Tag: Higher

  • Biology syllabi lack learner-centered principles

    Biology syllabi lack learner-centered principles

    A course syllabus serves as a road map for navigating the upcoming term and content that will be covered, but researchers believe it could support students’ self-directed learning as well.

    A November study published in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, authored by a team of faculty from Auburn University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, shows few introductory biology syllabi engage students in effective study habits or encourage help-seeking behaviors, instead favoring content.

    The research highlights opportunities to address the hidden curriculum of higher education and support success for historically marginalized students.

    What’s the need: Some college students lack effective study habits, and these gaps are often a piece of larger equity concerns for marginalized groups, highlighting limited opportunities or resources for underprivileged communities.

    Introductory science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses, in particular, often serve as gatekeepers, limiting which students can pursue these degree programs and resulting in less diverse STEM degree attainment.

    Today’s college students also demonstrate less college readiness in their academic skills, due in part to remote instruction as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Often, colleges or universities will create co-curricular interventions such as workshops to teach these skills or introduce best practices in a first-year seminar course. While these can be effective, institutions may lack the resources or time to deliver the interventions, which researchers say underscores a need for alternative strategies that reach students.

    Researchers theorized that embedding within the syllabus explicit instruction to promote three skills—study behaviors, metacognitive evaluation or academic help-seeking—could impact student success.

    Methodology: Researchers evaluated 115 introductory biology syllabi from 94 unique institutions, including 48 percent research-intensive institutions, 29 percent minority-serving institutions, 72 percent publics and 61 percent with enrollment over 10,000 students.

    A Deeper Look at STEM Syllabi

    A Worcester Polytechnic Institute study found instructors could help create a more inclusive learning environment in STEM courses through tailoring their syllabus to feature elements like materials from diverse scholars and accessibility statements. Read more here.

    One engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst redesigned her syllabus as a zine, or miniature magazine, to promote student engagement and build community in the classroom.

    Syllabi were categorized by having the presence of study behaviors, academic help-seeking and metacognition suggestions; the type of suggestions of those three factors; and the quality of these recommendations (effective or ineffective).

    Further syllabus analysis covered four factors to gauge how learner-centered they were, including having clear and appropriate learning goals and objectives, aligned and define assessment activities, a logically sequenced course schedule, and a positive and organized learning environment. Each syllabus was awarded between zero and 48 points, with higher scores indicating they were more learner-centered.

    The findings: Among the 115 syllabi evaluated, only 14 percent earned a score of at least 31 to be considered learner-centered. Around three in 10 syllabi were considered “content-centered,” earning a score of 16 or less. Researchers theorized faculty may lack time or interest when creating their own syllabi, instead relying on templates from the institution or previously generated documents.

    Design by Ashley Mowreader

    Only 3.5 percent of syllabi showed evidence of reducing opportunity gaps in STEM courses, which researchers defined as de-emphasizing course rules, encouraging the use of external resources for continued learning outside the classroom and emphasizing the role of students in their own learning.

    “Most of the syllabi in our sample provided learning resources but focused primarily on course policies and did not address students as engaged learners,” according to the study.

    A majority of syllabi did offer suggestions for study behaviors, metacognition or approaches for academic help-seeking (61 percent), although the greatest share of these only addressed help-seeking (45 percent). When the syllabus did share advice to seek help, many just provided a list of resources, and fewer encouraged students to utilize them.

    “Only 17.9 percent of syllabi provided a listing of academic help-seeking resources, encouragement to use those resources, and an explanation on how to use those resources,” researchers wrote, with the explanation piece critical for addressing equity gaps and the hidden curriculum of higher education.

    Of the syllabi that provided recommendations for students’ study behaviors, a significant number gave students unhelpful advice or shared practices that are not affirmed with research.

    “We found that most biology syllabi endorsed effective study strategies such as self-testing and spacing,” researchers wrote. “However, we also found that syllabi recommended strategies that have been described as ineffective for long-term learning (e.g., re-reading textbooks and re-writing notes).”

    Twenty-nine percent of syllabi recommended only effective, evidence-based study habits. A greater share (42 percent) offered both effective and ineffective techniques, and 24 percent only offered ineffective behaviors.

    Just because the syllabus was lacking details on how to study or practice metacognition doesn’t mean it was absent from the class entirely, researchers noted, as instructors may discuss these topics in class or provide additional resources with this information. This presents an opportunity for instructors to make themselves more aware of evidence-based practices to close equity gaps and bring the syllabus into better alignment with their pedagogy, according to the study.

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

    Source link

  • Did the Ivy League really break America? (opinion)

    Did the Ivy League really break America? (opinion)

    Are many of the ills that plague American society caused by Ivy League admission policies?

    That is the premise of David Brooks’s cover story for the December issue of The Atlantic, “How the Ivy League Broke America.” Brooks blames the Ivies and “meritocracy” for a host of societal problems, including:

    • Overbearing parenting
    • Less time for recess (as well as art and shop) in schools
    • An economy that doesn’t provide opportunities for those without a college degree
    • The death of civic organizations like Elks Lodge and Kiwanis Club
    • The high percentage of Ivy League graduates who choose careers in finance and consulting
    • The rise of populism based on “crude exaggerations, gross generalizations, and bald-faced lies.”

    Brooks somehow left the decline of small-town mom-and-pop businesses and the popularity of reality television off his laundry list.

    You may be wondering how the Ivies contributed to or caused all these problems. The essence of Brooks’s argument is that “every coherent society has a social ideal—an image of what the superior person looks like.” His hypothesis is that America’s social ideals reflect and are determined by the qualities that Ivy League universities value in admission.

    One hundred years ago, the Ivy League social ideal was what Brooks terms the “Well-Bred Man”—white, male, aristocratic and preppy, athletic, good-looking, and personable. What was not part of the ideal was intellectual brilliance or academic prowess, and in fact those who cared about studying were social outcasts. Applying to the Ivies resembled applying for membership to elite social clubs.

    That changed starting in the 1930s when a group of educational leaders, the most prominent being Harvard president James Conant, worried that the United States was not producing leaders capable of dealing with the problems it would face in the future. Their solution was to move to an admission process that rewarded intelligence rather than family lineage. They believed that intelligence was the highest human trait, one that is innate and distributed randomly throughout the population. Conant and his peers believed the change would lead to a nation with greater opportunities for social mobility.

