Tag: Higher

New college presidents appointed in February

Stacy Bartlett, currently the chief of staff at Point University in Georgia, will become the institution’s president, effective July 1.

Michael Benson, president of Coastal Carolina University, has been named the 27th president of West Virginia University, starting in July.

John Butler, the Haub Vice President for University Mission and Ministry at Boston College, has been appointed the institution’s president, beginning in the summer of 2026.

Elizabeth Cantwell, president of the Utah State University system, has been appointed president of Washington State University, effective April 1.

Sylvia Cox, executive vice president and chief academic officer at Southeastern Community College, has been named president of Rockingham Community College, effective May 1.

Wendy Elmore, currently executive vice president and provost of Lamar State College–Orange in Texas, has been named the institution’s next president, effective June 1.

Andrea Goldsmith, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, will become the seventh president of Stony Brook University, effective Aug. 1.

Adam Hasner, executive vice president of public policy for the Geo Group, has been named president of Florida Atlantic University.

Elizabeth Kiss, who most recently served as CEO of the Rhodes Trust, will become president of Union College, effective July 1.

Michelle Larson, president and CEO of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, has been named president of Clarkson University, effective April 1.

Dean McCurdy, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Ivy Tech Community College, has been named president of Colby-Sawyer College, effective June 1.

Heather Norris, formerly the interim chancellor of Appalachian State University, has been appointed to the position permanently, effective March 1.

Joseph Odenwald, president of Southwestern Michigan College, has been named president of Alma College, effective June 1.

Andrew Rich, dean of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York, has been appointed president of Franklin & Marshall College, beginning this summer.

Daniel Shipp, the president of Pittsburg State University, has been named president of Maryville University in Missouri, starting in June.

Shane Smeed, president of Park University in Missouri, has been appointed president of Utah Tech University.

Gentry Sutton, currently executive vice president and vice president of advancement at Warner University in Florida, has been appointed president of the institution.

Suzanne Walsh, president of Bennett College in North Carolina, has been named president of City University of Seattle, effective July 1.

Jermaine Whirl, who most recently served as president of Augusta Technical College, has been appointed president of Savannah State University, effective April 1.

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March 6, 2025
Presidents point to drivers of declining public trust

According to 2024 general election exit polling, 42 percent of voters with college degrees voted for now-President Donald Trump, compared to 56 percent of those without college degrees. Asked how they feel about this growing education gap in the electorate—what researchers call the diploma divide—25 percent of college and university presidents say they’re very or extremely concerned about its implications for their institution.

More say they’re highly concerned about the growing divide’s impact on higher education in general (58 percent) and on American democracy (64 percent). That’s according to a new analysis of findings from Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents, completed with Hanover Research.

Presidents also offer a scathing review of how higher education has responded to this divide thus far: Just 3 percent think the sector has been very or extremely effective, versus not at all, somewhat or moderately effective. The leaders have a similarly dismal view of how higher education is responding to declining public confidence: A mere 1 percent, rounded up, think it has been highly effective. Much larger shares of presidents think higher education has not been at all effective in responding to the public confidence crisis, with presidents of private nonprofit institutions especially likely to say so, or to the growing education divide in the electorate.

The Diploma Divide

Experts say that the diploma divide can’t be decoupled from the public confidence crisis, and that both have implications for the intensifying debate over, and presidential communication about, higher education’s value—especially in this political moment.

More on the Survey

Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents was conducted with Hanover Research starting in December and running through Jan. 3. The survey included 298 presidents of two- and four-year institutions, public and private, for a margin of error of 5 percent. Download a copy of the free report here, and check out reporting on the survey’s other findings, including what presidents really think about faculty tenure and student mental health, and their expectations for the second Trump administration.

On Wednesday, March 26, at 2 p.m. Eastern, Inside Higher Ed will present a webcast with campus leaders who will share their takes on the findings. Register for that discussion here.

“Presidents should be making very clear and very concrete what the practical benefits of their university are, not just for the students that attend that university but for the community, the state at large,” said Joshua Zingher, an associate professor of political science and geography at Old Dominion University who studies elections and political behavior, including the diploma divide. “Thinking about the long-term development of the U.S. as a science power or a technology power is very much a story of the university.” He noted that football games at the University of Iowa, in his home state, pause after the first quarter so that fans can wave to patients in the campus children’s hospital—an example of how society depends on thriving colleges and universities, and how cuts to university research and other funding have ripple effects.

Matt Grossman, professor of American politics and public policy and director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University, who co-authored the 2024 book Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics, agreed there is reason for presidents to be concerned about the diploma divide, in that the “analogies are not great.” Just think of the politically polarized trust in so-called mainstream media, an institution in which both Democrats and Republicans were once largely confident.

But whereas Zingher said that presidents might have to “take a position” at some point, even if many loathe being seen as political figures, Grossman pointed to existing public polling linking declining confidence to concerns about ideological bias within institutions, at least among Republicans. So Grossman said he was surprised by how few presidents in IHE’s annual survey most attribute declining trust to concerns about ideological bias (11 percent). About double that share say concerns about ideological bias are very or extremely valid (22 percent).

Grossman explained that higher education has always been culturally liberal, but as social and cultural issues become more central to how people vote, it’s harder for institutions to “be above the fray.” Indeed, higher education is now a wedge issue. As for how campus leaders should respond to the diploma divide, Grossman said, “The first step would be a realization that they know that they are facing these complaints.”

