Tag: Higher

  • Top lawyer targets tenure after being sued for ignoring it

    Top lawyer targets tenure after being sued for ignoring it

    Kansas lawmakers are considering a bill that would sap tenure of its meaning for faculty at the state’s public colleges and universities.

    House Bill 2348, introduced this month in the Kansas Legislature, doesn’t specifically say it would ban tenure. But according to the proposed law, “any special benefits, processes or preferences conferred on a faculty member” by tenure “can be at any time revoked” by a higher education institution or the Kansas Board of Regents, which governs the state’s public universities. It also says tenure wouldn’t “create any entitlement, right or property interest in a faculty member’s current, ongoing or future employment.”

    The bill would end such rights not just for future “tenure” earners but for already tenured professors, too. Mallory Bishop, a nontenured instructor at Emporia State University who serves as faculty president, said HB 2348 would “remove the core premise of tenure,” which is “you cannot be fired without cause.”

    “The bill itself seems to remove everything except the name of tenure,” Bishop said.

    It’s part of a growing trend among Republican lawmakers in multiple states seeking to weaken or eliminate tenure in public institutions. Ohio’s Senate passed a bill this year that would weaken tenure, though the House hasn’t yet followed suit. So far, no state has fully banned tenure at public institutions.

    But the Kansas bill is noteworthy for its origins. The Board of Regents and the state’s two top research universities publicly oppose it. So where did it come from?

    Steven Lovett, general counsel for Emporia State University, says he wrote it. And the top of the bill includes one sentence saying a lawmaker requested it on Lovett’s behalf.

    The bill materialized after Emporia State suffered a setback in its continued defense against a federal lawsuit filed by 11 tenured professors whom the university decided to lay off in 2022. A judge—rebuffing the university defendants’ request to toss out the suit—allowed the faculty to move forward with their allegations that they weren’t provided sufficient due process. Emporia State officials, including Lovett himself, are among the defendants in the continuing suit.

    Those faculty were among 23 tenured professors whom Emporia State laid off, citing financial pressures and other possible reasons. The university’s handling of the situation led the American Association of University Professors to censure the institution. The controversy presaged layoffs over the past two years by other U.S. universities, which also cited financial concerns and didn’t spare tenured faculty. West Virginia University made headlines in 2023 for axing a swath of tenured faculty, followed by the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and Western Illinois University.

    A university spokesperson wrote in a statement to Inside Higher Ed that Emporia State supports tenure and that Lovett’s “submission of this bill comes as a surprise to the university.” But the statement also defended Lovett’s “constitutional right” as “a private citizen” to submit the legislation.

    The statement doesn’t say whether the university supports or opposes the bill. Emporia State didn’t provide an interview or respond to written questions about its position on the legislation.

    Bishop said she’s asked top university officials for their stance but hasn’t received an answer; she said university president Ken Hush told her in a private conversation that even if the bill were to pass, “tenure still exists.” Lovett—saying he was commenting as a private citizen—has told lawmakers that universities that speak out against the bill are violating state law.

    And while the university says it was surprised by Lovett’s submission of the bill, an online video of an earlier legislative hearing shows Hush appearing to urge lawmakers to support similar legislation not long before his top lawyer introduced it.

    Reversing a Court Loss?

    The university attempted to dismiss the laid-off professors’ lawsuit by arguing that tenure didn’t give them a “property right” to continued employment. “Property right,” or “property interest,” is a legal term, and if tenured professors possess this right, it could mean they should have received due process before being ousted, in accordance with the 14th Amendment.

    In December, a U.S. district court judge in Kansas allowed the case to progress, ruling that the professors’ legal complaint sufficiently alleged that the faculty did have so-called property rights to keep their jobs. The case continues.

    As the Kansas Reflector previously reported, a Kansas House Higher Education Budget Committee member asked Hush about the suit during a Jan. 31 hearing. According to a video of the proceedings, Hush said the property right ruling “means an entitlement and job forever, until this is settled in some form. Obviously, as a state agency, we’re working with the attorney general on this. And the other option to correct that is via legislation.”

    About a week later, House Bill 2348 appeared at the request of Representative Steven K. Howe—who chairs the committee Hush spoke to—on behalf of Lovett. Howe declined to comment for this article.

    The bill, however, is currently before the House Judiciary Committee—not Howe’s committee. Lovett advocated for the legislation during a Feb. 11 Judiciary hearing, in which he was introduced as “Mr. Steven Lovett, private citizen.” Lovett told the lawmakers the university didn’t encourage him to write the bill “and had no knowledge of it before I submitted it.”

    He said the bill “eliminates the property right of tenure but not tenure itself.” The idea that tenure is a property right “obligates Kansans to a long-term, unfunded fiscal liability,” he said, adding that the due process required to oust tenured faculty “costs even more.” He argued the First Amendment makes tenure and due process unnecessary to protect academic freedom.

    “A nontenured faculty member enjoys as much legal protection to pursue academic freedom as a tenured faculty member,” he said. Tenure “primarily results in nothing more than personal gain.”

    Lovett said Board of Regents members echoed part of his arguments amid the lawsuit filed by the laid-off professors, arguing that any universities that opposed the bill would be violating state law that says the board manages public universities. As of now, though, a judge has dismissed all board members as defendants, leaving only Lovett, Hush and one retired Emporia State official facing the lawsuit.

    At the end of his speech, Lovett, who’s also an associate professor of business law and ethics at Emporia State, publicly renounced the tenure the university gave him.

