Tag: Higher

Stackable Credential for Veterans in Outdoor Adventure

As a student at Paul Smith’s College in New York, Andrew “AJ” Beaudoin was able to do what he loved: spend time outdoors with his young son.

Beaudoin, a disabled Army veteran who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after leaving the military, found comfort in the great outdoors and guiding others through adventures in nature. After Beaudoin completed his bachelor’s degree, his passion for serving others and nature compelled him to start his own charter business, which he then transformed into a three-day boot camp for other veterans looking to become outdoor entrepreneurs.

This summer, Beaudoin will teach a longer version of his course to a group of up to 35 veterans on the Paul Smith’s campus. The program, Battlefish Academy, transforms veterans’ learned skills as service members into industry knowledge, giving them the confidence to become entrepreneurs, as well as credentials they can build into degrees.

The inspiration: When Beaudoin left the service, he was suffering from PTSD and recovering from a series of strokes. He couldn’t connect his work as a paratrooper to civilian life and felt overwhelmed by the world around him.

He enrolled in Paul Smith’s in 2014, pursuing a bachelor’s in environmental sciences with a concentration in fish and wildlife management. It was one of Beaudoin’s professors who first asked the veteran to lead an expedition to teach his children how to fish.

“I didn’t anticipate it becoming a financial venture for me,” Beaudoin said. “I just wanted to find peace in my heart.”

Beaudoin started his own business, Battle Fish Charters, as an outdoor guide, leading fishing trips for individuals, families and fellow veterans throughout the Adirondacks in 2017. In summer 2024, Beaudoin launched the boot camp, Battle Fish University (BFU), with a small group of veterans who flew to New York from states including Montana, South Carolina and Wyoming.

During BFU—which was sponsored by the Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship Network, the National Center for Veteran Ventures and Paul Smith’s College—students learned first aid, CPR and other requirements to achieve a guide license.

The longer program, Battlefish Academy, builds on the experience, guiding students through applying for and obtaining a license and a certificate.

How it works: The program is 15 credits, which includes a two-week outdoor guide training led by Beaudoin, the inaugural Battlefish Academy director.

In the classroom, students learn the principles of management, marketing and economics, as well as business systems and managerial accounting. They also gain insight into the recreation market in the U.S. and marketing strategies for how to advertise their business and services.

Then academy students spend 14 days learning in an 18-acre lot across the street from Paul Smith’s main campus, where Beaudoin shows them how to tie fishing lines, navigate the wilderness and manage the client experience.

AJ Beaudoin (right), the inaugural director of Battlefish Academy at Paul Smith’s College, leads individuals and groups on ice fishing trips through his business, Battle Fish Charters.

After completing the certificate, students can stack their credits for an associate or bachelor’s degree in relevant programs, including business, outdoor recreation and eco-psychology.

Participants’ tuition is fully covered by GI benefits, and the college is working with nearby bases to create a pipeline for integrating service members into the program upon their departure from the military.

What’s the need: Beaudoin sees an opportunity to connect veterans’ sense of wellness, community, mission and leadership through an outdoor recreation business.

“I feel like veterans lose their sense of purpose after the service, and that’s a big struggle for us,” Beaudoin said. “So maybe becoming a small business owner could help them.”

About 5 percent of all employer businesses in the U.S. are veteran-owned, with the greatest share related to professional, scientific or technical services, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Some veterans, like Beaudoin, leave the military feeling as though their skills don’t apply to civilian life, but Battle Fish helps reframe those ideas.

A Network of Support

In addition to the specialized veteran training of Battlefish Academy, Paul Smith’s College offers military-connected students with a physical Veteran Resource Center that can aid learner completion, with services such as mentorship, networking opportunities and other supports.

“I think that the veteran skill set translates so perfectly from leading a mission in Afghanistan to, ‘Now, I’m leading a family down the river,’” Beaudoin said. “I’m trying to keep them safe and I’m utilizing those same skills that I was trying to keep my soldiers safe with.”

Another benefit is the effect on personal wellness. Spending time outdoors is one way that groups support veterans experiencing PTSD, because it instills a sense of calm and peace.

“There’s so many organizations that take veterans fishing. I want to keep the veterans on the water all of the time,” Beaudoin said.

The program also has the power to connect like-minded veterans, building a network of support and community. During his first Battle Fish University experience, Beaudoin found that veterans share a natural affinity, and he hopes the academy will provide nontraditional learners a similar space to engage with peers.

