Tag: Higher

Change Management in Higher Ed Isn’t a One-Off, It’s a Leadership Discipline
Heraclitus once said, “The only certainty in life is change.” I don’t often quote ancient philosophers, but that line feels especially true in the context of higher education.”

We hear a lot about change and change management in higher ed, but we don’t hear enough about how to successfully navigate it and use it as a springboard to propel institutions forward. But change in our industry is no longer episodic; it’s constant. From evolving student expectations to emerging technologies and shifting funding models, institutions are facing wave after wave of disruption. The sheer volume of change within higher education makes effective change management not just important, but essential to success.

Too often, change management in higher education is treated like a checklist: a one-and-done plan that lives and dies with the project at hand. A new technology platform. A revised advising model. A restructured academic department. Each initiative gets a task force, a timeline, maybe a town hall or two. Then it ends.

This reactive, fragmented approach may get things over the finish line, but it can also lead to burnout, resistance, and a lack of long-term adoption. Change fatigue is real, and without a strategic change management plan, it can lead to staff turnover and a revolving door of changes that fail to realize their full potential. Institutions get stuck in a perpetual loop of short-term fixes and long-term frustration.

We can’t continue to treat change management in higher education as a one-time initiative but need to start thinking of it as a core leadership discipline.

Higher ed change management deserves a seat at the table

Higher ed leaders are navigating an environment where agility is essential. Budgets are tighter. Competition is fiercer. Student needs are more complex. And digital transformation is an ongoing reality that will drive constant change.

But too often, higher education views change management as a reactive function, kicking in when something is already in motion, such as implementing a new CRM, redesigning an advising model, or centralizing key functions and departments. The focus is often on damage control: How do we minimize pushback, smooth over disruptions, and reach the finish line without too much friction?

Start by elevating change management to the strategic level, not only giving it a seat at the leadership table, but also providing it with the same structure, dedicated resources, and strategic oversight as any other core function. Schools that do this are better equipped to:
- Improve cross-campus alignment
- Reduce resistance and increase buy-in
- Accelerate the adoption of new systems or models
- Minimize disruption to students and staff
- Deliver better outcomes, faster
The bottom line? In this climate, the ability to manage change effectively is a competitive advantage. If you want your institution to be resilient, you need to be deliberate about how you manage change.

Build the muscle: 3 strategies for better change management in higher ed

To help get you started, here are three practical ways you can help your institution build confidence, strengthen its change management muscle, and create a culture that’s ready to adapt.

1. Create a change management playbook and use it

Successful change management cannot be ad hoc or reactive. A change management playbook brings clarity and consistency. It outlines the steps, tools, and best practices for managing change from start to finish. When creating your playbook, consider:
- Stakeholder mapping: Who are the executive sponsors? Who is affected? Who are the influencers? Who needs to be consulted early and often?
- Communication protocols: What do different audiences need to know and when? How will you keep them informed and engaged? How will the messages be delivered? How will we gather feedback?
- Training and support: What tools, resources, or guidance will people need to succeed in the new environment?
Having a playbook doesn’t mean every change looks the same. It means every change follows a thoughtful, proactive approach, building institutional memory and contributing to a proven, repeatable model. It also sends a clear signal to your campus community: We take change seriously, and we’re investing in doing it well.

Don’t silo your playbook. Make it a shared resource across IT, academic affairs, student services, and marketing. The more aligned your teams are, the more cohesive your change efforts will be.

2. Appoint change champions across the institution

Change doesn’t stick because a VP says so. It sticks because people at every level understand it, own it, and advocate for it.

That’s why identifying change champions is essential. Change champions are individuals with influence in their peer groups who understand the value of the change and are willing to help others navigate the transition. They can be faculty, staff, or student leaders. When building your network, identify advocates across departments and at all levels.

Empower these individuals with context, talking points, and direct lines of communication to leadership. Let them surface concerns early and share success stories along the way. Peer advocacy goes a long way in building trust, momentum, and reinforcing key messages.

The result? Change doesn’t feel imposed. It feels supported, even co-owned.

3. Make Communication your top priority

Communication is the lifeblood of effective change management in higher education. But too often, it’s treated as an afterthought. You can’t lead change in silence, and exceptional leaders should communicate early and often

Your institution should approach communication with intention and discipline:
- Start with the “why” behind the change. People are more likely to support change when they understand its purpose.
- Tailor messages to each audience. Faculty care about different things than students or staff. Don’t send one-size-fits-all emails and expect engagement.
- Use multiple channels. Email, intranet, in-person forums, social media, video — different people absorb information in different ways.
- Be transparent, even when things aren’t going according to plan. Share what you know, when you know it. When things change, explain why.
Clear, frequent communication is one of the most powerful tools you for building trust and reducing resistance. And remember: Communication is a two-way street. Build feedback channels into your plan. Listen actively. Adapt as needed.

Change management as a strategic function

So, what does it look like when an institution treats change management as a true leadership discipline? It looks like this:
- A standing change management office or role, reporting into strategy or operations.
- A centralized playbook that guides every major initiative.
- Regular training and coaching for leaders on how to lead through change.
- KPIs and feedback loops that track engagement, adoption, and outcomes.
- An inclusive culture where stakeholders are part of the process, not just recipients of it.
In this model, change is no longer a disruption. It’s a capability. Something your institution can do reliably, thoughtfully, and at scale.