    Brooks seems far from sure that the change was positive for America. He acknowledges that “the amount of bigotry—against women, Black people, the LGBTQ community—has declined” (that might be debatable given the current political climate), but observes that the previous ideal produced the New Deal, victory in World War II, NATO and the postwar world led by America, while the products of the ideal pushed by Conant have produced “quagmires in Vietnam and Afghanistan, needless carnage in Iraq, the 2008 financial crisis, the toxic rise of social media, and our current age of political dysfunction.” Those examples seem cherry-picked.

    In the essay, Brooks cites a number of troubling societal problems and trends, all supported with extensive research, but the weakness of his argument is that he tries to find a single cause to explain all of them. That common denominator is what he calls “meritocracy.”

    Meritocracy, a society with opportunities based on merit, is an appealing concept in theory, but defining merit is where things get sticky. Merit may be similar to Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart’s description of pornography, in that you know it when you see it. Does merit consist of talent alone? Talent combined with work ethic? Talent, work ethic and character?

    Merit is in the eye of the beholder. If I was admitted to an Ivy League university, it was obviously because I had merit. If someone else, especially someone from an underrepresented population, got the acceptance instead of me, factors other than merit must have been at play. If two candidates have identical transcripts but different SAT scores, which one possesses more merit? Complicating the discussion is the fact that many things cited as measures of merit are in fact measures of privilege.

    For Brooks, Ivy League meritocracy involves an overreliance on intelligence and academic achievement, to the detriment of noncognitive skills that are more central to success and happiness in life. He argues that “success in school is not the same thing as success in life,” with success in school primarily being individual while success in life is team-based. He quotes Adam Grant’s argument that academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence.

    Ultimately, he argues that “meritocracy” has spurred the creation of “an American caste system,” one in which “a chasm divides the educated from the less well-educated,” triggering “a populist backlash that is tearing society apart.” Yet Brooks’s beef is not so much with meritocracy as it is with a mindset that he attributes to Conant and his brethren. He equates meritocracy with a belief in rationalism and social engineering that assumes that anything of value can be measured and counted. What he is criticizing is something different from meritocracy, or at least reflects a narrow definition of meritocracy.

    Even if we don’t agree with Brooks’s definitions, or the implication that Ivy League admission policies are responsible for the ills of society, his article raises a number of important questions about the college admission process at elite colleges and universities.

    First, is the worship of standardized testing misplaced? The SAT became prominent in college admission at around the same time that Conant and others were changing the Ivy League admission paradigm. They believed that intelligence could be measured and latched onto the SAT as a “pure,” objective measure of aptitude. Today, of course, we recognize that test scores are correlated with family income and that scores can be manipulated through test preparation. And the “A” in SAT no longer stands for aptitude.

    Do we measure what we value or do we value what we can measure? Brooks criticizes the Ivies for focusing on academic achievement in school at the expense of “noncognitive skills” that might be more important to success in life after college, things like curiosity, relationship-building skills and work ethic. He’s right, but there are two reasons for the current emphasis. One is that going to college is going to school, so an admission process focused on scholastic academic achievement is defensible. The other is that we haven’t developed a good mechanism for measuring noncognitive skills.

    That raises a larger question. What do we want the admission process to accomplish? The SAT is intended to predict freshman year college GPA (in conjunction with high school grades). Is that a satisfactory goal? Shouldn’t we have a larger lens, aiming to identify those who will be most successful at the end of college, or after college? Should we admit those with the greatest potential, those who will grow the most from the college experience, or those who will make the greatest contribution to society after college?

    Brooks questions elite colleges’ preferences for “spiky” students over those who are well-rounded. Is a student body full of spiky students really better? An even more important question arises from a distinction Brooks made some years ago between “résumé virtues” and “eulogy virtues.”

    Does the elite college admission process as currently constituted reward and encourage students who are good at building résumés? A former student attending an elite university commented that almost every classmate had done independent academic research and started a nonprofit. Do students aspiring to the Ivies choose activities because they really care about them or because they think they will impress admission officers, and can admission officers tell the difference? What is the consequence of having a student body full of those who are good at playing the résumé-building game?

    There is one other issue raised by Brooks that I find particularly important. He argues that those who are successful in the elite admission process end up possessing greater “hubris,” in that they believe their success is the product of their talent and hard work rather than privilege and luck. Rather than appreciating their good fortune, they may believe they are entitled to it. That misconception may also fuel the populist backlash to elites that has increased the division within our country.

    I don’t buy Brooks’s definition of meritocracy or his contention that the Ivy League “broke” America, but his article nevertheless merits reading and discussion.

    Jim Jump recently retired after 33 years as the academic dean and director of college counseling at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Va. He previously served as an admissions officer, philosophy instructor and women’s basketball coach at the college level and is a past president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. He is the 2024 recipient of NACAC’s John B. Muir Excellence in Media Award.

    Source link

  • Anatomy of a higher education merger – City St George’s, University of London

    Anatomy of a higher education merger – City St George’s, University of London

    Depending on how you look at it, mergers are either very common or very unusual in UK higher education.

    Dig deep enough into the annals of any institutional history and you will most likely find at some point that the institution as we know it today emerged from the combination or absorption of various nineteenth or twentieth-century mechanics institutes, colleges of teaching or technical colleges.

    But recent history of the sector has seen only a handful of mergers, most notably the merger of what was then Victoria University of Manchester and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) in 2004, and the merger of the University of Glamorgan and University of Wales, Newport, to become the University of South Wales in 2013. More recently we’ve seen the merger of the Institute of Education into University College London, the merger of Writtle College with Anglia Ruskin University, recounted in detail on Wonkhe here, and the merger in 2024 of City, University of London and the medical school St George’s, University of London to create City St George’s, University of London.

    The mergers paradox

    Seen from the birds-eye view of Whitehall the relative recent paucity of higher education mergers can be puzzling to some. In the private sector mergers and acquisitions are a well-trodden path to gaining market share, reducing overheads, and generally creating the kind of organisational powerhouse before which others cower and cringe. Arguably, larger institutions can support a wider breadth of education and research activity, can have a greater impact on their external landscape, and are more protected from external change and financial twists of fortune.

    But for higher education institutions there is much more to take into consideration than the goal of organisational heft and security – there is a public service mission, and the institution’s values and culture, which may be best served by remaining the same size or pursuing only modest growth. And there is the administrative complexity and effort of undertaking major organisational change, when in some cases, institutional leaders argue, the benefits of scale can be realised through strategic collaboration rather than full merger.

    While it may look from the outside like the UK has a puzzlingly large number of universities and other providers of HE compared to our geographical footprint and population, we’re not a global outlier in that regard. Prospective students enjoy a broad choice of large multi-faculty institutions with a wide range of extra-curricular services and opportunities, and smaller, cosier, and more specialist offerings – indeed, higher education policy in recent decades has trended towards increasing the numbers of higher education providers.