What’s next: Battlefish Academy will launch this summer at Paul Smith’s with a capacity of 36 beds for the intensive experience.

Beaudoin hopes students leave the experience feeling more confident in starting their own business—and maybe interested in franchising his company, Battle Fish Charters, wherever they call home.

If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.

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April 3, 2025
Policy and Practice Foundations and Building Blocks

Two weeks ago Chris Buonocore, Alex Humphreys, Martin Kurzweil and Emily Tichenor (all of the nonprofit organization Ithaka, and part of the Articulation of Credit Transfer Project) posted in this blog the happy news that Transfer Explorer (a website, modeled after CUNY T-Rex, that shows everyone how prior learning experiences will count toward a college’s academic requirements) has been launched containing information from three South Carolina colleges. Information from dozens of additional colleges in Connecticut, New York, South Carolina and Washington will be added in the coming months.

Because this information is now public and usable, students and advisers will be able to make better plans for transfer, students will discover and choose transfer destinations that are a good fit for them, and institutions will be better able to align their programs and equivalencies to facilitate transfer. Transfer Explorer will also reduce the burden on students, advisers and admissions staff to locate and make sense of relevant information across disparate sources, allowing them to focus on higher-value tasks. The evidence from CUNY T-Rex suggests these benefits are already being realized in that context.

The advent of Transfer Explorer and other similar efforts to make transparent the rules on credit transfer and degree applicability raises an important question: Which policies and practices are desirable for institutions to have in place to make their credit mobility information public?

Let’s assume that a public website, such as Transfer Explorer, is available for displaying credit mobility information, and that an institution has the appropriate financial and staff resources to put its information on the website. Now what course credit and program requirement policies and practices must be in place, and which additional ones would be useful to have? This post describes some of these policies and practices.

Necessary Policies and Practices

Absolutely essential is that transfer credit rules stating how an institution will treat all types of prior learning experiences (e.g., course A at Institution X will count as equivalent to course B at Institution Y), as well as the program and degree requirements (for majors, concentrations, general education, etc.), must be systematically and consistently stored, recorded and updated in the institution’s software system(s), with the credit mobility website reflecting any changes in any of these rules and requirements in a timely manner. These practices are essential for the website to function as a trusted source of information.

There should be policies regarding who can change the transfer credit rules and degree requirements recorded in this software and under what conditions. This will reduce the likelihood of erratic, capricious or frequent changes, while ensuring that all students are subject to the same rules and requirements, without prejudice.

Any additional rules, requirements, restrictions or qualifications related to the conditions for granting credit for prior learning (such as a minimum grade in a prior course or a residency requirement at the destination college) should apply equally to all students and be explicitly and publicly stated. This ensures that all students have access to the same information, again promoting equitable treatment.

There should be administrative oversight of the above policies and practices, and that oversight should ideally be provided by people who would be unaffected by the rules’ consequences (i.e., conflicts of interest should be minimized). Oversight by people not acting in their own interest is necessary to ensure that policies and practices are appropriately instituted and maintained.

Additional Desirable Policies and Practices

It will be helpful to have policies regarding how course equivalencies for prior learning are decided in the first place—who decides and based on what information. This will promote efficient and effective decision-making regarding prior learning assessments.

There should also be specific, agreed-upon criteria for giving credit for prior learning. It has been effectively argued that transfer credit should be based entirely on learning outcomes, and not on, e.g., a course’s prerequisites, textbook or modality (in-person, online or hybrid); the degree the student may or may not have; the student’s major; etc. AACRAO’s recommended criterion for course equivalency is 70 percent “matching of content.” Such a policy ensures that credit for prior learning is based on only that—prior learning.

Any characteristics of prior learning, in addition to credits, that would satisfy an institution’s requirements, characteristics such as a course being writing intensive or including material on information literacy, should be recorded and considered for transfer. Students and those who support them need this information to be able to plan students’ complete academic trajectories.

An explicit appeals procedure that allows students to challenge transfer credit decisions can help in identifying errors and inadequacies in what is shown on the website, as well as promoting equitable treatment of all students (an example of the CUNY appeals procedure is here). Students can more effectively use such a procedure if the website keeps a record of when transfer credit rules and program and degree requirements have changed and how.

