In January I wrote a piece asking whether America’s research universities would make it to their 100th birthday, marking their birth with the creation of the National Science Foundation in 1950—its 75th birthday was May 10. The article built on concerns that our research universities are in a precarious state, with their resources stretched thin supporting their dual missions of education and research. At the end I added a new concern: with the beginning of the Trump administration would these institutions survive the year?
In only the first 100-odd days, the precipitous cancellation of grants and freezing of research support and now the proposed slashing of the budgets of the NSF and the National Institutes of Health and dramatic increase in the tax on university endowments have made my worst fears real. Are we really trying to end the partnership that has led to the greatest period of innovation in history?
With the creation of the NSF, the government and universities established a research partnership to feed the American economy and national defense and to train the R&D labor force. The partnership was supported by funding from both sides, coupled with an unrelenting commitment to research excellence and impact. By any measure it has been wildly successful, generating new knowledge, inventions and cures and educating generations to lead our economy and society.
In 2022 alone, the 174 Carnegie R-1—very research intensive—universities filed more than 20,000 patent applications and were granted nearly 6,000. But perhaps to understand why sustaining this partnership is vital to our future we only need to recall that the mRNA vaccines that spelled the end of the COVID-19 pandemic were built on research supported over decades by the NIH.
The scale of the partnership is apparent in the data: In 2022, university research spending totaled $97.8 billion, with $54.1 billion coming from the federal government. What has not been widely acknowledged is that universities contributed $24.5 billion of this total in the form of self-supported research and cost sharing, especially supporting the misunderstood indirect costs of research. Many of these expenses are not so “indirect,” as they support specialized spaces, facilities and instruments—you cannot do research in a parking lot.
Universities invested 45 cents for each federal research dollar received— this is the financing of the partnership. It seems like a bargain for the government to contribute only 0.2 percent of GDP (or less than 1 percent of the federal budget) to fuel innovation and the labor force of the world’s largest economy. Federal support of university research has grown only 44 percent since 2010. This compares to China’s threefold growth in investment in its universities.
The Chinese investment highlights the increasing competition for research talent, and we risk falling behind. Other countries are emulating us, building research universities and trying to attract the stream of talent that has come to the U.S. to learn, work and live. Our chilling climate for immigrants is making it much easier to lure this talent abroad.
American universities have done what they can to stay in front, with their own support of research growing twice as fast as federal funding, up from 30 cents to a federal dollar in 2010. It will be difficult for universities to continue to grow this investment. Following the pandemic, inflation has taken its toll. Now the funding cuts already imposed, and the enormous ones in the administration’s proposed budget, will shift billions in research costs to universities—costs they cannot afford. The proposed 15 percent cap on indirect costs alone—spread across all federal support—could cost the R-1 universities more than $10 billion, doubling their support relative to the federal government.
The result will be catastrophic, with universities retreating from research, essentially destroying in a few months the innovation ecosystem built over three-quarters of a century. The long-term impact will be devastating for all Americans, as measured in undiscovered inventions and cures, the global competition for ideas and people, and the country’s future economic prosperity.
Our innovation ecosystem will be hamstrung by the loss of a generation or more of research talent, who are either not trained or who go elsewhere. Already our talent pipeline is being constricted by cutting in half the number of NSF fellowships awarded to the most promising scientists and engineers. Reports also are mounting of scientists moving to countries where they are warmly welcomed with substantial government support. Is this our national strategy to strengthen America’s knowledge-based economy?
We are on the verge of an innovation winter that will last decades when we can ill afford it as we respond to demands to improve health care, compete for global dominance in AI and other critical technologies, and create a secure and peaceful world. Universities do face important challenges, such as expanding access, educating more Americans to be informed and thoughtful citizens, and giving them the skills to thrive in an AI-driven world. Universities can meet these challenges if they are supported.
We must avoid the innovation winter by continuing the partnership so our research universities remain the beacons for innovation and education that they have been for three-quarters of a century. This is the only way to keep America at the forefront, not at the back of the pack.
This choice is what is at stake for all of us.
Robert A. Brown is president emeritus of Boston University.
The Trump administration has ended $60 million in federal grant funding for Harvard University amid an ongoing fight with the private institution over concerns about alleged campus antisemitism.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced the move late Monday night.
“HHS is taking decisive action to uphold civil rights in higher education,” the agency posted on social media. “Due to Harvard University’s continued failure to address anti-Semitic harassment and race discrimination, HHS is terminating multiple multi-year grant awards—totaling approximately $60 million over their full duration. In the Trump Administration, discrimination will not be tolerated on campus. Federal funds must support institutions that protect all students.”
HHS also linked to a report from The Daily Caller, a right-wing website, which noted that the $60 million in grants came from funding via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A CDC official, according to The Daily Caller, told the university that funding an institution that the Trump administration perceives as discriminatory would be inconsistent with the CDC’s mission. The CDC official concluded that “no corrective action is possible here.”
Harvard did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.
The latest move comes as the Trump administration has already pulled other grants and federal contracts and frozen more than $2.7 billion in federal funding—about a third of Harvard’s federal funds.
Harvard is also facing several investigations from the Trump administration.
The university has been locked in conflict with the federal government for months since it spurned Trump’s demands to overhaul governance, hiring, admissions and more, which prompted retaliation in the form of a funding freeze. Harvard sued the Trump administration last month, arguing that it sought to “impose unprecedented and improper control over the university.”
The image of the suffering artist is a cliché that faculty and staff who work with students in the performing and visual arts are trying to dispel. They believe that creative inspiration doesn’t have to come at the expense of health and well-being.
“You definitely have to be able to connect on some level to that artistry. But that doesn’t mean necessarily that you have to suffer mental health issues to be able to access this,” said Frank M. Diaz, professor in the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
A growing awareness of young people’s mental health and the challenges depression and anxiety pose to student retention and college completion has inspired services for students of underrepresented minority backgrounds, student athletes and other populations on campuses.
More performing arts programs have also begun embracing education on emotional and physical well-being to equip students to succeed in college and beyond.
Under pressure: Performing arts students, like many college attendees, face academic pressures—as well as financial responsibilities to pay for college—that can put them under immense stress. A 2024 survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found that just under half of respondents indicated their top stressor while enrolled was balancing academics with personal, family or financial responsibilities.
Performers also juggle rehearsals, whether individual training or as part of an ensemble, that can require several hours of work outside of regularly scheduled classes. Musicians are often in practice rooms for hours each day, causing them to deprioritize their well-being.
“Some of them practice for six hours,” Diaz said. “That does not include their academic courses, their music courses, their ensembles that they’re in, their lessons and their studio classes. While you pile all that on, it’s a lot.”
Young people in general are more open to talking about mental health compared to previous generations, but performing arts students often feel cultural pressures to maintain certain appearances.