    Yet at times of financial challenge, such as those the sector is currently experiencing, talk inevitably turns to mergers and whether the sector as a whole would be more resilient if merger or acquisition was a more readily available tool in the financial sustainability arsenal. And here lies what might be termed the merger paradox – financially healthy institutions tend not to see a need for mergers or be motivated to pursue one even where a strategic business case might be made; whereas financially distressed ones are less likely to be an appealing prospect for a merger partner.

    In the case of both Writtle and St George’s, their governing bodies were astute enough to realise that their institutions would not thrive in the long term, and to start considering merger well before reaching a point of crisis.

    Being financially challenged is not the primary driver to merge with another institution,” says Richard Mills, Director, Head of Finance Consulting and lead for public sector M&A for KPMG in the UK. “Returns on investment take a long time to realise, and sometimes things get worse before they get better. The driver has to be strategic fit – for higher education a merger needs to be about strengthening the academic portfolio, and you need to be really clear on the vision and strategy for the merged organisation.”

    Having the strategy in place, and a plan for the legal and financial aspects of managing a merger is only the beginning. “You need to consider the implications of integrating systems, processes, and culture,” says Margaret Daher, Director and major higher education change specialist at KPMG. “The worst case scenario is a Frankenstein model of bolt-ons rather than one organisation emerging. The work of a merger is much greater than the initial negotiations and the creation of a new legal entity – but that initial work can be so consuming that you end up risking letting the dual running of two distinct entities under one institution become an unintentional status quo.”

    City St George’s story

    Elisabeth Hill, Deputy President and Provost at City St George’s, joined what was then City, University of London in September 2022, and was given responsibility for delivery – and realising benefits from – the planned merger with St George’s, University of London which was under discussion at that point.

    The merger was very much about strategy, not finances,” says Elisabeth. “City has always been a University focused on business and professional practice. When Anthony [Finkelstein] took up his post as President he saw the potential to expand the range of professions that we serve to include broader aspects of health as well as medicine. Being a larger institution gives us greater capacity, greater resilience, and a greater opportunity across a breadth of disciplines to leverage interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work internally and have a greater impact externally. All six of our academic schools already had some kind of interesting relationship with health and medicine so you could see how strengthening the breadth of health and medicine could align with City.”

    At the very early stages of discussion, the governing bodies of both institutions had agreed some “red lines” – primarily to give security to the Council of St George’s that the institution’s long history would not simply be assimilated into City and disappear. The incorporation of St George’s into the new institution’s name was seen as essential, as was the idea that the merger was a combination of two universities rather than the incorporation of one by another, although it was agreed that in practice City’s structure and policies would become the reference point for subsequent work to establish the new institution.

    Once it was clear that there was a strategic rationale and appetite to pursue merger for both Councils, a lot of “due diligence” work was required to make sure that the new institution would have the finances, and the expertise, to function and would be compliant in legal and regulatory terms. While neither institution felt itself to be in immediate financial peril, neither had the luxury of a financial cushion to support major investment, and it had to be clear that the combined finances of the two institutions would be sufficient both to fund the merger itself and to realise its planned benefits. Taking on space in the midst of a hospital site meant that City’s Council and executive team had to do a lot of work to establish risks and compliance expectations around estates maintenance and health and safety to ensure that they would not be putting City at risk as a result of the envisaged merger.

    At this stage both institutions had to carefully manage their very distinctive relationship, i.e. having agreed to merge in principle, but not yet having merged. A tightly negotiated “transfer agreement” set out the conditions under which the merger would operate including the conditions whereby either party could legitimately back out and what information each was obliged to share, in some cases with reference to competition law. Also at this stage, work began with the Department for Education, Office for Students, Privy Council, and General Medical Council among others to work through the academic and legal governance issues of transferring powers and duties from one higher education institution to another. Further work was undertaken to understand the implications for students and prospective students and their likely response to the merger and any related impact.

    A key thing was that there was little in terms of pre-defined process for dealing with a university merger of this type,” reflects Elisabeth. “At times it felt like we were making it up – albeit in a very thoughtful and evidence-informed way – as we went along. It was especially helpful to have people with insights from other sectors on our Council that we could draw on where useful or relevant in our sector and context. External bodies were very supportive, and we drew on significant external support, which is an absolute necessity in this kind of work. I don’t know how you could effect something like this without broader insight, guidance and expertise.”

    Integration – two becoming one

    The new City St George’s, University of London formally came into being on 1 August 2024, but the work of integration is ongoing. “We decided to leave most of the integration work until after the formal point of merger,” says Elisabeth. “By that time, we had been talking about merging for two years and there was a sense that some people were tired of the discussion and needed to see that it was really happening. And on a pragmatic level it is much easier to work through the integration challenges when everyone is under one metaphorical roof, there’s one vice chancellor, one senior team – so we judged that this approach would provide certainty and signal an ability to move forward, replacing uncertainty with certainty. Once we had access to all the detail of the information about St George’s programmes it also became clear that we weren’t going to have to deal with a lot of overlap, which was helpful because it meant we could deliver on a cultural expectation that we would respect the St George’s heritage, which by implication is fundamentally about the academic programmes and research.”

    Key priorities for integration were about bringing together St George’s and City’s School of Health & Psychological Sciences into one academic unit, whose executive dean was appointed through an external recruitment process. There was also a mapping process to establish the university professional functions and roles, and assign some functions to the new school, and some to the university. An early priority was confirming directors of professional services for the merged institution, who were then tasked with managing the integration of their teams. This work is now underway.

    While that integration work continues, Elisabeth points out that City St George’s like most universities, has a whole range of other strategic change agendas on the go, including portfolio review, curriculum management, creation of a student services hub, and replacement of some university professional services systems. There is also a root and branch review of professional services under way, looking at the location and effectiveness of roles and functions. That means it’s harder to attribute impact specifically to the merger process, but it’s also harder for people to blame the merger as the sole cause of unpalatable disruption.

    There is active discussion at City St George’s Council about what above-baseline success measures for the merger should be. Some members of St George’s Council have joined an enlarged City St George’s Council and work is underway to establish the culture of the new institution and supporting processes, and the information needed by Council members to ensure their understanding of the combined institution and support informed decision making around strategic developments and operational priorities.

    Institutionally, leadership continues to think on a day-to-day basis about the kind of integrated community it wants to have at the level of both school and university and what sorts of interventions will help people forge that community. Leaders are taking care to have visibility across all university campuses, putting effort into building relationships, undertaking more formal “road shows” to share strategy, hosting talks, and holding informal sessions with different staff groups. The two students’ unions have also merged – a separate merger in its own right – and continue to maintain an active presence on both sites, strengthening student representation and opportunities from the outset.