All courses from institutions accredited by what were formerly referred to as regional accreditors (along with, upon review, some other forms of prior learning) should be given at least elective credit. In addition to providing transfer students with predictable transfer credit, such a policy within the CUNY system greatly facilitated the establishment of CUNY T-Rex. For the courses of the 20 CUNY undergraduate colleges, developers had only to reflect on the website existing transfer credit rules (all 1.6 million of them); they did not have to determine what to do with courses that would receive no transfer credit.

Also highly desirable is that a student should be allowed to use any credit transfer rule in place at College B between when the student first matriculated in College A and subsequently transferred to College B (perhaps within a specified number of years since matriculation at College A). Such a policy is particularly useful for students who first matriculate at a community college and later transfer to a bachelor’s college within the same system. This policy would enable students and those who support them to plan a student’s entire academic trajectory.

Finally, in developing Transfer Explorer as well as CUNY T-Rex, the engineers had to first parse and deconstruct the colleges’ major and other requirements before programming them for the website. Many of the majors’ diagrams look like a tangled ball of yarn or a Super Bowl football play (diagrams that go way beyond just a sequence of major courses). Faculty and others may not realize how complex they are making requirements until they see them diagrammed. Such requirements can be very difficult to program and so should be simplified, if possible, as well as recorded in systematic, consistent ways.

Each of the preceding items is useful for constructing an excellent website that will show how an institution will treat a student’s prior learning. However, there are many additional benefits from these policies and practices. For example, concerning the last bullet, keeping the requirements of majors simple and straightforward will not only help the website’s programmers, but will make it easier for students and those who support them to understand and conform to a major’s requirements.

A basic principle of ACT, Transfer Explorer and CUNY T-Rex is that all of us in higher education benefit by obtaining good information and making it public. We hope that this blog post helps institutions do just that.

We thank the members of AACRAO, ACT, the Beyond Transfer Advisory Group, the Gates Foundation, Ithaka, the LEARN Commission and SOVA for ideas contributing to this blog post.

Alexandra W. Logue is professor emerita at the Center for Advanced Study in Education, Graduate Center, CUNY. From 2008 to 2014 she served as executive vice chancellor and university provost of the CUNY system, and she is a founder of CUNY T-Rex.

Chris Buonocore is the product manager of Transfer Explorer at Ithaka, as well as a founder and the former manager of CUNY T-Rex.

Christopher Vickery is professor emeritus of computer science at Queens College CUNY, as well as a founder and the creator of CUNY T-Rex.

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April 3, 2025
Faculty Protest Actions Against Trump Spark Backlash

A part-time lecturer allegedly offered students extra credit for attending a Tesla protest.

Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

While many professors across the U.S. have protested federal funding cuts and other attacks on higher education by President Donald Trump and his campaign donor and aide Elon Musk without incident, two faculty members are now facing sharp scrutiny for their actions on and off campus.

At the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, José Felipe Alvergue, who chairs the English Department, is on leave after he allegedly flipped a table Tuesday set up by the College Republicans to encourage support for Brad Schimel in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. A video posted by UW–Eau Claire’s College Republicans chapter showed the aftermath of the incident and accused Alvergue (who had not yet been identified when it was uploaded) of being a “violent” supporter of Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate who later won the race Tuesday.

“I am deeply concerned that our students’ peaceful effort to share information on campus on election day was disrupted,” UW–Eau Claire interim provost Michael Carney wrote in a statement to Inside Higher Ed. “UW–Eau Claire strongly supports every person’s right to free speech and free expression, and the university remains committed to ensuring that campus is a place where a wide variety of opinions and beliefs can be shared and celebrated. Civil dialogue is a critical part of the university experience, and peaceful engagement is fundamental to learning itself.”

Carney added that campus officials are working with the Universities of Wisconsin system and its Office of General Counsel, “which is conducting a comprehensive investigation of this matter.”

The incident prompted broad criticism, particularly from conservatives, many of whom called for the professor to be immediately fired.

“Outrageous. Yet sadly what many conservatives [sic] students deal with every day on so many campuses,” Scott Walker, a former Republican governor of Wisconsin, wrote on social media.

Alvergue did not respond to a request for comment.