“There’s a lot of stigma around the arts and mental health,” Diaz said. “Music students—we also have ballet here—don’t like to admit that they have issues. It’s seen as a weakness, so it’s been traditionally not talked about in our field.”
Additionally, the performing arts can put pressure on students’ physical health if they’re not trained or properly supported. A research study of music schools in Switzerland and the U.K. found music students had lower levels of physical and psychological health compared to the general population.
This unique combination of factors has pushed some colleges and universities to invest in specialized resources dedicated to students studying music.
Institutional change: Members of the National Association of Schools of Music, the accrediting body for most music programs, are required to provide music students with information about physical and mental health. Most institutions meet this requirement through a dedicated webpage where students can browse campus and external services. If you ask James Brody, director of the Musicians’ Wellness Program (MWP) at the University of Colorado, Boulder, College of Music, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Brody and his colleagues have been engaging in this work informally for over a decade. In 2020 the university rolled out an embedded counseling program, which provided the College of Music with a dedicated mental health clinician, Matthew Tomatz, to lead outreach and deliver services to music students. Tomatz, a former musician himself, receives referrals from faculty and staff to meet with students and provides regular group therapy for student musicians to engage with peers and talk about their struggles.
MWP was officially established in 2021, providing physical and social wellness education to learners across CU Boulder’s school of music to prevent and recover from injuries for long-term thriving.
Approximately 160 students participate in MWP offerings each year, and more than 130 music students accessed counseling and psychiatric services in the 2022–23 academic year, according to a university press release.
The Office of Wellness and Arts Health Initiative (OWAHI) at the Jacobs School of Music was established in 2023 as a way to increase student access to supports. The school is home to 1,600 students, making it one of the largest music schools in the U.S. The size can make music students more isolated from the larger campus community of Indiana University, because “everything [within the music school] is in one place and our students never go out and venture into this Big Ten campus that we have,” Diaz said.
Instead of making students seek out resources, the school centralized offerings into the OWAHI, creating a one-stop shop for a variety of support services that are student-centered and student-led.
Social wellness: One of the undertones of performing arts programs is competition; students fought hard to win a spot at an accredited music program, which can create feelings of rivalry and isolation from their peers.
Jacobs School of Music students enjoy a holiday party thrown by the Office of Wellness and Arts Health Initiatives in partnership with the Jacobs School’s Health and Wellness Committee.
Wendi Chitwood/Indiana University
To combat this narrative, Diaz created events centered on relationships. “Our data basically indicates that people are seeking community. They don’t know how to find it; they don’t know how to build good relationships. They know they want them. So, to me, that’s the basis of everything we do.”
OWAHI offers drop-in office hours for students to get snacks, talk with their peers and engage in destressing activities, including mindfulness training, massage, games and yoga. In addition, the office partners with the School of Social Work to provide student-led wellness coaching, which both connects learners with peers and gives social work students needed supervised practicum hours.
Jacobs students participate in a meditation session provided by the Office of Wellness and Arts Health Initiatives.
Jacobs School of Music/Indiana University
OWAHI offered about 70 coaching sessions in 2023–24 and an estimated 300 sessions during this academic year, which Diaz attributes to increased engagement on campus, student-led marketing and positive partnerships. Students who participate in services are also demographically representative of the school’s population, and Diaz has been pleased to see high participation rates among male students (41 percent of participants), given perceived barriers to engagement in mental health supports for men.
At New York Film Academy in Los Angeles, acting professor Victor Verhaeghe noted that his students tended to arrive with fewer socio-emotional skills, making it harder for them to engage. Verhaeghe has started using class time to lead meditation and shared affirmations, allowing students to become more vulnerable and connected to each other, as well as create self-love.
“I say, ‘Let’s start with sharing who you are; let’s open up to discussion,’” Verhaeghe said. “Some people are not ready to share, but I’ll share my story … It’s all about rewiring, it’s about changing the programming. As an artist, vulnerability is essential. You have to be able to tap into that.”
Physical wellness: Injuries among college students often come from late-night recklessness, sports, accidents or overwork. Less common is the physical strain improper musical technique can have on musicians.
“People don’t understand that musicians get injured, and the injury rate is high—as high as 80 percent of college students,” Brody of CU Boulder said.
Brody offers one-on-one consultations and lessons with students to help them recover from injury, misuse, anxiety or physical tension, helping them connect music and the body to ensure they can continue playing for many years. “I am continually amazed at how anatomically illiterate most musicians are,” he said.
Professor James Brody, director of the Musicians Wellness Program, instructs a student musician on clarinet.
University of Colorado, Boulder
He’s passionate about physical wellness education for musicians, and admits he sometimes has to pull back from overloading students with anatomy lessons.
“Some people say, ‘No pain, no gain,’” Brody added. “I say, ‘No pain, no pain.’ It really shouldn’t hurt.”
CU Boulder music students can also receive free hearing tests, a common practice for music schools to ward against noise-induced hearing loss.
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro offers two elective courses within the school of music that connect physical health to performance, encouraging students to move strategically and reduce tension.
In the future, Brody would love to see donor support for more resources to support musician well-being, including specially designed hearing protection and vocal health support from a laryngologist.
Occupational wellness: College students in general are anxious about their careers—71 percent of students say they feel at least somewhat stressed thinking about life after college—but the performing arts has always been an especially challenging field. Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that only about 20 percent of students with a fine arts degree actually work in arts, design, entertainment or media occupations.
“Every single student is terrified right upon getting out because of the complete unpredictable nature of this business,” Verhaeghe said.
Brody noted student musicians’ anxiety levels are high regarding their future plans, particularly due to a shrinking number of symphony orchestras and full-time opportunities. “Still, folks line up to do it,” he said. “We don’t have any lack of talent and motivation.”
In class, Verhaeghe talks about the challenging elements of being an actor, from not having work to playing demanding roles with long hours. “I think it’s important that we talk about the next phase,” he said. “I believe this is a calling to do this work, and not everybody’s called … if you really want to have a craft, then you will invest.”
Performing arts students also often live with the tension of trying to balance passion and work. Many people consider art to be a healing or soothing experience, allowing them to engage in mindfulness or relaxation. “The evidence is pretty clear that musicians and artists in general are the exception to the, ‘I do art and I feel good’ thing, like, we don’t experience that because it’s vocational,” Diaz said.
There’s one exception to this work, Diaz noted: when art becomes a service. At IU, students can participate in performances at senior centers through the Senior Outreach Program.
“Instead of going as ‘I’m going to perform this awesome thing with you,’ [it’s] ‘I’m going to connect with you, I’m going to go learn your name and learn what you like and perform for you at these senior community centers,’” Diaz said.
Faculty members agreed there’s a need to encourage students not to burn out or overexert themselves for the sake of their art, because it’s not sustainable in the long term and reduces their career potential.