Lead like change is the constant

If you take one thing away from this, let it be that change management isn’t a project, it’s a leadership discipline. It deserves the same strategic attention as budgeting, enrollment planning, or accreditation. Because, when done right, it unlocks the potential of your people, your technology, and your mission.

Change will keep coming, and by making change management a core part of how your institution operates every day, you can take control of it and effectively drive your desired outcomes.

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July 9, 2025
Higher Education Inquirer : Forgetting Henry George

As American colleges and universities spiral deeper into debt, corporatization, and social irrelevance, it is worth asking not just what ideas dominate the landscape—but what ideas have been buried, neglected, or deliberately forgotten. Among the most significant casualties in our intellectual amnesia is Georgist economics, a once-influential school of thought that offered a radical, yet practical, alternative to both capitalism’s excesses and socialism’s centralization. And in today’s extractive academic economy—what Devarian Baldwin calls the “UniverCity”—its insights are more relevant than ever.

The Ghost of Henry George

Henry George, a 19th-century American political economist, is best known for his seminal work Progress and Poverty (1879), in which he argued that while technological and economic progress increased wealth, it also deepened inequality—primarily because the gains were siphoned off by landowners and monopolists. His solution was deceptively simple: tax the unearned income from land and natural monopolies, and use that revenue to fund public goods and social services.

At one time, George’s ideas inspired political movements, policy debates, and even academic curricula. He was considered a serious rival to Karl Marx and a practical philosopher for American reformers, including the early labor movement. Cities like San Francisco saw brief experiments with land value taxation. But today, outside niche think tanks and the occasional urban planning circle, Georgism is a faint echo, barely audible in the halls of economic departments or public policy schools.

The University and the Land

If we look at contemporary higher education through a Georgist lens, what emerges is a sobering picture. Colleges and universities are not merely neutral grounds for the exchange of ideas—they are massive holders of land, beneficiaries of public subsidies, and agents of displacement. Institutions from NYU to the University of Chicago to Arizona State have used their nonprofit status and real estate portfolios to expand into communities, often gentrifying and pricing out working-class and BIPOC residents.

At the same time, these same institutions profit from a credentialing economy built on a foundation of student loan debt. Over 43 million Americans collectively owe more than $1.6 trillion in federal student loans, an economy of indebtedness that props up tuition-driven institutional budgets while shackling generations of graduates. The very students who attend these universities, often in the hope of upward mobility, find themselves trapped in debt servitude—subsidizing administrative bloat, sports franchises, and real estate empires they will never own.

This is where Devarian Baldwin’s work becomes critical. In In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower, Baldwin exposes how universities have become “anchor institutions,” deeply embedded in the urban fabric—not just through education, but through policing, property development, hospital systems, and labor exploitation. These institutions accumulate wealth not by producing new knowledge, but by extracting rents—social, economic, and literal—from their surroundings.

Baldwin and George, though a century apart, are speaking to the same fundamental economic injustice: wealth flowing upwards through property and privilege, at the expense of the many.

Why Georgism Was Forgotten

So why has Georgism disappeared from mainstream education? The answer lies partly in the success of those it sought to regulate. Landowners and financiers, who stood to lose the most from land value taxation, worked diligently to discredit George’s theories. Neoclassical economics, with its abstract models and marginal utility curves, became the dominant language—obscuring the real-world power dynamics of land and labor.

Universities, especially elite ones, adopted this neoclassical framework, increasingly aligning their interests with those of capital. Philanthropic foundations and corporate donors funded economic departments and think tanks that promoted market fundamentalism. Over time, Georgism—radical yet rooted in common sense—was pushed out of the curriculum.

This forgetting wasn’t accidental. It was ideological.

A Forgotten Game with a Forgotten Message

A striking example of Georgism’s cultural erasure lies in the very board game that has taught generations about capitalism: Monopoly. Originally created in the early 20th century by a woman named Elizabeth Magie, the game was first called The Landlord’s Game and was explicitly designed to illustrate Henry George’s ideas. Magie’s intent was pedagogical—she wanted players to see how land monopolies enriched a few while impoverishing others, and to promote George’s remedy of a single land tax.

But over time, the game was appropriated and rebranded by Parker Brothers and later Hasbro, stripped of its Georgist message and recast as a celebration of ruthless accumulation. What began as a cautionary tale about inequality became a glorification of it—a metaphor for how George’s ideas were not just buried but inverted.

In that sense, Monopoly is the perfect symbol for the American university: a system that once had the potential to democratize opportunity but now functions as a machine for privatizing wealth and socializing risk, leaving students and communities to pick up the tab.

What Higher Education Could Learn—and Teach

If the goal of higher education is to educate an informed, critical citizenry, then forgetting Georgist economics is not just an intellectual oversight—it’s a moral failure. Henry George offered a vision of society where value created by the community is returned to the community. In the age of student debt, university land grabs, and deepening inequality, this vision is urgently needed.

Imagine a higher education system where public revenue from land values funds debt-free college. Imagine a world where students no longer mortgage their futures for degrees whose value is increasingly uncertain. Imagine colleges not as engines of gentrification but as stewards of local wealth, investing in community-owned housing and cooperatives. Imagine students learning about economics not just as math problems, but as moral questions about justice, equity, and the public good.