On the other side of the country, a part-time lecturer at California State University, Fresno, has prompted outrage in conservative quarters over her social media posts, FOX26NEWS reported. Katherine Shurik, who teaches anthropology, allegedly posted an image of Trump in a casket with the caption “I have a dream for this to happen much sooner rather than later” and another of a gravestone with his name on it and a caption reading, “and take Musk and the rest of the Nazi (Republican) party members with you too!” Additionally, in a video of Shurik circulated by conservative influencers, she said students will “get extra credit for coming to the protest.” Some local news sites reported the extra credit was for protesting Tesla, owned by Musk.

The university was quick to distance itself from Shurik’s posts this week.

“While Fresno State firmly believes in the principles of free speech, we strongly condemn the abhorrent social media posts and comments made by one of our part-time instructors,” Fresno State officials wrote in a Tuesday statement. “As these views were published by the employee as a private citizen, they do not represent our university in any way. Fresno State firmly denounces wishes of death against any elected official, particularly the President of the United States—these go against our core educational values and are not consistent with our Principles of Community. As Americans and educators, we pride ourselves on democratic dialogue, not words of derision and contempt about the most important political figure of our country.”

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

Multiple social media users called for Fresno State to fire Shurik ,and local officials have also weighed in, including Gary Bredefeld, a member of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors.

“This is a professor at Fresno State posting about her longing for the deaths of President Trump, Elon Musk and Republicans. These are the unhinged radicals teaching our young kids at schools and universities across the country,” he wrote in a Sunday post on Facebook. “People like this are hate-filled, radical lunatics and have no business teaching anywhere. I would expect the President of Fresno State to address this immediately and denounce these postings.”

Even Musk himself noticed the uproar.

“Calling for the death of the President is a serious crime,” he wrote in a reply to a post about Shurik.

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April 3, 2025
Improving Transfer Based on Success Stories

A new transfer playbook, released by the Aspen Institute and the Community College Research Center, offers strategies for improving outcomes for transfer students by examining higher ed institutions with the best records.

The playbook notes that, for a decade, fewer than a fifth of community college students have successfully transferred and earned bachelor’s degrees, though many aspire to reach that goal. But the playbook stresses that better outcomes are possible. At colleges with the best overall transfer outcomes—those in the top 10 percent for all institutions—at least 52 percent of students transfer and at least 61 percent of transfer students earn bachelor’s degrees, far exceeding national averages. If all community colleges achieved these kinds of results, they could double the bachelor’s degree attainment rates for community college students from 16 percent to 32 percent, the playbook concludes.

Based on interviews with college leaders, students and staff members at campuses with successful transfer pathways and partnerships, the playbook’s authors offer three core strategies for improving transfer, with examples of relevant practices and case studies.

First, they recommend that executive leadership spearhead partnerships between community colleges and universities so improvements to transfer can be made at scale. They also suggest working toward more timely bachelor’s degree completion rates within majors by better aligning curriculum and instruction with transfer pathways. Lastly, they recommend tailoring advising and other supports for transfer students in ways that “foster trust and engagement.” For example, the playbook encourages community colleges to ensure transfer advising is offered to all students and occurs before, during and after the transfer process, with outreach to prospective students about transfer options as early as high school.

“There is immense potential in the dreams and ambitions of bachelor’s-intending community college students—and the many who may have counted themselves out but have the ability to complete a bachelor’s and expand their career horizons,” the foreword to the playbook reads.

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April 3, 2025
Scholars’ Stories of Losing Federal Funding

Sixteen researchers across a range disciplines from the biomedical sciences and STEM to education and political science share their experiences of losing research grants and what impact the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding will have on science, public health and education in Inside Higher Ed today.

The Trump administration told researchers Rebecca Fielding-Miller, Nicholas Metheny, Abigail Hatcher and Sarah Peitzmeier that trainings connected to their National Institutes of Health grant focused on the prevention of intimate partner violence against pregnant and perinatal women were “antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

“We could not disagree more,” Fielding-Miller, Metheny, Hatcher and Peitzmeier write. “Anyone who has cared for a child or for the person who gave birth to them knows that preventing maternal and infant death and abuse should be a nonpartisan issue. The current administration is intent on making even this issue into ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ When it comes to public health, there is no such thing.”

Meanwhile, Judith Scott-Clayton writes that the decision to cancel a Department of Education grant funding a first-of-its-kind randomized evaluation of the Federal Work-Study program—four and a half years into a six-year project—will leave policymakers “flying blind.”