    Doug Girod, chancellor of the University of Kansas, followed Lovett at the lectern.

    “I don’t believe I’m breaking the law, because I am here with the full knowledge of my board,” Girod said. Eradicating “meaningful tenure” would mean losing “our best faculty, and we will not be able to replace them,” he said.

    After Kansas State University’s president spoke against the bill, Blake Flanders, the top administrator at the Board of Regents, told lawmakers the board is also against it, citing similar recruitment and retention concerns. Further, his written testimony suggested he doesn’t buy Lovett’s argument that he’s acting as a private citizen.

    He pointed out that Board of Regents policy requires legislative proposals from institutions it governs first be presented to the board for approval “before being submitted to the Legislature.” He wrote, “That policy was not adhered to in the case of this bill.” A board spokesperson didn’t provide Inside Higher Ed an interview or answer written questions about whether the board is pushing for Lovett to be disciplined.

    Even if the bill passes, it’s unclear whether it would actually help Emporia State in its current suit or erase the meaning of tenure for other Kansas faculty who have already earned it. J. Phillip Gragson, attorney for the laid-off professors, said in an email that that would be unconstitutional.

    “While the state can certainly commit higher education academic and economic suicide by passing a bill that eliminates tenure prospectively only if it wants, the state cannot take away tenure rights from those professors who have already obtained tenure without due process,” he wrote.

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  • Federal judge bars DOGE from accessing student data

    Federal judge bars DOGE from accessing student data

    A federal judge temporarily barred Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing sensitive student data on Monday, after the American Federation of Teachers sued over privacy concerns. 

    The judge, Deborah Boardman of the District Court of Maryland, said the federal government had not provided convincing evidence that DOGE needed the information to achieve its goals. Last week, in a separate case brought by the University of California Student Association against the Education Department, a different judge declined to bar DOGE from accessing student data, saying the plaintiffs hadn’t shown any harm done. But Boardman, a Biden appointee, argued that DOGE staff being given access was enough to merit the injunction. 

    Education Department staff and student advocates raised concerns about DOGE employees’ access to student loan and financial aid data, which includes troves of uniquely sensitive, personally identifiable information. The injunction prevents the office from executing what Musk has referred to as an “audit” of the student loan system for at least two weeks while the lawsuit is ongoing, as well as from accessing financial aid data.

    “We brought this case to uphold people’s privacy, because when people give their financial and other personal information to the federal government—namely to secure financial aid for their kids to go to college, or to get a student loan—they expect that data to be protected,” AFT president Randi Weingarten wrote in a statement. 

    The court-ordered stoppage is the latest in a string of injunctions issued against Musk and the Trump administration in recent weeks, as lawsuits pile up against the administration’s attempts to swiftly upend the federal bureaucracy. On Friday, a federal judge blocked Trump from enforcing large parts of his executive order against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

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  • Data stories from Achieving the Dream’s latest award winners

    Data stories from Achieving the Dream’s latest award winners

    Each year, Achieving the Dream lifts up at least one community college in its network for adopting practices and strategies leading to a student-focused culture, notable increases in student outcomes and a reduction of equity gaps.

    To be eligible for the Leah Meyer Austin Award, an institution must demonstrate four-year improvement of at least three percentage points in the IPEDS on-time completion for the level of associated credential awarded, or have been selected as one of the top 150 colleges in the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. The achievements of this year’s honorees—Chattanooga State Community College in Tennessee and Southwestern Oregon Community College—show how a holistic approach to student success that exists through the institution can result in whole-college transformation.

    Setting the bar: In evaluating applicants, ATD considers gateway metrics, including leading indicators (early momentum metrics) and lagging indicators (completion or transfer), with substantial improvement of three percentage points or more over three years.

    Equity metrics may highlight data such as the equity gap improvement between part-time and full-time student outcomes or between Pell-eligible and non-Pell-eligible students. Substantial improvement means closing or narrowing equity gaps over three years by at least two percentage points.

    The following data demonstrate not just what Chattanooga State Community College and Southwestern Oregon Community College did to earn their honor, but also ways that other institutions can tell their own data stories.

    Chattanooga State Community College actions and results: The Vision 2027 strategic plan has inspired a shift from 15-week to seven-week terms, more personalized academic advising, strengthened commitments to basic needs assistance and wraparound support services, and implementation of an affordable course materials program.

    • Fall-to-fall persistence rate from the fall 2019 cohort to the fall 2022 cohort saw a 7.1-percentage-point gain.
    • The credit completion rate jumped from 54.6 percent among the 2020 fall cohort to 66.4 percent among the fall 2023 cohort.
    • Articulation agreements and course road maps related to Tennessee Transfer Pathways resulted in an 8.2-percentage-point climb in the rate of students who transfer and earn a baccalaureate degree within six years of matriculating between the fall 2015 cohort and the fall 2018 cohort.
    • The adoption of a co-requisite model, with embedded tutors, for gateway English and math courses led to a rise in gateway math completion from 38.5 percent for the fall 2020 cohort to 49.5 percent for the fall 2023 cohort. Completion rates for gateway English courses, meanwhile, grew from 49.3 percent to 66.6 percent in that time frame. Approximately 45 to 48 percent of the college’s student population is still developing essential college-level academic skills.

    Southwestern Oregon Community College actions and results: This rural institution’s recent efforts have included engaging and supporting its community’s adult and part-time learner populations, such as by creating targeted student orientations, evaluating community practices and its portfolio of academic and workforce programs, meeting the special financial needs of first-generation adult learners, and improving online services (40 percent of Southwestern’s overall student body are online learners).

