Tag: Higher

New College of Florida says it will ‘happily be the first’ to sign Trump’s higher ed compact
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Dive Brief:
- New College of Florida has publicly volunteered to be the first institution to adopt the Trump administration’s higher education compact.
- The institution — which has undergone a right-wing transformation since 2023 at the direction of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — said in a news release Monday that it would “happily be the first” to formally embrace President Donald Trump’s vision for higher education.
- Most universities directly offered the compact have rejected the sweeping proposal, which promises priority for federal grants in return for implementing far-reaching policies favored by the administration.
Dive Insight:

At the beginning of October, Trump administration officials outlined a potential deal that it first brought to nine major research universities.

In return for special consideration in research and other federal funding, the universities were asked to implement a wide-ranging slate of policies. Those included a five-year tuition freeze, a standardized test requirement for applicants, an institutional position of neutrality on political and social events, and a commitment to potentially dissolve units deemed anti-conservative.

Seven of the universities rejected the compact outright. Two others, Vanderbilt University and the University of Texas at Austin, have yet to formally accept or reject the deal. In October, Trump appeared to open the compact up to all colleges via a social post. At least three other institutions have declined the compact since.

Many of the rejecting institutions cited concerns about academic freedom and independence. But NCF said Monday that it has already implemented policies reflecting many of the principles in the compact. The college has nixed diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, dismantled its gender studies department, and eliminated “discrimination in admissions.”

Before 2023, NCF had a reputation as a LGBTQ+ friendly campus and one of the most progressive institutions in the state. But that year, DeSantis appointed a new slate of trustees at the liberal arts college, kicking off a turbulent transformation into a conservative model of public education.

The governor publicly advocated for a vision for NCF as a “Hillsdale of the South,” referring to Hillsdale College in Michigan, a conservative Christian institution.

The American Association of University Professors’ governing council voted unanimously in 2024 to sanction NCF over noncompliance with the faculty group’s standards for shared governance.

The AAUP called NCF’s changes an “unprecedented politically motivated takeover” citing findings from its 2023 report on political interference in higher ed in Florida. At NCF that included course changes, tenure decisions and faculty dismissals following DeSantis remaking of NCF’s board, according to the report.

“The board of trustees and administration thoroughly restructured the college’s academic offerings without meaningful faculty involvement and denied academic due process to multiple faculty members during their tenure applications and renewals,” the AAUP said in announcing the censure.

More recently, Republican state lawmakers and DeSantis have reportedly eyed an expansion of NCF, which could include diverting other public institutions’ resources to NCF’s control.

For its part, the college said Monday that it has reformed around principles such as merit and free thought.

“We have no affirmative action or DEI, and we have been building a campus where open dialogue and the marketplace of ideas are at the forefront of everything we do,” said NCF President Richard Corcoran, formerly the Republican speaker for the Florida House and the education commissioner under DeSantis.

Initially, the Trump administration offered the compact to research powerhouses that take on large numbers of federal contracts, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Southern California and UT-Austin.

The smaller NCF only reported $381,509 in federal grants in fiscal 2024.
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October 28, 2025
The Case Against AI Disclosure Statements (opinion)
I used to require my students submit AI disclosure statements any time they used generative AI on an assignment. I won’t be doing that anymore.

From the beginning of our current AI-saturated moment, I leaned into ChatGPT, not away, and was an early adopter of AI in my college composition classes. My early adoption of AI hinged on the need for transparency and openness. Students had to disclose to me when and how they were using AI. I still fervently believe in those values, but I no longer believe that required disclosure statements help us achieve them.

Look. I get it. Moving away from AI disclosure statements is antithetical to many of higher ed’s current best practices for responsible AI usage. But I started questioning the wisdom of the disclosure statement in spring 2024, when I noticed a problem. Students in my composition courses were turning in work that was obviously created with the assistance of AI, but they failed to proffer the required disclosure statements. I was puzzled and frustrated. I thought to myself, “I allow them to use AI; I encourage them to experiment with it; all I ask is that they tell me they’re using AI. So, why the silence?” Chatting with colleagues in my department who have similar AI-permissive attitudes and disclosure requirements, I found they were experiencing similar problems. Even when we were telling our students that AI usage was OK, students still didn’t want to fess up.

Fess up. Confess. That’s the problem.

Mandatory disclosure statements feel an awful lot like a confession or admission of guilt right now. And given the culture of suspicion and shame that dominates so much of the AI discourse in higher ed at the moment, I can’t blame students for being reluctant to disclose their usage. Even in a class with a professor who allows and encourages AI use, students can’t escape the broader messaging that AI use should be illicit and clandestine.