“Since 1964, the FWS program has disbursed more than $95 billion in awards,” Scott-Clayton wrote. “In comparison, our grant was less than three-thousandths of 1 percent of that amount, and the amount remaining to finish our work and share our findings with the public was just a fraction of that.”

Read all of the scholars’ stories here.

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April 3, 2025
400 Books Removed From Naval Academy Library

The U.S. Naval Academy has culled 400 books deemed to promote to diversity, equity and/or inclusion from its library at the insistence of the Trump administration, according to the Associated Press.

Last week, the Naval Academy, located in Annapolis, Md., identified 900 potential books to review in response to orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office to remove books containing DEI-related content, The New York Times reported. That list included The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., Einstein on Race and Racism, and a biography of Jackie Robinson. A list of the books that were ultimately removed has not been released.

The nation’s five military academies were also told in February to eliminate admissions “quotas” related to sex, ethnicity or race after President Trump signed an executive order to remove “any preference based on race or sex” from the military. Both the Naval and Air Force Academies have also completed curriculum reviews to remove materials that allegedly promote DEI, and a West Point official also told the AP that it was prepared to review both curriculum and library materials if directed to do so by the Army.

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April 3, 2025
FSA Executive Retires and Acting Under Secretary Takes Over

The responsibilities of acting under secretary James Bergeron doubled as the Department of Education announced Wednesday that he will not only oversee the regulatory duties related to higher ed but manage the entire Office of Federal Student Aid.

Even in the wake of major layoffs, FSA remains the largest office in the department. It oversees the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the allocation of Pell Grants and—at least for now—management of the $1.7 trillion student loan portfolio.

FSA had been led for much of the last year by Denise Carter, who is now retiring after more than 30 years working in the federal government. Carter also served as acting education secretary earlier this year. The department didn’t say in the news release why Carter was retiring now; the agency has offered early retirement offers and buyouts as part of an effort to reduce the workforce.

Carter said in the release she was grateful for the opportunity to serve her country.

“As I move on, I hope we as a nation commit to ensuring every student has the support needed to achieve extraordinary educational outcomes,” Carter added. “The economic strength of our nation depends on their success.”

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April 3, 2025
Staff and Funding Cuts at the NEH Loom

The Department of Government Efficiency has struck higher ed institutions once again—this time through the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Leaders of the agency—which supports research, innovation and preservation in disciplines related to culture, society and values—told staff members Tuesday that the Trump administration intends to make substantial reductions in staff, slash the agency’s grant programs and rescind grants that have already been awarded.

Humanities advocates don’t know exactly how large the cuts to NEH’s approximately 180-person staff or $78.25 million grant budget will be, but they note that “patterns at other agencies” provide a solid hint. The impact on colleges and universities, they say, would be crushing.

“The NEH supports the full range of humanities work that takes place at higher ed institutions, including support for research and teaching, academic publishing and professional development programs for faculty,” said Stephen Kidd, executive director of the National Humanities Alliance. “Cuts would be particularly devastating, because unlike a lot of private funders, the NEH is more prestige-blind. With its mandate to support the humanities across the country, it’s more likely to give grants to people at smaller and public institutions.”

President Trump has been talking about cutting humanities funding since his first term. Even before whispers about the latest cuts began, humanities scholars expressed concern that new grant-eligibility rules imposed to comply with Trump’s executive order on diversity, equity and inclusion would “undercut NEH’s very mission.”

The president and his cabinet secretaries have already fired or offered buyouts to tens of thousands of government employees in an attempt to hollow out the federal workforce. Two of the most notable cuts impacted the Department of Education—which supports higher ed through federal student aid programs, data collection and accountability measures—and the Department of Health and Human Services, one of the world’s largest research funding sources for colleges and universities.

Now Trump is turning his focus from educational infrastructure and sciences to history, literature and philosophy. Paula Krebs, executive director of the Modern Language Association, believes the move is “sending a message.”

The cut “adds up to a huge net loss for all of higher education” and suggests “it is not worth investing in the study of our culture and the culture of others,” Krebs said. “In the larger context of DOGE cuts, the nation is saying that it’s not worth investing in the study of anything at all.”

The announcement of looming cuts at NEH comes just three weeks after the agency’s Biden-appointed chair, Shelly Lowe, resigned. A citizen of the Navajo Nation, Lowe was the agency’s first Native American chair. Before that, she served as executive director of the Harvard University Native American Program.

