Tag: Higher

Coursera Report Shows Strong Support for Microcredentials

A new report from Coursera suggests students and employers alike are gravitating toward microcredentials and view them as beneficial.

The report based its findings on voluntary online surveys of at least 1,200 students across a variety of countries and more than 1,000 employers in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, France, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Turkey. The surveys were fielded between December 2024 and January 2025. Coursera offers a variety of microcredentials on its course-sharing platform.

The survey found that most employers, 96 percent, felt microcredentials help a candidate’s application, and 85 percent were more likely to hire a job candidate with a microcredential compared to one without. Meanwhile, 90 percent of employers were willing to offer higher starting salaries to candidates with recognized, credit-bearing microcredentials. Most employers believed microcredentials have various advantages, including employers saving on first-year training costs and hires coming in with higher proficiency in vital industry skills. Eighty-seven percent of employers hired at least one employee with a microcredential in the past year.

Learners surveyed had overwhelmingly positive feelings toward microcredentials, as well. Ninety-four percent of students felt microcredentials build essential career skills. The same percentage wanted to see microcredentials embedded in degree programs, up from 55 percent in 2023. The report says students are twice as likely to enroll in a program that includes a microcredential and 2.4 times more likely to enroll if it’s a microcredential for credit.

The report also found that entry-level employees with microcredentials felt the programs benefited their careers. Among surveyed entry-level workers with microcredentials, 28 percent reported receiving a pay raise and 21 percent received a promotion after earning a microcredential. Seventy percent felt like their productivity increased after earning a microcredential and 83 percent said microcredentials gave them confidence to adapt to new job responsibilities.

“Employer demand for skills-based hiring requires educators to prioritize skills-based learning,” Francesca Lockhart, professor and cybersecurity clinic program lead at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a blog post about the report from Coursera. “We must adapt our curricula to prepare students for a job market where desired qualifications are shifting too quickly for traditional education to keep pace.”

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May 1, 2025
Senate Committee Postpones Vote on Antisemitism Awareness Act

A vote on the Antisemitism Awareness Act—a bill that would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s controversial definition of antisemitism—was postponed Wednesday following a testy two-hour debate in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Jewish Insider reported.

The committee’s Republican chairman, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, called off the planned vote after the Democratic minority won enough Republican support to pass several amendments aimed at more clearly distinguishing what qualifies as discriminatory speech and protecting the First Amendment rights of pro-Palestinian protesters.

For instance, some of the proposed amendments included clarifying that it is not antisemitic to oppose the “devastation of Gaza,” or to criticize Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as preventing the revocation of visas based on “protected conduct under the First Amendment.” Lawmakers also sought to ensure students and faculty members could protest as long as they don’t incite violence.

Cassidy opposed the amendments, saying they were “problematic” and could jeopardize GOP support for the bill on the Senate floor.

“So that it’s clear for the people that are watching, supporting these amendments is an effort to kill this bill, which protects Jewish students from antisemitic acts,” he said during the meeting. “The bill [already] includes protections for free speech. So let’s not be naïve as to what’s taking place here.”

But Democrats and Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky said the amendments were necessary to ensure that while objecting to bigotry and discrimination, this bill also upheld the constitutional right to peaceful protest. (Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, also supported some of the amendments.)

“I worry very much that the Antisemitism Awareness Act that we are considering today is unconstitutional and will move us far along in the authoritarian direction that the Trump administration is taking us,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent and ranking member of the committee, said in his opening remarks.

Paul also objected the current bill’s language, particularly the examples of antisemitic speech it includes.

“The problem is if you look at the IHRA’s examples of speech, they are going to be limiting on campuses everything on that list … protected by the First Amendment,” Paul said. “The First Amendment isn’t about protecting good speech; it protects even the most despicable and vile speech.”

The bill was already expected to face a tight vote given that the committee consists of 12 Republicans and 11 Democrats. So if two Republicans voted in opposition to the act, it wouldn’t move forward.

Furthermore, multiple Republican members of the committee were not present for the full hearing due to other commitments. Cassidy said there was not enough time for all Republicans to return to the committee room for a vote before the meeting ended, so he postponed the vote. A vote on the Protecting Students on Campus Act, which would require colleges to notify students of how to file discrimination complaints, was also delayed.