AI disclosure statements have become a weird kind of performative confession: an apology performed for the professor, marking the honest students with a “scarlet AI,” while the less scrupulous students escape undetected (or maybe suspected, but not found guilty).

As well intentioned as mandatory AI disclosure statements are, they have backfired on us. Instead of promoting transparency and honesty, they further stigmatize the exploration of ethical, responsible and creative AI usage and shift our pedagogy toward more surveillance and suspicion. I suggest that it is more productive to assume some level of AI usage as a matter of course, and, in response, adjust our methods of assessment and evaluation while simultaneously working toward normalizing the usage of AI tools in our own work.

Studies show that AI disclosure carries risks both in and out of the classroom. One study published in May reports that any kind of disclosure (both voluntary and mandatory) in a wide variety of contexts resulted in decreased trust in the person using AI (this remained true even when study participants had prior knowledge of an individual’s AI usage, meaning, the authors write, “The observed effect can be attributed primarily to the act of disclosure rather than to the mere fact of AI usage.”)

Another recent article points to the gap present between the values of honesty and equity when it comes to mandatory AI disclosure: People won’t feel safe to disclose AI usage if there’s an underlying or perceived lack of trust and respect.

Some who hold unfavorable attitudes toward AI will point to these findings as proof that students should just avoid AI usage altogether. But that doesn’t strike me as realistic. Anti-AI bias will only drive student AI usage further underground and lead to fewer opportunities for honest dialogue. It also discourages the kind of AI literacy employers are starting to expect and require.

Mandatory AI disclosure for students isn’t conducive to authentic reflection but is instead a kind of virtue signaling that chills the honest conversation we should want to have with our students. Coercion only breeds silence and secrecy.

Mandatory AI disclosure also does nothing to curb or reduce the worst features of badly written AI papers, including the vague, robotic tone; the excess of filler language; and, their most egregious hallmark, the fabricated sources and quotes.

Rather than demanding students confess their AI crimes to us through mandatory disclosure statements, I advocate both a shift in perspective and a shift of assignments. We need to move from viewing students’ AI assistance as a special exception warranting reactionary surveillance to accepting and normalizing AI usage as a now commonplace feature of our students’ education.

That shift does not mean we should allow and accept any and all student AI usage. We shouldn’t resign ourselves to reading AI slop that a student generates in an attempt to avoid learning. When confronted with a badly written AI paper that sounds nothing like the student who submitted it, the focus shouldn’t be on whether the student used AI but on why it’s not good writing and why it fails to satisfy the assignment requirements. It should also go without saying that fake sources and quotes, regardless of whether they are of human or AI origin, should be called out as fabrications that won’t be tolerated.

We have to build assignments and evaluation criteria that disincentivize the kinds of unskilled AI usage that circumvent learning. We have to teach students basic AI literacy and ethics. We have to build and foster learning environments that value transparency and honesty. But real transparency and honesty require safety and trust before they can flourish.

We can start to build such a learning environment by working to normalize AI usage with our students. Some ideas that spring to mind include:
- Telling students when and how you use AI in your own work, including both successes and failures in AI usage.
- Offering clear explanations to students about how they could use AI productively at different points in your class and why they might not want to use AI at other points. (Danny Liu’s Menus model is an excellent example of this strategy.)
- Adding an assignment such as an AI usage and reflection journal, which offers students a low-stakes opportunity to experiment with AI and reflect upon the experience.
- Adding an opportunity for students to present to the class on at least one cool, weird or useful thing that they did with AI (maybe even encouraging them to share their AI failures, as well).
The point with these examples is that we are inviting students into the messy, exciting and scary moment we all find ourselves in. They shift the focus away from coerced confessions to a welcoming invitation to join in and share their own wisdom, experience and expertise that they accumulate as we all adjust to the age of AI.

Julie McCown is an associate professor of English at Southern Utah University. She is working on a book about how embracing AI disruption leads to more engaging and meaningful learning for students and faculty.
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October 28, 2025
Improving Community College Transfer in California
California has established significant goals for postsecondary attainment, with the stated aim of having 70 percent of working-age adults hold a credential of value by 2035. To meet this goal, the state has invested time and resources into the community college system and upward transfer processes, seeking to create affordable and accessible pathways in and through higher education.

A recently published report by the Public Policy Institute of California Higher Education Center found that a large share of community college students are applying to and enrolling in state universities to complete a bachelor’s degree, but equity gaps persist among certain demographic groups.

The data highlights the importance of focusing on early benchmarks of academic progress—including credit completion rates, GPA and the stated goal of transfer—to help students succeed in making the transition to a four-year university. The report also underscores that some transfer students are willing to pay more and travel farther to attend a more selective institution.

