this system reflect? That shift—from mere definitional awareness to focused critical engagement—is when I know the class is working. Students cease to see tax as someone else’s problem and begin seeing it as a potent tool of and for democracy.

    In their final papers, students have proposed remarkably forward-looking and sophisticated tax policy reforms—reflecting both creativity and civic seriousness. One student argued that companies receiving public subsidies through tax credits, like chemical and drug manufacturers, should be barred from claiming additional credits to remediate harms their products create. Another proposed a data-collection “sin tax” aimed at discouraging exploitative surveillance practices by tech companies. These aren’t rote academic exercises. They’re thoughtful intervention proposals that treat tax as a lever for shaping society.

    If tax policy determines who gets what, who pays for it and how the government keeps a hand in the marketplace, then it belongs squarely at the heart of a liberal arts education. We don’t cabin discussions of justice in law schools, and we don’t isolate questions of the public good in policy programs—why do we treat taxation, which intersects with both and innumerable other facets of modern life, as off-limits or too technical for undergraduates?

    This isn’t a plea to teach undergraduates to file their own taxes—though there is probably a case to be made for that, too. It’s about ensuring curricula help them understand how the world works and how it’s been designed to work for some more than others. That means tackling the politics of Internal Revenue Service funding, exploring how “tax relief” often functions as an upstream transfer of wealth and how a positively sprawling bill like the one recently passed through Congress can obscure much more than it reveals.

    If no one understands how tax policy works, how can anyone meaningfully weigh in on whether they support one revenue bill or another? On issues like immigration, abortion or education funding, many people bring at least some passing knowledge or lived experience to the conversation. Tax remains, for most, a black box. The more opaque it becomes, the more tempting it is for lawmakers to retreat into it—tucking major redistributive choices into the shadows of the tax code, where they can be shielded from public scrutiny.

    On the other hand, when students come to see tax as a form of the civic superstructure—something they live within and not just under—they are empowered to not only understand tax policy but to shape it. That should be one of the goals of any serious undergraduate education.

    We don’t have to, and should not, keep treating tax as one professional niche within other professional niches. If we want students to understand how tax relates to power, fairness and democratic participation, we should give them the tools to talk about it. This needn’t focus on the rates and rules but should illustrate the values taxes reflect and trade-offs they embed.

    Courses like mine don’t require a background in economics, accounting or law. They require a willingness to take seriously the idea that how we tax equates to how we govern. If we can help students see tax not as a source of dread or line item on their paycheck, but as the site of collective economic decision-making, we don’t just produce better-informed graduates—we’ll also produce more engaged citizens.

    Andrew Leahey is a practice professor of law at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law.

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  • Rufo, Shapiro, Others Ask Trump for New Higher Ed “Contract”

    Rufo, Shapiro, Others Ask Trump for New Higher Ed “Contract”

    A conservative think tank called on President Trump Tuesday to “draft a new contract” that universities must follow or face “revocation of all public benefit.” Among other things, institutions would have to end “their direct participation in social and political activism,” abolish “DEI bureaucracies,” and publish “complete data on race, admissions, and class rank,” according to the statement put out by the Manhattan Institute.

    “The Manhattan Statement on Higher Education” also says universities must deliver “swift and significant penalties, including suspension and expulsion, for anyone who would disrupt speakers, vandalize property, occupy buildings, call for violence, or interrupt the operations of the university.”

    “Beginning with the George Floyd riots and culminating in the celebration of the Hamas terror campaign, the institutions of higher education finally ripped off the mask and revealed their animating spirit: racialism, ideology, chaos,” the statement says.

    “The universities have contributed to a new kind of tyranny, with publicly funded initiatives designed to advance the cause of digital censorship, public health lockdowns, child sex-trait modification, race-based redistribution, and other infringements on America’s long-standing rights,” it says.