“The culture is gradually changing because it has to,” Brody said. “If it doesn’t, it’s like feeding people into a wood chipper.”
As Pennsylvania State University’s Board of Trustees prepares to decide the fate of seven of its 19 Commonwealth Campuses where enrollment has collapsed over a decade, faculty, lawmakers and some board members are questioning the university’s commitment to the state and say administrators haven’t been transparent about their decision-making process.
University administrators say the enrollment numbers alone don’t support keeping open the seven campuses slated to close. Several of those campuses have seen enrollment fall by more than 40 percent since fall 2014.
Penn State’s Board of Trustees met last week in a private executive session but did not vote on the plan. They’re expected to do so Thursday.
President Neeli Bendapudi has made the case for the closures, arguing such actions are necessary, as the university can no longer sustain all of its branch campuses financially amid severe enrollment declines. She proposed closing the Dubois, Fayette, Mont Alto, New Kensington, Shenango, Wilkes-Barre and York campuses. Those campuses enroll almost 3,200 students altogether, the largest of which is Penn State York with 703 students last fall. The smallest is Shenango, which enrolled 309 students in fall 2024.
Now, as the proposal nears the finish line, its fate is up the air and Bendapudi is facing concerns about the process of reaching the seven names.
A ‘Difficult But Necessary’ Plan
University leadership began drawing up those plans in February after a difficult year for higher education across the Keystone State. Four universities in the state shut down (or ended degree programs, as in the case of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) in 2024. The closures were mostly brought on by enrollment challenges, though some were dogged by concerns about fiscal mismanagement.
University administrators spent the last several months reviewing 12 campuses for possible closure before the list of seven leaked to media outlets last week.
Officials in a 143-page document cast the plan as “difficult but necessary decisions to ensure its long-term sustainability, allowing for continued investment in student success and dynamic learning environments for years to come” amid plunging enrollment and broad demographic challenges.
Officials argued that the seven campuses identified for closure “face overlapping challenges, including enrollment and financial decline, low housing occupancy, and significant maintenance backlog.” They added that “projected low enrollments pose challenges for creating the kind of robust on-campus student experience that is consistent with the Penn State brand” and would require significant investments, including $200 million for facilities alone.
“I believe the recommendation balances our need to adapt to the changing needs of Pennsylvania with compassion for those these decisions affect, both within Penn State and across the commonwealth,” Bendapudi said in a statement when the plan was released.
She added that there is a two-year timeline for closing campuses, so they wouldn’t shut down until the end of the spring 2027 semester.
Now the plan heads to the 36-member Board of Trustees. However, some trustees have openly expressed their opposition to the proposal.
In an interview with Inside Higher Ed, Paterno criticized the proposal as rushed.
“We’ve been presented with two options. One is the status quo, which everybody knows is not viable and is kind of a straw man. The other option is to close all seven campuses,” he said.
Given that the costs of operating those campuses comprise “less than half of 1 percent of our budget,” Paterno said the board should take more time to explore solutions. He argues that the university has not tried to leverage fundraising to support struggling Commonwealth Campuses and that the administration should slow the process down and reach out to potential donors.
“We’d rather be a year late than a day early,” Paterno said.
He also noted the decision to close campuses is not Penn State’s alone. The university is state-affiliated but not state-owned, which gives it a greater degree of autonomy than fully public institutions. But since the university receives some public funds, it must submit plans to close campuses to the Pennsylvania secretary of education, who must then approve the proposal.
‘A Betrayal’
Faculty have concerns about job losses, what will become of rural student populations and an alleged lack of transparency in the closure process.
One faculty member at Penn State Wilkes-Barre, speaking anonymously due to concerns about retribution, noted, “While most faculty saw this coming, it was heartbreaking to see it in writing.”
They questioned Penn State’s support for its Commonwealth Campuses, arguing that “the decision to decrease funding” to those locations that serve in-state students sends a strong message about where Penn State places its priorities” while it invests heavily in its main campus. They also pointed to renovations at Beaver Stadium projected to cost $700 million.
(That project is believed to be the most expensive renovation in the history of college athletics.)
“The lack of shared governance, transparency, and respect for contributions of faculty to Penn State University makes it easy to see why unionization efforts among faculty are needed,” they wrote, highlighting ongoing efforts by the Penn State Faculty Alliance and SEIU 668 to unionize.
Some state politicians have also panned the plan.
State Senator Michele Brooks, a Republican who represents a district that includes the Shenango campus, told Inside Higher Ed in an emailed statement that she recently met with trustees, who conveyed to her and others “that they feel this has been a deeply flawed process.”
She urged Penn State’s administration and governing board to re-evaluate the decision and to work “with communities on innovative ways to reinvest in these campuses and help them grow.”
Republican state representative Charity Grimm Krupa, who serves a district that includes the Fayette campus slated for closure, accused Penn State of betraying its mission in a fiery statement.
“Shutting down the Fayette campus isn’t about financial responsibility; it’s about walking away from the very students Penn State was created to serve,” Grimm Krupa said last week. “It’s a betrayal of the university’s land-grant mission and a slap in the face of rural communities. Abandoning this campus sends a clear message: if you’re not from a wealthy or urban area, Penn State doesn’t see you as worth the investment. That’s disgraceful, and I urge every trustee to vote no against these closures.”
There is an endless war being waged against colleges and universities in this country, one unprecedented in our lifetimes. Not merely a war of words, it is one of deeds. Beginning with state-level efforts to ban “critical race theory” and “divisive concepts” from college classrooms and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from campuses, it has now grown into an obsessive preoccupation of federal policy.
Broad executive orders have sought to ban concepts related to race, gender and identity on campus, using the leverage of withheld federal grants. Drastic and indiscriminate cuts have been made to university funding. International students have had their visas revoked on the basis of their political views. Attacks on nonpartisan university accreditors have mounted. And escalating demands that elite private research universities effectively place themselves in government receivership or lose further billions in federal dollars have thrown the sector into chaos.
That is why I was honored to sign, and to help coordinate, last month’s letter from more than 600 college, university and scholarly society presidents in defense of our nation’s institutions of higher learning. The letter, which calls for “constructive engagement that improves our institutions and serves our republic,” also criticizes “the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering” institutions of higher learning and warns that “the price of abridging the defining freedoms of American higher education will be paid by our students and our society.”
I remain concerned that the problems colleges and universities face today go deeper than funding cuts and government threats. Indeed, our national debate over higher education has lost the plot entirely. Critics of higher education present the entire sector as an elitist, out-of-touch indoctrination factory for liberal orthodoxy, one that has replaced the great books of the Western canon with political claptrap. This charge has gained broad traction among the public. But not only is it untrue on the merits, it fundamentally misunderstands the purpose and mission of higher education. It asks the wrong question and delivers the wrong answer.