Presidents of private nonprofit institutions are somewhat more likely than their public counterparts to express the highest level of concern about the divide’s impact, including on higher education in general. Region also appears to matter, with presidents in the South least likely to worry about the divide. Regarding its impact on American democracy, for example, some 45 percent of presidents in the South are very or extremely worried, versus 62 percent of those in the Midwest, 73 percent of those in the West and 75 percent in the Northeast.

The widening diploma divide means that voters without a college degree are increasingly likely to vote Republican and those with a degree are increasingly like to vote Democratic. With the Republican Party growing more critical of higher education, this has real consequences for college and university missions and budgets.

But Keith Curry, president of Compton College and chief executive of the Compton Community College District, emphasized that educating students, including about voting, transcends politics: “It’s important that as leaders we’re bipartisan, and to focus on helping students register to vote and participate in the [democratic] process. They have to understand the issues and how to gather the information. They make their own decisions.”

For what it’s worth, faculty members in a fall poll by IHE and Hanover overwhelmingly said that they planned to encourage students to vote in the 2024 election. But just 2 percent planned to tell students to vote for a particular candidate or party.

Jay Akridge, trustee chair in teaching and learning excellence, professor of agricultural economics and former provost at Purdue University, offered a slightly different take. Calling the diploma divide “concerning,” he said it might “make higher ed think more about students with parents who did not go to college and how to better serve this group of first-generation students.”

The Value Debate

If not concerns about ideological bias, to what do presidents most attribute declining public confidence in higher education?

From a list of survey options, the plurality (49 percent) cite concerns about the value of a college education and/or whether college is worth it. A less common choice: concerns about lack of affordability, including high tuition (18 percent). And very few presidents point to concerns about whether colleges are adequately preparing students for the workforce (7 percent).

Some differences emerge by institution type, with public presidents more likely to cite concerns about whether college is worth it than their private nonprofit peers (54 percent versus 43 percent, respectively). But presidents of private nonprofits are somewhat more likely to blame concerns about affordability (22 percent versus 15 percent of public institution presidents).

As for whether presidents think that such concerns are actually founded, half say that concerns about affordability are very to extremely valid, with presidents at public institutions (57 percent) significantly more likely to say so than those at private nonprofits (39 percent).

And while very few presidents over all (1 percent) most attribute declining public confidence in higher education to concerns about equity, including access and outcomes for historically underrepresented groups, a quarter (26 percent) think that such concerns are highly valid. The same goes for higher education being disconnected from society (24 percent say this is highly valid)—something that’s arguably linked to the diploma divide, as well.

Just 15 percent of presidents say the value question is highly valid. Some 40 percent say it’s not at all valid, while an additional 46 percent rate it as somewhat or moderately valid.

In IHE’s 2024 Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers with Hanover, 94 percent of CBOs somewhat or strongly agreed that their institution offers good value for what it charges for an undergraduate degree. Just 9 percent of CBOs said their institution charges too much for an undergraduate degree.

As for the student perspective, in IHE’s 2024 Student Voice survey series, most current two- and four-year students agreed that they’re getting a valuable education. But they were much less likely to agree that their college was affordable.

Martha Snyder, partner at HCM Strategists, says the education firm’s own U.S. polling and other research has found a general, even bipartisan belief “that education beyond high school in some form or fashion is necessary and important for longer-term economic viability, prosperity and longer-term job security.” But—similar to the Student Voice findings—the “disconnect tends to be in accessibility and affordability.” That is, even as Americans may understand the long-term value of higher education, it is undercut by the immediate challenges of paying for it—especially when weighed against the opportunity cost of not working, or perhaps not working as much, while pursuing a degree.

Snyder says this also points to a need for institutional transparency on cost of attendance and for better presidential communication as to why higher education works the way it does.

“Think about the notion of a credit hour, right? The complex way that pricing happens is not easily understood by students and families. And even though net price has fallen, well, what is net pricing?” she said. “So there’s another disconnect in how we are communicating the information we’re providing to individuals about the opportunities, about the pathways and about what the end result is, in terms of career opportunities and career advancement.”

Akridge, of Purdue, also noted the gap between the relatively large share of presidents who think concerns about the value of a degree are driving declining public confidence and the relatively small share who point to concerns about whether or not colleges are adequately preparing students for the workforce, as these two points are connected. Moreover, he said, there “are plenty of valid questions raised by employers about whether or not college graduates are ready for the work world.”

In just one example, a recent survey of U.S. employees and human resources leaders by Hult International Business School found that 85 percent of recent graduates wish their college had better prepared them for the workplace, and 75 percent of HR leaders say most college educations aren’t preparing people at all for their jobs. There’s a lot to mine here‚ some of it probably generational (Gen Z employees aren’t necessarily mangers’ favorites, and they have their own expectations about work).

Employer-led skills training has long been on the decline, as well. In any case, Akridge said that given employer perceptions about lack of preparation, “presidents are missing an opportunity—the so-called skills gap is an issue they can take action to close. And this is an issue where such actions will be well received by the public and will make a great story to tell.”

Akridge and David Hummels, professor of economics and dean emeritus at Purdue, last fall launched “Finding Equilibrium: Two Economists on Higher Ed’s Future,” a Substack newsletter seeking to inform the value conversation. It has offered a number of ideas for improving the career readiness of college graduates, including elevating teaching and learning as a priority through curricular and co-curricular design, innovation and delivery; rethinking organizational structures and student support with a focus on career readiness; and strengthening connections and feedback loops with employers. Akridge and Hummels have also written about how the economic case for college remains strong and how the price students actually pay to attend college has fallen.