Devarian Baldwin’s scholarship, much like George’s, invites us to interrogate power structures and imagine alternatives. It’s time for a revival of that imagination.

Relearning the Unlearned

Reclaiming Georgist economics in the academy would not be a return to some golden past, but a reckoning with the present. It would mean confronting the rentier logic at the heart of higher education—and the debt-based financing that sustains it—and reorienting our institutions toward justice and common prosperity.

In a moment when so much of American higher ed is collapsing under its own contradictions, perhaps what’s needed is not another billion-dollar endowment or ed-tech unicorn, but an idea long buried: that land—and learning—should belong to the people.

For the Higher Education Inquirer, this is part of an ongoing inquiry into the pasts we forget, the futures we imagine, and the power structures that shape both.

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July 9, 2025
Higher Education Inquirer : Trump’s March Backward

The United States is witnessing an alarming shift in the balance of power. Recent actions by the Supreme Court and Congress have effectively cleared the way for President Donald Trump to exercise authority in ways critics say resemble authoritarian rule.

Central to this shift is the Supreme Court’s decision on July 8, 2025, to allow Trump’s mass federal layoffs to proceed. This ruling overturned a lower court’s injunction that had temporarily blocked the president’s executive order to slash tens of thousands of federal jobs. The layoffs target agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Services, critical players in addressing climate change, public health, and education.

The court’s decision was unsigned and passed 8–1, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting. Her dissent warned that the ruling emboldens the president to exceed constitutional limits without proper checks.

Just weeks earlier, Congress passed what supporters called the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” a sweeping budget package that enshrined Trump-era tax cuts, eliminated taxes on tips and Social Security income, and drastically reduced funding for social safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP. The bill also increased Pentagon spending by $125 billion. The legislation passed strictly along party lines, with no Democratic votes.

The atmosphere of intensifying executive authority was underscored on June 14, 2025, when Trump staged a large-scale military parade in Washington, D.C., reminiscent of displays typically seen in authoritarian regimes. The parade featured tanks, fighter jets, and thousands of troops marching through the capital, a spectacle widely criticized as an exercise in pageantry and a troubling signal of militarism. In response, spontaneous “No Kings” protests erupted nationwide, with demonstrators rejecting what they saw as the cultivation of a personality cult and warning against the erosion of democratic norms.

These domestic developments unfold against a backdrop of escalating global crises and geopolitical realignments. The Trump administration has maintained a confrontational stance toward China, imposing new tariffs that have intensified a growing economic cold war. This friction comes as the BRICS coalition — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — gains strength, seeking alternatives to the U.S.-dominated financial and diplomatic order.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to supply arms and financial support to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, while simultaneously imposing inconsistent policies that weaken its international credibility, especially regarding the unresolved Palestinian conflict.

At home, the Trump administration’s deregulation of the cryptocurrency market has raised alarms. With minimal oversight, the growing crypto economy faces increased risks of fraud and instability, a symptom of the broader laissez-faire approach that favors corporate interests over public protections.

Adding to domestic turmoil, Trump has controversially pardoned dozens of individuals convicted for their roles in the January 6 Capitol insurrection, framing them as “political prisoners.” Many have ties to extremist groups, and Trump has proposed hiring preferences for them within the federal government’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency, which is leading the controversial federal workforce layoffs.

Legal experts and civil rights organizations argue these actions collectively undermine the constitutional principle of separation of powers. They say the administration’s use of executive orders and politically motivated pardons bypasses Congress and the courts, weakening democratic oversight.

Congress’s role has also been questioned. By passing the partisan budget bill without bipartisan support, critics argue lawmakers have effectively rubber-stamped an agenda that dismantles government functions, cuts vital social programs, and expands military spending.

The Supreme Court’s emergency ruling to lift the injunction against the layoffs further signals the judiciary’s retreat from its role as a check on executive power. By acting swiftly and without a full hearing, the court has allowed a significant reshaping of the federal workforce without thorough judicial review.

Together, these developments mark a troubling trend toward the concentration of power in the executive branch. Observers warn that if left unchecked, these actions could erode the foundations of American democracy and weaken its position in an increasingly multipolar world.

Sources

San Francisco Chronicle, “Supreme Court clears way for Trump to resume mass federal layoffs” (July 8, 2025)

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/trump-mass-firings-20761715.php

Associated Press, “Trump signs sweeping tax, spending bill on July 4” (July 4, 2025)

https://apnews.com/article/3804df732e461a626fd8c2b43413c3f0

Politico, “House Republicans pass ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ after weeks of division” (May 22, 2025)

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/22/house-republicans-pass-big-beautiful-bill-00364691

Business Insider, “Supreme Court rules in favor of Trump’s federal layoffs” (July 8, 2025)

https://www.businessinsider.com/supreme-court-ruling-trump-firings-federal-agencies-2025-7

Washington Post, “Trump begins mass commutations for Jan. 6 rioters, defends actions as ‘justice reform’” (March 1, 2025)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/01/trump-jan-6-pardons

Medicare Rights Center, “Final House vote looms on devastating health and food assistance cuts” (July 3, 2025)

https://www.medicarerights.org/medicare-watch/2025/07/03/final-house-vote-looms-on-devastating-health-and-food-assistance-cuts

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July 9, 2025
Keep in Mind That AI Is Multimodal Now

Remember in late 2022 when ChatGPT arrived on the international scene and you communicated with AI through a simple chat bot interface? It was remarkable that you could type in relatively short prompts and it would instantly type back directly to you—a machine with communication capability!