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May 1, 2025
Agency at Stake: The Tech Leadership Imperative

One in three chief technology and information officers says their institution is significantly more reliant on artificial intelligence than it was even last year, according to the Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research 2025 Survey of Campus Chief Technology/Information Officers, published today. Yet those same campus tech leaders also indicate their institutions are struggling with AI governance at a time of upheaval for higher education.

The fragmentation in campus technology policies and approaches is only adding “another layer of uncertainty” to the general chaos, said Chris van der Kaay, a one-time college CIO and current higher education consultant specializing in AI policy.

Some additional disconnects: Only a third of campus tech leaders say investing in generative artificial intelligence is a high or essential priority for their institution, and just 19 percent say higher education is adeptly handling the rise of AI.

This, combined with technology companies’ growing influence in society and the sector, raises big questions about college and university agency in defining how AI will shape their futures.

Maintaining Control

“Colleges and universities have to be in control of how AI is being used unless they want the private sector dictating how it will be used at their institutions,” van der Kaay said. “If they want to maintain control and be at the forefront of change, helping institutions adapt and supporting staff and faculty needs—they have to make it a top priority.”

More on the Survey

On Wednesday, June 18, at 2 p.m. Eastern, Inside Higher Ed will present a webcast to discuss the results of the survey. Please register here.

This independent Inside Higher Ed Survey of Campus Chief Technology/Information Officers was supported in part by Softdocs, Grammarly, Jenzabar and T-Mobile for Education.

Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of Campus Chief Technology/Information Officers was conducted by Hanover Research. The survey included 108 CTOs from public and private institutions, two-year and four-year, for a margin of error of 9 percent. A copy of the free report can be downloaded here.

Between February and March of this year, Inside Higher Ed and Hanover Research sent surveys to 2,197 college and university CTOs. Of the 108 who submitted responses, providing a valuable snapshot of this terrain, 59 percent serve on an executive cabinet or council at their institution. But close to half believe their college isn’t fully leveraging their knowledge and insights to inform strategic decisions and planning involving technology.

And it’s in that environment that the majority of CTOs reported both a rise in demand for online education and a lack of formal AI governance: 31 percent say their institution hasn’t created any AI use policies, including those that address teaching, research, student services and administrative tasks.

Similar to last year’s survey results, just 11 percent of CTOs indicate their institution has a comprehensive AI strategy, while about half (53 percent) believe their institution puts more emphasis on thinking about AI for individual use cases than thinking about it at an enterprise scale.

“AI has implications for every single area of an organization. It’s not just another technology we have to learn. It’s much broader than that,” van der Kaay said. “AI has us not only thinking about how we’re doing things but why we’re doing them, which is why it’s important to have that enterprise-level thinking in using these tools. If we’re just trying to use AI to accomplish things based on decades-old policies, processes, procedures—that’s not the most effective use.”

Ultimately, van der Kaay said he’s “optimistic that it’s giving us an opportunity here to make a lot of meaningful change.”

Digital Divides and Risks Persist

But the rise of AI has also heightened long-standing problems for colleges and universities, including access divides and cybersecurity concerns.

As the technology allows hackers to carry out larger-scale, more sophisticated breaches, only three in 10 CTOs are highly confident their college’s practices can prevent cyberattackers from compromising data and intellectual property, or launching a ransomware event. Van der Kaay said that while this likely reflects the cautious mindset of many CTOs, creating sound cybersecurity policy underscores the need for a cohesive, campuswide technology strategy.

“You don’t want an IT department just locking down stuff without working collaboratively with the faculty and staff to make sure there’s no impact on the learning process,” he said, noting that cybersecurity systems are also expensive. “If CTOs are not engaged with senior leadership and education planning at the highest level, that’s a problem.”

Beyond internal discussions and challenges, external influences are forcing rapid changes to the resources, focus and delivery of higher education.

Since President Donald Trump began his second term in January, his administration has cut billions in federal research funding to higher education institutions, leaving even wealthy institutions with craters in their budgets. At the same time, large technology companies are marketing AI-driven products to colleges and students as tools capable of moving the needle on student success—though many in the academic community are still skeptical of those claims.

Student success is also top of mind for CTOs surveyed, including 68 percent who say leveraging data for student success insights is a high or essential priority in digital transformation efforts and 59 percent who say the same of teaching and learning. While 39 percent of CTOs say their institution has set specific goals for digital transformation, none has yet achieved a complete transformation.

Commonly cited barriers to meeting those digital transformation goals are insufficient number of IT personnel, insufficient financial investment and data-quality and/or integration issues.