The background: California’s public higher education system is the largest and most diverse in the country, the report authors note. The California Community College system includes 116 institutions enrolling over 2.1 million students, and the California State University system consists of 22 institutions educating nearly half a million students. Within the state, the system is the top destination for upward transfer, with 58 percent of community college students going on to enroll at a CSU campus.

Over the past decade, the two college systems have partnered to streamline transfer opportunities. One innovation is the associate degree for transfer (A.D.T.), a group of 40 academic pathways that guarantee admission to students who complete 60 credits toward a bachelor’s degree in a specific major. Another is the CSU Transfer Planner, which provides insights for students to navigate transferable credits, degree programs and campus requirements for transfer.

The report looks at student demographic information, academic progress and participation in transfer pathways such as A.D.T. to identify success indicators in the transfer pipeline.

Methodology

Researchers analyzed data from the CSU Application and Admission Dashboard and longitudinal student-level data from fall 2018 and fall 2023.

In the sample, 48 percent of transfer applicants were Latino, 26 percent white, 15 percent Asian and 4.5 percent Black. A majority were 24 years old or younger, and 75 percent received a California Promise Grant or a Pell Grant while in community college.

The data: The average student spends nine semesters at a community college before applying to a CSU institution, researchers found.

Students are required to complete 60 credits to transfer with junior-level standing, but the median student completed 71.5 credits. Only half of applicants had earned an A.D.T. before applying, and 22 percent earned a local associate degree, meaning about 30 percent of students applied for transfer without a credential.

Researchers noted that students who made significant progress in their first year of community college were more likely to transfer. Those who successfully completed transfer-level math in their first year applied to CSU after seven terms on average, whereas student who didn’t applied after 10 community college terms.

Students who were 25 or older, Black or financial aid recipients were less likely to meet early milestones and therefore less likely to transfer. Conversely, students with high GPAs were more likely to transfer.

The data also indicated a gap between students eligible for admission at a CSU and those who actually applied. One in five students who completed an A.D.T. never applied to CSU despite having guaranteed admission. Of those, 43 percent enrolled at a different university, many in the University of California system.

In total, 87 percent of A.D.T. recipients declared a transfer goal while at community college, but approximately 20 percent of them didn’t continue on to a bachelor’s degree program.

A majority (92 percent) of all transfers were eventually admitted to at least one CSU, and 63 percent of all transfers enrolled. Three in 10 applied more than once, and almost half of them (47 percent) had their application denied the first time.

“It is possible that these students were initially rejected from the campus of their choice (or to all campuses), took more community college classes, and then gained admission,” researchers wrote. On the flip side, a large share of those whose transfer applications were rejected applied only once (88 percent), and to only one campus (61 percent).

Admissions data also revealed the importance of academic benchmarks early in the student’s community college career. Admission rates for students who took transfer-level math or English in their first year were higher compared to their peers who did not; similarly, students who earned 24 transferable credits were more likely to gain admission to a CSU. Unsurprisingly, students who stated a transfer goal, completed the A.D.T. or had a GPA of 3.25 or higher also had high admittance rates.

One trend researchers noted is that students who were admitted to a CSU but chose to enroll at a different institution were more likely to select a college that was farther away or more expensive, indicating that cost and proximity are not deciding factors. Transfers also enrolled at more selective colleges compared to their peers who opted to enroll at CSU, though some students selected universities with lower graduation rates than CSU.

Over all, transfer students had high graduation rates. Among the incoming fall 2020 cohort, 76 percent graduated with their bachelor’s degree in four years, and 69 percent completed it in three years. About 19 percent of students left the CSU system without graduating three years after enrolling, and these students were more likely to be Black, Latino, male or older or have financial need.

Recommendations: Based on their findings, researchers identified three opportunities for improvement:
1. Invest in the student’s first year. Interventions including dual enrollment, corequisite English and math courses, proactive advising, and flexible scheduling can promote early momentum and academic success for community college students.
2. Collect additional data on enrollment decisions. While system data showed that some students opt out of a four-year degree program, researchers emphasized the need for student voices to understand why those admitted would not enroll at CSU. Researchers also noted a need for campus-specific data, “because there is high variation across individual CSUs in both acceptance and enrollment rates.”
3. Create space at selective campuses and in high-demand majors. “Some of the students who were never admitted to CSU were competitive applicants, but they applied to the most in-demand campuses,” the authors wrote. To increase capacity for these students, researchers suggest flexible course scheduling options, co-locating campuses or expanding online degree programs.
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October 28, 2025
Director of Online Program Development at UVA

The origins of “Featured Gigs” trace back to the first post in the series with Kemi Jona, vice provost for online education and digital innovation at UVA. While I had the idea for the series, it was Kemi who ultimately came up with most of the language for the four questions we use to explore opportunities at the intersection of learning, technology and organizational change. Today, Kemi answers questions about the role of director of online program development.