The agency is now being led by interim director Michael McDonald, who previously served as its general counsel.

Since Lowe stepped down, DOGE staff members have made several appearances at the office. On Tuesday, they said 70 to 80 percent of the staff would be let go, three staff members told The New York Times. Sources also told the Times that all grants approved by the Biden administration but not yet paid out in full will be canceled.

Neither NEH nor the White House responded to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment.

Founded in 1965, the NEH has allocated more than $6 billion in grants to museums, historical sites, libraries, state humanities councils and higher education institutions to support a variety of programs.

Kidd, from the Humanities Alliance, said one of the most substantial losses universities could face is funding for curriculum development. In an era when public doubt regarding the value of a college degree is on the rise and skills-based hiring is gaining traction, humanities departments across the country are looking for new ways to mix the classical liberal arts with modern pre-professional training. NEH grants, he said, have been a key source of support for such experimentation.

“These kinds of curricular innovations can help to ensure that students in the humanities have strong pathways to future careers,” Kidd said. It’s “NEH’s support for curricular innovations that might bring the humanities in conversation with business or with biological and health sciences.”

He and other humanities association leaders have also expressed concern about cuts to grants intended to help libraries and museums preserve historical documents, art and other materials that are key to humanities research. The cuts to NEH, they say, will only compound the damage that has already been done by Trump’s executive order to disband the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

“Without funding for preservation, materials will disappear, degrade or not be collected in the first place,” Kidd said. “And once those are lost—they’re lost. The record of human activity is gone.”

Though its mandate is much broader than the humanities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities also registered concern about the NEH cuts.

“NEH-funded research documents American history and culture [and] explores the legal and ethical use of emerging technologies such as AI,” said Craig Lindwarm, the association’s senior vice president of governmental affairs. “While undoubtedly reforms to NEH can be made and efficiencies found, cuts to NEH research would undermine progress in these critical areas and beyond.”

To Peter Berkey, executive director of the Association of University Presses, the looming endowment cuts are the epicenter of “a disastrous ripple through the entire scholarly ecosystem.”

“Perhaps most importantly,” he said, “these actions will diminish the very disciplines that drive the development of critical thinking, the understanding of value and the pursuit of justice and democracy among the next generation of scholars and citizens.”

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April 3, 2025
How Trump Is Wreaking Havoc on the Student Visa System

Last week, an international student adviser at a small regional college logged on to a private forum for international enrollment and admissions professionals, seeking advice on “something strange” she’d noticed.

She had run a report on her Student Exchange and Visitor Information System database, where international student records are stored, after seeing troubling reports of foreign student deportations. When she got the results back, she found that a number of her students had had their legal residency status terminated without her knowledge.

This is the third installment in an Inside Higher Ed series on international students under Trump. Read the first and second here.

In the days since, nearly 100 other international student service professionals have piled onto the discussion thread to share similar stories: They trawled through SEVIS only to find unexpected visa revocations and had to quickly decide how to notify affected students.

Inside Higher Ed obtained access to the forum but is keeping it and the identity of the officials posting there anonymous to ensure the privacy of the participants.

Most of the officials on the forum reported an even more troubling detail: Students weren’t just having their visas revoked; they were losing their student status altogether.

When international students have their entry visas revoked, they almost always retain their legal residency status in SEVIS, according to immigration lawyers. They can stay in the country as long as they remain enrolled in courses and must reapply for a new visa if they leave. Now, as the Trump administration revokes hundreds of student visas each week, federal immigration officials also seem to be terminating students’ SEVIS status—paving the way for arrest and deportation.

One forum member asked how it was possible that Immigration and Customs Enforcement could alter SEVIS status on their own; they’d never seen it done before and thought it might be a mistake.

“I’m just wondering if we have any recourse to request corrections,” they wrote. “Trying to think creatively (and maybe desperately) at this point.”

University officials and immigration experts who spoke with Inside Higher Ed both on the record and on background echoed the concerns of the forum participants. They said the Trump administration is playing fast and loose with the visa system and that its tactics are severely limiting universities’ options to help students who may be targeted by ICE.

The officials on the forum said affected students were almost all Middle Eastern—Turkish, Kuwaiti, Saudi, Iranian—or from majority-Muslim countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Some said they’d received letters with unusually forceful wording, demanding they turn over student records under threat of federal investigation. Many fretted over how to advise affected students without running afoul of immigration authorities themselves.