For most of us, this remains the most common daily mode of accessing and utilizing AI. Many of us are using AI only as a replacement for Google Search. In fact, Google Search AI Overviews, are now a standard feature, which was announced last year for a significant portion of users and search queries. They appear at the top of the results, and only after allowing you to follow up with a deeper dive are you taken to the old list of responses. As of mid-June 2025, the rollout of AI Overviews has progressed to the point where these overviews are a common sight at the top of search results pages. Yet the whole world of communication is open now for most of the frontier models of AI—and with the new communication modes comes a whole world of possibilities.

In order to more fully utilize the remarkable range of capabilities of AI today, we need to become comfortable with the many input and output modes that are available. From audio, voice, image and stunning video to massive formally formatted documents, spreadsheets, computer code, databases and more, the potential to input and output material is beyond what most of us take for granted. That is not to mention the emerging potential of embodied AI, which includes all of these capabilities in a humanoid form, as discussed in this column two weeks ago.

So, what can AI do with images and videos? Of course, you can import images as still photographs and instruct AI to edit the photos, adding or deleting objects within the image. Many apps do this exceptionally well. This does raise questions about deepfakes, images that can be shared as if they were real, when actually they are altered by AI in an attempt to mislead the public. Most such images do carry a watermark that indicates the image was generated or altered by AI. However, there are watermark removers that will wash away those well-intended alerts.

One example of using the image capability of AI is in the app PictureThis, which describes itself as a “botanist in your pocket.” As one would expect, you can upload a picture from your smartphone and it will identify the plant. It will also provide a diagnosis of any conditions or diseases that it can determine through the image, offer care suggestions such as optimal lighting and watering, point out toxicity to humans and pets, and provide tips on how to help your plant thrive. In education, we can utilize AI to provide these kinds of services to learners who simply take a snapshot of their work.

We can build upon the PictureThis example to create a kind of “professor in your pocket” that offers enhanced responses to images that, for example, might include an attempt to solve a mathematical problem, develop a chemistry formula, create an outline for an essay and much more. The student may simply take a smartphone or screenshot of their work and share it with the app, which will respond with what may be right and wrong in the work as well as give ideas of further research and context that will be helpful.

Many of us are in positions where we need to construct spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and more formal reports with cover pages, tables of contents, citations and references. AI stands ready to convert data, text and free-form writing into perfectly formatted final products. Use the upload icon that is commonly located near the prompt window in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or other leading models to upload your material for analysis or formatting. Gemini, a Google product, has direct connections with Google apps.

Many of these features are available on the free tier of the products. Most major AI companies have a subscription tier for around $20 per month that provides limited access to higher levels of their products. In addition, there are business, enterprise, cloud and API levels that serve organizations and developers. As a senior fellow conducting research, I maintain a couple of subscriptions that enable me to seamlessly move through my work process from ideation to creation of content, then from content creation to enhancement of research inserting creative concepts and, finally, to develop a formal final report.

Using the pro versions gives access to deep research tools in most cases. This mode provides far more “thinking” by the AI tool, which can provide more extensive web-based research, generate novel ideas and pursue alternative approaches with extensive documentation, analysis and graphical output in the form of tables, spreadsheets and charts. Using a combination of these approaches, one can assemble a thoughtful deep dive into a current or emerging topic.

AI can also provide effective “brainstorming” that integrates deep insights into the topics being explored. One currently free tool is Stanford University’s Storm, a research prototype that supports interactive research and creative analyses. Storm assists with article creation and development and offers an intriguing roundtable conversation that enables several virtual and human participants to join in the brainstorming from distant locations.

This has tremendous potential for sparking interactive debates and discussions among learners that can include AI-generated participants. I encourage faculty to consider using this tool as a developmental activity for learners to probe deeply into topics in your discipline as well as to provide experience in collaborative virtual discussions that presage experiences they may encounter when they enter or advance in the workforce.

In general, we are underutilizing not only the analytical and composition capabilities of AI, but also the wealth of multimode capabilities of these tools. Depending upon your needs, we have both input and output capabilities in audio, video, images, spreadsheets, coding, graphics and multimedia combinations. The key to most effectively developing skill in the use of these tools is to incorporate their time-saving and illustrative capabilities into your daily work.

So, if you are writing a paper and have some data to include, try out an AI app to generate a spreadsheet and choose the best chart to further clarify and emphasize trends. If you need a modest app to perform a repetitive function for yourself or for others, for example, generating mean, mode and standard deviation, you can be helped by describing the inputs/outputs to AI and prompt it to create the code for you. Perhaps you want to create a short video clip as a simulation of how a new process might work; AI can do that from a description of the scene that you provide. If you want to create a logo for a prospective project, initiative or other activity, AI will give you a variety of custom-created logos. In all cases, you can ask for revisions and alterations. Think of AI as your dedicated assistant who has multimedia skills and is eager to help you with these tasks. If you are not sure how to get started, of course, just ask AI.