If our sector is to regain the respect and appreciation of American society, we need to reorient the national conversation. We need to help people remember what it is that colleges and universities actually do—and why it matters.
The American Association of Colleges and Universities, where I have been president since 2016, is a voice and a force for what we call liberal education. Let me be clear: teaching students to believe in liberal politics or conservative politics is the opposite of what “liberal education” means. Rather, the term, which predates modern political labels, refers to liberating the mind from received orthodoxies of all types.
I agree with Margaret Mead—and with leaders across the political spectrum, from Barack Obama to Ron DeSantis—that students should be taught how to think, not what to think. A successful college education is measured not by what its graduates believe but by what they can conceive. It fires the imaginations of its students, helps them explore ideas and experiences different from their own, and trains them in habits of thought and mind that aid them in making their own meaning from the world. It provides them both with the practical skills they will need for their future employment and with the critical thinking tools that help them attain, and succeed in, their jobs of choice. By providing a forum and a method for open inquiry and intellectual freedom, and by exposing students and communities to new ideas and perspectives, it also helps to strengthen our democracy.
This type of education does not happen by chance, from a hodgepodge of unconnected courses; it is part of a plan. For decades, AAC&U has served as a learning lab for a type of comprehensive undergraduate education that teaches students in a systematic way, over the course of a two-year or four-year degree, how to become effective thinkers and problem-solvers. We pioneered the concepts of high-impact practices, inclusive excellence and innovations in general education, learning outcomes and assessment, innovations that have been adopted by hundreds of campuses across the country, including many of our nearly 900 member institutions.
Higher education should always try to do better at opening students’ minds; in fact, that commitment is at the core of my organization’s work. Taking criticism seriously is how colleges and universities innovate and improve. But that innovation cannot happen if the government steps in to ban or defund ideas it dislikes, taking away the academic freedom of faculty; if it strips university leadership of its autonomy to make decisions about what ideas are permitted or promoted on campus; or if it makes so many threats or cuts that professors and students become afraid to speak and think freely.
The careful process of preparing students for democratic citizenship requires helping them understand the great multiplicity of people, cultures and beliefs that make up the world we live in. It is time for us to stop asking whether colleges and universities teach the “right” ideas and ask, instead, whether they teach students the skills they need to navigate our complex world. That approach would lead us away from culture wars and heavy-handed government restrictions and toward constructive engagement with the educational missions of colleges and universities so they can work together with government to improve our students’ educations.
Lynn Pasquerella is president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities.
For many institutions of higher education (including the one I work for), Coursera is an important online learning partner. Therefore, it was a big deal when Coursera announced earlier this year that Greg Hart was taking over as CEO from Jeff Maggioncalda. This space seemed like a good place to begin to get to know Greg, and he graciously agreed to answer my questions.
Q: You’ve spent the majority of your career at Amazon, so education is a new space for you. What do you want universities to know about how you’ll approach partnerships, and how will your background influence how you lead Coursera?
A: My background is rooted in building and scaling technology-driven businesses that serve millions of customers. At Amazon, I led the creation and launch of Alexa and later served as the global head of Prime Video. Those roles shaped how I think about innovation, long-term customer value and meaningful experiences at scale. While higher education is a new sector for me, there are clear parallels: At Amazon, we solved enduring customer problems through technology. That same principle applies at Coursera—learners are seeking flexible, high-quality and job-relevant education, often in moments that define the trajectory of their lives. Both our university and industry partners are working with us to meet these evolving needs with world-class learning content, enabled by our platform’s ability to deliver personalized learning experiences at scale.
What makes this work especially meaningful is the higher stakes involved. We’re not just helping people shop or stream content—we’re helping them transform their lives through access to learning. That sense of purpose is what drew me to Coursera. I approach our university partnerships with deep respect for the role higher education plays in society, and I see my responsibility as ensuring Coursera is a trusted, effective and mission-aligned partner for institutions around the world.
Q: Can you update us on Coursera’s business, focusing on the biggest growth drivers and challenges? How confident can universities be in Coursera’s long-term financial resilience as a strategic partner?
A: Coursera is where the world comes to gain new skills and learn from the most trusted institutions. Content is the engine of our business and the foundation of our ecosystem. Today, we partner with more than 350 leading universities and companies, offering job-relevant content across a wide range of domains, including technology, business, AI and data science.
This catalog has attracted more than 175 million learners globally, including more than seven million new registered learners in the first quarter of this year alone. Many learners come to Coursera directly through our platform, while a growing number access content through institutional settings via our enterprise offerings. This entire ecosystem is powered by a unified platform that enables our partners to reach a global audience at scale, leverage data to inform content strategy and skills recommendations and harness advanced AI tools to drive personalized learning and discovery.
Since going public in 2021, we’ve operated as responsible stewards of our capital, balancing disciplined cost management with long-term investments in growing our business and advancing our mission. Coursera is in an extremely stable position financially: We are growing, we generate positive free cash flow, we have a very healthy balance sheet and we have no debt.
In Q1 2025, we delivered $179 million in revenue, up 6 percent year over year on growth in our consumer and enterprise segments and generated over $25 million in free cash flow, marking our strongest quarter of cash performance to date. Based on this strong start, we now expect full-year 2025 revenue to be between $720–730 million, with annual adjusted EBITDA margin improvement of 100 basis points to 7 percent—an outlook that reflects both durable demand and growing operating leverage. As of March 31, 2025, we have approximately $748 million in unrestricted cash and no debt, giving us both the stability and flexibility to invest in platform innovation, expand our content ecosystem and continue supporting our partners and learners around the world.
Q: Given your background in industry, do you see more value in partnerships and content from businesses, like industry microcredentials? How do colleges and degrees factor into your long-term vision?
A: Coursera was founded in 2012 by two Stanford professors, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Universities are, and will continue to be, central to Coursera’s mission and strategy—especially in an era shaped by generative AI, where enduring human skills and trusted credentials are more important than ever. University content is vital not only to degree programs, but also to our offerings for individuals, businesses and governments. Some of our most popular courses are from top university instructors—Jules White of Vanderbilt, Vic Strecher of Michigan, Laurie Santos of Yale and Sydney Finkelstein of Dartmouth.
We do not view degrees and nondegree programs as competing priorities. Rather, we believe in building an interconnected ecosystem that gives learners the flexibility to start with entry-level microcredentials, build towards academic credit and ultimately stack into full degrees. Today, 90-plus entry-level professional certificates are offered by our industry partners, and a third of them carry credit recommendations, making them a natural on-ramp to higher education. Our degree portfolio has expanded to over 50 programs and remains a strategic component of our consumer offering.