Hummels told Inside Higher Ed that presidents are especially well positioned to share this kind of information with the public, to address the value debate head-on: “They are not passive actors. They need to get out in their communities and around their states, talking to high schools and chambers of commerce and the like, making the case that college is affordable with grant aid. That the return on college is large and positive when you take challenging courses of study and make the most of co-curricular opportunities.”

The big asterisk here is that completion rates hover in the mid–60 percent range for four-year institutions. Students pursuing more expensive college options but moving into lower-wage jobs is another problem. So it’s also “clear higher ed does not work for everyone,” Akridge said. “We don’t create value for all students.” And how to get better remains “an essential question.”

More on Affordability—and the Diploma Divide

Curry, president of Compton College, said he has no doubts about higher education’s value, but that affordability is a highly valid concern at his institution.

“We have students who are thinking about, ‘Do I buy a book for math class, or do I get food?’ They have to make some real decisions based off of their current finances about to going to college. It is not just the tuition cost. It is the total cost of education—what does that look like?”

Similarly, students are weighing the cost of working versus going to college. This means that they have to be able to see higher education’s value in real time, Curry said. One way the college is helping students understand this is with program maps that list careers, salaries and other opportunities connected to various areas of study.

For Hummels, affordability also points right back to the diploma divide in terms of future funding for higher education. If a majority of voters without a college education vote for one party and express a growing conviction that college is not worth it, he said, “then it becomes easier to cut back on Pell Grants, on subsidized student loans, on state support for universities.”

The impacts of these cuts would be felt most strongly by lower-income and lower-education households, he continued, and “the lack of support becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. College will become out of reach for these households.”

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March 6, 2025
Peter Elbow was right about teaching writing

In the New York Times obituary of Peter Elbow, the giant of composition studies, he is said to have “transformed freshman comp,” which he definitely did, but also, maybe not?

Even as someone who has done his fair share of thinking and writing about teaching writing, I did not realize that his landmark book, Writing Without Teachers, was first published all the way back in 1973. For sure, the approach to writing he advocated for in Writing Without Teachers and subsequent books challenged the prevailing dogma of academic writing by emphasizing freedom, student agency and audience above correctness and authority, but to consider the full import of Elbow’s message and compare it to what happens in writing classrooms, it’s tough to see a full “transformation” at work.

At the time I started teaching freshman composition as a graduate TA (1994), I had never heard of Peter Elbow, and none of the people tasked with preparing me for the job introduced me to his work. In fact, I would not encounter Elbow until 2001, when I expressed frustration with teaching through the lens of rhetorical “modes” and how I wished that I could get students writing more freely and authentically because I was tired of reading performative B.S. written for a grade.

“You should try Peter Elbow,” I was told. I did, and it was like the clouds suddenly parted and I could see the sun for the first time. Anyone who teaches writing as a process, who uses peer review and reflection, is working from Elbow-ian DNA. This surely fits any definition of transformation, doesn’t it?

But also, why was I not introduced to Peter Elbow as a beginning writing teacher? Why, at the time I did discover him, were departments still teaching rhetorical modes, or composition as (essentially) essays responding to literature?

In hindsight, I can tell that Elbow’s views on writing must have had a significant impact on the kind of writing I was asked to do in school and how I did it. I’ve written extensively how my grade school teachers of the 1970s privileged creativity and writing problem solving over correctness, engendering a lifelong curiosity about how writing works.

But by the time I was a teacher, it seems as though whatever transformation Elbow had caused had been beaten back, at least to some degree. Focus on process and revision remained, but this process was deployed in the making of very standard, significantly prescriptive artifacts that were easy to explain, straightforward to grade—as they fit established rubrics—and (at least in my experience) largely uninteresting to read and (in the experience of many students) uninteresting to write.

It isn’t surprising that attempts at giving students room to maneuver, which make it difficult to compare them to each other or standards of sufficiency, are resisted by those who prefer order to exploration. The most popular composition textbook of recent years is They Say/I Say (well over a million copies sold) a book that literally coaches students to write using Mad Libs–style templates to imitate forms of academic writing, under the theory students will learn academic expression through osmosis.

Having tried this book for half a semester, I understand its appeal. It’s really just a more refined version of the prescriptive process I used in the 1990s teaching rhetorical modes. If your primary goal is to have students turn in an artifact that resembles the kind of writing that would be produced through a scholarly process, it is very handy.

If the goal is to get students to think like scholars or go through a process that requires them to wrestle with the genuine challenges of academic inquiry and expression, it is a lousy choice. These are simulations of academic artifacts, predating the simulations now easily created by large language models like ChatGPT.

The orderly logic of “schooling” seems to repeatedly win over the mess and chaos of learning. Elbow argued that discovery and differentiation was the highest calling of the learning process, and that writing was an excellent vehicle for fulfilling this calling. This requires one to get comfortable with discomfort. For some reason this is serially viewed as a kind of threat to school, rather than what it should be, the focus of the whole enterprise.

The New York Times obituary calls Elbow’s approach a “more reflective and touchy-feely process,” which I read a signal as to the lack of rigor of the approach, but in truth, it’s the opposite. There’s nothing particularly rigorous about compliance, particularly when enforced by an authority above with all the power, like a teacher wielding their grade book.

As I’ve found over and over in my career, including weekly in this space for the last 13 years, there is nothing more demanding than being asked to deliver a thought that could only come from your unique intelligence. There is also nothing more interesting for both the writer and the reader.