    So what would Elisabeth say to another senior leader preparing for a merger? “It’s extremely intense, and for most people it starts outside your normal realm of expertise. You have to be prepared to run business as usual alongside all the additional work on merging, and you have to support staff and students to stay focused on the things they should be focusing on and not getting distracted either by opportunities for future alignment or deferring things to post-merger.”

    Perhaps the most important lesson for any leader considering merger is having to be prepared to navigate the challenge of sticking to institutional and professional values while actually achieving what can be an intensely challenging process on a human level:

    We always wanted to be respectful of context and history, to collaborate, be true to our values, and true to the commitments we made and the ethos of how the merger would be discussed and planned,” says Elisabeth. “But you can’t always be as collaborative as you might want to be – otherwise the risk is you fail to get to the point of merger agreement. At least one of the parties has to be pushing for progress and ensuring that decisions are made at any one time.”

    Seven merger fundamentals

    Having worked on the City St George’s merger, Margaret Daher and Richard Mills would strongly advise boards and executive teams to recognise that a merger is a serious strategic endeavour – it needs to be owned and delivered by resolute staff and managers. Their experience and studies of successful mergers highlights seven fundamentals which need to be got right, although they add that often these are still ignored.

    1. Create and communicate a strong, clear vision. From the start, all staff should be informed of the compelling strategic rationale behind the merger, the transition process and the expected changes, and encouraged to engage in two-way feedback to increase the sense of involvement.
    2. Select new leaders early and let them lead. By identifying and publicising the new leadership team, the merged entity can effectively cut links with past loyalties, provide clarity on leadership and lines of reporting, building cultural alignment and engagement.
    3. Place an emphasis on integration planning. Having a robust and long-term post-merger integration plan is essential to overcoming fragmented ways of working, legacy structures and cultural issues, thereby reducing the risk of indefinitely dual running.
    4. Do the due diligence. Giving proper consideration to short- versus long-term benefits, and carrying out robust due diligence to understand risks fully and test the plans will help the organisations set their sights on opportunities at an early stage, and incorporate anticipated issues into post-merger integration plans so they are monitored and addressed.
    5. Win over stakeholders and develop cultural alignment. Staff are the people that make services happen, so it is vital to overcome any resistance to change. A comprehensive change management approach needs to be adopted, “change champions” should be chosen at an early stage, and given the responsibility and authority to influence and motivate their colleagues. Understanding cultural differences and how to achieve alignment is critical.
    6. Develop both the structure and people. Make sure that the new merged organisation has the resources and the skills to manage the transition process by investing in suitable capability, as well as instituting structural and procedural changes such as mixed work schedules and cross-site working that can encourage collaboration and generate a new culture.
    7. Have patience to achieve long term objectives. Mergers are highly challenging and integration is unlikely to happen quickly. To succeed every level of the organisation requires dedicated resources, experienced people, and strong pre- and post-merger planning, all of which take time to develop and deploy.

    While there are obvious practical and cultural hurdles to overcome, what recent examples demonstrate is that with the right vision, case for change and supporting business rationale, a merger can be the strategic solution for long term sustainability.

    This article is published in association with KPMG as part of our Radical Efficiency series. You can view other articles in the series here.

    Source link

  • Rutgers cancels HBCU event to align with Trump DEI orders

    Rutgers cancels HBCU event to align with Trump DEI orders

    The virtual mini-conference sponsored by Jobs for the Future was scheduled for Jan. 30.

    The Rutgers University Center for Minority Serving Institutions announced Thursday that it has canceled an upcoming virtual conference about registered apprenticeship programs as a result of President Trump’s executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

    “We were very excited to bring the HBCUs and Registered Apprenticeship Mini-Conference to you next week,” said the email sent to registered attendees. “Unfortunately, due to President Trump’s Executive Orders … we have been asked to cease all work under the auspices of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility HUB at Jobs for the Future, which the U.S. Department of Labor funds.”

    Jobs for the Future, an organization focused on helping college and workforce leaders create equitable economic outcomes for students, runs a national innovation hub focused on improving access to registered apprenticeships for women, people of color and other underrepresented groups.

    Located in New Jersey, a blue state for more the 30 years, Rutgers has not faced pressure from state legislators to dismantle DEI. But the cancellation demonstrates the leverage and power the federal government can hold over colleges and universities by threatening to pull funding from programs that don’t comply with the president’s demands.

    It’s just the kind of reaction higher ed policy experts and DEI advocates predicted as a result of the Republican agenda.

    “That wariness and sort of pre-emptive compliance, even absent direct threats from the federal or state government, might be somewhat universal,” Brendan Cantwell, a professor of education at Michigan State University, told Inside Higher Ed.

    “These leaders will be worried about losing their federal funding, which is exactly what DEI opponents want,” added Shaun Harper, a professor of education, business and public policy; the founder of the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center; and an Inside Higher Ed opinion contributor.

    More cancellations are anticipated in the weeks and months to come as the Trump administration continues to issue executive orders. For instance, Trump’s growing team at the Department of Education announced a series of actions Thursday related to eliminating DEI.

    “The Department removed or archived hundreds of guidance documents, reports, and training materials that include mentions of DEI from its outward facing communication channels [and] put employees charged with leading DEI initiatives on paid administrative leave,” agency officials said in a news release. “These actions are in line with President Trump’s ongoing commitment to end illegal discrimination and wasteful spending across the federal government. They are the first step in reorienting the agency toward prioritizing meaningful learning ahead of divisive ideology in our schools.”

    Other actions the department has taken include:

    • Dissolving the department’s Diversity and Inclusion Council.
    • Terminating the Employee Engagement Diversity Equity Inclusion Accessibility Council within the Office for Civil Rights.
    • Canceling ongoing DEI training and service contracts that total over $2.6 million.
    • Withdrawing the department’s Equity Action Plan, which was released in 2023 to align with former president Joe Biden’s executive order to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities.

    Source link

  • North Idaho College awaits its fate

    North Idaho College awaits its fate

    After years of scrutiny over governance issues that included violations of open meetings laws and other infractions, North Idaho College will soon learn whether it will keep or lose accreditation.

    The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities will convene Tuesday through Friday for its January meeting. Commissioners will determine whether NIC adequately resolved outstanding concerns driven by a former board majority that emphasized culture war issues at the rural Idaho college, tried to push out its president and hired personnel with political connections to board members.