More on Tech and Student Success

“Data by itself is fine, but it just tells you what’s wrong,” said Glenda Morgan, an education technology market analyst for Phil Hill and Associates. “But you need to take action after, which is harder.” She added that taking effective action to improve student outcomes is even more urgent as of this week, after House Republicans on the Education and the Workforce Committee advanced a bill known as the Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan, which would create a risk-sharing program making colleges partially responsible for unpaid student loans.

“Emerging technologies do have a role to play, but probably not as much as many vendors and CTOs might think,” Morgan said. “You need the data to make the moves, but it also needs to be linked to student journeys.”

Days before the House advanced that bill, Trump issued an executive order calling for AI literacy in K-12 schools through public-private partnerships with AI industry groups, nonprofits and academic institutions that will develop those resources.

The results of that AI literacy directive will have implications for higher education, too. While school districts may start requiring their teachers to start using specific education-technology products, university instructors have more autonomy in how they choose to incorporate technology—if at all.

“We’re going to have to respond to that by going to state legislative bodies to get funding to make sure our faculty are prepared to teach AI-literate students and that our students are prepared to go into the workforce,” said Marc Watkins, a lecturer in creative writing and assistant director of academic innovation at the University of Mississippi. “AI isn’t going away; it’s only becoming more advanced. If you don’t actually have a plan to start thinking about what it’s going to look like over the next five years, it’s going to be incredibly hard to catch up.”

But getting the resources to make that happen won’t be like “waving a magic wand,” Watkins emphasized. “It’s going to take time, and a lot of thoughtful purchases and initiatives that involve human beings. It’s not just flipping a switch.”

While some institutions, such as the California State University system, have already made big investments in giving every student access to generative AI tools, the CTO survey suggests that half of colleges don’t grant students access to such tools. And those disparities will only deepen at universities that don’t invest in AI or create comprehensive policies that translate into action.

“You can have a vision statement about AI, but if every school, department and teacher has their own say about how to incorporate AI, it creates a difficult situation to navigate,” Watkins said. “For students, it’s nagging to think about what they should be expected to know about generative AI. How can they be AI-literate and workforce-ready when many faculty still think it’s cheating? We need to have open conversations about how AI is changing knowledge.”

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May 1, 2025
HELU’s Wall-to-Wall and Coast-to-Coast Report – April 2025 (Higher Ed Labor United)

April 2025 HELU Chair’s Message – May Day Strong

From Levin Kim, HELU Chair
Over the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, higher ed workers from coast to coast have been fighting back against attacks on critical lifesaving research, on immigrant workers, on education and research in the public interest. We’re in the fight of our lives, for our work, our communities, and our future.

Despite alarming news on the daily—from students and workers removed from our campuses, firings, program closures, government intervention in classroom curriculum, and brazen attacks on academic freedom—we refuse to be immobilised into inaction because we know a better world is possible if we fight for it. We’re standing up for the future of higher ed by building a wall-to-wall, coast-to-coast movement of workers ready to organize, to fight, and to win. Now is the time for coalition-building, for moving your coworkers to take action together, and getting out in the streets. Find and attend a May Day event near you tomorrow, and stay tuned for more ways to take action.

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April 30, 2025
Mellon Foundation Gives Humanities Councils Emergency Funds

The Mellon Foundation is giving $15 million in emergency funding to state humanities councils after the National Endowment for the Humanities eliminated $65 million in support for the councils, amid sweeping cuts to its grants and workforce, the foundation announced Tuesday.

These councils, established by Congress in 1971, are nonprofits that support educational programming for the public, such as literacy initiatives, lectures, book fairs and cultural programs. The support will go toward all 56 state and jurisdictional humanities councils across the country in hopes of staving off possible deep cuts and closures. The foundation plans to allocate $2.8 million to challenge grants of up to $50,000 for each council, to be matched by other funders. And each council will received $200,000 in immediate operational support, The New York Times reported.

Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, said in the announcement that while the emergency funds can’t cover the full extent of cuts, it’s a show of support.

“At stake are both the operational integrity of organizations like museums, libraries, historical societies in every single state, as well as the mechanisms to participate in the cultural dynamism and exchange that is a fundamental part of American civic life,” Alexander said.

Phoebe Stein, president of the Federation of State Humanities Councils, called the foundation funding a “lifeline.”