Q: What is the university’s mandate behind this role? How does it help align with and advance the university’s strategic priorities?

A: The 2030 Plan calls on the university to expand the reach of its educational programs—both in person and online—and to make UVA more accessible, including to learners across and beyond the Commonwealth. The University of Virginia’s Office of the Vice Provost for Online Education and Digital Innovation is a key part of advancing this charge on behalf of the university, helping our schools and institutes design, deliver and scale high-quality online and hybrid programs that extend UVA’s reach and impact.

The director of online program development plays a central role in advancing UVA’s online education goals. The role is ideal for someone who thrives at the intersection of strategy, innovation and execution. The director will not only guide program development but also help UVA build the internal capacity and frameworks needed to sustain this growth long-term. This is a high-impact, high-visibility position that will help shape the next chapter of online and hybrid learning at UVA and potentially serve as a model for the sector.

Q: Where does the role sit within the university structure? How will the person in this role engage with other units and leaders across campus?

A: This role sits within the provost’s office and reports directly to the vice provost for online education and digital innovation. The director will guide UVA schools and institutes through the planning, launch and evaluation of new online and hybrid programs, serving as a trusted partner to deans, associate deans, program directors and faculty.

This individual will bring structure and strategy to UVA’s online growth, helping schools scope opportunities, assess market demand, support business case development and build the readiness needed for sustained success. The role requires exceptional communication, diplomacy and systems-level thinking to align multiple stakeholders around a shared vision.

Q: What would success look like in one year? Three years? Beyond?

A: In service of the vision articulated in the 2030 Plan and aligned to the strategic goals of our partner schools and institutes, UVA is undertaking ambitious growth in its online and hybrid portfolio. In the first year, success means ensuring active projects move from planning to launch with clarity and momentum, establishing shared frameworks, timelines and accountability across partners.

Within three years, success will be measured not only in the number of successful program launches but also in the maturity of UVA’s internal systems, talent and decision-making processes that enable continued agility and innovation.

Longer term, the director will help institutionalize a robust, repeatable, data-informed model for program development so UVA’s schools can innovate faster and with greater confidence, while ensuring that all programs uphold UVA’s reputation for academic excellence.

Q: What kinds of future roles would someone who took this position be prepared for?

A: Because this individual will be deeply engaged in all aspects of online program design, development and launch, he or she will gain substantial experience working with deans, faculty and other senior leaders. This experience would help set up future leadership roles in online education and digital innovation or in the private sector.

This role offers a rare opportunity to operate at the heart of institutional transformation—building systems and partnerships that inform how UVA advances its mission as we begin our third century as a leading public institution. The experience will prepare the director for senior university leadership roles in strategy, academic innovation or digital transformation. It will equip them with the cross-sector perspective and executive acumen valued by both higher education and mission-driven organizations beyond academia.

Please get in touch if you are conducting a job search at the intersection of learning, technology, and organizational change. If your gig is a good fit, featuring your gig on Featured Gigs is free.

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October 28, 2025
How Colleges Use Anti-Elitist and Elite-Adjacent Campaigns

High Point University in North Carolina sets itself apart by offering a luxury experience.

Wikipedia

Two university campaigns hit the national spotlight in recent weeks. Each tells a very different story about how colleges market themselves.

Colorado Mesa University’s new Featherstone University spoof takes aim at elite school stereotypes, ending with the line “We care about who you are, not who you know.”

Days later, The Wall Street Journal profiled High Point University in a turnaround story built on private wealth and exclusivity. Its campus features etiquette lessons, manicured gardens and an airplane cabin for networking drills. HPU prepares students for a world where who you know still matters.

In an industry criticized for sameness, both CMU and HPU stand out as strategic outliers.

Trust, Value and the Split in Demand

Public trust in higher education is fragile. Concerns over cost, access and free speech have left families asking if it is worth it. Against this backdrop, two playbooks are emerging: anti-elitist authenticity and elite-adjacent experience.

Playbook A: CMU’s Skepticism as Fuel

Colorado Mesa University’s “Welcome to Featherstone” flips elite-school marketing on its head. The parody ends with a challenge: “We don’t care about who you know. We care about you.”

For a public university serving rural, first-generation, working-class students, the message fits. CMU has built its brand on affordability, access and trust by cutting tuition, growing CMU Tech and guaranteeing free tuition for Colorado families earning $70,000 or less.