    A decision on the college’s accreditation status will be delivered within 30 days of the meeting.

    College officials hope the commissioners see the progress they say NIC has made over the last year, resolving various governance issues raised by NWCCU as it sought to comply with accreditation standards after a flurry of warnings that culminated in a show-cause status in February 2023, meaning the college must “present evidence why its accreditation should not be withdrawn.” The sanction highlighted multiple governance issues driven by an exceptionally erratic board.

    Years of Conflict

    North Idaho’s clash with its accreditor came as a result of thorny governance issues marked by bitter clashes on its five-member elected Board of Trustees, with meetings that occasionally devolved into name-calling and appeared at times to be fueled by personal and ideological agendas.

    The high drama began at the small college in Coeur d’Alene in 2021 with allegations of abuse and aggressive behavior toward employees and others by then-chair Todd Banducci. The firing of former president Rick MacLennan without cause that same year prompted a successful lawsuit against the college, and the resignation of three board members (one amid residency questions) in 2022 prompted the state to temporarily appoint three new trustees who served out the remainder of their predecessors’ terms.

    While the reconstituted board managed to hire a new president in 2022, membership was reshuffled after elections that year. Two members who often voted together—Banducci and Greg McKenzie—were joined by Mike Waggoner, all of whom had ties to the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, a group some considered far-right even for rural Idaho. With a new board majority in place, governance issues at NIC escalated rapidly in 2023.

    The new majority seated after Election Day in 2022 began by hiring Art Macomber as the college’s attorney in a surprise move that the board would later admit violated open meetings laws. The college’s prior attorney, Marc Lyons, had resigned after the election, writing that his services were “no longer desired” by the board majority. Macomber, who has since resigned, had political connections to the board majority.

    The board’s next act was to sideline President Nick Swayne, placing him on administrative leave in December after he cautioned trustees that they had violated open meetings and procurement law by abruptly picking Macomber without public notice or a bidding process. In Swayne’s place, the board hired an interim president while Macomber conducted a nebulous investigation into Swayne’s hiring by the prior board. (The interim president was given a contract that paid him more than $235,000 a year, $5,000 more than Swayne’s annual salary.) However, Swayne was reinstated in March 2023 after a successful legal challenge to the board’s attempted ouster.

    Amid the volatility, NWCCU issued a series of escalating warnings.

    The accreditor first contacted North Idaho leadership in April 2021 in response to complaints about alleged noncompliance with nondiscrimination, governing board and academic freedom standards. The accreditor then raised further concerns about governance standards in December 2021 related to MacLennan’s firing. (The Idaho State Board of Education also raised concerns about “the current trajectory” of NIC that same month.) In April 2022, NWCCU officially sanctioned NIC with a warning letter about noncompliance with governance and institutional integrity standards. In December of that year, after Swayne was temporarily sidelined, the accreditor threatened NIC with show-cause status. By February 2023, NWCCU followed through, slapping NIC with a show- cause sanction that was later extended in July of that year.

    In a May 2023 report, accreditors wrote that “NIC’s governing board’s actions over the past two years have created risks to institutional quality and integrity.” Among their concerns were “multiple lawsuits resulting from Board actions” and violations of open meetings laws; high leadership turnover, including having two presidents under contract; the hiring process for Macomber; and multiple votes of no confidence in the board by faculty and staff that trustees had not responded to.

    When NWCCU extended NIC’s show-cause status in July, it called on the board to address the no-confidence resolutions and “resolve current litigation, governance, and accreditation issues that have had a current and immediate impact” on college finances, among various other issues.

    Swayne, in an interview with Inside Higher Ed, noted that the issues fell on the governance side, which is also reflected in NWCCU’s findings. Academics at the college, he said, are strong.

    An Optimistic Outlook

    As the concerns about the loss of accreditation continued—often becoming a heated focal point in public comments at board meetings—NIC hired outside consultants, such as the Association of Community College Trustees to help develop board policies and interpersonal relationships.

    While that process seemed to help, Swayne doesn’t believe a lack of training was the issue.

    “I don’t want to discount the value of the consulting, but two years of consulting to try to teach board members, adults—well-educated adults—how to behave properly in a board meeting doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Swayne said. “So there was something else going on. I can’t tell you what that was—I don’t know.”

    The notion of something sinister underlying the actions of the former board majority has been a common theme at meetings in recent years, with speakers questioning the trustees’ motives. Local residents often demanded the board majority explain their motivations and offered theories of their own, sometimes tinged with conspiracy, including speculation that the three trustees aimed to shut the college down in order to free up prime real estate for development.

    Swayne suggested there was a “hangover from COVID” at play given that opposition to masks and vaccines was a “main issue” for the majority bloc of trustees until the coronavirus pandemic waned. Emboldened trustees, he suspects, were in search of another cause after that fight ended. And some, like Banducci, had alleged the existence of a liberal “deep state” at the community college, particularly among faculty.

    After some employees voiced support for the Black Lives Matter movement, Banducci claimed on a podcast that “those agendas are being woven into the curriculum. And, you know, who controls the kids, who controls their minds, who controls the college student, you know, controls the voter of the future and controls the populace.” Banducci also allegedly berated MacLennan’s wife for being a Hillary Clinton support, according to a former trustee who called for Banducci to step down in 2021.

    But with increasing accreditor scrutiny, there appeared to be a softening of the board, starting with Waggoner, who often sided with Banducci and McKenzie but later emerged as a swing vote.

    Swayne said he noticed the change around May 2024. And once Waggoner’s voting patterns shifted, Banducci and McKenzie fell in behind him. Meetings, which had often stretched on for hours due to heated public comment periods and legal wrangling, became shorter, more cordial and nonconfrontational.

    Last fall, Banducci and Waggoner decided not to run for re-election and McKenzie lost his bid for another term, putting an end to the board majority that was behind many of the decisions that prompted scrutiny from accreditors as three new trustees were seated. (McKenzie and Banducci did not respond to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed. Waggoner could not be reached.)

    Swayne said there were “seven months of relatively normalized meetings with the old board.” And now, with a reconfigured board, he believes NIC’s governance issues have been resolved.

    If NIC does lose accreditation over governance issues, it would be an anomaly. Typically, accreditation is stripped due to severe financial or academic issues, which NWCCU has not found. Governance concerns are typically met with warnings, which NWCCU issued in multiple cases before taking further action.

    NWCCU president Sonny Ramaswamy wrote by email that it would be “inappropriate to speak about any decisions the Board of Commissioners will make [on] North Idaho College, before they have acted” and noted that the process will follow an established accreditation actions policy.