    • In comparing the 2017 cohort to the 2020 cohort, the four-year completion rate among part-time learners improved by 8.7 percentage points, narrowing the equity gap between adult learners and traditional-aged learners by 3.2 percentage points. Between adult learners and traditional-aged learners, the gap narrowed by 6.7 percentage points, as the rate of completion among the former rose 12.3 percentage points.
    • The equity gap between first-generation and continuing-generation learners in fall-to-fall persistence narrowed by three percentage points, from 8.2 percent in the fall 2019 cohort to 5.2 percent in the fall 2022 cohort.
    • From the fall 2017 cohort to the fall 2020 cohort, the overall four-year completion rate grew 6.6 percentage points, and the rate at which students transfer and earn a baccalaureate degree (despite severe geographical hardships) rose 3.7 percentage points from the fall 2015 cohort to the fall 2018 cohort.

    More information on both winners can be found here. In a March 31 webinar, Achieving the Dream will feature both winners.

    Is your institution or department tracking new KPIs related to student success, or using data in a new way? Tell us about it.

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  • Facing NIH cuts, colleges restrict grad student admissions

    Facing NIH cuts, colleges restrict grad student admissions

    Several colleges and universities are pausing admissions to some graduate programs, reducing class sizes or rescinding offers to students in an effort to cut costs amid uncertainty in federal funding.

    The disruption to graduate school admissions is the latest cost-cutting move for colleges. After the National Institutes of Health proposed cutting reimbursements for costs related to research, several colleges and universities said they would pause hiring and cut spending, Inside Higher Ed previously reported. (A federal judge has blocked the NIH plan from taking effect for now.)

    In recent days, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Pennsylvania and several other institutions have stopped doctoral admissions, at least temporarily. Some colleges are pausing admissions to some programs such as in the biomedical sciences, Stat News reported. At others, the pause is universitywide. The University of Southern California and Vanderbilt University temporarily paused graduate student admissions, though both universities later said that they’d ended the pause.

    A University of Pittsburgh spokesperson told WESA, a local NPR station, that the university “temporarily paused additional Ph.D. offers of admission until the impacts of that [NIH] cap were better understood … the University is in the process of completing that analysis and expects to be in a position to resume offers soon.”

    Meanwhile, the University of Pennsylvania is planning to cut graduate admissions rates, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported, citing an email from the interim dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, Jeffrey Kallberg, who wrote that the cuts were a “necessary cost-saving measure” to adjust to the NIH proposal.

    “This is not a step any of us wanted to take,” Kallberg wrote, according to the Daily Penn. “We recognize that graduate students are central to the intellectual life of our school—as researchers, teachers, collaborators, and future scholars. However, we must ensure that we can continue to provide strong support for those students currently in our programs and sustain the school’s core teaching and research activities.”

    Tom Kimbis, executive director of the National Postdoctoral Association, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that academic institutions reliant on federal funding “are being forced to make tough decisions to support these researchers in a difficult environment.”

    “The decisions in Washington to pause or cease funding for science and research is impacting early-career researchers across a wide range of disciplines,” Kimbis added. “Slowing or stopping their work, on topics from cancer and Alzheimer’s research to social science issues, hurts Americans in all 50 states.”

    In the last week, some faculty began tracking the reductions in the biomedical sciences via a shared spreadsheet that includes verified cuts and unverified decisions based on word of mouth and internal emails. Faculty on social media said the cuts will have long-term ramifications for sciences as fewer students enter the field. On TikTok, several students who had applied to grad school shared their dismay at how the funding cuts meant they might have to say goodbye to their career plans and research.

    Accepting graduate students, particularly for Ph.D. programs and in the biomedical sciences, requires universities to make a long-term financial commitment, which is more difficult now that the NIH has stopped making new grant awards and is aiming to cut funds. Colleges receive billions from the NIH to support research. If the proposed rate cuts move forward, institutions say they would have to shut down some labs and lay off employees.

    “University research and scholarship operate on a time scale of years and decades,” the Rutgers AAUP-AFT chapter wrote in a letter to New Jersey senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim. “Higher education would become impossible in the face of capricious and arbitrary withholding of funding, elimination of entire areas of grant support for critical scientific research, and cancellation of long-held contracts.”

    They went on to warn that the threat to funding would diminish the country’s strength as a research superpower. “The best scientists, the best scholars, and the best students will make the rational decision to take their talents elsewhere. Once lost, the historic excellence of United States universities, including world-leading institutions in New Jersey, both public and private, will not be easily regained.”



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  • The blurred lines of higher education in South Korea: when colleges look like universities

    The blurred lines of higher education in South Korea: when colleges look like universities

    Edward Choi and Young Jae Kim

    South Korea has become an attractive destination for international students, boasting a strong higher education system with internationally recognised universities. A complication, however, is emerging with some foreign students enrolling in what they believe are universities, only to later discover that they are attending junior colleges, Korea’s flagship vocational institutions.

    This phenomenon may be linked to changes in institutional marketing (identity branding) and key organizational characteristics at junior colleges and universities alike. Many colleges have removed words like “technical” or “vocational” from their names and are now called universities in both Korean and English. They have also expanded their degree offerings to include bachelor’s and, in some cases, even graduate programs.