    Among the 44 signatories are:

    • Christopher Rufo, an anti-DEI activist, member of the New College of Florida Board of Trustees and Manhattan Institute senior fellow;
    • Virginia Foxx, a Republican U.S. representative from North Carolina who chaired the House Education and the Workforce Committee;
    • Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto professor emeritus and Daily Wire contributor;
    • Ben Shapiro, a podcaster and Daily Wire co-founder;
    • Scott Yenor, a Claremont Institute fellow and Boise State University professor who resigned from the University of West Florida Board of Trustees after implying only straight white men should be in political leadership;
    • Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars; and
    • Mark Bauerlein, an Emory University professor emeritus and member of the New College of Florida Board of Trustees.

    In an email to Inside Higher Ed, Rufo wrote, “The American people have reached a decision point: to continue subsidizing the corruption of the universities, or to demand sensible, popular, and targeted reforms.”

    In a post on X Tuesday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon congratulated Rufo and the Manhattan Institute for “envisioning a compelling roadmap to restore integrity and rigor to the American academy!” But Education Department spokespeople didn’t specifically say whether the federal government would take action on the proposed contract.

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  • U.S. Universities Can’t Innovate in Isolation (opinion)

    U.S. Universities Can’t Innovate in Isolation (opinion)

    In a paradoxical bid to “make America great again,” President Trump and congressional Republicans are pushing to restrict international research collaboration in U.S. higher education. The Department of Education is investigating Harvard University; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Pennsylvania for potential violations of the Higher Education Act, which requires universities to report foreign gifts and contracts valued at $250,000 or more.

    Policymakers are further proposing to lower that threshold to $50,000 and require universities to obtain federal waivers before entering into contracts with “foreign countries of concern.” The administration is also seeking to prohibit Harvard from enrolling international students and placing full or partial travel bans on people from 19 countries. And after pausing student visa interviews for about a month starting in May, the administration is now scrutinizing applicants’ social media accounts to approve or deny their visas.

    At a time when the global race to develop cutting-edge technologies is accelerating, the U.S. should be expanding—not constraining—its international research partnerships.

    Federal demands for foreign gift reporting kicked off in 1986, after Georgetown University received donations from Arab governments to establish its Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Policymakers worried about potential strings attached, such as influence over curricula and threats to free speech, resulting in legislation requiring universities to disclose foreign funding. Over time, however, compliance waned, and successive administrations allowed the law to fall into disuse.

    That changed in 2019, when the Trump administration revived enforcement and began investigating universities for noncompliance, uncovering billions of dollars in unreported funding. The concern then, as now, was that a lack of transparency threatened academic independence and posed national security risks.

    It is understandable to want to know if foreign governments are influencing American institutions. But is there good reason to think current rules are effective, or that stricter ones would be?

    There is little evidence that decades of lax enforcement have led to significant harm. The Trump administration’s China Initiative, for example, sought to root out espionage in academia but instead cast a wide, indiscriminate net, leading to criminal charges against professors like Feng Tao, Anming Hu and Gang Chen based on questionable allegations. In each case, charges were ultimately dropped or the scientists were acquitted, but not before reputations were damaged and careers derailed. Of the 162 cases prosecuted by the Department of Justice under the China Initiative, only about 20 involved university researchers, and at least nine of these cases ended in dismissed charges or acquittals. The initiative illustrates how geopolitical anxiety can erode academic freedom and damage innocent collaborations for little gain.

    Both the previous and current Trump administrations have scrutinized universities’ research, including on dual-use technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics systems and laser technology, arguing that they can be used to advance foreign governments’ (particularly China’s) military objectives. But politicians too often fail to acknowledge that most applications in these fields are nonmilitary, including autonomous vacuum cleaners, industrial robots and self-driving cars. Autonomous systems have been a long-standing area of global research, much of it geared toward civilian innovation. Moreover, federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, have implicitly supported this research through funding.

    While reporting can be onerous, requiring universities to obtain federal waivers to collaborate with researchers from “foreign countries of concern” is more intrusive. So too are possibly biased social media screening of foreign students and travel bans that prevent entire populations from engaging with U.S. institutions. These policies move beyond transparency into gatekeeping, forcing universities to seek permission before working with researchers from countries like China, home to more than 1.4 billion people and a global leader in scientific research. Past historical lessons on how political tensions have been allowed to erode academic freedom do not need to be relearned.