They all worried about how best to protect students while adjusting to a visa system that appeared to be changing overnight into something unrecognizable.

“Most of us are not practicing immigration attorneys (and haven’t needed to be),” one university official wrote. “We’re in a strange new world where little from past practice seems to apply.”

‘Strange New World’

Some students have had their visas revoked due to criminal records, but many university officials report only minor infractions like traffic violations, some of them adjudicated years ago. Those without a criminal record are having their visas revoked largely under a specific clause in the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the secretary of state personal power to determine if a student’s continued presence “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”

That 35-year-old clause has almost never been invoked until now. In an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit filed by detained Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, a group of immigration lawyers says they scoured court records and legal documents for precedents of the foreign policy risk clause being used to revoke student visas. Out of 11.7 million cases, they found it had been used only 15 times before this year and had only resulted in deportation four times.

In an email to Inside Higher Ed, a State Department spokesperson confirmed that the “revocation of [a] student visa lead[s] to termination of their students status,” and that it’s up to ICE agents whether to notify universities of the change. They added that they don’t provide statistics on visa revocations, but that the “process is ongoing and the number of revocations is dynamic.”

“The State Department revokes visas every day in order to secure America’s borders and keep our communities safe—and will continue to do so,” the spokesperson wrote.

Clay Harmon, director of AIRC: The Association of International Enrollment Management, said he’s heard reports of abrupt visa revocations from members across the country, and that it’s disrupting international student service offices tasked with helping manage student visas.

“Folks in the visa system are already strapped to meet current mandates,” he said. “Adding this arbitrary element into what has always been a very well-regulated system causes an undue and unfair burden on institutions.”

Visa Vigilance

Many international student support officials said they’ve recently made a habit of checking SEVIS daily for new terminations, especially after last week’s ramping up in international student deportations blindsided some college officials.

When Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by ICE agents last week, not only were university officials unaware that her visa had been revoked, but her file in SEVIS still said she was “in good immigration standing,” according to a court motion filed by the university Wednesday night. Ozturk’s SEVIS file was only updated to reflect a termination of her status at 7:32 p.m., hours after she was abducted from the street outside her residence; university officials did not receive an email from ICE about the change in her status until 10:30 the next evening.

A spokesperson for Minnesota State University at Mankato, where a student was detained by ICE agents last Friday, told Inside Higher Ed Wednesday that they hadn’t received any communication from immigration officials about the student whatsoever. And at the University of Minnesota’s flagship campus, a computer system did not show that Turkish graduate student Dogukan Gunaydin’s visa was revoked until several hours after he was taken into custody, according to a lawsuit Gunaydin filed Sunday.

One university international affairs official, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak freely about his experience, said he decided to check SEVIS last week after reading Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement that the department had revoked 300 student visas last month. He was shocked to find that one of his students had not just their visa but also their legal status to remain in the country revoked, on the grounds they might be a foreign policy risk.

The official, who has been working in the field for more than 40 years, said he’d never seen immigration services revoke a student’s SEVIS status before.

“We usually check SEVIS once a semester … we don’t usually have to check statuses because we’re the ones who would change them,” the official said. “Now we are making a point to check thoroughly, every day. It’s the only way to protect our students.”

The student had not been notified of their status termination before the university reached out and “had absolutely no idea” what could have precipitated the decision. They hadn’t participated in any campus protests or written op-eds and were hardly politically active. The only criminal infraction they remembered was running a stoplight.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired Cornell law professor who specializes in immigration law and student visas, said leaving university officials in the dark about changes to visa status “makes it difficult for colleges to advise their international students.”

“The system works on communication going both ways between immigration officials and institutions,” he said. “The government doing things in secret makes it hard for both students and universities to know whether they are complying.”

There’s a lot at stake in compliance for universities: The Trump administration has threatened to use the Student Exchange and Visitor Program, which normally investigates universities for visa fraud, to decertify colleges it believes have been harboring students they determine are threats to national security, according to an Axios report. Decertification would bar colleges from enrolling any international students at all.

Harmon of AIRC said the political weaponization of SEVP would be unprecedented.

“Their primary concern has been to verify that institutions are offering bona fide educational services and aren’t just diploma mills,” he said. “I’ve never heard of a fully accredited, reputable institution being subjected to some kind of investigation outside of the standard recertification process.”