This isn’t simply mocking the elite; it’s segmentation. CMU speaks to families who see higher education as a bridge, not a birthright. In a sea of interchangeable ads, it uses satire to say, “We hear your skepticism—and we’re still here for you.”

A Take From Rural America

CMU’s approach hit a nerve, but it also hit a truth.

I was born in East Detroit, then raised in Richmond, Mich., a farming town of 4,000. When my parents learned our local high school wasn’t accredited, they sent my brothers and me to school an hour away. At that time, only 32 percent of the local high school graduates pursued college. I still remember junior high classmates missing school to plant and harvest corn and soybeans.

For rural communities like these, college can feel distant—financially and culturally. CMU’s campaign speaks to them with rare honesty.

Playbook B: High Point’s Experience as Advantage

If CMU sells authenticity, High Point sells aspiration. Its campus hums with classical music and fountains, lined with rocking chairs and gardens designed for conversation. Students dine in on-campus restaurants that double as lessons in professional etiquette, and housing options range from traditional dorms to $40,000 tiny homes.

President Nido Qubein calls it preparation, not pampering: “Half of Wall Street sends their kids here.” The model caters to families who can pay full price and want an environment that mirrors the careers their children expect to enter.

It’s not subtle, but it shows the university understands its target audience. In an uncertain marketing environment, HPU is selling a vision of success that feels polished, predictable and safe.

What the Models Reveal

CMU and HPU reveal opposite, equally intentional strategies. CMU doubled down on affordability with its 2024 CMU Promise Tour, which reached 22 rural and urban communities, boosting first-year enrollment by 25 percent. HPU, meanwhile, courts families buying access and advantage through concierge-level amenities.

CMU uses satire to mock exclusivity; HPU leans into luxury to promise it. Both know exactly whom they’re speaking to.

Leadership Takeaways

In a landscape of sameness and skepticism, higher ed leaders should ask, “What do we stand for—and how do we prove it?”

Is it belonging and mobility like CMU, or exclusivity and polish like HPU? Either can work if it’s backed by programs, outcomes and transparency. Whatever your promise, ensure the experience delivers it.

Both institutions have likely alienated some audiences, but they’ve connected deeply with their own. That’s the point of strategic marketing. Their playbooks, while different, seem to be working for Colorado Mesa and High Point, which both had record enrollments in fall 2025 amid national headlines warning of a demographic cliff.

Beyond the Marketing

Beyond the spotlight, both universities must prove results. Time and measurement will tell if they are delivering on access and affordability, or on postgraduate success and networks.

Authenticity carries risk, as organizational psychologist Adam Grant recently noted in a New York Times op-ed, but when outcomes match promises, both models can be legitimate. Hide results or exaggerate benefits and either fails the test of ethics and equity.

In a nation this diverse, there is no single market for higher ed—there are many markets. And in a landscape this stratified, the unforgivable sin isn’t satire or spectacle; it’s sameness without substance.

Maria Kuntz is director of content marketing strategy and communications at the University of Colorado–Boulder. She leads content strategy for advancement, oversees the award-winning Coloradan alumni magazine and writes about storytelling, leadership and trust in higher education.

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October 28, 2025
AAUP President Exacerbated “Organizational Antisemitism”

Cassidy asked the AFT president to respond in writing to four questions by Nov. 6.

U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education Labor and Pensions

In a letter to American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the education committee, accused American Association of University Professors president and AFT vice president Todd Wolfson of promoting “organizational antisemitism” within the AAUP.

Cassidy cited an August Inside Higher Ed interview with Wolfson in which the union leader stood against sending weapons to Israel, accused the Trump administration of weaponizing antisemitism for political gains and advocated for the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, a definition of antisemitism that does not include anti-Zionism.

Cassidy also referenced a statement from Wolfson calling Vice President JD Vance a fascist as well as a March letter to the AAUP from the Anti-Defamation League and Academic Engagement Network that said “the AAUP [is] being perceived as increasingly moving in a virulently anti-Israel direction, and as a result, growing insensitive and even hostile to the concerns of its Jewish and Zionist members.”

“In the six months since he received this warning from one of the nation’s leading organizations dedicated to fighting antisemitism [ADL], Dr. Wolfson has not only failed to address these concerns but has exacerbated them,” Cassidy wrote. “Jewish faculty members deserve to carry out their work free from discrimination. As an association with a national presence, it is concerning that AFT has not only failed to help solve this problem but has made it worse by allowing Dr. Wolfson to continue to serve in a leadership role.”

The AAUP is an affiliate of the AFT, one of the largest unions nationwide for K–12 and higher education professionals. The two became formally affiliated in 2022 and share some leadership, including Wolfson.

Wolfson replied to Cassidy’s letter in a statement to Inside Higher Ed Monday.