    Although the U.S. Department of Education claimed to improve the process for foreign gift reporting with a new portal in the first Trump administration, it increased the amount of information for colleges to report. The reporting process, while intended to enhance transparency, imposes bureaucratic costs on institutions.

    Preserving open academic environments, where innovation can thrive, is not a liability, but a strategic advantage. Still, precautions should be taken. Sensitive research should be classified by the federal government. Companies partnering with universities should set clear terms about who can access proprietary projects. People who violate classification rules or contract terms should face consequences. But the default should be freedom, not prohibition.

    To keep America great, it is essential to preserve the openness and intellectual freedom that define U.S. higher education and make it the best postsecondary system in the world, at least as indicated by its dominance of international rankings, share of Nobel laureates and attractiveness to international students. Open academic environments encourage innovation, foster critical thinking and enable researchers to explore cutting-edge fields—including those vital to national competitiveness.

    If the U.S. is to maintain its position as a global leader in research, it must champion academic freedom, not restrict it.

    Neal McCluskey is the director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, where Kayla Susalla is a research associate.

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  • Reading “Nexus” as Opportunity for Different Type of AI Conversation

    Reading “Nexus” as Opportunity for Different Type of AI Conversation

    Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari

    Published in September 2024

    The last book I recommended for digital learning teams to read to fuel conversations about AI and higher education was Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With AI by Ethan Mollick. It is short, taking only four hours and 39 minutes to read in audiobook format. (Is there any other way to read books?)

    Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI is an altogether different beast. Reading this book entails absorbing some significant opportunity costs at a portly 17 hours and 28 minutes of listening time.

    Counterintuitively, at this moment in higher education, Nexus’s 17 hours and 28 minutes of required attention are more feature than bug. All of us working in digital learning and higher education would do well to trade time reading about the latest assault on our values and institutions and instead spend that time listening to Harari tell his AI story.

    Despite the value of Nexus as a distraction from news, screens and any conversations about almost anything nowadays, real value can be derived from the book in our campus discussions about AI. Granted, a bit of handwaving may be necessary to connect Harari’s story with how we are going to infuse AI into our curriculum, course production and university administrative processes. As with most exercises in lateral thinking, the benefits come from the process, not the ends, and any attempt to connect the ideas in Nexus to campus AI policies and practices is sure to yield some interesting results.

    What Harari sets out to do in Nexus is fit the emergence and future impact of AI within the broader historical story of the evolution of information networks. As with all prior information technology revolutions, AI (or at least generative AI) will decrease information creation and transmission costs.

    In higher education, we already see the impact of AI-generated content, as AI-created assessments and AI-generated synthesis of course videos and readings appear across a wide range of online courses. Very quickly, we will start to see a transition from subject matter expert instructional videos to SME avatar media, generated from nothing more than a headshot and a script.

    Harari’s worry about our AI future is that generative AI can create new information. Information does not equal knowledge, as platforms for dissemination can just as quickly (or more easily) spread disinformation as facts. What happens when generative AI generates and spreads so much disinformation that practical knowledge gets overwhelmed?

    Unlike Mollick’s book Co-Intelligence, which is practical and positive, Nexus is abstract and a bit scary. It will be challenging to read Nexus with the goal of making connections with how we might handle the rise of generative AI on our campuses and within our industry without arriving at some level of pessimistic concern. After all, we are in the business of knowledge creation and dissemination, and generative AI promises to change (perhaps radically) how we go about both of these activities.

    A second area of higher education AI concern that reading Nexus will do little to alleviate revolves around who creates the tools. The history of universities being dependent on the platforms of for-profit companies to accomplish our core mission-related teaching activities is not an encouraging precedent. The thought of higher education as a passenger in a corporate vehicle of AI tools and capabilities should invoke first worry and then action.

    While Nexus’s lack of actionable steps for universities in the age of AI might frustrate many in our community looking for that road map, it may be that taking a 30,000-foot view is what is needed to best assess the landscape. What Nexus lacks in practical advice around AI for higher education, it excels in providing the overarching framework (information networks) and historical context in which to have different (and perhaps more ambitious) campus conversations on AI.