Ultimately, I evolved in ways that make me not quite a full Elbow-ian. The experiences in The Writer’s Practice are structured in ways that do not quite square entirely with Writing With Teachers, though even as I write this sentence, I cannot help but note that calling the assignments in the book experiences, and the fact that I wrote the book in such a way that it could be engaged in the absence of a teacher, suggests that maybe the gap isn’t as wide as I perceive.

While I was working on the manuscript of what would come to be called More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI, I would play around with possible titles, as the title on the proposal—“Writing With Robots”—was used for the purpose of getting attention for a book proposal, not something that genuinely reflected the sentiments of the book I planned to write.

One of the titles I considered was “Everyone Should Write,” a reference to one of Elbow’s later collected volumes, Everyone Can Write.

One of the gifts of the existence of large language models has been to demonstrate the gap between machine prose and that which can be produced by a unique human intelligence. In a way, this only revalidates Elbow’s original insights of Writing Without Teachers, that we, as humans, have a higher purpose than producing school artifacts for a grade.

I’m not giving up hope that we can accept this gift.

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March 6, 2025
Education association sues Trump admin over DEI guidance

Legal challenges to the Education Department’s guidance ordering colleges to rescind all race-based programming are piling up.

A week after the American Federation of Teachers sued the Trump administration over the guidance, the National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit that seeks to restrain the department from enforcing the Feb. 14 letter.

Similar to the AFT lawsuit, the NEA argues that the letter and its threat to cut federal funding would hamper public schools’ function as “the nation’s ‘nurseries of democracy.’” The NEA lawsuit was filed in the New Hampshire federal district court, while the AFT’s challenge is in Maryland district court.

“The Trump administration is threatening to punish students, parents and educators in public schools for … fostering inclusive classrooms where diversity is valued, history is taught honestly, and every child can grow into their full brilliance,” Becky Pringle, president of the NEA, said in a news release. “We’re urging the court to block the Department of Education from enforcing this harmful and vague directive and protect students from politically motivated attacks that stifle speech and erase critical lessons.”

NEA alleges that the Dear Colleague letter “imposes vague and viewpoint discriminatory prohibitions,” “invites arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement,” and causes “substantial, irreparable harm.”
The NEA wants the court to declare the letter contrary to constitutional rights and place a permanent restraint on the department, preventing it from enforcing the letter’s orders.

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March 6, 2025
Navigating the path to higher education after local authority care

Young people in England with experience of children’s social care face significant barriers to entering and succeeding in higher education.

Our research at TASO – Pathways into and through higher education for young people with experience of children’s social care – conducted alongside the Rees Centre, University of Oxford, highlights significant and concerning disparities.

For example, at the age of 22, compared with the general population, care leavers and those who have ever been in care are four times less likely to enter higher education – 14 per cent of care-experienced people versus 56 per cent of the general population. Of those care leavers who do make it into higher education, 18 per cent drop out, more than double the withdrawal rate of their peers in the general population.

And it’s not just care leavers who experience unequal outcomes. The research looked more widely at anyone with experience of children’s social care – a group that is around 20 times larger than the care leaver population – and found stark inequalities in their access to and experience of higher education compared not only to the general population, but also compared to those eligible for free school meals. For example, “children in need” are two to three times less likely to attend higher education than the general population.

These results suggest that the experience of children’s social care has a lasting impact on educational prospects, and that the needs of affected young people are not being met by the current support system. Although the findings are perhaps not surprising, they are still shocking. Our report aims to act as a call to action for universities, policymakers and those seeking to close equality gaps in higher education.

Routes to an unlevel playing field

Not only is there an uphill struggle to the higher education “playing field” for those who have been in care, once there, the playing field itself is far from level. The data shows that getting those with experience of children’s social care into university is only the first challenge to address, and the high dropout rate demonstrates that targeted work is required to improve retention and support systems.

Care leavers – and others with experience of children’s social care – often take alternative routes to university. Over one-third (36 per cent) of care leavers take a vocational pathway, compared to just 13 per cent of the general population, and they are more likely to start university later in life rather than at the traditional age of 18. This suggests that the traditional academic pipeline does not serve them effectively, and that policymakers should aim to support these alternative pathways and set strategies for recruiting mature learners.

Care leavers and entry rates

There are some differences between those with experience of children’s social care overall and care leavers specifically. Although care leavers have poorer outcomes on most measures, care leavers have a relatively high entry rate at age 18/19, compared to other groups who have experienced children’s social care.

This could be due to a higher level of support being made available for this group in the transition from post-16 settings to higher education, reinforcing the importance of targeted interventions.

Accommodation outside of term time

Accommodation is another crucial area where care-experienced people are at a disadvantage, often without a stable home to go to during the term breaks. We need closer collaboration between local authorities and higher education providers to ensure they are collectively meeting their duty of support to care-experienced learners, and especially care leavers where the state has a corporate-parent responsibility.

This is one clear area where more joined-up working is needed to help ensure that care-experienced students have somewhere suitable to stay when universities close their doors outside of term time.

The people within the statistics

It is also important to note that many with experience of children’s social care enter higher education and thrive. As with all statistical reports, focusing on averages, however derived, risks missing the many important exceptions. That is, some individuals succeed despite the relatively long odds of doing so, and we should not interpret statistical results in a causal or absolute way.

We hope, in particular, that Virtual School Heads – a regional role that acts as a headteacher for all children with a social worker within a particular local authority – will find the research helpful when working on the strategic goal of improving educational inclusion and participation for care-experienced children and young people.

A call for change

The research underscores the fact that universities – including more selective or prestigious institutions – should rethink their approach to recruiting and supporting those with experience of children’s social care.