    While Swayne declined to predict the outcome, he believes the college has made significant progress on accreditation concerns and “started meeting the standards back in May of 2024.” He’s hopeful that a room full of more than two dozen commissioners will see it the same way.

    Source link

  • Carnegie Foundation launches sustainability classification pilot

    Carnegie Foundation launches sustainability classification pilot

    The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the American Council on Education announced Thursday that they have launched a pilot of their new Sustainability Elective Classification, a designation that will recognize institutions of higher education that “embed sustainability and climate action into their core missions,” according to the announcement.

    The pilot program will include 21 colleges and universities from across the 50 states and Puerto Rico and will aim to refine the criteria for the classification while working to guarantee that it is attainable to institutions of all sizes and types. The classification is expected to consider “institutional efforts across curriculum, research, operations, community engagement, and workforce development, with an emphasis on preparing students for careers in sustainability fields.”

    “The Elective Classification for Sustainability recognizes how institutions of higher education are essential to the future of American innovation and progress, within and beyond their classrooms,” Timothy F. C. Knowles, president of the Carnegie Foundation, said in the announcement. “These pilot institutions are helping to forge the way.”

    The Sustainability Elective Classification is scheduled to launch in early 2026. The Carnegie Foundation and ACE are also looking for a university or institution to serve as the classification’s administrative and operational host.

    Source link

  • Trump’s sex and gender order could create risk for colleges

    Trump’s sex and gender order could create risk for colleges

    While running for president, Donald Trump pledged to fight the Biden administration’s efforts to expand protections for transgender students. On day one of his second term in office, he got to work fulfilling that promise.

    In an executive order, which is part of a broader effort to restrict the rights of transgender people, Trump declared that there are only two sexes and banned the federal funding of “gender ideology.” His supporters hailed the move as a return to common sense, while LGBTQ+ advocates saw it as an attack seeking to erase the existence of trans people.

    For colleges and universities, the order raises more questions than it answers, and its immediate implications are unclear. As with other executive orders, it includes many provisions that require the Education Department to take action and issue guidance about how colleges should comply. But depending on how the department responds, the order could complicate institutions’ efforts to accommodate transgender students and eventually change how the federal government enforces Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

    Susan​​​​ Friedfel, a higher education attorney at Jackson Lewis, a New York City law firm that works with colleges and other employers, said more information is needed from the Education Department to determine how the order will affect higher ed institutions, especially since other federal and state laws protect LGBTQ+ students.

    “We have a lot of questions,” she said. “It’s challenging because we have conflicting laws that apply to the same space.”

    In the meantime, she encouraged colleges to revisit their Title IX policies to ensure they are in compliance with the 2020 regulations put in place by the first Trump administration and to think about how best to accommodate everybody.

    The order, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” defines “sex,” “male” and “female,” among other terms, and orders federal agencies to use those definitions when “interpreting or applying statutes, regulations, or guidance and in all other official agency business, documents, and communications.”

    The order is likely to face legal challenges, said Cathryn Oakley, senior director of legal policy at the Human Rights Campaign, who argues that it’s unlawful.

    “It is important that people not give this executive order more credence than it deserves,” she said.

    Other LGBTQ+ advocates echoed Oakley, emphasizing that executive orders don’t create or change laws.

    “Discrimination based on sex, including discrimination against transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people, remains illegal, and it cannot be legalized through this executive order,” Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement.

    But Republican lawmakers, conservative legal organizations and other anti-trans advocates applauded Trump’s order, saying it would protect women and girls from discrimination and ground federal law in “biological fact.”

    “Blatant and deliberate attempts to redefine our sons’ and daughters’ identities by questioning biology itself has done significant harm to our children and society,” said Representative Tim Walberg, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House education committee. “[The] action by the Trump administration acknowledges the biological differences between men and women. In doing so, it is protecting women from discrimination and securing the progress women have made over the decades.”

    What’s in the Order

    In addition to defining “sex” and other terms, the order outlines a plan to combat “gender ideology,” which the Trump administration defines as replacing “the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.”

    Federal officials were told to remove any internal or external documents that “inculcate gender ideology” and take “any necessary steps to end the federal funding of gender ideology.” Additionally, agencies will now only use the term “sex” instead of “gender” in all applicable federal policies and documents, according to the order. The Biden administration gave people the option on passport applications to mark their gender as X rather than choose male or female. That option is now being eliminated.

    On Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the State Department wouldn’t process any passport applications seeking to change the applicant’s gender from male to female or requesting the X option, The Guardian reported.

    Agencies are required to give an update on their efforts to implement the order in 120 days.

    The Trump administration also directed the attorney general to correct the Biden administration’s “misapplication” of the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which said that LGBTQ+ individuals were protected from discrimination in the workplace on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

    The first Trump administration said that Bostock didn’t apply to Title IX, which bars sex-based discrimination in education settings. But the Biden administration reversed that guidance in June 2021.

    The Bostock decision was key to the Biden administration’s new Title IX regulations, which clarified that the law also prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. A federal judge ruled earlier this month that the new Title IX rule was unlawful and wiped the regulations off the books.

    Trump’s executive order also requires the education secretary to rescind a number of guidance documents related to the now-vacated Title IX regulations, as well as resources for supporting LGBTQ+ students. That includes the Education Department’s June 2021 Dear Colleague letter that said Title IX protects LGBTQ+ students from discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

    In addition, the Trump administration is rescinding a back-to-school message for transgender students from the Departments of Education, Justice and Health and Human Services that provided resources for students who experience bullying or discrimination.

    ‘Nothing Radical’

    Kim Hermann, the executive director of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a conservative legal organization that sued the Biden administration over the Title IX regulations, said Trump’s order immediately restores the privacy and physical safety rights of women, so colleges that don’t comply could face federal civil rights investigations or lawsuits.

    “There’s nothing radical about this executive order,” she said. “All it does is solidify Congress’s original intent when they passed the laws … Our girls and our women on college campuses are sick of their rights being eroded.”

    Friedfel said the current Trump administration will likely investigate complaints from cisgender students who are uncomfortable sharing spaces with transgender students.

    “That doesn’t mean that they necessarily have to do anything radically different, but recognize that there’s that risk there,” she said.

    Oakley said that guidance from the department is necessary for universities to understand what’s expected of them and how the Office for Civil Rights will enforce Title IX. She doesn’t expect OCR to take discrimination against LGBTQ+ faculty, staff and students seriously.

    “It’s also going to be very difficult to understand how to be in compliance when the folks who are enforcing the law are not respecting the actual case law,” she said. “So it is going to create a tremendous amount of confusion.”