“It appears Senator Cassidy and his GOP colleagues are furious that seven universities have rejected Trump’s absurd Higher Ed Loyalty Oath. Rather than reckon with their failed attempt to strong-arm higher education, they’ve chosen to complain to our national affiliate, AFT, because AAUP dared to hold a webinar,” Wolfson wrote, referring to an AAUP webinar called “Scholasticide in Palestine” that Cassidy referenced in the letter. “I would respectfully suggest they spend less time trying to undermine my constitutional rights and more time focusing on what Americans actually care about—like reopening the government, lowering healthcare costs, and addressing the cost-of-living crisis.”

Cassidy wants Weingarten to tell him by Nov. 6 how AFT is addressing the concerns raised by the ADL and to share more details about how she’s working with the AAUP to ensure Jewish members aren’t experiencing antisemitism. He also asked Weingarten whether AFT publicly condemns Wolfson’s remarks.

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October 28, 2025
Miami Dade Fights Hearing on Trump Library Land Deal

Ever since Miami Dade College announced last month that it was donating land for the construction of Donald J. Trump’s presidential library, the community college has faced criticism. Now it is fighting in court to prevent a public hearing on the deal, which would resolve a lawsuit brought by a citizen who has argued the move is illegal.

At a Sept. 23 board meeting, Miami Dade College transferred land to the state of Florida to be used for Trump’s presidential library. Critics alleged that the meeting was rushed, failed to offer adequate public notice on the specifics of the deal and lacked any discussion or debate; a public notice referenced only a “potential real estate transaction” as the reason for the meeting.

Some estimates have put the value of the 2.6-acre site in downtown Miami at $250 million to $300 million, though others say it is worth $67 million. But regardless of the dollar amount, Miami Dade College is giving the land away for free.

Marvin Dunn, a local historian, sued to block the transfer, alleging in his lawsuit that the Board of Trustees “unquestionably violated” state anticorruption laws. Dunn argued in a court filing that “depriving the public of reasonable notice of this proposed decision was a plain violation of the Sunshine Act and of the Florida Constitution” and asked for an injunction to block the transfer.

Judge Mavel Ruiz of Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit granted Dunn a temporary injunction earlier this month, noting that he is likely to prove his claims about sunshine law violations, but she did not altogether block the land transfer. She also left the door open for the Board of Trustees to redo the deal.

“It is understood that the board can provide the reasonable disclosure and convey this property as they see fit,” Ruiz said. “That’s why this is not a case, at least for this court, rooted in politics.”

Jesus Suarez, an attorney for Continental Strategy (founded in 2022 by former Republican lawmaker Richard Corcoran, who was later tapped to lead New College of Florida), which is representing Miami Dade College, has contended that the deal is completely aboveboard.

“The law doesn’t require that there be any specificity in the notice,” Suarez has argued. College lawyers also said they would appeal the ruling to temporarily block the transfer.

State officials have bristled at Ruiz’s temporary injunction. Florida attorney general James Uthmeier, who has assigned members of his staff to assist the college in its legal battle, told The Miami Herald the temporary injunction is not technically in place because it was not issued as a written order.

Dunn, meanwhile, is seeking to expedite legal proceedings, aiming for a trial to begin by January.

While Ruiz emphasized that the case is not about politics, the MDC board, which is appointed by Republican governor Ron DeSantis, is overwhelmingly comprised of Republican donors. Board chair Michael Bileca and trustee Jose Felix Diaz are also former GOP lawmakers.

Of the seven trustees, six have donated to Republican candidates and causes. Miami Dade College president Madeline Pumariega, who has defended the way the board handled the transfer, has also donated to GOP candidates, though she has given to Democrats in the past as well. (Most of the presidents at Florida’s 40 public institutions have either Republican ties or past donations.)

Miami Dade College officials did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

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October 28, 2025
IU Alumni Pull Donations Over Student Newspaper Censorship

Indiana University’s decision to suspend the print publication of its student newspaper is costing the institution: Alumni are pulling donations in protest. The university ended the Indiana Daily Student’s print edition after firing the paper’s adviser, who refused to comply with administrators’ request to remove news coverage from a homecoming edition of the paper.

University leaders insist they’re not censoring the student paper but moving it to a digital platform in line with a business plan adopted last year to address the paper’s deficits. But alumni aren’t buying it, IndyStar reported. Some are asking what came of donations they made to a fund dedicated to the student publication after the newspaper reported students faced hurdles to spending the money. Other alumni are pulling their donations altogether.