Is something in the water—or, more appropriately, in the algorithm? Cheating—while nothing new, even in the age of generative artificial intelligence—seems to be having a moment, from the New York magazine article about “everyone” ChatGPTing their way through college to Columbia University suspending a student who created an AI tool to cheat on “everything” and viral faculty social media posts like this one: “I just failed a student for submitting an AI-written research paper, and she sent me an obviously AI-written email apologizing, asking if there is anything she can do to improve her grade. We are through the looking-glass, folks.”
It’s impossible to get a true read on the situation by virality alone, as the zeitgeist is self-amplifying. Case in point: The suspended Columbia student, Chungin “Roy” Lee is a main character in the New York magazine piece. Student self-reports of AI use may also be unreliable: According to Educause’s recent Students and Technology Report, some 43 percent of students surveyed said they do not use AI in their coursework; 5 percent said they use AI to generate material that they edit before submitting, and just 1 percent said they submit generated material without editing it.
There are certainly students who do not use generative AI and students who question faculty use of AI—and myriad ways that students can use generative AI to support their learning and not cheat. But the student data paints a different picture than the one presidents, provosts, deans and other senior leaders did in a recent survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities and Elon University: Some 59 percent said cheating has increased since generative AI tools have become widely available, with 21 percent noting a significant increase—and 54 percent do not think their institution’s faculty are effective in recognizing generative Al–created content.
In Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of Campus Chief Technology/Information Officers, released earlier this month, no CTO said that generative AI has proven to be an extreme risk to academic integrity at their institution. But most—three in four—said that it has proven to be a moderate (59 percent) or significant (15 percent) risk. This is the first time the annual survey with Hanover Research asked how concerns about academic integrity have actually borne out: Last year, six in 10 CTOs expressed some degree of concern about the risk generative AI posed to academic integrity.
Stephen Cicirelli, the lecturer of English at Saint Peter’s University whose “looking glass” post was liked 156,000 times in 24 hours last week, told Inside Higher Ed that cheating has “definitely” gotten more pervasive within the last semester. But whether it’s suddenly gotten worse or has been steadily growing since large language models were introduced to the masses in late 2022, one thing is clear: AI-assisted cheating is a problem, and it won’t get better on its own.
So what can institutions do about it? Drawing on some additional insights from the CTO survey and advice from other experts, we’ve compiled a list of suggestions below. The expert insights, in particular, are varied. But a unifying theme is that cheating in the age of generative AI is as much a problem requiring intervention as it is a mirror—one reflecting larger challenges and opportunities within higher education.
(Note: AI detection tools did not make this particular list. Even though they have fans among the faculty, who tend to point out that some tools are more accurate than others, such tools remainpolarizing and not entirely foolproof. Similarly, banning generative AI in the classroom did not make the list, though this may still be a widespread practice: 52 percent of students in the Educause survey said that most or all of their instructors prohibit the use of AI.)
Academic Integrity for Students
The American Association of Colleges and Universities and Elon University this month released the 2025 Student Guide to Artificial Intelligence under a Creative Commons license. The guide covers AI ethics, academic integrity and AI, career plans for the AI age, and an AI toolbox. It encourages students to use AI responsibly, critically assess its influence and join conversations about its future. The guide’s seven core principles are:
Know and follow your college’s rules
Learn about AI
Do the right thing
Think beyond your major
Commit to lifelong learning
Prioritize privacy and security
Cultivate your human abilities
Connie Ledoux Book, president of Elon, told Inside Higher Ed that the university sought to make ethics a central part of the student guide, with campus AI integration discussions revealing student support for “open and transparent dialogue about the use of AI.” Students “also bear a great deal of responsibility,” she said. They “told us they don’t like it when their peers use AI to gain unfair advantages on assignments. They want faculty to be crystal clear in their syllabi about when and how AI tools can be used.”
Now is a “defining moment for higher education leadership—not only to respond to AI, but to shape a future where academic integrity and technological innovation go hand in hand,” Book added. “Institutions must lead with clarity, consistency and care to prepare students for a world where ethical AI use is a professional expectation, not just a classroom rule.”
Mirror Logic
Lead from the top on AI. In Inside Higher Ed’s recent survey, just 11 percent of CTOs said their institution has a comprehensive AI strategy, and roughlyone in three CTOs (35 percent) at least somewhat agreed that their institution is handling the rise of AI adeptly. The sample size for the survey is 108 CTOs—relatively small—but those who said their institution is handling the rise of AI adeptly were more likely than the group over all to say that senior leaders at their institution are engaged in AI discussions and that effective channels exist between IT and academic affairs for communication on AI policy and other issues (both 92 percent).
Additionally, CTOs who said that generative AI had proven to be a low to nonexistent risk to academic integrity were more likely to report having some kind of institutionwide policy or policies governing the use of AI than were CTOs who reported a moderate or significant risk (81 percent versus 64 percent, respectively). Leading on AI can mean granting students institutional access to AI tools, the rollout of which often includes larger AI literacy efforts.
(Re)define cheating. Lee Rainie, director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center at Elon, said, “The first thing to tackle is the very definition of cheating itself. What constitutes legitimate use of AI and what is out of bounds?” In the AAC&U and Elon survey that Rainie co-led, for example, “there was strong evidence that the definitional issues are not entirely resolved,” even among top academic administrators. Leaders didn’t always agree whether hypothetical scenarios described appropriate uses of AI or not: For one example—in which a student used AI to generate a detailed outline for a paper and then used the outline to write the paper—“the verdict was completely split,”Rainie said. Clearly, it’s “a perfect recipe for confusion and miscommunication.”
Rainie’s additional action items, with implications for all areas of the institution:
Create clear guidelines for appropriate and inappropriate use of AI throughout the university.
Include in the academic code of conduct a “broad statement about the institution’s general position on AI and its place in teaching and learning,” allowing for a “spectrum” of faculty positions on AI.
Promote faculty and student clarity as to the “rules of the road in assignments.”
Establish “protocols of proof” that students can use to demonstrate they did the work.
Rainie suggested that CTOs, in particular, might be useful regarding this last point, as such proof could include watermarking content, creating NFTs and more.
Put it in the syllabus! (And in the institutional DNA.) Melik Khoury, president and CEO of Unity Environmental University in Maine, who’s publicly shared his thoughts on “leadership in an intelligent era of AI,” including how he uses generative AI, told Inside Higher Ed that “AI is not cheating. What is cheating is our unwillingness to rethink outdated assessment models while expecting students to operate in a completely transformed world. We are just beginning to tackle that ourselves, and it will take time. But at least we are starting from a position of ‘We need to adapt as an institution,’ and we are hiring learning designers to help our subject matter experts adapt to the future of learning.”
As for students, Khoury said the university has been explicit “about what AI is capable of and what it doesn’t do as well or as reliably” and encourages them to recognize their “agency and responsibility.” Here’s an excerpt of language that Khoury said appears in every course syllabus:
“You are accountable for ensuring the accuracy of factual statements and citations produced by generative AI. Therefore, you should review and verify all such information prior to submitting any assignment.