    The blurring of identities (and institutional traits) and the implications thereof are a focus of our study, Confusion in the Marketplace: A Study of Institutional Isomorphism and Organisational Identity in South Korea (Choi and Kim, 2024). Through a national, statistical overview and the content analysis of select institutional websites, we examined the dimensions along which South Korean colleges and universities are organizationally isomorphic, a concept that describes how organizations begin to resemble each other as a result of external pressures (see DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Importantly, we discuss in our article the market implications for this type of institutional convergence.

    Key changes or dimensions of likeness

    Nearly all colleges (95%) have rebranded themselves with the term “university” in their Korean names, and 61% have done so in English. Colleges now offer bachelor’s-equivalent degrees, with 92% providing such programs, and some even offering graduate degrees (11%). Both colleges and universities emphasise similar disciplines, including Business Administration, Family & Social Welfare, and Mechanical Engineering, reflecting shared market demands.

    Institutional websites suggest colleges and universities adopt similar marketing strategies, emphasising employment outcomes and industry-academic collaboration. Less selective universities resemble colleges in focusing on job-market relevance in research and academic programming. Both institution types operate in local, national, and international spheres with internationalisation efforts at both types.

    There are key differences to note. Some universities, particularly elite ones, highlight intellectual growth and social development as a societal role in vision and other identity statements. Research at especially elite universities is both applied and humanities-focused, while this is not true in the case of colleges and lower-tier universities. Furthermore, internationalisation at universities is mostly about citizenship and cultural development while the same is less cultural but utilitarian at colleges (eg career development through international field placements).

    Why are junior colleges becoming more like universities?

    We discuss several key reasons behind the organisational sameness among Korea’s colleges and universities. One key factor is South Korea’s shrinking student population. With birth rates at record lows, the number of high school graduates has plummeted, creating a crisis for universities and junior colleges alike (Lee, 2024) and forcing these institutions to compete directly for a shrinking pool of students. The offering of baccalaureate degrees and graduate programming, among other organizational changes, may serve as primary examples of survival strategies amid the changing demographics. The same may be said of universities where there is a strong vocational dimension in academic offerings, much like what we see at colleges.

    Government policies (both historical and contemporaneous) have also played a major role in the Korean case of institutional isomorphism. Such policy directions have pushed both universities and junior colleges to align their offerings with workforce demands (Ministry of Education, 2023d, 2024a). In 2008 the government approved bachelor’s-equivalent degrees for junior colleges, allowing them to offer advanced major courses. In 2022, junior colleges were even permitted to introduce graduate programs, further blurring the distinction between these institutions and universities.

    Additionally, South Korea’s push for internationalisation amid globalisation has encouraged universities and junior colleges alike to aggressively market themselves to international students. The country has set ambitious national goals for attracting students from abroad (ICEF, 2023); as a result, both institutional types are using similar branding strategies. Words like “world-class,” “global,” and “innovative” appear frequently on websites, even in the case of junior colleges like Kyung-in Women’s University, an institution with virtually negligible global recognition or research excellence.

    The risks of blurred identities

    A key concern with blurred identities and institutional characteristics (including social roles) is that they can create confusion for international students who are increasingly looking to Korea as an attractive education destination. For students seeking a traditional university experience, this can lead to disappointment and even financial and academic setbacks, not to mention reputational damages to Korea and its higher education system.

    There is also the issue of mission creep, where junior colleges in their efforts to emulate universities, risk losing sight of their normative societal function. Junior colleges have historically complemented universities in increasing access to education and providing job training for students who might not otherwise pursue higher education (see Brint and Karabel, 1989; Dougherty, 1994; Lee, 1992). This mission is at stake. The accretion and expansion of new and existing programs and services, respectively, require invariably additional resources, which might drive up educational costs. Many prospective students may not be able to afford these fee hikes.

    What to make of institutional isomorphism?

    At the end of the day, students want a quality education and meaningful career opportunities. It is important for them to clearly understand what they are signing up for – given how important higher education is to shaping their career trajectories. Policy discussions at the national level must now consider the global character of Korea’s junior colleges, whose cosmetic and organisational changes can impact international mobility patterns. Clearer differentiation from a policy perspective is needed in this regard.

    We must not ignore the positive implications of institutional isomorphism, whose market advantages have not been fully explored by scholars. We argue that institutional isomorphism – particularly where college and university programs converge – can be strategically utilised as a policy lever to address market challenges. Rather than viewing institutional homogenization as inherently problematic, policymakers could use it to correct market inefficiencies like supply and demand challenges. The shortage of nurses in Korea (see Lee, 2023), for example, is likely being addressed through the joint efforts of colleges and universities in training and producing nurses with similar qualifications.

    Unchecked isomorphism, however, has its challenges, as pointed out earlier (ie confusion in the international student marketplace). We are also concerned about a skills mismatch where colleges and universities are pumping out graduates with homogenised skillsets. This type of sub-optimisation can result in high youth unemployment rates and students working in careers unrelated to their academic majors, which are already concerns in Korea (see Sungmin and Lee, 2023).

    To conclude, our study notes that institutional isomorphism is a global phenomenon, with similar trends observed in countries such as China, the US, and Australia (see Bae, Grimm, and Kim, 2023; Bük, Atakan-Duman, and Paşamehmetoğlu, 2017; Hartley and Morphew, 2008; Saichaie and Morphew, 2014; Taylor and Morphew, 2010). Further research is needed to assess whether isomorphism in higher education lends to competitive market advantages beyond Korea.