Former journalism student Patricia Esgate canceled $1.5 million in bequests she planned to leave to the university. Alum Ryan Gunterman, executive director of the Indiana High School Press Association and the faculty adviser of Franklin College’s student newspaper, posted on Facebook that he and his wife were ceasing all future donations after giving money to the university and newsroom for over two decades. Toby Cole, a fourth-generation alum of the institution, told IndyStar in an email that his family was ending its monthly contributions and a $300,000 planned gift for scholarships.

“If IU can pay our [football] coach almost $100mm we can fund our IDS,” Cole said in the email. “Problem is ‘they’ don’t want an independent free speaking print newspaper because students actually wield power with it.”

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October 28, 2025
Misogyny and “Hoeflation” at the Nat’l Assoc. of Scholars

In an essay for Minding the Campus titled, “College Students in a Romance Recession, Boys Blame ‘Hoeflation,’” Jared Gould blames women for these imagined problems on campus, part of “a broad feminization of our institutions, which, to say the least, is not a good thing.”

Gould uses the term “hoeflation” in his title to explain the problem of women being more selective than men on dating apps: “This imbalance has led young men to coin the term ‘hoeflation,’ the grind of chasing women they might barely fancy, but will date just to escape loneliness.” Oh, the poor lonely men, forced to work so hard to get laid by women they don’t like and call a “ho.” Why do all of these women—sorry, “hoes”—reject these obviously wonderful and respectful men?

But ultimately the real problem, Gould says, is “leftist professors, who, bent on fueling radicalization, are largely to blame for the chasm between the sexes.” Those feminist faculty, Gould says, must be eliminated from universities to allow beautiful romances to blossom between the real men and their “hoes.”

Why is Minding the Campus publishing this misogynist nonsense? Minding the Campus is a leading conservative voice about academia, owned by the National Association of Scholars, with Peter Wood as its executive editor.

For a moment, I wondered if perhaps the NAS had been fooled by a left-wing hoax, publishing a work of such gross misogyny that had been planted to humiliate them. But no, Gould is not some random idiot. This idiot is the managing editor of Minding the Campus, following positions as a research fellow at Speech First and a senior editor at Campus Reform. He’s an influential voice and editor within the conservative movement.

Beyond his open embrace of misogyny, Gould suffers from a lack of fact-checking skills.

Gould wrote, “This August, a University of Tennessee professor canceled class to celebrate Taylor Swift’s engagement. Rather than using the moment to critique Swift’s portrayal of marriage as the ultimate career capstone, his canceling class quietly reinforced the idea that dating and partnership are secondary to education, career, and financial goals.”

In reality, Tennessee communications professor Matthew Pittman was teaching his social media class and recorded a skit with his students pretending to cancel class despite the “biochem midterm” (in August!) he claimed was planned that day. It was a test of how misinformation spreads online and persists even after the truth is revealed, and Gould failed the test miserably.

Gould got fooled multiple times by the hoax after being informed that it was a hoax, initially writing in August that the cancellation of class was “staged” but still somehow thinking it was real, both in his own article and another essay by Samuel Abrams at Minding the Campus. Just two months later, Gould is still repeating the fake story.

Of course, even if a professor had canceled class to celebrate Swift’s upcoming marriage, that would be precisely the opposite of showing how “dating and partnership are secondary” to other goals. Gould managed to repeatedly fall for a hoax and still draw all the wrong conclusions from the fake news.

But let’s not allow Gould’s misogyny and incompetence to distract us from how incredibly stupid his essay truly is. Gould began his article with a remarkably broad generalization based on one strange anecdote: “Love seems to be over for college students. That’s at least what I gathered from a recent conversation with a student in Texas.” Gould reported that this man is “not scoring dates” even though he took a dance class, which, it turned out was “a giant sausage fest” full of men seeking to find that most elusive creature, the single woman on a college campus. Assuming that this student is real, it’s still difficult to connect Gould’s bizarre conclusions from this pointless story with a data set of precisely one dude.

According to Gould, “College girls have stopped looking for dates, and the men—well, they’ve learned to keep their eyes glued to the ground, lest they star in a viral TikTok captioned, ‘Guy looked at me—send help.’” Ah, yes, the poor men, unable to even look at anyone on campus because the feminazis will call 911 if they can see a man’s eyes. No wonder men are so rare on college campuses, when even their eyes are oppressed and they must pay the terrible price of “hoeflation.”

Although it may be tempting to laugh at Gould’s embarrassing attempt at cultural analysis, his solution is ominous: “reforming higher education. We should dismantle the careerist catechism that emanates from it and shutter its sex fairs that peddle pleasure as a proxy for partnership.”