One student adviser wrote on the forum that they received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security demanding a number of international students’ records and threatening to revoke the college’s visa certification “without any chance of appeal” if they did not provide the records within five business days. Another said they’d gotten the same letter, but their deadline was just three business days.

Some college officials say fear and caution make it hard to do all they can to help students.

“Having to be so careful around actually protecting the student’s physical safety just feels … not good enough, frankly,” one adviser wrote. “It’s just very painful to have to tread so lightly when there is so much more at stake for them.”

Scott Pollock, a veteran immigration lawyer who specializes in international educators and student visas, said that’s part of the Trump administration’s strategy.

“The administration has been sowing terror in the hearts of international students. Now that’s spreading to school officials as well,” he said. “It’s all part of this revenge-driven policy.”

This past week several international students who received visa revocations decided to leave the country voluntarily. Two Saudi students at North Carolina State University fled this week, as did a student at Temple University and a graduate student at Cornell University who is suing the Trump administration.

Many more likely did the same without fanfare—including the anonymous university official’s student, who hopes to apply for re-entry as soon as they can.

“It was not an easy decision for the student, and it was not an easy decision for us to help them make,” the official said. “But they thought it would be the least risky thing to do and give them the greatest opportunity to finish their degree, which was their priority.”

“I really hope to see them back on campus in the fall.”

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April 3, 2025
Scholar warns of chilling speech in higher ed after NYU canceled her presentation

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A prominent public health scholar warned of self-censorship and the chilling of free speech in higher education after New York University administrators in March abruptly canceled her presentation over what she described as concerns that certain material could be perceived as antisemitic and anti-government.

Joanne Liu — a physician, professor at McGill University and former head of the international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders — said in an op-ed with French newspaper Le Devoir that she had been invited to speak at NYU nearly a year ago on challenges in humanitarian work.

Before the presentation, and after Liu uploaded it to a university platform, a representative at the private university’s health unit reached out to her with concerns from leadership, Liu said in recent media interviews.

Those concerns centered largely on a slide containing a table from the Aid Worker Security Database showing heavy casualties among humanitarian workers in Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas. The administrator shared concerns with Liu that the slide could be viewed as antisemitic, Liu said in her op-ed and media interviews.

Statistics from the database show 163 aid worker fatalities in Gaza in 2023, more than in all other global conflicts combined. The deaths were largely caused by airstrikes, according to AWSD.

In her account, Liu, who completed a medical fellowship at NYU in 1996, was told that the leadership didn’t understand why she discussed only the victims in Gaza.

Those leaders at NYU also raised issues with other slides referencing the Trump administration’s cuts to international aid, as well as a photo included in the presentation of President Donald Trump’s heated Oval Office meeting in February with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to Liu. Administrators worried those might be considered anti-government, Liu said.

Liu offered to remove or alter the slides, ultimately offering to take out material that prompted concerns but leave a general slide about humanitarian war casualties.

“As long as I can keep the key, overarching message, I am fine. I can manage that,” Liu recalled in an interview Tuesday with the progressive media outlet Democracy Now!

Hours later, the NYU administrator informed Liu her presentation was canceled.

“I was stunned,” Liu told Democracy Now!, adding that her colleagues had expressed excitement over her talk ahead of it.

In her Le Devoir op-ed, Liu pointed to the Trump administration’s move to cancel $400 million in research grants and contracts at Columbia University on allegations that it allowed antisemitism to spread on campus, which led to major concessions by the Ivy League institution to the administration. Liu also pointed to other universities that the government has targeted.

In a Saturday interview with Canada’s CTV News, she noted a sense of vulnerability and fear among universities. “They are so scared that something could happen to their funds that they preventively over-self-censor themselves,” she said.

She discussed similar themes of chilled speech in the Trump era with Democracy Now!

“I truly and strongly believe that universities are the temple of knowledge, but, as well, of plurality of ideas,” she said. “And if we do not allow that, we are basically killing the essence of what university is about.”

A spokesperson for NYU’s health unit did not respond to Higher Ed Dive’s questions about who made the final decision to cancel Liu’s presentation or the reasons behind it.

“Guest speakers at our institution are given clear guidelines at the outset,” the spokesperson said. “Per our policy we cannot host speakers who don’t comply. In this case we did fully compensate this guest for her travel and time.”

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April 2, 2025