    Edward Choi is an Assistant Professor at Underwood International College, Yonsei University. His research interests centre on a range of topics: Korean higher education, traditional Korean education, the internationalisation of higher education, and the global phenomenon of family-owned universities. 

    Young Jae Kim was a student at Underwood International College, Yonsei University.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • Why grad students should prioritize friendships (opinion)

    Why grad students should prioritize friendships (opinion)

    How important is friendship to you? According to a Pew Research Center study in 2023, 61 percent of U.S. adults said having close friends is extremely or very important for people to live a fulfilling life, which is much higher than the share who said the same about being married (23 percent), having children (26 percent) or having a lot of money (24 percent). Meanwhile, almost one in three Americans feel lonely every week.

    In this context, perceptions of workplace friendships are evolving as the world of work transforms. Working professionals consider having a best friend at work to be even more important since the start of the pandemic and the dramatic increase in remote and hybrid work. Younger generations, such as millennials and Gen Zers, want to curate authenticity and set boundaries. They may prioritize job satisfaction and mental health over other traditional factors. How do those new priorities relate to friendship?

    In addition to well-being benefits, having friends at work can contribute to an individual’s professional development and workplace performance. Working in an environment that fosters vulnerability, as friendships often do, enables individuals to challenge themselves in ways they may otherwise avoid.

    The topic of friendship at work often focuses on the postgraduate workforce. We argue for the importance of applying the same principles to the graduate student and postdoctoral experience. We discuss ways in which graduate students and postdoctoral scholars can benefit from prioritizing friendships and essential interpersonal skills, which can lead to a more robust academic experience and support network.

    Navigating Challenges and Life After Graduate School

    Studies show that strong relationships at work are linked to a lower risk of burnout, better mental health and fewer traumatic experiences. Having peer friendships helps graduate students and postdoctoral scholars cope with the rigorous nature of their academic training. Although the demands of this training can make it difficult to prioritize one’s social life, intense work environments in group settings also provide many opportunities for like-minded individuals to get to know each other beyond the immediate tasks at hand.

    Cultivating such relationships helps students and scholars to navigate the challenges of graduate school and/or their postdoctoral training and work with the benefit of a support system. Sometimes people struggle to comprehend the unique and specific nature of graduate training. Having peers in the same environment allows one to work through challenges and problems with someone who knows firsthand the context of what they are experiencing.

    As graduate students and postdoctoral scholars face points of transition, either at the beginning or end of their training, many will leave their current support network and find themselves in need of building new connections. Yet, fulfilling friendships can take time and effort to build. Friendships formed in graduate school can provide an incredible form of support for any moment in life and can have lifelong implications for personal and professional careers. In fact, many of us in the workplace still talk to friends we made during our graduate school years and cherish the memories we built based on understanding and trust.

    Strengthening Academic Research and Performance

    A significant portion of the research on workplace friendships highlights the increase in performance and productivity that results from the presence of such relationships. Happiness leads to increased performance across the board. Developing friendships among peers can result in an increase in potential collaborators for opportunities such as co-authorships, conference presentations or interdisciplinary research. It can also happen the other way around—connections that begin as professional collaborations may turn into friendships.

    The two of us writing this article are real examples of how developing friendships within the workplace can provide benefits to one’s career growth. We met as colleagues and quickly found commonalities in our personal interests and professional goals. While our jobs took us to different institutions, a robust co-writing dynamic emerged from the foundations of our friendship. Our story is similar to that of many scholars who write with their friends.

    Developing Transferable Skills

    Creating meaningful connections also helps graduate students and postdoctoral scholars strengthen key transferable skills that are relevant in preparing for diverse career paths. Consider three that come to mind:

    • Communication: For many friendships, there is a sense of comfort that develops over time. This bond encourages an ease in conversations lacking in other types of interactions. Friends can be a sounding board when you are attempting to process your thoughts and put them into words for an external audience.
    • Collaboration: Some graduate students and postdoctoral scholars may conduct solitary research with little opportunity to work within a team or group setting, especially in the humanities. Identifying opportunities to collaborate with friends helps to develop the ability to contextualize one’s responsibilities within a broader project. This cultivates a skill that employers often prioritize in the hiring process: collaboration or teamwork.
    • Cultural competency: Another benefit to fostering workplace friendships is becoming more aware of different lived experiences from your own. While it is possible to do this through less personal interactions, friendships allow you to share life stories and perspectives and build deeper connections. Expanding your perspective will allow you to become a stronger scholar (during your time in graduate school or postdoctoral training) and professional (whatever your postgraduation plans may be) in an increasingly diverse world.

    Implications for Career Development

    Of course, there are some challenges to keep in mind with workplace friendships. These may include: trusting someone too soon and oversharing, participating in gossip and rumors, and in-group pressure to fit in, which ultimately leads to exclusion of some through group homogeneity and barriers to opportunities. Other challenges exist for individuals with marginalized backgrounds. The lack of diversity or representation in certain disciplines can further feelings of isolation and take a greater toll on one’s well-being.

    Those of us working with this unique population can make an intentional effort to facilitate meaningful relationship-building and address the challenges above through educational programming. Professional development events for marginalized populations often provide a “third space” for individuals to connect in a critical mass, breathe and celebrate, and identify role models and peer collaborators. The University of Maryland system’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate is a great example of community-building.