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July 9, 2025
The Hidden Curriculum of Student Conduct Proceedings
For first-generation students, the hidden curriculum—the unstated norms, policies and expectations students need to know in higher education—can be a barrier to participating in high-impact practices, leaving them in the dark about how to thrive in college.

But new research aims to identify the lesser-known policies that disadvantage first-generation students and to make them more accessible. During a panel presentation at NASPA’s Student Success in Higher Education conference in June, Kristin Ridge, associate dean of students and community standards at the University of Rhode Island, discussed her doctoral research on first-generation students and how they interact with the student handbook and conduct spaces on campus.

What’s the need: First-generation students make up 54 percent of all undergraduates in the U.S., or about 8.2 million students. But only one in four first-generation students graduates with a college degree, compared to nearly 60 percent of continuing-generation students.

First-generation students are often diverse in their racial and ethnic backgrounds and come with a variety of strengths, which academic Tara Yosso describes as the cultural wealth model. But in some areas, including higher ed’s bureaucratic processes, first-gen students can lack family support and guidance to navigate certain situations, Ridge said. Her personal experience as a first-generation learner and a conduct officer pushed her to research the issue.

“It really came to a head when I was dealing with two students who had a similar circumstance, and I felt like one had a better grasp of what was going on than the other one, and that was something that didn’t sit right with me,” Ridge said. “I felt like the behavior should be what I am addressing and what the students are learning from, not their previous family of origin or lived experience.”

Conduct systems are complicated because they require a fluency to navigate the bureaucracy, Ridge said. Student handbooks are often written like legal documents, but the goal of disciplinary proceedings is for students to learn from their behavior. “If a student doesn’t understand the process or the process isn’t accessible to them, there are very real consequences that can interrupt their educational journey,” she added.

Some states require conduct sanctions to be placed on a student’s transcript or a dean’s report for transfer application. These sanctions can result in debt, stranded credits or underemployment if students are unable to transfer or earn a degree.

“Sometimes [continuing-generation] students who have parents or supporters can better understand what the implications of a sanction would be,” Ridge says. “Students who don’t have that extra informed support to lean on may unwittingly end up with a sanction that has more long-term impact than they realize.”

First-generation students may also experience survivor’s or breakaway guilt for having made it to college, which can result in them being less likely to turn to their families for help if they break the student code of conduct or fear they will be expelled for their actions, Ridge said.

Therefore, colleges and universities should seek to create environments that ensure all students are aware of conduct procedures, the content of the student handbook and how to receive support and advocacy from both the institution and their communities, Ridge said.

Creating solutions: Some key questions conduct staff members can ask themselves, Ridge said, include:
- Is the handbook easy to access, or is it hidden behind a login or pass code? If students or their family members or supporters have to navigate additional steps to read the student handbook, it limits transparency and opportunities for support.
- Is content available in plain English or as an FAQ page? While institutions must outline some expectations in specific language for legal reasons, ensuring all students understand the processes increases transparency. “I like to say I want [students] to learn from the process, not feel like the process happened to them,” Ridge said.
- Is the handbook available in other languages? Depending on the student population, offering the handbook in additional languages can address equity concerns about which families can support their students. Hispanic-serving institutions, for example, should offer the handbook in Spanish, Ridge said.
- Who is advocating for students’ rights in conduct conversations? Some institutions offer students a conduct adviser, which Ridge says should be an opt-in rather than opt-out policy.
- Is conduct addressed early in the student experience? Conduct is not a fun office; “no one’s going to put us on a parade float,” Ridge joked. That’s why it’s vital to ensure that students receive relevant information when they transition into the institution, such as during orientation. “My goal is for them to feel that they are holding accountability for their choices, that they understand and learn from the sanctions or the consequences, but I don’t want them to be stressed about the process,” Ridge said. Partnering with campus offices, such as TRIO or Disability Services, can also ensure all students are aware of conduct staff and the office is seen less as punitive.
If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.
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July 9, 2025
Essay on Faculty Engagement and Web Accessibility (opinion)
Inaccessible PDFs are a stubborn problem. How can we marshal the energy within our institutions to make digital course materials more accessible—one PDF, one class, one instructor at a time?

Like many public higher education institutions, William & Mary is working to come into compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines by April 2026. These guidelines aim to ensure digital content is accessible for people who rely on screen readers and require that content be machine-readable.

Amid a flurry of other broad institutional efforts to comply with the federal deadline, my colleague—coordinator of instruction for libraries Liz Bellamy—and I agreed to lead a series of workshops designed to help instructors improve the accessibility of their digital course materials. We’ve learned a lot along the way that we hope can be instructive to other institutions engaged in this important work.

What We’ve Tried

Our first big hurdle wasn’t technical—it was cultural, structural and organizational. At the same time various groups across campus were addressing digital accessibility, William & Mary had just moved our learning management system from Blackboard Learn to Blackboard Ultra, we were beginning the rollout of new campuswide enterprise software for several major institutional areas, the institution achieved R-1 status and everyone had so many questions about generative AI. Put plainly, instructors were overwhelmed, and inaccessible PDFs were only one of many competing priorities vying for their attention.

To tackle the issue, a group of institutional leaders launched the “Strive for 85” campaign, encouraging instructors to raise their scores in Blackboard Ally, which provides automated feedback to instructors on the accessibility of their course materials, to 85 percent or higher. The idea was simple—make most course content accessible, starting with the most common problem: PDFs that are not machine-readable.