We outline some of the ways to support these groups – by recruiting mature learners, those from vocational pathways, and by strengthening retention strategies. One possible idea, previously suggested by the Social Market Foundation, is that providers could be offered an additional £1,000 for each care leaver they recruit as a “student premium”, beyond existing accommodation support. At TASO, we want to see higher education providers evaluating their interventions to attract and support those with experience of children’s social care, so we can start to build a picture of what works to benefit these students.

Our report makes it clear: universities, policymakers and local authorities must work together to ensure that those with experience of children’s social care are not left behind. The challenges they face in accessing and completing higher education are not inevitable but significant and targeted support is required to change the status quo. If higher education is a vehicle for social mobility, the continued focus on underrepresented groups – including those with experience of children’s social care – is vital.

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March 6, 2025
Equal Pay Day Data: On Average, Women in Higher Ed Are Paid 82 Cents on the Dollar
by Christy Williams | March 5, 2025

Since 1996, the National Committee on Pay Equity has acknowledged Equal Pay Day to bring awareness to the gap between men’s and women’s wages. This year, Equal Pay Day is March 25 — symbolizing how far into the year women must work to be paid what men were paid in the previous year.

To help higher ed leaders understand, communicate and address gender pay equity in higher education, CUPA-HR has analyzed its annual workforce data to establish Higher Education Equal Pay Days for 2025. Tailored to the higher ed workforce, these dates observe the gender pay gap by marking how long into 2025 women in higher ed must work to make what White men in higher ed earned the previous year.

Higher Education Equal Pay Day falls on March 8, 2025, for women overall, which means that women employees in higher education worked for more than two months into this year to gain parity with their White male colleagues. Women in the higher ed workforce are paid on average just 82 cents for every dollar a White man employed in higher ed makes.

Highlighting some positive momentum during this Women’s History Month, some groups of women are closer to gaining pay equity. Asian American women in higher ed worked only a few days into this year to achieve parity on January 4 — an encouraging jump from January 14 in 2024.

But the gender pay gap remains for most women, and particularly for women of color. Here’s the breakdown of the gender pay gap in the higher ed workforce, and the Higher Education Equal Pay Day for each group.* These dates remind us of the work we have ahead.
- March 8 — Women in Higher Education Equal Pay Day. On average, women employees in higher education are paid 82 cents on the dollar.
- January 4 — Asian Women in Higher Education Equal Pay Day. Asian women in higher ed are paid 99 cents on the dollar.
- March 5 — White Women in Higher Education Equal Pay Day. White women in higher ed are paid 83 cents on the dollar.
- March 29 — Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Women in Higher Education Equal Pay Day. Native of Hawaii or Pacific Islander women in higher ed are paid 76 cents on the dollar.
- April 4 — Black Women in Higher Education Equal Pay Day. Black women in higher ed are paid 75 cents on the dollar.
- April 11 — Hispanic/Latina Women in Higher Education Equal Pay Day. Hispanic/Latina women in higher ed are paid 73 cents on the dollar.
- April 24 — Native American/Alaska Native Women in Higher Education Equal Pay Day. Native American/Alaska Native women are paid just 69 cents on the dollar.
CUPA-HR research shows that pay disparities exist across employment sectors in higher ed — administrators, faculty, professionals and staff — even as the representation of women and people of color has steadily increased. But with voluntary turnover still not back to pre-pandemic levels, not addressing pay disparities could be costly.

CUPA-HR Resources for Higher Education Equal Pay Days

As we observe Women’s History Month and Higher Education Equal Pay Days for women, we’re reminded that the quest for equal pay is far from over. But data-driven analysis with the assistance of CUPA-HR research can support your work to create a more equitable future.

CUPA-HR’s interactive graphics track the gender and racial composition of the higher ed workforce, based on data from CUPA-HR’s signature surveys. The following pay equity analyses control for position, indicating that any wage gaps present are not explained by the fact that women or people of color may have greater representation in lower-paying positions:

*Data Source: 2024-25 CUPA-HR Administrators, Faculty, Professionals, and Staff in Higher Education Surveys. Drawn from 707,859 men and women for whom race/ethnicity was known.

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March 5, 2025
Closing a college with dignity (part 3) (opinion)
After a year of many last events, Cabrini University celebrated its final commencement ceremonies last May and a “legacy” event to ceremonially close the institution and pass the legacy to Villanova University, which purchased the campus. As the emotions have tempered, and Cabrini’s president and academic leadership team have moved on to new career opportunities, we offer these lessons learned for financially struggling colleges that may be facing the possibility of closure, as well as insights for colleges in positions of financial strength on how they can help.

If Your College Is Struggling Financially

The quickest route to a chaotic close is running out of cash. Depending on how liquid an institution is—a combination of how much actual cash it holds with how many assets it has that can quickly be converted to cash—running out of cash can happen suddenly. A constant awareness of liquidity is imperative to avoid such a terrible outcome, and any potential partner will ask how long the cash will last as a preliminary decision criterion.

This is the third part of a three-part series. Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here.

For many institutions, the most accessible cash resource is the unrestricted portion of the endowment. This can be both a blessing and a curse. Some institutions today are actively drawing more on their endowment than the historic 4 to 5 percent in support of annual operations in order to solve potentially existential challenges (the blessing)—but if the revitalization effort fails, then institutional resources may not be available to preclude closure (the curse). Without the Villanova partnership, Cabrini would have faced a significant cash crunch, which would have forced very difficult choices, especially related to supporting employees in the final stages of closing.