“Mellon’s support allows us to not only preserve this vital network—it helps ensure that everyday Americans can thrive through lifelong learning, connection, and understanding of one another,” she said in the announcement.

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April 30, 2025
Student Loan Overhaul Clears House Committee

Over strong objections from Democrats, House Republicans on the Education and the Workforce Committee advanced legislation Tuesday that would make dramatic changes to the federal student aid system.

For a full Inside Higher Ed analysis of what provisions are included in the reconciliation bill, read here.

The sweeping 103-page bill, known as the Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan, passed on a party-line vote after more than five hours of debate. The legislation would cap the amount of federal loans a student can take out, cut off the Pell Grant for students who attend less than half time, consolidate income-driven repayment plans and introduce a risk-sharing program where colleges are partially responsible for unpaid student loans. The bill, which would also reverse multiple Biden-era student borrower protection regulations, could save more than $330 billion in federal funding over 10 years, committee Republicans say.

It’s just one section of a larger budget bill that lawmakers are planning to use to fund some of President Donald Trump’s top priorities, like lofty tax cuts for the wealthy and a major crackdown on immigration. But House Republicans said the changes were more than just a means to fund his MAGA agenda.

“If there is any consensus when it comes to student loans, it’s that the current system is effectively broken and littered with incentives that push tuition prices upward,” Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican and committee chair, said in his opening statement. Higher education is “on a fiscally unsustainable path, so we must deliver on the promise of economic mobility to our students and families. Taken together, the provisions in this package will do just that.”

Democrats on the committee argued the legislation is nothing more than a means to fund tax cuts for the wealthy that will force low-income and racial minority students to take on more debt and penalize the community colleges, regional universities and minority-serving institutions that educate those students. All in all, the bill will put the cost of a college degree out of reach for many, they said.

“I appreciate that my colleagues acknowledge that the cost of college is too high, and that Congress should reform the system. But the committee print before us today … seriously misses the mark of making college more affordable,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member on the committee. “Put bluntly, this Republican proposal will limit how much money middle- and low-income students can borrow from the federal government.”

Scott and other Democrats proposed 33 amendments—all of which Republicans voted down. They ranged from requests to prove the bill wouldn’t disproportionately affect certain institutions and increase costs for students to defending the Pell eligibility of part-time students and some consumer-protection regulations. Democrats also proposed replacing the income-driven repayment plan in the legislation with a more generous Biden-era alternative and striking the bill entirely. Other amendments touched on other issues unrelated to this section of the legislation, such as proposed cuts to Medicaid and the Department of Government Efficiency’s access to sensitive data.

Republicans countered that Democrats’ allegations that the bill would make college less affordable were, as Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah said, “nothing further from the truth.” The proposed changes to the federal aid system will lead to better loan terms and repayment options that are also fair to taxpayers and avoid wasteful spending, they argued.

The bill will now head to the House Budget Committee, where it will be folded into a complex omnibus bill before it is sent to the floor for a full House vote.

But even if it clears the House, the legislation still has a long way to go. The House and the Senate have differing ideas about how much federal spending they wish to cut and what programs they are willing to slash. The Senate is aiming to make at least $1 billion in education cuts, which is less than 1 percent of the House committee’s $330 billion reduction.

This reconciliation bill only needs a simple majority vote, or 51 yeas, to pass the upper chamber, but that will require almost all Republicans in the Senate to agree, which experts don’t think is a foregone conclusion.

Risk Sharing

One of the more contentious proposals in the bill is the risk-sharing provision, which would require colleges to repay the government a portion of students’ unpaid loans.

Republicans on the committee described the risk-sharing proposal as critical, adding that it would penalize colleges for forcing their students into unmanageable debt and would incentivize them to lower their cost of attendance.

“The best way for us to do that is not to loan [students] more money, but to reduce the cost so that they don’t need the loans,” said Rep. Randy Fine of Florida, who has been active in higher ed in the Sunshine State. “That’s what this bill does over and over and over again.”

But Democrats said it is misleading to say the bill and provisions like risk-sharing would reduce costs and increase graduation rates, arguing it would actually incentivize colleges to accept fewer low-income students and increase tuition or cut critical student-support programs in order to foot the bill of new penalties.

Rep. Alma Adams, a Democrat of North Carolina, called risk-sharing “a dire threat” especially to historically Black colleges and universities, which would have to pay an average of $1.7 million per year to account for the debt of their graduates.