“Remember that many assignments require you to use in-text citations to acknowledge the origin of ideas. It is your responsibility to include these citations and to verify their source and appropriateness.
“You are accountable for ensuring that all work submitted is free from plagiarism, including content generated with AI assistance.
“Do not list generative AI as a co-author of your work. You alone are responsible.”
Additional policy language recommends that students:
Acknowledge use of generative AI for course submissions.
Disclose the full extent of how and where they used generative AI in the assignment.
Retain a complete transcript of generative AI usage (including source and date stamp).
“We assume that students will use AI. We suggest constructive ways they might use it for certain tasks,” Khoury said. “But, significantly, we design tasks that cannot be satisfactorily completed without student engagement beyond producing a response or [just] finding the right answer—something that AI can do for them very easily.”
In tandem with a larger cultural shift around our ideas about education, we need major changes to the way we do college.”
—Emily Pitts Donahoe, associate director of instructional support in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and lecturer of writing and rhetoric at the University of Mississippi
Design courses with and for AI. Keith Quesenberry, professor of marketing at Messiah University in Pennsylvania, said he thinks less about cheating, which can create an “adversarial me-versus-them dynamic,” and more about pedagogy. This has meant wrestling with a common criticism of higher education—that it’s not preparing students for the world of work in the age of AI—and the reality that no one’s quite sure what that future will look like. Quesenberry said he ended up spending all of last summer trying to figure out how “a marketer should and shouldn’t use AI,” creating and testing frameworks, ultimately vetting his own courses’ assignments: “I added detailed instructions for how and how not to use AI specifically for that assignment’s tasks or requirements. I also explain why, such as considering whether marketing materials can be copyrighted for your company or client. I give them guidance on how to cite their AI use.” He also created a specialized chat bot to which students can upload approved resources to act as an AI tutor.
Quesenberry also talks to students about learning with AI “from the perspective of obtaining a job.” That is, students need a foundation of disciplinary knowledge on which to create AI prompts and judge output. And they can’t rely on generative AI to speak or think for them during interviews, networking and with clients.
There are “a lot of professors quietly working very hard to integrate AI into their courses and programs that benefit their disciplines and students,” he adds. One thing that would help them, in Quesenberry’s view? Faculty institutional access to the most advanced AI tools.
Give faculty time and training. Tricia Bertram Gallant, director of the academic integrity office and Triton Testing Center at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author of the new book The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI (University of Oklahoma Press), said that cheating part of human nature—and that faculty need time, training and support to “design educational environments that make cheating the exception and integrity the norm” in this new era of generative AI.
Faculty “cannot be expected to rebuild the plane while flying it,” she said. “They need course release time to redesign that same course, or they need a summer stipend. They also need the help of those trained in pedagogy, assessment design and instructional design, as most faculty did not receive that training while completing their Ph.D.s.” Gallant also floated the idea of AI fellows, or disciplinary faculty peers who are trained on how to use generative AI in the classroom and then to “share, coach and mentor their peers.”
Students, meanwhile, need training in AI literacy, “which includes how to determine if they’re using it ethically or unethically. Students are confused, and they’re also facing immense temptations and opportunities to cognitively offload to these tools,” Gallant added.
Teach first-year students about AI literacy. Chris Ostro, an assistant teaching professor and instructional designer focused on AI at the University of Colorado at Boulder, offers professional development on his “mosaic approach” to writing in the classroom—which includes having students sign a standardized disclosure form about how and where they’ve used AI in their assignments. He told Inside Higher Ed that he’s redesigned his own first-year writing course to address AI literacy, but he is concerned about students across higher education who may never get such explicit instruction. For that reason, he thinks there should be mandatory first-year classes for all students about AI and ethics. “This could also serve as a level-setting opportunity,” he said, referring to “tech gaps,” or the effects of the larger digital divide on incoming students.
Regarding student readiness, Ostro also said that most of the “unethical” AI use by students is “a form of self-treatment for the huge and pervasive learning deficits many students have from the pandemic.” One student he recently flagged for possible cheating, for example, had largely written an essay on her own but then ran it through a large language model, prompting it to make the paper more polished. This kind of use arguably reflects some students’ lack of confidence in their writing skills, not an outright desire to offload the difficult and necessary work of writing to think critically.
Think about grading (and why students cheat in the first place). Emily Pitts Donahoe, associate director of instructional support in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and lecturer of writing and rhetoric at the University of Mississippi, co-wrote an essay two years ago with two students about why students cheat. They said much of it came down to an overemphasis on grades: “Students are more likely to engage in academic dishonesty when their focus, or the perceived focus of the class, is on grading.” The piece proposed the following solutions, inspired by the larger trend of ungrading:
Allow students to reattempt or revise their work.
Refocus on formative feedback to improve rather than summative feedback to evaluate.
Incorporate self-assessment.
Donahoe said last week, “I stand by every claim that we make in the 2023 piece—and it all feels heightened two years later.” The problems with AI misuse “have become more acute, and between this and the larger sociopolitical climate, instructors are reaching unsustainable levels of burnout. The actions we recommend at the end of the piece remain good starting points, but they are by no means solutions to the big, complex problem we’re facing.”
Framing cheating as a structural issue, Donahoe said students have been “conditioned to see education as a transaction, a series of tokens to be exchanged for a credential, which can then be exchanged for a high-paying job—in an economy where such jobs are harder and harder to come by.” And it’s hard to fault students for that view, she continued, as they receive little messaging to the contrary.
Like the problem, the solution set is structural, Donahoe explained: “In tandem with a larger cultural shift around our ideas about education, we need major changes to the way we do college. Smaller class sizes in which students and teachers can form real relationships; more time, training and support for instructors; fundamental changes to how we grade and how we think about grades; more public funding for education so that we can make these things happen.”
With none of this apparently forthcoming, faculty can at least help reorient students’ ideas about school andtry to “harness their motivation to learn.”
One of the challenges for students entering the workforce is identifying how their experiences in and outside the classroom have prepared them for careers. A 2023 survey by Cengage found that one-third of recent graduates felt underqualified for entry-level roles, and only 41 percent believed their program taught them the skills needed for their first job.
Focused career development opportunities that address unique learner populations, such as working or neurodiverse students, can help bridge the gap between lived experiences and their application to the world of jobs.
Inside Higher Ed compiled various initiatives that increase career readiness for specific student populations.
Neurodiverse Learners
Beacon College in Leesburg, Fla., primarily serves students with learning disabilities, including ADHD and dyslexia. Last year the college established a career fair designed for these learners, which introduces them to employers looking to develop a neurodiverse talent workforce.
Survey Says
Just under half of college students believe their college or university should focus more on helping students find internships and job possibilities, according to a May 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab.