Rating agencies have also called out the growing amount of deferred maintenance colleges are facing. This is an in-the-weeds problem that many institutions are not addressing, at their great peril. In Cabrini’s case, we had to close a residence hall due to a heating system failure, and a heavily used campus road was so frequently repaired that it was difficult to traverse. We also could not provide competitive equipment for students in one of our most popular majors.

For institutions on the brink, deferred maintenance can be a real deterrent when considering deal terms with potential partners. Villanova has announced that it will spend $75 million to upgrade the Cabrini campus.

Here are some additional factors financially struggling institutions should consider:
- Your accreditor will not tell you to close until it is too late. Cabrini did not receive any warnings from its accreditor in the decade prior to closure. The institution remained accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education through graduating its final class and even moved through the required accreditation self-study process in the final year of operation. Do not rely on your accrediting body to make decisions for you.
- Be honest and transparent with your campus community about enrollment and the college’s financial reality.
- Consider the cash reserves necessary to close with dignity. Your expenditures will be higher than normal during the wind-down period. You will need to secure an excellent legal team with expertise in closing colleges. There will also be costs associated with exiting long-term contracts and licenses as well as severance and retention costs. Anticipating these increased costs and decreased revenues in the final year is critical to the success of the closure.
- Anticipate that alumni may want to “save the college.” If you do not have a history of alumni making large gifts, these efforts will be unlikely solutions. When entertaining such possibilities, consider the amount necessary to raise not just to keep the institution open for another year, but to sustain operations over time.
- Plan for a closing timeline, even if you are not certain you will close. Choosing the right time in the academic calendar to announce a closing is an especially challenging task. Primary consideration must be given to future educational opportunities for students, followed by maximizing employment opportunities for faculty and staff. If it is possible to announce a closing after the end of an academic year for two years into the future, that affords the opportunity to graduate juniors and seniors while preparing sophomores and first-year students for teach-out, and gives faculty up to two academic recruiting cycles, which is especially helpful for tenure-stream faculty. Having sufficient funding on hand is key to offering a two-year closing time frame, given that fiscal and human resources start to deplete as soon as a closing announcement is made.
- As you plan for a closing timeline, consider the ethical responsibility to deliver a robust student experience. In its final year, Cabrini prioritized using funds for student events and experiences and reduced or eliminated budgets for employee travel, professional memberships and other non-student-facing services.
If Your College Is Preparing for a Closure Announcement

If your institution has decided to close, consider the following steps before you announce:
- Build a website with critical information so that all of your constituents—students, employees, alumni and donors—can receive information. Continue to add to FAQs as more information becomes available.
- Keep the circle of people who know about the impending closure small to avoid leaks prior to having as much planned as possible. Using nondisclosure agreements is critical. While holding this news may be questioned as unethical, the decision to wait to announce until plans are in place provides the community with more clarity on partner/teach-out institutions, career counseling, mental health counseling, health care, plans for severance and retention agreements, etc.
- Consider hiring a crisis management team to prepare you for the announcement.
- Plan to host open forums (virtually and in person) for parents, students and faculty to support their transitions immediately after the closure announcement. Understand that the messaging may not be absorbed when people are upset. Post recordings or PowerPoint slides on your closing website.
- Plan for mental health support for employees and students, with both in-person and virtual options.
- Plan for the many human resources issues you will need to consider. Compliance with the federal WARN Act is crucial in order to not incur additional costs. If you provide a notice of a year or more, you will want to retain key faculty and staff. Simultaneously, you will want some melt of employees to align with the melt of students (and tuition income) that will occur. This means you will need to consider both retention and severance agreements, while complying with terms laid out in employee handbooks.
- Remain in close communication with your accreditor(s) and continue to report on compliance with standards as well as the closure plan. They have processes and expectations that colleges need to honor in order to retain accreditation for the final graduating class. As noted earlier, Cabrini had to complete a regularly scheduled Middle States self-study process, including the site team visit, in the final year of operation, while also completing processes related to closure and the asset purchase agreement.
- Anticipate that there will be additional administrative tasks to finish after students and faculty leave. In this regard, there will seem to be multiple dates that feel like an ending—the date when academics cease and degrees are no longer awarded, the date when accreditation ends, the date when a transaction occurs for the property, the date the endowment transfer process happens through the Orphan’s Court—a process specific to Pennsylvania—and more. Audits, financial aid close-out and reporting requirements, tasks related to tax compliance, discontinuation of vendor relationships, transition of student records, withdrawal from the federal international student program and other administrative tasks will need to occur after most campus employees have been terminated. Understanding these requirements and creating a checklist for closure will keep your leadership team on track.
If Your College Has Announced Plans to Close
- Request department chairs work collaboratively to identify students who can realistically graduate prior to closing, determine what courses these students need and schedule classes to meet these needs. Closing institutions need to be flexible but not sacrifice the quality of the education. Modifying degree requirements to the point where students do not have the skills and knowledge that is expected of the degree is unethical.
- Adapt catalog policies to ensure due process for managing grievances, academic standing determinations, grade disputes/changes, hearing requests, etc., within the timeline for closure. Once closed, transcripts cannot be modified.
- Establish a working group on record retention to determine what needs to shift to another institution or agency and what needs to be shredded.
- Prepare faculty and staff on campus to assume many roles as their faculty and staff colleagues depart throughout the year.
- Anticipate that alumni will suddenly be more engaged than they have been in recent years. Your focus must remain on taking care of your current employees and students, who deserve a robust experience.
- Give yourself grace and extend that to everyone around you. Everyone is experiencing some level of grief, stress and trauma. Be flexible even while knowing that at times you will need to have firm deadlines to respect people’s bandwidth and complete processes. Understand that students and employees will react differently and move on different schedules.
- Have hope. There are moments of your closure period that will be horrific. There is no other way to describe it. There will also be moments of solidarity and togetherness. Ultimately, a closure can be a period of forced growth for many people. Many Cabrini employees found a new job opportunity that advanced their careers.
If Your College Isn’t Closing, but a College in Your Area Is
- If a college or university in your area is closing or is rumored to be closing, talk with them to ask how you can best support them. Before posting information on your website or speaking with the media about welcoming the students from the closing college or university, ask the closing institution directly about how you can best support their students and employees for a smooth transition.
- Working with institutions to establish memorandums of understanding for supportive transitioning of students is important, as is acting with transparency and honesty. Unfortunately, there were institutions that exhibited predatory behaviors toward Cabrini students with flashy, false promises that led vulnerable students to spend more time and money to complete their degrees. Don’t be that institution.
- If a college provides a notice period, understand that actively recruiting their students or employees prior to closure might negatively impact the closing institution. If you would like to offer employment to someone at a closing institution who is in a key position such as director of financial aid or registrar, consider communicating with the closing institution to seek a solution that can provide a transition period, possibly splitting the employee’s time between the two institutions.
Final Reflection