We kicked things off at our August 2024 “Ready, Set, Teach!” event, offering workshops and consultations. Instructors learned how to find and use their Ally reports, scan and convert PDFs, and apply practical strategies to improve digital content accessibility. In the year that followed, we tried everything we could think of to keep the momentum going and move the needle on our institutional Ally score above the baseline. Despite our best efforts, some approaches fell flat:
- Let’s try online workshops! Low engagement.
- What about in-person sessions? Low attendance.
- But what if we feed them lunch? Low attendance, now with a fridge full of leftovers.
- OK, what if we reach out to department chairs and ask to speak in their department meetings? It turns out department meeting agendas are already pretty full; response rates were … low (n = 1).
The truth is, instructors are busy. Accessibility often feels like one more thing on an already full plate. So far, our greatest success stories have come from one-on-one conversations and by identifying departmental champions—instructors who will model and advocate for accessible practices with discipline-specific solutions. (Consider the linguistics professor seeking an accurate 3-D model of the larynx collaborating with a health sciences colleague, who provided access to an interactive model from an online medical textbook—enhancing accessibility for students learning about speech production.)

But these approaches require time and people power we don’t always have. Despite the challenges we’ve faced with scaling our efforts, when success happens, it can feel a little magical, like the time at the end of one of our highly attended workshops (n = 2) when a previously skeptical instructor reflected, “So, it sounds like accessibility is about more than students with disabilities. This can also help my other students.”

What We’ve Learned
Two ingredients seem essential:

Activation energy: Instructors need a compelling reason to act, but they also need a small step to get started; otherwise, the work can feel overwhelming.
Sometimes this comes in the form of an individual student disclosing their need for accessible content. But often, college students (especially first year or first generation) don’t disclose disabilities or feel empowered to advocate for themselves. For some instructors, seeing their score in Ally is enough of a motivation—they’re high achievers, and they don’t want a “low grade” on anything linked to their name. More often, though, we’ve seen instructors engage in this work because a colleague or department chair tells them they need to. Leveraging positive peer pressure, coupled with quick practical solutions to improve accessibility, seems to be an effective approach.
1. Point-of-need support: Help must be timely, relevant and easy to access.
When instructors feel overwhelmed by the mountain of accessibility recommendations in their Ally reports, they are often hesitant to even get started. We’ve found that personal conversations about student engagement and course content or design often provide an opening to talk about accessibility. And once the door is open, instructors are often very receptive to hearing about a few small changes they can make to improve the accessibility of their course content.

Where Things Stand

Now for the reality check. So far, our institutional Ally score has been fairly stagnant; we haven’t reached the 85 percent goal we set for ourselves. And even for seasoned educational developers, it can be discouraging to see so little change after so much effort. But new tools offer hope. Ally recently announced planned updates to allow professors to remediate previously inaccessible PDFs directly in Blackboard without having to navigate to another platform. If reliable, this could make remediation more manageable, providing a solution at the point of need and lowering the activation energy required to solve the problem.

We’re also considering:
- Focus groups to better understand what motivates instructors to engage in this work.
- Exploring the effectiveness of pop-up notifications that appear with accessibility tips and reminders when instructors log in to Blackboard to raise awareness and make the most of point-of-need supports.
- Defining “reasonable measures” for compliance, especially for disciplines with unique content needs (e.g., organic chemistry, modern languages and linguistics).
Leading With Empathy

One unintended consequence we’ve seen: Some instructors are choosing to stop uploading digital content altogether. Faced with the complexity of digital accessibility requirements, they’re opting out rather than adapting. Although this could help our institutional compliance score, it’s often a net loss for students and for learning, so we want to find a path forward that doesn’t force instructors to make this kind of choice.

Accessibility is about equity, but it’s also about empathy. As we move toward 2026, we need to support—not scare—instructors into compliance. Every step we make toward increased accessibility helps our students. Every instructor champion working with their peers to find context-specific solutions helps further our institutional goals. Progress over perfection might be the only sustainable path forward.
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July 9, 2025
Higher education leadership is at an inflection point – we must transform, or be transformed

At a recent “fireside chat” at a sector event, after I had outlined to those present some details of the transformational journey the University of East London (UEL) has been on in the past six years, one of those attending said to me: “Until UEL has produced Nobel Prize winners, you can’t say it has transformed.”

While I chose not to address the comment immediately – the sharp intake of breath and rebuttals that followed from other colleagues present seemed enough at the time – it has played on my mind since.

It wasn’t so much the comment’s narrow mindedness that shocked, but the confidence with which it was delivered. Yet, looking at the ways in which we often celebrate and highlight sector success – through league tables, mission groups, or otherwise – it is little wonder my interlocutor felt so assured in his worldview.

Value judgement

This experience leads me to offer this provocation: as a sector, many of our metrics are failing us, and we must embrace the task of redefining value in 21st century higher education with increased seriousness.

If you disagree, and feel that traditional proxies such as the number of Nobel Prizes awarded to an institution should continue to count as the bellwethers for quality, you may wish to pause and consider a few uncomfortable truths.

Yes, the UK is a global leader in scientific excellence. But we are also among the worst in the OECD for translating that science into commercial or productivity gains. The UK is a leading global research hub, producing 57 per cent more academic publications than the US in per capita terms. Yet compared to the US, the UK lags significantly behind in development and scale-up metrics like business-funded R&D, patents, venture capital and unicorns.