    What are you reading?

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  • The Brand Power of Licensing

    The Brand Power of Licensing

    For many colleges and universities, licensed merchandise has long been a quiet but steady source of revenue and brand visibility. From sweatshirts and baseball caps to water bottles and notebooks, these products not only generate income but also serve as walking billboards that boost school spirit and brand recognition far beyond campus.

    But lately, there’s been a shift. Higher ed marketers should be paying close attention to what’s happening in the licensing space, because the early warning signs of disruption are already here.

    Tariffs and Canceled Orders: A Brewing Storm

    Recent increases and uncertainty regarding tariffs on imported goods are driving up pricing for licensees to manufacture and import collegiate merchandise. With rising material, shipping and import costs, many licensees are reassessing their strategies. Some are choosing to cancel or reduce purchase orders, pulling back on riskier bets or deprioritizing smaller-volume schools in favor of top-tier brands with national visibility. Some are choosing to completely rebuild their supply chains, which involves changing product offerings, factory partners and source nations. Smaller-volume schools necessarily will be cut from some offerings as supply chains are rebuilt.

    For institutions outside the Power Four athletic conferences, that means your branded products may no longer be showing up on some store shelves for a while or may be offered in significantly reduced volume. Even for larger schools, the financial strain on licensees and the changes they need to make could lead to diminished SKU/style offerings, fewer special collections, slower product refreshes and reorders, and less innovation.

    The Impact on Brand Visibility and Affinity

    This isn’t just a revenue issue; it’s a brand issue. Licensed merchandise is one of the few marketing channels that turn fans, alumni and students into ambassadors. Today’s prospective students are tomorrow’s student body and future alumni and lifetime fans. When a fan or parent wears your school’s hoodie to the grocery store or a high school senior sees your logo in a retail window, that visibility reinforces your institution’s cultural presence.

    If fewer products are being made or if those products aren’t showing up in physical and digital storefronts, your brand presence shrinks. That affects more than just sales; it influences how connected your audience feels to your institution and has downstream negative impacts on enrollment, community involvement, donations and athletic support. These supply chain and licensee challenges are coming on the heels of significant COVID-related upheavals and before an anticipated nationwide enrollment cliff related to shrinking high school population.

    Why Marketing Leaders Should Get Involved

    Traditionally, licensing may live under auxiliary services or a separate business office. But as marketing leaders, we should be partnering more closely with licensing teams to ensure we have a full picture of how our brand is performing in the marketplace.

    Here are three steps marketing leaders can take now to mitigate the impact of this changing landscape.

    1. Re-Engage With Your Licensing Team

    Ask for a performance snapshot: How have royalties trended? Are specific categories, like youth apparel, tailgating gear or alumni merchandise, down or up more than others? What are your top-selling or worst-performing licensees and SKUs? Are there any retail partners you could work with to broaden their selection of licensed products?

    1. Evaluate Your Licensee Mix and Sourcing Strategy

    Encourage conversations about domestic sourcing options and alternative manufacturers with domestic production. If one of your primary partners is pulling back due to tariffs, there may be smaller or niche partners who are better equipped to weather the storm and innovate in response.

    1. Activate Your Community Through Storytelling

    If retail sales are contracting, consider how your marketing team can help drive traffic to official online stores or promote domestic-sourced direct-to-consumer efforts. Strategic storytelling such as featuring alumni-owned or local licensees or highlighting sustainable merchandise can align with institutional values while boosting sales.

    A Moment for Brand Resilience

    In higher ed, we often talk about resilience in terms of enrollment, endowment or curriculum. But brand resilience matters, too, and licensing is a key part of that equation. As market conditions tighten, schools that stay actively involved in their licensing strategy will have an advantage—not just financially, but reputationally.

    Now is the time to treat your licensing portfolio not as a passive revenue stream but as an extension of your brand strategy. The marketers who do will be best positioned to navigate the challenges ahead and emerge stronger.

    Jenny Petty is vice president, marketing communications, experience and engagement, and chief marketing and communications officer, and Denise “Goat” Lamb is chief licensing officer at the University of Montana.