In an ideal world of higher education, no institution would have to endure a sudden or planned closure. However, the current financial and enrollment pictures at many colleges and universities point to a harsher reality.

For others working at institutions that are exploring mergers, acquisitions or closures, do not work in isolation. There are now many higher education professionals who have lived through this experience who can offer advice confidentially and understand the need for nondisclosure. Higher education will be stronger if we work together, not in competition, and recognize our shared mission to serve students and our communities.

The final two years were a very difficult time for Cabrini University’s community. The institution’s leadership is forever grateful to the faculty and staff, all of whom rose to the occasion to embrace the many lasts. Their selfless work and sacrifice will serve as a legacy for Cabrini, as will the colleges where Cabrini students chose to continue their educations and the institutions where former Cabrini faculty and staff will continue their careers.

Helen Drinan served as interim president of Cabrini University. Previously, she served as president of Simmons University.

Michelle Filling-Brown is associate vice provost for integrated student experience and a teaching professor in the Department of English at Villanova University. She formerly served as chief academic officer/dean for academic affairs at Cabrini University, where she also served as a faculty member for 16 years.

Richie Gebauer is dean of student success at Bryn Mawr College. He formerly served as assistant dean of retention and student success at Cabrini University.

Erin McLaughlin is the interim dean of the College of Arts, Education and Humanities at DeSales University. She formerly served as associate dean for the School of Business, Education and Professional Studies at Cabrini University, where she also served as a faculty member for 16 years.

Kimberly Boyd is assistant professor of biology and anatomy and physiology at Delaware County Community College. She formerly served as dean of retention and student success at Cabrini University, where she also served as a faculty member for 25 years.

Missy Terlecki is dean of the School of Professional and Applied Psychology at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. She formerly served as associate dean for the School of Arts and Sciences at Cabrini University, where she also served as a faculty member for 19 years.

Lynda Buzzard is associate vice president and controller at Villanova University. Previously, she served as the vice president of finance and administration at Cabrini University in its final year.
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March 5, 2025
OpenAI invests $50M in higher ed research
OpenAI announced Tuesday that it’s investing $50 million to start up NextGenAI, a new research consortium of 15 institutions that will be “dedicated to using AI to accelerate research breakthroughs and transform education.”

The consortium, which includes 13 universities, is designed to “catalyze progress at a rate faster than any one institution would alone,” the company said in a news release.

“The field of AI wouldn’t be where it is today without decades of work in the academic community. Continued collaboration is essential to build AI that benefits everyone,” Brad Lightcap, chief operating officer of OpenAI, said in the news release. “NextGenAI will accelerate research progress and catalyze a new generation of institutions equipped to harness the transformative power of AI.”

The company, which launched ChatGPT in late 2022, will give each of the consortium’s 15 institutions—including Boston Children’s Hospital and the Boston Public Library—millions in funding for research and access to computational resources as part of an effort “to support students, educators, and researchers advancing the frontiers of knowledge.”

Institutional initiatives supported by NextGenAI vary widely but will include projects focused on AI literacy, advancing medical research, expanding access to scholarly resources and enhancing teaching and learning.

The universities in the NextGenAI consortium are:
- California Institute of Technology
- California State University system
- Duke University
- University of Georgia
- Harvard University
- Howard University
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- University of Michigan
- University of Mississippi
- Ohio State University
- University of Oxford (U.K.)
- Sciences Po (France)
- Texas A&M University
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March 5, 2025
The role of embedded mental health counselors

Mental health challenges are among the greatest threats to student persistence and retention in higher education, but providing large-scale preventative and responsive mental health care is a looming challenge for colleges and universities.

In addition to having sufficient clinicians and trained professionals to support students in crisis, finding ways to deliver wellness support to students before they’re in crisis is critical.

One strategy is embedding mental health counselors into student spaces or academic departments. By integrating services into a physical location, such as a student center, clinicians can connect with students in informal and intentional ways, gaining their trust and supporting specific pockets of the campus community.

In this episode of Voices of Student Success, host Ashley Mowreader spoke with Estevan Garcia, chief wellness officer at Dartmouth College, to learn more about public health approaches to mental health support on college campuses. Later, hear from Casey Fox, associate director of integrated services from the University of South Carolina, who leads the university’s integrated mental health program, about how efforts have scaled.

Listen to the episode here and learn more about The Key here.