Beyond banning “sex fairs,” Gould wants massive repression to “de-trench institutions of leftist professors.” We’ve seen a lot of awful excuses on the right for silencing speech on campus, from pretending to care about antisemitism to defending white people from the crime of diversity. But helping men get dates and sparing them the costs of “hoeflation” may be the worst reasons yet offered by conservatives for their campaign of campus censorship.

John K. Wilson was a 2019–20 fellow with the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement and is the author of eight books, including Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies (Routledge, 2008), and his forthcoming book The Attack on Academia. He can be reached at [email protected], or letters to the editor can be sent to [email protected].

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October 28, 2025
$1.2B Fine, Nix Trans Athlete Wins, More

The Trump administration demanded that UCLA pay $1.2 billion and restrict student freedoms.

Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

The details of the Trump administration’s demands on the University of California, Los Angeles—in addition to the previously reported $1.2 billion payout the federal government asked for—have finally been revealed. A lawsuit by UC faculty unions forced the higher ed system to release a copy of a draft resolution agreement, shedding light on the terms UC was first faced with nearly three months ago.

The Trump administration has demanded, among other things, that UCLA not enroll “foreign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment.” In the same paragraph, the proposed resolution agreement says UCLA would have to “socialize international students to the norms of a campus dedicated to free inquiry and open debate.”

The federal government also demanded that UCLA ban overnight campus demonstrations and mandate that masked campus protesters reveal their identities when asked.

Multiple provisions aim to limit transgender individuals’ rights. The document demands that UCLA’s medical school and affiliated hospitals stop “performing hormonal interventions and ‘transgender’ surgeries” on anyone under 18; stop allowing transgender women to play on women’s sports teams; strip records, awards and other recognition from transgender women athletes; and send personal apologies to the cisgender women who placed lower than trans athletes.

California voters banned affirmative action in public education nearly 30 years ago, but the demand letter suggests the Trump administration doesn’t think UCLA has complied. It would require UCLA to bar providing “information about candidates’ race, sex, ethnicity, or other protected characteristics to faculty or other UCLA personnel with decision-making authority over hiring, retention, promotion or tenure.”

Other provisions target affirmative action in hiring and student admissions, including a line that says, “UCLA shall discontinue race- and ethnicity-based scholarships.” The proposed agreement says “proxies used to effectuate race-based or sex-based outcomes” aren’t allowed in selecting for fellowship programs and also bans the use of such undefined proxies in hiring and admissions.

The document’s release comes after UC said in early August that it would negotiate with the federal government, citing the estimated $584 million in funding that at least three different federal agencies had announced they were suspending. That funding freeze followed a July 29 letter to UC from the Department of Justice, which said its months-long investigations across the system had so far concluded that in its response to a pro-Palestinian protest encampment in spring 2024, UCLA violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It was yet another example of the Trump administration accusing a selective university of tolerating antisemitism and cutting off hundreds of millions of federal dollars. But, unlike Harvard and Columbia Universities, UCLA is a public institution, and its targeting by the federal government represents an expansion of the administration’s campaign to overhaul higher ed.

Last week, the University of Virginia became the first known public institution to settle with the administration over discrimination allegations. That settlement didn’t require a payout, but among other things, UVA committed to not use proxies for race; to end all diversity, equity and inclusion programming; and to prohibit trans athletes from participating in sports.

Media earlier reported some of the administration’s demands on UCLA, but university officials didn’t make the details public until Friday, when a lawsuit by the UCLA Faculty Association and Council of UC Faculty Associations forced them to.

“Accession to these demands would be to undermine everything that has made the UC the successful engine of social mobility and economic might that it has been for our state,” Anna Markowitz, president of the UCLA Faculty Association, wrote in an email. “It will harm undergraduate learning opportunities, and hamper UC’s ability to be a scholarly leader on the international stage. It enshrines ideology at the heart of the institution rather than decades of empirical and scholarly understanding. We stand against this extortion effort.”

Markowitz said the “UCLA FA and CUCFA have stood with our union colleagues in calling for no negotiations since the beginning.” The university administration “is under intense federal pressure,” she said, and she urged them to resist—“particularly because other faculty legal action has resulted in the restoration of nearly all of the temporarily suspended federal grants.”

Indeed, Stett Holbrook, a UC spokesperson, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed Monday that “as for terminated federal research funds, that figure is in the tens of millions”—a far cry from the August estimate of $584 million.

He provided a statement saying, “UC has been clear it must evaluate its response to the administration’s settlement proposal that, like all settlement communications, is confidential. As stated previously, the proposed $1.2 billion settlement payment alone would derail work that saves lives, grows our economy, and fortifies our national security. UC remains committed to protecting the mission, governance, and academic freedom of the University.”

White House and DOJ officials didn’t respond to requests for interviews Monday or answer written questions.

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October 27, 2025