Universities have been strongly incentivised to increase research volume in recent years, but as the outgoing chief executive of UKRI Ottoline Leyser recently posited to the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology committee do we need to address this relatively unstrategic expansion of research activity across a range of topics, detached from economic growth and national priorities? Our global rankings – built on proxies like Nobel Prizes – are celebrated, while our real-world economic outcomes stagnate. We excel in research, yet struggle in relevance. That disconnect comes at a cost.

I recently contributed to a collection of essays on entrepreneurial university leadership, edited by Ceri Nursaw and published by HEPI – a collection that received a somewhat critical response in the pages of Research Professional, with the reviewer dismissing the notion of bold transformation on the basis that: “The avoidance of risk-taking is why universities have endured since the Middle Ages.”

Yes. And the same mindset that preserved medieval institutions also kept them closed to women, divorced from industry, and indifferent to poverty for centuries. Longevity is not the same as leadership – and it’s time we stopped confusing the two. While we should all be rightfully proud of the great heritage of our sector, we’re at real risk of that pride choking progress at a critical inflection point.

Lead or be led

Universities UK chief executive Vivienne Stern’s recent keynote at the HEPI Annual Conference reminded us that higher education has evolved through tectonic shifts such as the industrial revolution’s technical institutes, the social revolution that admitted women, the 1960s “white heat” of technological change, and the rise of mass higher education.

Now we are on the edge of the next seismic evolution. The question is: will the sector lead it, or be shaped by it? At the University of East London, we’ve chosen to lead by pressing ahead with a bold transformation built on a central premise that a careers-first approach can drive success in every part of the university – not on precedents that leave us scrambling for relevance in a changing world.

Under this steam, we’ve achieved the UK’s fastest, most diversified, debt-free revenue growth. We’ve become an engine of inclusive enterprise, moving from 90th to 2nd in the UK for annual student start-ups in six years, with a more than 1,000 per cent increase in the survival of student-backed businesses. We’ve overseen a 25-point increase in positive graduate outcomes – the largest, fastest rise in graduate success – as well as ranking first in England for graduating students’ overall positivity. We use money like we use ideas: to close gaps, not widen them. To combat inequality, not entrench it.

So, let me return to the Nobel Prize comment. The metrics that matter most to our economy and society, the achievements that tangibly improve lives, are not displayed in glass cabinets – rather those that matter most are felt every day by every member of our society. Recent polling shows what the public wants from growth: improved health and wellbeing, better education and skills, reduced trade barriers. Our government’s policy frameworks – from the industrial strategy to the AI strategy – depend on us as a sector to deliver those outcomes.

Yet how well do our reputational rankings align with these national imperatives? How well does our regulatory framework reward the institutions that deliver on them? Are we optimising for prestige – or for purpose? We are living at a pivot point in history. The institutions that thrive through it will not be those that retreat into tradition. They will be those that rethink leadership, rewire purpose, and reinvent practice.

Too much of higher education innovation is incremental; transformational innovation is rare. But it is happening – if we choose to see it, support it, and scale it. I urge others to join me in making the case for such a choice, because the next chapter of higher education will be written by those who act boldly now – or rewritten for those who don’t.

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July 9, 2025
Higher Education Inquirer : IMPORTANT INFO for Sweet v Cardona (now Sweet v McMahon) CLASS

Just dropping this IMPORTANT INFO from the DOE for Sweet v Cardona (now Sweet v McMahon) peeps who are CLASS – DECISION GROUPS and POST-CLASS.

Edited To Add

Decisions Class are streamlined R and R submissions.

Post-class denials MUST ask the DOE for a reconsideration, which allows you to add additional evidence.

Orginial Post:

For REVISE and RESUBMITS (R and R) notices, the DOE is now saying that they WILL “disregard R and R*”* submissions if you EMAIL additional supporting documents or material. You CANNOT email the R and R back.

You MUST submit a NEW BDTR APPLICATION and INCLUDE your previous BDTR application number which can be fund on the Denial letter.

YOU HAVE 6 MONTHS TO RE-SUBMIT FROM THE RECEIPT OF THE R AND NOTICE (Here: https://studentaid.gov/borrower-defense**/

**)

The DOE states, “If you email supplemental information to the DOE or attempt to update your existing application, you will be treated as having failed to Revise and Resubmit”.

ALSO, If you are still trying to add more evidence to your BDTR application this late in the game, you may want to wait for the decision letter to come out. We are reaching Group 5 Decision deadline, and Post-Class is 6 months after that. If you feel uneasy about your evidence, START collecting it now!

Follow all DIRECTIONS on anything you get from the DOE relating to BDTR (except demanding payment, they can pound sand LOL).

In Solidarity!!!

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July 8, 2025
Higher Education Inquirer : College Financial Aid: How It Really Works

Crucial Insights: Understanding College Financial Aid Dynamics

(00:02:56) Variety of College Financial Assistance Options
(00:05:18) Scholarships: Balancing Merit and Financial Need
(00:10:00) Student Selection Strategies in College Admissions
(00:21:40) Financial Aid Strategy at Competitive vs. Smaller Schools
(00:26:29) Major-based Financial Aid Allocation in Colleges

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July 8, 2025
The Quick Convo All Writing Teams Should Have (opinion)
Scenario 1: You’re part of a cross-disciplinary group of faculty members working on the new general education requirement. By the end of the semester, your group has to produce a report for your institution’s administration. As you start to generate content, one member’s primary contributions focus on editing for style and mechanics, while the other members are focused on coming to an agreement on the content and recommendations.