This spring’s event, Internship Careers and Neurodiversity (ICAN), featured two dozen national and local employers. Success coaches were on site to support students and employers as they engaged with one another, and students could visit the Zen Den if they needed a quiet and private space to process.
ICAN “is designed to remove barriers and reduce anxiety often associated with large-scale ‘convention center’ type events, so Beacon College can empower neurodivergent college students and help increase their participation in networking events elsewhere,” according to an April press release.
Student Athletes
Student athletes have packed schedules while they’re in season, making it difficult to balance athletics, coursework and extracurricular activities, which can sometimes push career development opportunities to the background.
To help student athletes build their confidence in professional settings, Kennesaw State University created a “networking scrimmage” with employers so learners could practice introducing themselves, relay their academic and athletic accomplishments, and discuss career interests in a low-stakes environment, according to a university press release.
Students also heard from three former student athletes who shared their stories of transitioning from sports into the workforce, as well as advice on how to navigate postcollege life.
Adult Learners
In 2023, the University of Phoenix created a digital tool that allows working adult learners to identify skills and goals that will guide them on their career journey.
Students can access Career Navigator through the student portal. The tool allows them to build out demonstrated and self-attested skills and explore job features, including daily tasks and salary range, as well as identify skill gaps they may have when pursuing their desired career.
Student Veterans
After leaving military service, many veterans enroll in college to build career skills and gain further education, but connecting their military experience to civilian life can be a challenge.
The University of Colorado, Denver, provides a one-year cohort program for student veterans, Boots to Suits, to aid their journey, providing personalized academic and career-development resources. Program participants receive job search strategies and career coaching, as well as advice on networking and building their LinkedIn profile and résumé.
Major Programs
While general career fairs and networking opportunities can give students visibility into employers or roles they may not otherwise have considered, tailored events can connect students of a particular discipline to employers looking for their expertise.
Staff at Villanova University identified a problem at their career fairs: The number of employers looking for early-career civil engineers far overshadowed the number of students interested in such jobs. In response, staff created a new event specifically for civil engineering students, allowing employers to connect with potential interns earlier in their college career while also ensuring that students who were interested in other fields were able to engage with organizations that better fit their career goals.
The University of Maryland hosts a Visual Arts Reverse Career and Internship Fair, a flipped model of the career fair in which employers visit a student’s table or booth to engage with their portfolio of work. This allows students to display graphic design, video production and immersive media skills in an engaging way that better reflects their learning and accomplishments.
Do you have a career-focused intervention that might help others promote student success? Tell us about it.
I am currently chair of the philosophy department at the University of Utah. I have taught at “the U” for 32 years. We are a flagship but not an elite university; we admit 89 percent of applicants. Our students range from quite unprepared to extremely capable. For the most part, I have loved my job and have put my heart and soul into it. I have always been proud to be on this faculty helping students at all levels of academic readiness acquire skills in reading, writing, speaking and reasoning that enhance their lives and prepare them for virtually any job. But recently, my pride has evaporated and been replaced with feelings of grief and shame.
This year—my first as chair—has seen profound upheaval. In January 2024, shortly before my term began, the State Legislature passed an anti-DEI bill, prohibiting, among other things, offices and programs related to diversity, equity or inclusion. Administrators were required to purge these three words from university websites and other documents, such as RPT—retention, promotion and tenure review—guidelines, and the university administration interpreted the law as requiring that the Women’s Resource Center, the Black Cultural Center and the LGBT Resource Center be shuttered.
The state has also imposed a “bathroom bill” requiring trans university students to use locker rooms aligning with their sex assigned at birth, has banned Pride flags in public spaces (and in faculty offices if they can be seen through a window), and now requires faculty to post their syllabi in a publicly searchable database. It also prohibits university presidents from taking a stand on any issue that does not bear upon the “mission, role or pedagogical objectives” of the institution. And finally, as the coup de grâce for academic freedom and faculty expertise, it has funded and established the Center for Civic Excellence at Utah State University, mandating that all students take general education courses on the topics of Western civilization and the rise of Christianity. The law establishing the center identifies it as a pilot program to be rolled out to other Utah universities in the future.
Then there is the state of Utah’s version of the national campaign against alleged “waste, fraud and abuse.” Recently passed laws dictate the process by which all post-tenure reviews of faculty must be conducted, curtail shared governance and cut state funds to all Utah public institutions by 10 percent ($60.5 million). Universities can have the funds “reallocated” if they use them for high-demand, high-wage majors. As a result, we lost our History and Philosophy of Science major, which drew some of our best students, many of them double majoring in STEM subjects and working toward careers in medicine and public health. To be clear, eliminating this major will reduce opportunities for students while producing no savings whatsoever; offering it requires no additional staff, advisers or courses beyond what is already in place for our philosophy major. These funding cuts also mean that tenure-line faculty in my department will receive a zero percent raise this year.
In addition to the state’s actions, the upper administration—in seeming alignment with Facebook’s motto of “move fast and break things”—has instituted so many changes in such a short time it is hard to keep track. It abruptly revamped the advising system, brought four colleges under the umbrella of a Colleges and Schools of Liberal Arts and Sciences in a “shared services” arrangement, and keeps rolling out new “student success initiatives.” Whether these changes are wise or not, the pace at which they were made imposed a crushing amount of (mostly stultifying) work on deans and department chairs. Aside from refereeing a few manuscripts for journals, I have not read a piece of philosophy since I became chair, much less written one. In the midst of this, the dean of my college, a strong supporter of philosophy, resigned in the middle of the fall semester and was replaced by someone from outside our college, essentially putting us in receivership.
While all this is happening, my youngest child, who is queer, is deciding where to attend college. He applied to the University of Utah, where he was admitted to the Honors College and received a scholarship. But how can I send him here? I fear for his safety no matter where he lives in our current hate-filled political climate, but still I hesitate to subject him to the environment on my own campus. I will likely incur a hefty bill, then, so he can attend a university out of state.
I had more or less come to terms with this constraint, and was also managing to persevere in my job, when something happened that finally took the wind out of my sails: The president of the university announced, to the surprise of faculty, that returned missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be eligible to receive up to 12 college credits for their service to the church.
I am galled by what all this says about who matters at my university. While students like my child can’t even have a designated room on campus to hang out in with like-minded others—and while the main symbol reminding us of the existence and dignity of students like him is banned from public spaces—returned LDS missionaries, who have an entire institute across from campus dedicated to their spiritual support, can get a full semester of credit, at a greatly reduced cost, essentially for going door to door trying to persuade people to join their church. This set of priorities is so wrong-headed that it verges, for me, on surreal. And yet the administration sees no irony or hypocrisy in naming its Office of Student Experience “U Belong.”