    Source link

  • Scientists worried after Trump halts NIH grant reviews

    Scientists worried after Trump halts NIH grant reviews

    Orders to freeze travel, meetings, communications and hiring at the National Institutes of Health—and all other agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services—has some federally funded researchers on edge just days into President Donald Trump’s second term.

    Scholars say they’ve received emails canceling key meetings that determine which research projects to fund and they’re worried about how those and other disruptions could stall the billions of dollars in NIH-funded projects universities oversee.

    “I suspect that folks outside the sciences don’t understand just how disruptive even a short delay in funding decisions can be,” Adam Forte, an associate professor of geology at Louisiana State University who runs his own lab, posted on BlueSky Thursday alongside numerous other concerned scholars. “This is how we lose huge amounts of scientific capacity, scientific capacity we as a collective have already invested huge amounts of time and money in, just lighting it on fire to watch the flames.”

    If they leave, it’s not like there is much chance they’re coming back to that, or a similar position. That expertise is just gone as they are forced to move onto something else to pay the bills. A spectacular waste from a “short” delay in the machinery that funds science. 5/6

    — Adam Forte (@topoismyforte.bsky.social) 2025-01-23T12:23:24.069Z

    Some research policy experts say a pause is typical for the initial days of a new administration and that it’s too soon to tell whether this week’s order is a cause for concern. Others, however, are interpreting it as part of a larger message from Trump, who has repeatedly undermined scientific findings about COVID-19 and climate change and nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who falsely claims there are no safe or effective vaccines, to lead the HHS.

    While Kennedy, who previously vowed to enact mass layoffs at the NIH, and Trump’s other cabinet nominees await Senate confirmation, Trump has already issued a blitz of executive orders—including some that roll back diversity and environmental justice initiatives, as well as protections for federal workers and immigrants—since retaking the White House Monday. (In addition to those in HHS, all federal agencies are also under a hiring freeze.)

    “It’s not unheard-of to see some things paused when a new administration takes over, but when we look at the whole package of language and executive orders that have come out this week, they’re all tied up together,” said Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The goal is to intimidate, chill and create this exact sort of fear.”

    A Communications Freeze

    That fear for NIH-affiliated researchers came after Dorothy Fink, acting secretary of HHS, sent a memo Tuesday to all HHS division heads, including the directors of the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration.

    “As the new administration considers its plan for managing the federal policy and public communications processes, it is important that the President’s appointees and designees have the opportunity to review and approve any regulations, guidance, documents, and other public documents and communications (including social media),” explained the memo, which instructed agency employees to refrain from numerous forms of communications, including issuing grant award announcements and public speaking, until a presidential appointee can review them. The memo is in effect until Feb. 1.

    An NIH spokesperson clarified to Inside Higher Ed via email that the restrictions apply to communication “not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health,” and that any “exceptions for announcements that HHS divisions believe are mission critical” will be made “on a case-by-case basis.”

    On Wednesday, Glenda Conroy, a senior travel official for NIH, emailed NIH employees notifying them that all sponsored travel for HHS employees is also suspended until further notice.

    Disruptions to Research

    As of right now, all these restrictions mean that scheduled meetings have been canceled or postponed, including NIH study sections, which convene scientific experts to decide which projects to fund.

    And university-affiliated researchers make up a sizable portion of the grant application pool. The $44 billion NIH is the largest federal research funding source for colleges and universities, which receive billions in NIH grants each year to support medical and other scientific research projects, including those that have advanced treatments for common diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s.

    Chrystal Starbird, an assistant professor of biology and a cancer researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine, had been planning for months to attend a study section next week where nearly 60 grants were set to be reviewed, but she got word a couple of days ago that it was canceled.

    “Ultimately, the NIH will continue to function, so maybe it’s not a huge issue, but for the people being reviewed now it is,” she said. “None of those grants will be reviewed on time. The question is: How are they going to get all of us together again to review the grant?”

    And rescheduling the study sections for weeks or months after the communication restrictions lift may disrupt certain ongoing projects.

    “Some people may be using this funding to do research that may have more time pressure,” Starbird said, noting that clinical research typically adheres to strict patient-monitoring timelines. “We have to acknowledge that there’s already a significant impact from this pause.”

    ‘Too Soon to Assume’ Worst-Case Scenario?

    Carrie Wolinetz, a science and health policy consultant who worked for the NIH between 2015 and 2023, said in an email that the communications freeze is similar to memos from previous transitions. Although she acknowledged that pausing study section meetings seems broader than previous transitions, it doesn’t strike her “as tremendously outside the norm of activities that might be paused while a new team is transitioning.”

    And though it’s understandable that all of these restrictions are “causing anxiety,” she said it’s “too soon to assume that worst case scenario.”

    “It becomes a concern if there is a long cessation of activity, of the sort you might experience if there was an extended government shutdown,” she said. “There is likely to be minimal impact in the short term—other than for folks who hopped on flights only to discover their meeting was cancelled, which I imagine was pretty irritating.”

    But others caution that having such restrictions in place for even a short time could force people out of their jobs, create a talent void and potentially stall innovation.

    “Even if this is short-lived bumpiness, the uncertainty in funding can have career-altering implications, especially for young scientists,” Erica Goldman, a former academic and director of policy entrepreneurship for the Federation of American Scientists, said in an email.

    “If conferences or travel are canceled, for example, the inability to present new ideas and network with senior colleagues can have cascading effects,” she continued. “I’m reminded of the experiments, data, and professionals who left the field during COVID-19. Even temporary pauses can have lasting consequences.”

    Source link

  • Should universities cash in on cryptocurrency donations?

    Should universities cash in on cryptocurrency donations?

    In 2023, Korean video game company WeMade pledged to donate the equivalent of one billion Korean won ($695,988) in Wemix tokens—a cryptocurrency linked to the blockchain platform of the same name—to Seoul National University.

    What seemed like a moment for celebration quickly descended into controversy, with the university eventually ceasing to accept cryptocurrency donations altogether.

    So, what happened? Shortly after the donation was made, WeMade reportedly liquidated a large share of its coins, causing a significant currency devaluation and meaning SNU’s donation was no longer worth so much—a problem given that the funds had been earmarked for a specific project.

    That wasn’t the only barrier. Under South Korean financial regulations, the university was also unable to open a corporate account for virtual asset exchange. With calls to change the law unanswered, the university was left holding a volatile currency it was unable to convert to cash.

    Now Korean regulators are reportedly considering allowing the country’s universities to convert cryptocurrency for the first time—potentially opening a significant new fundraising stream for the country’s financially ailing sector.