The students at these institutions “started behind but are determined to get ahead,” Adams said, adding that they don’t default because they are failing; they default because they are “carrying the burden of generations of inequity.”

“This bill will tell colleges to take only the best students and leave the rest behind,” she added.

Multiple student advocacy and higher education groups opposed risk-sharing and other proposals in letters to the committee and fact sheets.

Third Way, a left-of-center think tank, noted in a memo Monday that the concept of risk-sharing “has a lot of intuitive appeal,” but the proposal “misses the mark for meaningful accountability.” Other provisions like loan limits and changes to the Pell Grant program will also “drive students into the private loan market,” the memo added.

And the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities told the committee that, if passed, risk-sharing would amount to a “staggering level of federal overreach” that penalizes colleges and universities for “decisions beyond their control.”

“The gravity of these changes would have a far reaching impact to current and future students,” APLU wrote. “There is a better way.”

If Republicans “truly believed” the bill would not raise the cost of college and the burden of debt for students, then they would have no problem passing proposed amendments that certify its impact on students and institutions, said Adams, the North Carolina Democrat.

“Let’s be clear about what this really means: This bill punishes students for being poor. It punishes students for needing to work. It punishes students for living in the real world,” she said. It transforms financial aid “from a bridge into a barricade.”

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April 30, 2025
Three Laws for Curriculum Design in an AI Age (opinion)

Almost a third of students report that they don’t know how or when to use generative AI to help with coursework. On our campus, students tell us that they worry if they don’t learn how to use AI, they will be left behind in the workforce. At the same time, many students worry that technology undermines their learning.

Here’s Gabby, an undergraduate on our campus: “It turned my writing into something I didn’t say. It makes it harder for me to think of my ideas and makes everything I think go away. It replaces it with what is official. It is correct, and I have a hard time not agreeing with it once ChatGPT says it. It overrides me.”

Students experience additional anxiety around accusations of unauthorized use of AI tools—even when they are not using them. Here’s another student: “If I write like myself, I get points off for not following the rubric. If I fix my grammar and follow the template, my teacher will look at me and assume I used ChatGPT because brown people can’t write good enough.”

Faculty guidance in the classroom is critical to addressing these concerns, especially as campuses increasingly provide students with access to enterprise GPTs. Our own campus system, California State University, recently rolled out an AI strategy that includes a “landmark” partnership with companies such as OpenAI, and a free subscription to Chat GPT Edu for all students, faculty and staff.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, students are not the only ones who feel confused and worried about AI in this fast-moving environment. Faculty also express confusion about whether and under what circumstances it is OK for their students to use AI technology. In our roles at San Francisco State University’s Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CEETL), we are often asked about the need for campuswide policies and the importance of tools like Turnitin to ensure academic integrity.

As Kyle Jensen noted at a recent American Association of Colleges and Universities event on AI and pedagogy, higher ed workers are experiencing a perceived lack of coherent leadership around AI, and an uneven delivery of information about it, in the face of the many demands on faculty and administrative time. Paradoxically, faculty are both keenly interested in the positive potential of AI technologies and insistent on the need for some sort of accountability system that punishes students for unauthorized use of AI tools.

The need for faculty to clarify the role of AI in the curriculum is pressing. To address this at CEETL, we have developed what we are calling “Three Laws of Curriculum in the Age of AI,” a play on Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics,” written to ensure that humans remained in control of technology. Our three laws are not laws, per se; they are a framework for thinking about how to address AI technology in the curriculum at all levels, from the individual classroom to degree-level road maps, from general education through graduate courses. The framework is designed to support faculty as they work their way through the challenges and promises of AI technologies. The framework lightens the cognitive load for faculty by connecting AI technology to familiar ways of designing and revising curriculum.

The first law concerns what students need to know about AI, including how the tools work as well as their social, cultural, environmental and labor impacts; potential biases; tendencies toward hallucinations and misinformation; and propensity to center Western European ways of knowing, reasoning and writing. Here we lean on critical AI to help students apply their critical information literacy skills to AI technologies. Thinking about how to teach students about AI aligns with core equity values at our university, and it harnesses faculty’s natural skepticism toward these tools. This first law—teaching students about AI—offers a bridge between AI enthusiasts and skeptics by grounding our approach to AI in the classroom with familiar and widely agreed-upon equity values and critical approaches.