    Another viable option for educators and institutions to consider is to leverage the power of peer or near-peer mentoring. Research highlights the importance of mentoring constellations, which acknowledge the varying needs of a mentee and how mentoring relationships differ in structure or intensity. While a “vertical mentor” may be more senior in an organization and offer guidance to mentees based on career progression or life stages, a “horizontal mentor” refers to a peer at a similar career level who shares the mentee’s experiences and challenges. At the University of Maryland, College Park, the Graduate School has created a near-peer mentoring program that focuses on interdisciplinary knowledge-sharing between a doctoral student and a postdoctoral scholar over a year. This program promotes a culture of mentoring where both parties can develop self-awareness and build skills critical to their respective careers.

    Finally, how can graduate students and postdoctoral scholars go about making friends at work? Begin by prioritizing relationships in the spaces you occupy, especially during moments of uncertainty. Then, attend and leverage university programming around well-being, professional development and mentoring, to meet people with similar interests and values. Next, look carefully within your high-touch professional relationships, and consider how proximity, similarity, and reciprocity can help you facilitate the initiation and development of a friendship.

    Yi Hao is the program director of career and professional development at the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, and a member of the Graduate Career Consortium—an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.

    Mallory Neil is the director of industry partnerships for the College of Science at Clemson University.

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  • Education Dept. allows some civil rights inquiries to restart

    Education Dept. allows some civil rights inquiries to restart

    After pausing most civil rights investigations, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is resuming some inquiries, but only those related to disability-based discrimination, according to a memo obtained by ProPublica.

    Those involving race or gender will remain on hold, the nonprofit news organization reported.

    The investigation freeze, which had been in place for a month, forbade OCR staffers from pursuing discrimination complaints that had been submitted by thousands of students at schools and colleges across the country. In fiscal year 2024, the office received 22,687 complaints—37 percent of which alleged discrimination based on disability.

    “I am lifting the pause on the processing of complaints alleging discrimination on the basis of disability. Effective immediately, please process complaints that allege only disability-based discrimination,” Craig Trainor, the office’s acting director, wrote the internal memo that was sent to employees, most of whom are attorneys.

    A spokesperson for the department declined to respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.

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  • ABA suspends DEI standards for accreditation

    ABA suspends DEI standards for accreditation

    The American Bar Association is suspending diversity, equity, and inclusion standards for the law schools it accredits amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on DEI efforts, Reuters reported.

    An ABA council reportedly voted on the change Friday, suspending DEI standards through August as the organization—which accredits nearly 200 law schools—considers permanent changes.

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

    The change comes as the ABA has clashed with the Trump administration in recent weeks, accusing the president of “wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself” in issuing rapid-fire executive orders that have targeted DEI and birthright citizenship, and sought to shrink the federal government through mass firings and other actions that some legal scholars have deemed unlawful.

    In the aftermath, the Trump administration barred political appointees to the Federal Trade Commission from holding ABA leadership posts, participating in ABA events, or renewing their memberships. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson accused the ABA of a “long history of leftist advocacy” and said “recent attacks” on the administration made the relationship “untenable.” 

    State officials have also pressured ABA to drop its DEI standards. In January a group of 21 attorneys general, all from red states, sent a letter to the ABA urging it to drop DEI standards.

    The ABA has reportedly been reviewing its standards on DEI since 2023, when the U.S. Supreme Court upended affirmative action with its ruling in favor of Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    Some Republican officials have celebrated the ABA’s move. “This is a victory for common sense! We are bringing meritocracy back to the legal system,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on X.

    ABA’s suspension of DEI standards comes after the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology dropped diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility from its accreditation criteria.

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  • Judge extends block on controversial NIH cuts

    Judge extends block on controversial NIH cuts

    A federal judge Friday extended a temporary block on the National Institutes of Health’s plan to slash funding for universities’ indirect research costs amid a legal battle over the policy change.

    The nationwide block, which U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley put in place Feb. 10 soon after a coalition of state attorneys general, research advocates and individual universities sued the agency, was set to expire Monday. But it will now remain in place until Kelley has time to consider the arguments the plaintiffs and NIH presented at a hearing Friday morning.

    It’s unclear when Kelley will rule. But after the two-hour hearing, she said she certainly “has a lot of work to do” to before making a decision.

    “This case is not about whether as a policy matter the administration can target waste, fraud and abuse,” Katherine Dirks, an attorney for the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, told the judge during the hearing. “It’s contrary to the regulations which govern how these costs are determined and how these payments are disbursed. If there were an intention on the administration’s part to change the mechanism by which those occur, there’s a process for it—a statutory process and a regulatory process. Neither of those were followed here.”

    But the NIH’s legal team said the agency has the right to unilaterally cap reimbursements for costs related to research—such as hazardous waste removal, facilities costs and patient safety—at 15 percent. 

    “This is not cutting down on grant funding,” said Brian Lea, a lawyer for the NIH, said at Friday’s hearing. “This is about changing the slices of the pie, which falls squarely within the executive’s discretion.”

    Counsel for the plaintiffs, however, argued that the policy is unlawful and, if it’s allowed to move forward during a protracted litigation process, will cause “irreparable harm” to university budgets, medical breakthroughs and the patients who may not be able to enroll in clinical trials as a result. 

    “A clinical trial is for a lot of people a last hope when there’s not an FDA–approved medicine that will treat their condition. Any minute that they’re not enrolled in that trial brings the risk of irreparable harm,” said Adam Unikowsky, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “Part of these institutions’ mission is serving these patients, and this cut will irreparably harm their ability to fulfill that mission.” 