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  • Student Success Resources for Academic Advisers

    Student Success Resources for Academic Advisers

    Academic advisers play a key role in helping students navigate higher education.

    Martine Doucet/E+/Getty Images

    Academic advising is key to helping students navigate their institution and critical for student engagement and retention. However, not every student receives high-quality advising.

    A 2023 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse found that just over half (55 percent) of college students said they were advised on their required coursework for graduation. And a 2023 survey by Tyton Partners found that only 65 percent of students were aware of academic advising supports on campus, compared to 98 percent of college employees who said the service was available.

    In a 2024 Student Voice survey, 75 percent of students said they had at least some trust in academic advisers on their campus, while 20 percent said they had not much trust in them.

    High caseloads, a lack of coordination among departments and low student engagement with resources are some of the top challenges advisers face in their work, according to a 2024 report by Tyton Partners.

    Inside Higher Ed compiled five resources to support academic and faculty advisers in their goal of promoting student success.

    1. Advising Journey Map

    NASPA’s Advising Success Network hired a group of student fellows to create advising support resources for colleges and universities that reflect students’ identities and educational goals. One resource, a journey map, was developed by three students and highlights the ideal and lived experiences students had navigating the institution, as well as any gaps in awareness or support. For example, while students expect to feel empowered and supported during their class registration period, in reality, according to the map, they feel confused but ready. In fact, the word “confused” is used four times in the 13 steps along the map, and “scared” appears three times.

    The resource is designed to help college advisers recognize the discrepancies between expectations and reality, as well as the ways nontraditional learners may feel differently about their college experience compared to their traditional-aged peers.

    1. Understanding Generative AI Tools

    While many advisers want to better engage and support students, burnout and high caseloads can reduce the time and ability staff have to work with them.

    Reports from Tyton Partners and EAB find opportunities to implement generative AI tools to help reduce redundancies and increase human-to-human interactions between advisers and advisees.

    Course registration, in particular, is one area ripe for generative AI support, according to Tyton’s report, because the technology can enhance student autonomy, facilitate more informed decisions and allow advisers to focus on issues like safety or financial aid that can’t be addressed by technology. A student survey included in Tyton’s report also shows that students prefer using generative AI for academic advising and course registration, making it a more natural fit.

    The University of Central Florida employed CampusEvolve.AI to aid with course registration and the University of Michigan developed its own tool, U-M Maizey, to provide 24-7 advising resources to students.

    1. Trauma-Informed Support

    College students today are increasingly diverse in their lived experiences, socioeconomic backgrounds, disabilities and racial and ethnic identities. A greater number of students also report trauma and significant mental health challenges, which makes providing student-centered care essential in all settings across the university. Inside Higher Ed’s 2023 Student Voice survey found that 38 percent of respondents believe advisers have a responsibility to help students who are struggling with mental health concerns.

    InsideTrack and the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce created a resource to advise staff on how to reduce trauma and toxic stress at higher education institutions in order to improve employee morale and, in turn, address student outcomes.

    1. Advising Summit

    Campus-specific training supports can also enhance services and ensure staff are confident enough to engage with students.

    The University of Pittsburgh helps upskill its academic advisers and others across the institution with support and awareness for historically marginalized student groups at the Mentoring and Advising Summit.

    The annual conference is a free, one-day experience open to anyone interested to share ideas and explore tools used by departments. In addition to the event, early career staff can join a Pitt Mentoring and Advising Community Circle to receive support and encouragement as they navigate their roles and seek to improve their work.

    1. Digital Courses

    In addition to providing reports and white papers that focus on boosting advising support for a variety of learners, including incarcerated students, HBCU students and student parents, the Advising Success Network offers online course opportunities.

    The six courses are asynchronous and free, providing attendees with evidence-based advising practices focused on equity and closing opportunity gaps for student from racial minorities or low-income backgrounds.

    Course topics include facilitating cross-campus collaboration, holistic advising efforts and leveraging technology, among others.

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

    This article has been updated to reflect the University of Pittsburgh’s advising summit is open to the public, not just campus members.

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