The second part of our three laws framework asks what students need to know in order to work with AI ethically and equitably. How should students work with these tools as they become increasingly embedded in the platforms and programs they already use, and as they are integrated into the jobs and careers our students hope to enter? As Kathleen Landy recently asked, “What do we want the students in our academic program[s] to know and be able to do with (or without) generative AI?”

The “with” part of our framework supports faculty as they begin the work of revising learning outcomes, assignments and assessment materials to include AI use.

Finally, and perhaps most crucially (and related to the “without” in Landy’s question), what skills and practices do students need to develop without AI, in order to protect their learning, to prevent deskilling and to center their own culturally diverse ways of knowing? Here is a quote from Washington University’s Center for Teaching and Learning:

“Sometimes students must first learn the basics of a field in order to achieve long-term success, even if they might later use shortcuts when working on more advanced material. We still teach basic mathematics to children, for example, even though as adults we all have access to a calculator on our smartphones. GenAI can also produce false results (aka ‘hallucinations’) and often only a user who understands the fundamental concepts at play can recognize this when it happens.”

Bots sound authoritative, and because they sound so good, students can feel convinced by them, leading to situations where bots override or displace students’ own thinking; thus, their use may curtail opportunities for students to develop and practice the kinds of thinking that undergird many learning goals. Protecting student learning from AI helps faculty situate their concerns about academic integrity in terms of the curriculum, rather than in terms of detection or policing of student behaviors. It invites faculty to think about how they might redesign assignments to provide spaces for students to do their own thinking.

Providing and protecting such spaces undoubtedly poses increased challenges for faculty, given the ubiquity of AI tools available to students. But we also know that protecting student learning from easy shortcuts is at the heart of formal education. Consider the planning that goes into determining whether an assessment should be open-book or open-note, take-home or in-class. These decisions are rooted in the third law: What would most protect student learning from the use of shortcuts (e.g., textbooks, access to help) that undermine their learning?

University websites are awash in resource guides for faculty grappling with new technology. It can be overwhelming for faculty, to say the least, especially given high teaching loads and constraints on faculty time. Our three laws framework provides a scaffold for faculty as they sift through resources on AI and begin the work of redesigning assignments, activities and assessments to address AI. You can see our three laws in action here, in field notes from Jennifer’s efforts to redesign her first-year writing class to address the challenges and potential of AI technology.

In the spirit of connecting the new with the familiar, we’ll close by reminding readers that while AI technology poses new challenges, these challenges are in some ways not so different from the work of curriculum and assessment design that we regularly undertake when we build our courses. Indeed, faculty have long grappled with the questions raised by our current moment. We’ll leave you with this quote, from a 1991 (!) article by Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe on the rise of word-processing technology and writing studies:

“We do not advocate abandoning the use of technology and relying primarily on script and print for our teaching without the aid of word processing and other computer applications such as communication software; nor do we suggest eliminating our descriptions of the positive learning environments that technology can help us to create. Instead, we must try to use our awareness of the discrepancies we have noted as a basis for constructing a more complete image of how technology can be used positively and negatively. We must plan carefully and develop the necessary critical perspectives to help us avoid using computers to advance or promote mediocrity in writing instruction. A balanced and increasingly critical perspective is a starting point: by viewing our classes as sites of both paradox and promise we can construct a mature view of how the use of electronic technology can abet our teaching.”

Anoshua Chaudhuri is the senior director of the Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning and professor of economics at San Francisco State University.

Jennifer Trainor is a faculty director at the Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning and professor of English at San Francisco State University.

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April 30, 2025
Addressing Nursing Student Shortages with Precollege Support

The U.S. is expected to experience a shortage of nurses by 2030, which will only grow as older generations age and health-care needs increase, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.

One of the contributing factors to this shortfall is a disconnect between the number of students enrolling in nursing school and the projected demand for nursing services. Another is high levels of work-related stress, leading to burnout.

In August 2023, the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh launched the Pre-Nursing Pathway, a weeklong intensive precollege program that helps students prepare for the academic rigor of the nursing program and connects them with resources. In the pathway, students engage in peer interactions, mentorship and additional time with faculty and staff, allowing them to build emotional resiliency and a network of support.

What’s the need: Staff at UW-Oshkosh noticed a decrease in qualified applicants to the nursing program and an overall decline in the matriculation of pre-nursing students, said Jessica Spanbauer, director of the center for academic resources.

Students had large gaps in their foundational science and math concepts as well as a lack of time management and organizational skills, which could be tied in part to remote instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Spanbauer said.