    Since 1965, institutions have been able to periodically negotiate their reimbursement rates directly with the federal government; university rates average about  28 percent. However, rates can vary widely depending on factors such as geographic cost differences and the type of research, and some institutions receive indirect reimbursement rates of more than 50 percent of their direct grants. 

    Although the NIH argued in court that indirect costs are “difficult to oversee” as a justification for cutting them, the plaintiffs refuted that claim, pointing to a complex negotiation process and regular audit schedule that’s long been in place to ensure the funds are being used to support NIH research. 

    In fiscal year 2024, the NIH sent about $26 billion to more than 500 grant recipients connected to colleges—$7 billion of which went to indirect costs. 

    Saving or Reallocating $4B?

    This isn’t Trump’s first attempt to cap indirect costs, which Elon Musk—the unelected billionaire bureaucrat overseeing the newly created Department of Government Efficiency—recently characterized as a “rip-off” on X, the social media site he owns.  

    In 2017, Congress rebuked President Trump’s attempt to cap indirect costs, and it has written language into every appropriations bill since specifically prohibiting  “deviations” from negotiated rates. Given that, Kelley asked the Trump Administration’s legal team, how in his second term, Trump “can unilaterally slash these previously negotiated indirect cost rates which Congress prevented him from doing previously?” 

    “The money that is saved—it’s not being saved, it’s being reallocated—will be taken from indirect costs and filed into new grants that will be using the same funding formula,” said Lea, who told the judge he was using air quotes around the word saved. “The money is not being pocketed or being shipped somewhere else. It’s being applied back into other research in a way that best fits NIH and what will best serve the public’s health.”

    But Lea’s claims that the money will simply be reallocated contradicted the NIH’s own social media post from Feb. 7, which said the plan “will save more than $4B a year effective immediately,” and Kelley asked for an explanation.  

    In response, Lea said the NIH’s “tweet was at best sort of a misunderstanding of what the guidance does.” 

    The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, did not immediately respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment on whether it plans to issue a widespread public correction on social media and its other platforms to clarify its policy and inform taxpayers that their plan to cap indirect costs is not intended to save them any money. As of Friday afternoon, the post was still up on X.

    Layoffs, Canceled Clinical Trials

    But Unikowsky, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said that funneling money away from indirect costs would still harm the nation’s esteemed scientific enterprise, which is grounded in university research. 

    “Indirect costs are real costs associated with doing research,” said Unikowsky, pointing to the California Institute of Technology as an example. The institute spent $200 million to build a state-of-the-art laboratory and is counting on indirect cost reimbursements from the NIH to help pay off the debt it incurred to construct it. 

    “There’s going to be a hole in Cal Tech’s research budget” and the “money is going to have to come from somewhere else,” Unikowsky added.

    Unikowsky also listed nine different institutions, including the Universities of Florida, Kansas and Oregon, that have said they will have to lay off skilled workers who support medical research, including nurses and technicians, if the cap goes into effect. 

    Lea, the lawyer for the Trump Administration, countered that destabilizing university budgets doesn’t amount to immediate and permanent harm warranting injunctive relief on the rate caps. 

    “That’s not an irreparable thing, or else every business that’s in a money pinch could just come in and get an injunction,” he said. “I understand that many institutions would prefer to use endowments and tuition for other purposes, but unless they’re barred from doing so—and the inability to do so would cause some non-monetary harm—that’s not irreparable harm.”

    Although Kelley gave no indication on when or how she plans to rule, some university leaders who listened to the hearing came away optimistic that she’ll favor the plaintiff’s arguments. 

    “We look forward to the judge’s ruling,” said Katherine Newman, provost at the University of California which is one of the universities suing the NIH. “[We] maintain our position that the Administration’s misguided attempt to cut vital NIH funding is not only arbitrary and capricious but will stifle lifesaving biomedical research, hobble U.S. economic competitiveness and ultimately jeopardize the health of Americans who depend on cutting-edge medical science and innovation.”

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  • A ‘Dear Colleague’ Letter in Defense of DEI, by Shaun Harper

    A ‘Dear Colleague’ Letter in Defense of DEI, by Shaun Harper

    Dear Colleague:

    The U.S. Department of Education’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights issued a “Dear Colleague” letter last week that overflowed with misrepresentations of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in our nation’s educational institutions. The threat of losing federal funding has understandably spooked many of you. It is clear to others and me that inciting such fear, as opposed to actually holding institutions accountable for doing right by students and employees whom racial discrimination most persistently harm, was the aim of the Department’s letter.

    I am writing to publicly furnish guidance that I have privately offered to principals, superintendents, college and university presidents, education governing board members, and journalists over the past seven days. But before doing so, I start with a question that I posed in this Forbes article more than a year ago: “What sense does it make to know something is a lie and to have examples of what’s actually true, yet deliberately hide those truths for fear of what liars might do?” Much of what was conveyed in the Department’s letter was largely untrue—at best based on anecdotes, not on credible evidence systematically collected from surveys of students and employees, or from rigorous analyses of discrimination reports disaggregated by race.

    To be sure, persons (no matter how small in number) who experience discrimination, harassment, abuse, and other forms of injustice deserve protections and remedies from their educational institutions and the federal government. But the Department’s letter insists that it is white and Asian students who are most on the receiving end of these experiences. A corpus of evidence published over five decades makes irrefutably clear that Asian American, Black, Indigenous, Latino, and multiracial students and employees most often experience racism on campuses. Paradoxically, the Department’s letter calls for the elimination of policies, offices, programs, and activities that aim to address those historical and contemporary norms. This is guaranteed to result in more discrimination, harassment and abuse. In addition, racialized opportunity and outcomes disparities that disadvantage people of color will widen and new racial inequities will emerge.