Soon I will be hosting a retirement party for a wonderful colleague who joined the faculty one year before I did. In another era, I would have been sad to see him go but glad to be continuing in what I regard as my vocation. Now I feel nothing but envy. It is time for me, too, to retire, but, alas, that is not an option, because I have four years of out-of-state tuition to pay.
Cynthia Stark is a professor and chair of the philosophy department at the University of Utah.
When you finish a Ph.D., it often feels like you’re standing at a professional fork in the road: stay in academia or go into industry. But what if the real opportunity lies not on either of those well-worn paths, but at their intersection?
That’s where commercialization postdoctoral programs come in—an option many early-career researchers don’t know exists but for which you may be ideally suited.
These programs provide the tools to turn your research into real-world impact. They explore how discoveries made in the lab can become products, services or systems that solve real problems. And they teach you how to think like an entrepreneur, even if you don’t plan to start your own company, which many postdocs find helps them become more competitive for faculty and industry roles.
If you’re curious about how your work could make a broader impact or simply what technology transfer, commercialization or innovation looks like from inside the university, this is your invitation to learn more.
What Are Commercialization Postdocs?
At a basic level, commercialization postdoc programs support Ph.D.s learning how to move research from discovery to application. These programs fall into two general categories:
Technology transfer fellowships train you to manage intellectual property (IP), evaluate market potential and support licensing processes.
Entrepreneurial and IP commercialization fellowships let you work hands-on with university-owned (or your own) innovations to develop them for real-world use.
Both paths expand your skill set well beyond most traditional academic training and do so in a way that positions you to lead innovation in any field or sector.
You’re trained to identify gaps, solve problems and produce new knowledge. Commercialization programs help you understand how to apply those same skills in ways that create value beyond the lab or scholarly community.
Even if you don’t see yourself launching a start-up, learning to assess market needs, build relationships across disciplines and effectively communicate your research vision and unique value proposition can open doors to new kinds of funding, partnerships and diverse career prospects.
From Mindset to Practice: A Case Study in Entrepreneurial Thinking
In spring 2024, Virginia Tech worked with Archer Career to develop a program focused on helping postdocs adopt an entrepreneurial mindset. Through online modules and a full-day, in-person workshop, 19 postdocs from across multiple disciplines engaged in activities including:
Crafting elevator pitches
Identifying the innovative aspects of their research
Mapping and mobilizing their personal and professional networks
Those that attended the program said they felt it filled a gap in their knowledge and appreciated hearing from current Ph.D. entrepreneurs and connecting with peers. They also realized they weren’t alone in their questions about research commercialization and start-up company creation, and that there was space for conversations about innovation that didn’t require giving up their scholarly identities. This event also demonstrated the need for more discussions about the value of an entrepreneurial mindset among academics.
Where Commercialization Postdoc Programs Live
While commercialization postdoc programs are still emerging, there’s a growing list of opportunities across the U.S. that support Ph.D.s building critical technology transfer and entrepreneurial skills.
ASPIRE to Innovate Postdoctoral Fellowship Program—Vanderbilt University: Current Ph.D. students studying biomedical sciences and postdocs affiliated with Vanderbilt School of Medicine apply to receive mentorship, training and networking opportunities to learn how to launch a company and to commercialize technologies discovered at Vanderbilt.
Postdoctoral Entrepreneurship Program—University of Washington: This program gives strong preference to UW postdoctoral researchers or graduating Ph.D. students. It funds “commercially focused individuals” to work in UW labs on translational experiments to identify and obtain funding and to develop a business model.
Ignite Fellow for New Ventures Program—Cornell University: The program aims to build new businesses, “grow entrepreneur scientists and engineers,” and “enrich Cornell’s venture ecosystem.” The program is open to graduating Ph.D.s or master’s students working with a faculty inventor to commercialize technology developed on a Cornell campus.
Activate Fellowship: This program provides two years of support, including “funding, technical resources, and unparalleled support from a network of scientists, engineers, investors, commercial partners, and fellow entrepreneurs.” The program accepts applications in the fall of each year, with the fellowship beginning in early summer the following year. Prospective fellows can apply to work in their local ecosystem or in hubs located across the U.S.:
Runway Startup Postdoc Program—Cornell Tech: “Part business school, part research institution, and part startup incubator,” Runway is focused on digital technologies, and Startup Postdocs are provided with training, mentorship and other resources to support their growth as entrepreneurs. Startup Postdocs arrive with ideas that require time and specialized guidance to develop. The program accepts candidates from anywhere around the world.
Each of these programs offers something slightly different, but they share a common goal—to empower researchers to think beyond the bench and take an active role in translating ideas into action. The Activate Fellows and Runway program at Cornell Tech are especially unique, as they allow a Ph.D. to bring their own ideas with them. The Runway program, which to date has trained 55 postdocs, has also been featured in The Journal of Technology Transfer.
One advantage of participating in a commercialization-focused postdoc program is the access to resources that support your growth. Many programs are embedded in innovation ecosystems, such as tech transfer offices, legal support, start-up incubators and translational research centers. Some even offer seed funding or business mentorship to help you move a technology forward.
What’s Next? A Call to Action
If you’re a postdoc or advising one, you don’t need to have a ready-to-pitch product to benefit from this kind of training. You just need to be curious.
Ask yourself:
What problems does my research help solve?
Who beyond my field might care about this work?
What skills could help me turn this into something people can use?
What resources are available to me to learn more about commercializing research and entrepreneurship?
Whether you want to start a company, work at the intersection of science and policy, or simply make your research more impactful, commercialization training can help you get there.
We also need to do more, collectively, to bring visibility to commercialization programs available to Ph.D.s. This includes:
Raising awareness among graduate students and faculty mentors of the potential for impact and opportunities in commercialization.
Encouraging institutions to embed innovation and entrepreneurship training into core professional development and strengthen their innovation ecosystem.
Supporting peer communities that normalize entrepreneurial thinking in academia.
Tracking and sharing outcomes from postdocs who go through these programs.
Most importantly, we need to keep reminding ourselves and our colleagues that commercialization and entrepreneurship isn’t a detour: It’s a destination that many Ph.D.s are uniquely equipped to reach.
Final Thoughts
You don’t need to have a CEO title in your sights to benefit from entrepreneurial thinking. At its core, commercialization is about connecting your work to the world, and that’s something every researcher and scholar should know how to do. Whether through a fellowship, a campus workshop or self-guided exploration, now is a great time to start learning how your research can make a difference in the world.
And who knows? You might just discover that innovation is your next career frontier.
Chris Smith is Virginia Tech’s postdoctoral affairs program administrator. He serves on the National Postdoctoral Association’s Board of Directors and is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium—an organization providing a national voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.
Tomer Joshua serves as associate director of the Runway Startup and Spinouts programs at Cornell Tech and the Jacobs Technion–Cornell Institute, where he supports deep tech and digital start-ups.