The university decided to implement a pre-nursing program, in part to boost enrollment of students, but also to ensure students who do attend are successful on their career journey.

How it works: The program is organized by the Center for Academic Resources and the College of Nursing, but is supported by admissions, the Undergraduate Advising Resource Center, the counseling center, the biology and chemistry departments, residence life, and recreation and wellness.

Both admitted and deposited students are eligible to apply to the program, with special priority given to first-generation students.

Selected program participants move onto campus a week before classes start for an intensive orientation experience. All students live in one wing of a residence hall together, mentored by two current nursing students, building a sense of community and peer support.

During their week on campus, students participate in biology and chemistry labs led by professors; attend workshop presentations by advisers, counselors and academic support staff; and explore campus, familiarizing themselves with support resources. The goal is to proactively address knowledge gaps among students early on, enhancing their success and preparing them for the future demands of their profession.

“By focusing on crucial and relevant concepts, we could ensure that students are well-equipped to excel in their nursing education,” Spanbauer said. “We could help build students’ confidence and encourage students to actively engage in shaping their academic trajectory.”

Program participants are also offered tours of local hospitals, a Q&A session with nursing students and recent alumni, professional development workshops, and support from financial aid, dining, residence life and the Office of Accessibility.

“We were fortunate that we had colleagues ready to enhance collaboration across units to further promote a student-focused supportive learning environment where students can thrive,” said Seon Yoon Chung, dean of the college of nursing.

The impact: The program launched in August 2023 with 15 participants. Ninety percent of those students retained to fall 2024, and they earned an average GPA of 3.1. Eighty percent of the fall 2023 cohort are still in the pre-nursing major or accepted into the nursing program.

An additional 12 students participated in August 2024 (100 percent of whom retained to spring 2025), and the staff hope to double participation rates this upcoming fall, Spanbauer said.

Staff collect qualitative data about participants by using surveys and focus groups, as well as insights from faculty and other staff. In the future, longitudinal career-progression data and alumni surveys will help assess the program’s long-term impact, Spanbauer said.

Campus leaders are also considering ways to enhance recruitment efforts and increase capacity for students through various resources, online modules and flexible scheduling to accommodate more interested students.

Do you have an academic intervention that might help others improve student success? Tell us about it.

This article has been updated to correct attribution of a quote to Seon Yoon Chung.

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April 30, 2025
Urgent Need for AI Literacy

The rapid advent of AI capabilities, coupled with the developing economic pressures worldwide, have led to a surge in employers seeking to reduce operating expenses through widespread use of generative and agentic AI to augment, and in some cases, replace, humans in their workforce. This follows last year’s warning from the World Economic Forum that said, “AI skills are becoming more important than job experience.”

The World Economic Forum report goes on to cite the 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report, which draws on a survey of 31,000 people across 31 countries, hiring trends from LinkedIn, Microsoft 365 productivity data and research with Fortune 500 companies: “Over the past eight years, hiring for technical AI roles was up 323%, and businesses are now turning to non-technical talent with the skills to apply generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot. Two-thirds of business leaders surveyed say they wouldn’t hire a candidate without AI skills. Nearly three-quarters said they would rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them.”

Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Beth McMurtrie defines AI literacy: “The term AI literacy can feel squishy. But the definitions circulating among campus working groups, disciplinary associations, and other organizations share several key components. To be AI literate, they agree, you must understand how generative AI works, be able to use it effectively, know how to evaluate its output, and understand its weaknesses and dangers. For AI skeptics, that last point is crucial. Too many workshops stop short, they say, focusing only on how to use AI tools.”

In a survey conducted last November, Educause reported only 37 percent of institutions were supporting needed AI abilities by “upskilling or reskilling” faculty or staff, and just 1 percent reported hiring new AI staff. A larger percentage of faculty and staff were addressing related academic integrity and assessment issues. The Educause AI Landscape Study reported,

“Respondents from smaller institutions are remarkably similar to respondents from larger institutions in their personal use of AI tools, their motivations for institutional use of AI, and their expectations and optimism about the future of AI.

“Respondents from small and larger institutions differ notably, however, in the resources, capabilities, and practices they’re able to marshal for AI adoption.”