    Elsewhere, universities are already cashing in on the crypto craze, most notably in the U.S. In 2021, the University of Pennsylvania received $5 million in Bitcoin from an unnamed donor. A year later, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, a leading blockchain, donated the equivalent of $9.4 million in USDC coin to the University of Maryland to fund public health research in the wake of the pandemic.

    The Giving Block, a U.S.-based platform that facilitates cryptocurrency donations to nonprofit organizations, said that the higher education sector has been one of its “biggest growth areas” over the past two years, with Washington State University and Northeastern University among the company’s clients.

    “There are several things driving this, like the booming crypto market and broader mainstream adoption, but the biggest driver for schools is simply following the money,” said Pat Duffy, its co-founder.

    With analysts suggesting popular currencies like Bitcoin will continue to grow in value this year, spurred on by newly inaugurated Donald Trump’s crypto-friendly rhetoric, universities could be set to benefit—if they are prepared to manage the risks that come with the volatile landscape.

    “For donors in the U.S., the biggest driver is the tax incentive,” said Duffy. “You can skip capital gains taxes on appreciated assets and still get a deduction for the full market value.

    “The donor pays no taxes on their appreciated crypto, and neither does the school. Donors across the country are eliminating tens of millions of dollars in tax liability by choosing to give with crypto, and giving larger gifts … as a result.”

    For universities, accepting cryptocurrency may also allow them to target their fundraising at a younger, tech-savvy market. “They can attract more people if they accept crypto payments,” said Nir Kshetri, professor of management at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

    It’s not just donations where universities are capitalizing. Some, like Bentley University, have begun accepting tuition fees in cryptocurrency, with significant implications for international students.

    In Nigeria, for example, converting the naira to the U.S. dollar to make fee payments can be a complicated process. For some, paying in decentralized cryptocurrency is simpler and faster, according to Kshetri.

    However, a key risk for universities is the unpredictability of cryptocurrency markets, with fears compounded by the volatility of Bitcoin in recent years. While the market is recovering, crashes such as the one experienced in 2022 have left a lasting impact and made some universities wary.

    “Right now it’s at a peak, but who’s to say we won’t see a return to what we saw two years ago when the bottom fell out?” cautioned Bill Stanczykiewicz, director of the Fund Raising School at Indiana University Indianapolis’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

    According to Stanczykiewicz, best practice is to avoid holding on to cryptocurrency, even if it is predicted to increase in value. “What we say to fundraisers is if you get crypto, turn it into your national currency as quickly as you can,” he said, or use a platform like the Giving Block, which does this for you.

    However, this approach isn’t universal. In Paraguay, Universidad Americana is less risk-averse than some, evaluating the market before converting any cryptocurrency payments.

    Universities considering going down this avenue also need to consider the ethical aspects, said Stanczykiewicz, and whether such donations adhere to their institution’s values.

    Specifically, the environmental impact of currencies like Bitcoin is a concern for some. However, Kshetri argued, the coin has already been mined prior to the donation—that is, the damage has already been done. “Just to transfer that Bitcoin from you to me consumes very little … electricity,” he said.

    Whatever your ethical view, those interviewed for this article agreed on this: Cryptocurrency is here to stay and, for universities, it’s simply a question of how quickly they embrace it.

    “Historically, it was regulatory uncertainty that made universities nervous about crypto acceptance and investing,” said Duffy. Today, he continued, in the U.S., “regulatory clarity and the political support we see on both sides of the aisle have cleared up those concerns.”

    With countries like South Korea set to provide a regulatory green light, too, it may not be long before institutions around the globe follow in the footsteps of their U.S. counterparts.

    Source link

  • Four ways to help students return from a leave of absence

    Four ways to help students return from a leave of absence

    Some students may need to take a leave of absence for their mental health before returning to an institution. Here’s how the institution can help.

    Brothers91/E+/Getty Images

    In the past few years, more students have shared the toll their mental health can take on their academic pursuits. Recent surveys of students who left higher education prior to completing a credential or degree reveal that mental health challenges or stress are primary reasons why they discontinue their education.

    Some learners opt to take a pause, withdrawing from the university for a semester or longer to prioritize their health and wellness.

    To promote student completion and success, institutions can consider formal procedures and initiatives targeted toward easing the transition of re-enrollment after a voluntary mental health leave of absence.

    The background: Colleges have historically offered students the opportunity to temporarily unenroll to address health conditions, but only more recently has that definition expanded to include students’ mental health.

    At some institutions, students who withdrew found it difficult to return. Other institutions prioritized risk mitigation versus student success and pushed learners to withdraw rather than providing solutions.

    “Such policies and practices actually discourage students—not just the student with a mental health condition, but all others—from seeking help,” according to a 2021 report from Boston University and the Ruderman Family Foundation.

    A recent survey from the Princeton Review found 43 percent of colleges and universities now have an official support program in place for students returning from mental health leave of absence.

    However, there is little consistency in policies and practices regarding medical or psychiatric leaves of absence, according to the BU report: “Students are often left to confusing, conflicting information and sometimes, discriminatory policies and practices that make a return to higher education difficult.”

    State policymakers have worked to expand the conditions included in leave-of-absence policies at institutions to recognize mental health difficulties.

    In May 2024, Maryland passed legislation that expanded formal health withdrawal policies at public institutions to include mental health. The legislation also requires institutions to provide partial refunds for students who withdraw for physical or mental health reasons in the middle of the term.

    A 2022 bill introduced to the New York State Legislature would require university systems to review enrollment and re-enrollment policies for students who take extended mental health leaves.

    Students Taking Action

    Active Minds, a youth-led mental health advocacy group, developed a guide for students who are advocating for improved leave-of-absence policies at their institution.

    How to help: Some of the ways institutions assist learners are through:

    • Outlining the return process. The University of Southern California offers a step-by-step outline of the different offices a student must contact to re-enroll. Stanford University also created a Returning to Stanford booklet to answer frequently asked questions.
    • Consolidating resources. Many learners are unaware of the full scope of resources available at the institution. A centralized website, such as this one at Cornell University, can help students during their transition back to campus.
    • Providing coaching services for returners. Institutions, themselves or in partnership with outside organizations, can deliver intentional coaching for skill development and resource coordination to re-enroll learners.
    • Connecting students with peers. Supportive communities can help reconnect students to the institution and affirm their commitments to healthy habits, like engaging in social activities or demonstrating good study behaviors. Georgetown University offers a special support group, Back on the Hilltop, for learners who are returning from a leave of absence or who have recently transferred.

    Do you know of a wellness intervention that might help others encourage student success? Tell us about it.

    Source link