Read a transcript of the podcast here.

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March 5, 2025
How to use AI to advance the college
The challenges are proliferating while funding is deteriorating. Fortunately, the AI options to accomplish more with less funding are expanding. As of the end of February, a number of awe-inspiring deep research tools have been released. More than half a dozen such tools are available from different providers at prices ranging from no cost to $200 a month. They are becoming the key to enhancing efficiency and effectiveness of administrators, including deans.

Omar Santos, distinguished Cisco engineer, published on Feb. 21, 2025, “A Comparison of Deep Research AI Agents,” where he outlines some of the features of the five leading brands as of that date, noting, that “unlike simple question-answering bots, these agents perform multi-step reasoning: formulating search queries, browsing web content, analyzing data, and synthesizing findings into structured outputs with citations.” Santos goes on to describe that there are two primary architectural approaches to deep research agents:

“Fully Autonomous Agents: Once given a prompt or topic, these agents operate independently end-to-end. For example, OpenAI’s Deep Research feature (launched in Feb 2025) allows ChatGPT to act like a ‘research analyst,’ working for several minutes without intervention to gather information from the web and compile a report with sources. It is powered by a specialized version of OpenAI’s upcoming o3 model optimized for reasoning and web browsing. The user simply provides the topic, answers a few additional questions, and the agent handles the rest autonomously. This fully-automated approach is convenient but requires a very robust agent to decide on research directions and verify information on its own.

“Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) Agents: These agents incorporate human feedback or approval at different steps of the research workflow. Rather than running to completion unquestioned, the AI will pause for guidance—typically after formulating a research plan or outline—so the user can review and adjust it before the agent proceeds.”

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Santos compares and contrasts five different such tools, leading with the OpenAI and Google Gemini versions. I would add two more to the list. First is the outstanding Storm tool developed as a brainstorming device by the Open Virtual Assistant Lab at Stanford University. The other is the Grok 3 Beta recently released by X.ai.

In all cases, these tools are capable of using advanced reasoning to develop a research plan, search the internet at large and other selected sites to which you provide access permissions, conduct probing research, compose a report with citations, revise the report and update as directed. Increasingly, the tools are offering options to ensure they do not use your inputs for training. Each of these tools will, no doubt, revise and improve in the coming months as new competitors enter the field. I expect that university IT departments will assist deans and other administrators as they select, train and become proficient at using the tool best suited to their needs.

Here are ways these tools may assist deans in meeting the challenges of their positions this fall and moving forward.

Personal Assistant
- These very “smart” tools can manage calendars, set reminders, respond to routine correspondence and more. In these cases, deans may initially want to give individual approval of actions, but in time, just as with an experienced assistant, they may want to enable auto-processing while keeping copies for follow-ups.
- One can share an email or notes of a conversation with any additional points that should be included in the response and ask the deep research tool to compose a response (including references it discovers that are relevant to the communication).
- The deep research tools can automatically schedule meetings and prepare agendas for items that either the dean or the tool may identify as emerging issues for the college.
College Research Projects
- A continuing assignment may be to conduct a weekly search for new public and private funding of projects in which the faculty of the college have an interest.
- Strategies for reducing indirect costs of projects can be researched and a report shared with project managers, department chairs and faculty conducting research.
- Focused reports can be generated to propose extended funded research topics and opportunities in areas where the college faculty have conducted preliminary research.
- Emerging markets for products of research can be identified and letters of introduction to businesses who might value the research can be drafted and sent.
Curriculum Currency and Relevancy
- The Deep Research tool can compare the college’s published curriculum with those of peer institutions and others for timeliness, utility and corporate demand.
- A dynamic comparison of the top 10 competitor colleges’ curriculum and research agendas can be maintained with update alerts when a competitor makes changes. In such cases, the tool can automatically create a meeting of relevant faculty and staff, including an agenda with materials from the competition to focus the discussion.
- Deep Research can conduct predictive analyses of current curriculum, identifying courses that obstruct the smooth flow of students through the curriculum (once identified, the tool can set up an agenda with data handouts to discuss the problem and suggest solutions). In such studies, learning outcome effectiveness can be assessed, and percentage and time to employment of graduates or certificate completers and retention of graduates by employers can be analyzed.
Meeting and Leading the Competition
- Deep Research is the ideal tool to identify new domestic and international markets for enrollments.
- Professional certificates can be designed by the tool to meet emerging needs in the field. These can be matched to faculty backgrounds for potential staffing.
- Deep Research can do an analysis of faculty workloads, identify those who may need more support and those who may be available for more activities, and make recommendations to the dean and department chairs.
Analyzing and Assessing Productivity and Currency of Unit Work
- Deep Research tools are able to extrapolate on the work of current projects and compare their objectives to emerging markets, technologies, and societal needs. Sharing such reports with the relevant units as well as preparing the agenda for discussion, keeping minutes of the meeting and codifying outcomes can all be accomplished with AI tools.
- Full annual reviews and analysis of revenue generated, students enrolled, outcomes accomplished and other such data can be accomplished by Deep Research. These can help to guide strategic planning.
These are just a few of the important tasks of the dean that can be assisted by Deep Research tools. There are many more tasks that can be tackled by these tools. I hope that this brief list will prompt readers to become comfortable with the range of work that can be done in order to identify their own tasks for which they could use assistance.

Is your university preparing to implement these tools in support of deans and other administrators? Has training begun? It is important that your institution gets started so that you will not rapidly fall behind your peers in utilizing advanced AI tools to enhance effectiveness and efficiency.
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March 5, 2025