These responses from as recently as the end of last semester show that the majority of institutions are lagging behind in preparing themselves and their graduates and certificate completers for the rapid changes that are expected to take place in workplaces around the world over the coming months. Yet, as reported in Government Technology, new laws creating frameworks in California and the European Union are leading the way in ensuring learners are well prepared for the emerging workplace:

“Under California’s new law, AI literacy education must include understanding how AI systems are developed and trained, their potential impacts on privacy and security, and the social and ethical implications of AI use. The EU goes further, requiring companies that produce AI products to train applicable staff to have the ‘skills, knowledge and understanding that allow providers, deployers and affected persons … to make an informed deployment of AI systems, as well as to gain awareness about the opportunities and risks of AI and possible harm it can cause.’ Both frameworks emphasize that AI literacy isn’t just technical knowledge but about developing critical thinking skills to evaluate AI’s appropriate use in different contexts.”

The American Library Association has taken a leading role in developing a draft document, “AI Competencies for Academic Library Workers,” that is currently under review based upon recommendations made by constituencies in recent weeks. The document includes two sections: “dispositions (tendencies to act or think in a particular way) and competencies (skills, knowledge, behaviors, and abilities). Dispositions are presented as a single list. Competencies are organized into four categories: Knowledge & Understanding; Analysis & Evaluation; Use & Application; and Ethical Considerations.”

In a project backed by a $1 million grant from Google, Government Technology reports that the City University of New York is supporting 75 faculty members to develop teaching methods that support best practices in utilizing AI in higher education. The report goes on to say,

“Such initiatives are spreading rapidly across higher education. The University of Florida aims to integrate AI into every undergraduate major and graduate program. Barnard College has created a ‘pyramid’ approach that gradually builds students’ AI literacy from basic understanding to advanced applications. At Colby College, a private liberal arts college in Maine, students are beefing up their literacy with the use of a custom portal that lets them test and compare different chatbots. Around 100 universities and community colleges have launched AI credentials, according to research from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, with degree conferrals in AI-related fields increasing 120 percent since 2011.”

These initiatives are exemplars of a variety of approaches that institutions might consider to respond to the urgent need to prepare learners for the workplace that is so rapidly emerging. Yet, now, as we move into the final weeks of the spring semester, it still appears that many, if not most, of the institutions of higher learning are failing their students. We are failing to fully prepare those students to enter the workforce where, as the World Economic Forum says, two-thirds of business leaders surveyed say they wouldn’t hire a candidate without AI skills and nearly three-quarters said they would rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them.

What is your institution doing to meet this urgent need? Who is leading a universitywide initiative to meet this need? Will your spring graduates and certificate completers be able to compete with others who have credentials that include knowledge and competencies in AI?

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April 30, 2025
Johns Hopkins Taps Endowment Earnings for Research Funding

Johns Hopkins University is turning to earnings on its $13.2 billion endowment to preserve research and protect researchers, trainees and staff amid drastic cuts to federal funding, The Baltimore Banner reported Monday.

Since President Donald Trump started his second term in January, federal agencies have terminated or stalled billions in research grants to colleges and universities in a move scientists and higher education advocates warn will decimate university budgets, slow scientific innovation and hurt local economies. Johns Hopkins estimates that it has so far lost 100 federal grants, while others remain under review by the Trump administration to ensure they align with the federal goal of rooting out diversity, equity and inclusion, among other things. As a result, the university said it’s approaching $1 billion in federal funding losses so far this year.

While Trump and his allies have suggested universities can use their endowments to fund research, officials at Johns Hopkins—which received more funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2024 than any other university—said Monday that’s not so easy.

“It’s a common misconception that universities can simply ‘use the endowment’ in moments like this,” university officials said in a statement. “The reality is that most of our endowment is made up of legally restricted funds designated by donors for specific purposes. The principal of the endowment must legally be preserved in perpetuity—to support Johns Hopkins’ mission now and for future generations—and cannot be drawn down like a reserve fund.

“That said, we are using flexible resources—some of which are tied to endowment earnings—to help sustain critical research in this moment of uncertainty.”

Johns Hopkins hasn’t disclosed how much total earnings it plans to take from its endowment to help faculty and students continue their research, according to a news release.

But in the plan released Monday, it said individuals will receive up to $100,000 for delayed grants or $150,000 for terminated grants during a 12-month period. The university will also offer a year of support to Ph.D. students completing their dissertations and postdoctoral fellows who had been expecting support from federal grants that were terminated, as well as expand a program that offers editorial support for grant proposals and journal articles and another that enables undergraduates to work with faculty mentors on original research or projects.

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April 30, 2025