    Here are 11 actions I recommend for higher education institutions that are truly committed to anti-discrimination and anti-racism:

    1. Maintain mission fidelity: Many college and university mission statements have long included language about fostering inclusive learning environments, preparing students for citizenship and work in a diverse democracy, and other values that qualify as DEI. If and when the Department probes an institution, you must be prepared to show how and why various DEI efforts are essential for mission actualization.
    2. Show your work: The Department’s letter will compel many of you to hide, rename, or altogether discontinue DEI initiatives. I insist on doing the opposite. Now is the time to showcase DEI activities to confirm that they are not the racist, divisive, discriminatory, and anti-American activities that obstructionists erroneously claim.
    3. Show your racial equity data: Transparency about racial disparities in student outcomes and various employee trends should be used to justify the existence of DEI policies and programs. Black undergraduate men, for instance, are often at the bottom of most statistical measures of educational progress and performance; my and other scholars’ research confirms that it is not because those students were undeserving of admission or are academically less capable. Data like these could help justify the need for Black male student success initiatives.
    4. Show racial discrimination data trends: Educational institutions are required to have reporting and investigation processes for claims of racial discrimination. As previously noted, the Department’s letter makes is seem as if white and Asian students are being most routinely discriminated against. It might just be that your campus data shows something different. It is important to present year-over-year trends, as opposed to a one-time snapshot. These data could be used to justify the existence of various DEI policies and programs.
    5. Assess the campus racial climate: The National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates (NACCC) is a suite of peer-reviewed, expert-validated quantitative surveys that are administered to every student or employee at a participating institution, including white people. Whether you use the NACCC or some other data tool, now is the time to formally assess the climate to determine if and how persons from different racial groups are experiencing the institution. The NACCC has been administered on hundreds of campuses over the past six years—very few white respondents have reported what the Department’s letter alleges. It is important for institutions to provide climate survey data about which groups most frequently encounter discrimination, harassment, abuse, and exclusion.
    6. Rely on evidence: A dozen highly respected researchers contributed to Truths About DEI on College Campuses: Evidence-Based Expert Responses to Politicized Misinformation, a report published last March. This document is just one of several hundred research-based resources (including peer-reviewed studies published in top academic journals) that confirm the educational and democratic value of DEI in higher education. You should use these evidence-based resources to justify the continuation of your institution’s policies and programs.
    7. Insist on evidence: DEI attackers make numerous untrue and exaggerated claims about what is occurring on campuses. Educational leaders have the right to insist that outside accusers furnish evidence of widespread discrimination, harassment, and abuse. Data sources must be rigorous, trustworthy, and verifiable. One-off examples and small numbers of anecdotes ought not be accepted as evidence of pervasive wrongdoing. Imagine if someone told lies about you as an individual person—you would demand proof. Institutions that have committed themselves to DEI deserve this, too.
    8. Articulate consequences: As the federal government, state legislators, and others scrutinize campus DEI efforts, it behooves leaders and employees not only to amplify the value of these policies and programs, but also to forecast what would occur in their absence. For example, how the discontinuation of a first-year transition program for Indigenous students would widen first-to-second-year persistence rate disparities between them and peers from other racial groups. Or how financially devastating lawsuits would be to institutions if less attention was paid to improving the workplace climate for the groups of employees whom years of investigations data confirms experience the highest levels of discrimination and harassment on campus.
    9. Ensure reporting equity: The Department’s letter includes a link to this webpage where “anyone who believes that a covered entity has unlawfully discriminated may file a complaint with OCR.” It is important for white and Asian American, as well as for Black, Indigenous, Latino, and multiracial people to know this reporting site exists. If it is distributed through only a limited number of cable news and social media channels, then there is a chance that those who experience discrimination most often will not be aware of its existence. It is similarly important to remind students and employees of how to access campus-level reporting resources.
    10. Humanize DEI professionals: As many DEI professionals were being fired from their federal jobs last month, I recognized their humanity in this TIME article. I specifically noted the following consequences for them: “Some of these workers now won’t be able to afford daycare for their kids or elder care for their aging parents. Others have children in college whose tuition payments are suddenly in limbo because of politics. Some will lose their healthcare benefits. Too many of these workers will struggle to find other jobs because of the false narratives that are being told about DEI.” Professionals who do DEI work everywhere, including in higher education, deserve greater protections from their employers. These innocent people deserve colleagues like you who use your platforms to communicate threats to their lives and careers.
    11. Form coalitions: The tone of the Department’s letter is serious. It has many people scrambling on their individual campuses. We need institutions to come together to collectively strategize, defend their DEI commitments, push back and sue. Attempting to do this in isolation will not yield the macro-level outcomes that our democracy and its educational institutions deserve. Last fall, I launched the National DEI Defense Coalition. So far, hundreds of scholars, leaders, and DEI professionals have contributed. In the next few weeks, I will publicly announce ways for others to participate. But meanwhile, please leverage existing networks (professional associations, athletic conference memberships, and so on).

    These are not the only ways institutions can defend DEI policies and programs, but my hope is that they provide some helpful guidance in response to the Department’s letter as well as to other politicized misinformation, disinformation and anecdotal exaggerations about who is being most frequently discriminated against on campuses.

    For Democracy,

    Shaun Harper

    Shaun Harper is university professor and provost professor of Education, Business and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership.

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