Scenario 2: When you’re at the stage of drafting content for a grant, one member of a writing team uses strikethrough to delete a large chunk of text, with no annotation or explanation for the decision. The writing stops as individual participants angrily back channel.

Scenario 3: A team of colleagues decides to draft a vision statement for their unit on campus. They come to the process assuming that everyone has a shared idea about the vision and mission of their department. But when they each contribute a section to the draft, it becomes clear that they are not, in fact, on the same page about how they imagine the future of their unit’s work.

In the best case scenarios, we choose people to write with. People whom we trust, who we know will pull their weight and might even be fun to work with. However, many situations are thrust upon us rather than carefully selected. We have to complete a report, write an important email, articulate a new policy, compose and submit a grant proposal, author a shared memo, etc., with a bunch of folks we would likely not have chosen on our own.

Further, teams of employees tasked with writing are rarely selected because of their ability to write well with others, and many don’t have the language to talk through their preferred composing practices. Across professional writing and within higher education, the inability to work collaboratively on a writing product is the cause of endless strife and inefficiency. How can we learn how to collaborate with people we don’t choose to write with?

Instead of just jumping into the writing task, we argue for a quick conversation about writing before any team authorship even starts. If time is limited, this conversation doesn’t necessarily need to be more than 15 minutes (though devoting 30 minutes might be more effective) depending on the size of the writing team, but it will save you time—and, likely, frustration—in the long run.

Drawing from knowledge in our discipline—writing studies—we offer the following strategies for a guided conversation before starting any joint writing project. The quick convo should serve to surface assumptions about each member’s beliefs about writing, articulate the project’s goal and genre, align expectations, and plan the logistics.

Shouldn’t We Just Use AI for This Kind of Writing?

As generative AI tools increasingly become integrated into the writing process, or even supplant parts of it, why should people write at all? Especially, why should we write together when people can be so troublesome?

Because writing is thinking. Certainly, the final writing product matters—a lot—but the reason getting to the product can be so hard is that writing requires critical thinking around project alignment. Asking AI to do the writing skips the hard planning, thinking and drafting work that will make the action/project/product that the writing addresses more successful.

Further, we do more than just complete a product/document when we write (either alone or together)—we surface shared assumptions, we come together through conversation and we build relationships. A final written product that has a real audience and purpose can be a powerful way to build community, and not just in the sense that it might make writers feel good. An engaged community is important, not just for faculty and staff happiness, but for productivity, for effective project completion and for long-term institutional stability.

Set the Relational Vibe

To get the conversation started, talk to each other: Do real introductions in which participants talk about how they write and what works for them. Talk to yourself: Do a personal gut check, acknowledging any feelings/biases about group members, and commit to being aware of how these personal relationships/feelings might influence how you perceive and accept their contributions. Ideas about authorship, ownership and credit, including emotional investments in one’s own words, are all factors in how people approach writing with others.

Articulate the Project Purpose and Genre

Get on the same page about what the writing should do (purpose) and what form it should take (genre). Often the initial purpose of a writing project is that you’ve been assigned to a task—students may find it funny that so much faculty and staff writing at the university is essentially homework! Just like our students, we have to go beyond the bare minimum of meeting a requirement to find out why that writing product matters, what it responds to and what we want it to accomplish. To help the group come to agreement about form and writing conventions, find some effective examples of the type of project you’re trying to write and talk through what you like about each one.

Align Your Approach

Work to establish a sense of shared authorship—a “we” approach to the work. This is not easy, but it’s important to the success of the product and for the sake of your sanity. Confront style differences and try to come to agreement about not making changes to each other’s writing that don’t necessarily improve the content. There’s always that one person who wants to add “nevertheless” for every transition or write “next” instead of “then”—make peace with not being too picky. Or, agree to let AI come in at the end and talk about the proofreading recommendations from the nonperson writer.

This raises another question: With people increasingly integrating ChatGPT and its ilk into their processes (and Word/Google documents offering AI-assisted authorship tools), how comfortable is each member of the writing team with integrating AI-generated text into a final product?

Where will collaboration occur? In person, online? Synchronously or asynchronously? In a Google doc, on Zoom, in the office, in a coffee shop? Technologies and timing both influence process, and writers might have different ideas about how and when to write (ideas that might vary based on the tools that your team is going to use).

When will collaboration occur? Set deadlines and agree to stick with them. Be transparent about expectations from and for each member.

How will collaboration occur? In smaller groups/pairs, all together, or completely individually? How will issues be discussed and resolved?

Finally, Some Recommendations on What Not to Do

Don’t:
- Just divvy up the jobs and call it a day. This will often result in a disconnected, confusing and lower-quality final product.
- Take on everything because you’re the only one who can do it. This is almost never true and is a missed opportunity to build capacity among colleagues. Developing new skills is an investment.
- Overextend yourself and then resent your colleagues. This is a surefire path to burnout.
- Sit back and let other folks take over. Don’t be that person.
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July 8, 2025