News of the policies comes after a Texas bill was signed into a law that prohibits people from using bathrooms that differ from their sex assigned at birth in state buildings.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | rustamank/iStock/Getty Images
Employees at Angelo State University in Texas could be fired for displaying a pride flag or discussing any topic that suggests there are more gender identities than male and female.
Spokespeople for Angelo State have not confirmed or denied details of the policies reportedly discussed at meetings Monday between faculty, staff and institutional leaders. But, local news magazine the Concho Observer reported that the policies would ban discussion of transgender topics or any topics that suggest there are more than two genders.
The policies would also require instructors to remove information about transgender topics on syllabi and refer to students by their given names only, not any alternative names. Safe space stickers and LGBTQ+ flags would be banned and employees wouldn’t be allowed to include their pronouns in their email signatures.
News of the policies comes just as Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill on Monday that prohibits people from using the bathroom that differs from their sex assigned at birth in state buildings, including public universities, NBC reported. Institutions that violate this law face fines of up to $125,000.
The Angelo State policies are the latest in a string of attacks on academic freedom at Texas public universities in recent weeks. Texas A&M University officials terminated a professor, demoted two other faculty members and, as of Thursday, accepted the president’s resignation in response to a viral video that showed a student challenging a professor in class for teaching about gender identity.
“What is happening at ASU is part of a larger assault on higher education and marginalized communities across Texas and the nation,” Brian Evans, president of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors, said in a statement. “Moreover, it is an overt attempt to erase individuals of diverse backgrounds and experiences by limiting not only what can be taught but also what ideas students can explore. These policies and this extremist push to censor open inquiry, debate, and discovery is an affront to the U.S. and Texas Constitutions and an assault on the very foundations of our colleges and universities.”
It is unclear exactly whom the new policies at Angelo State will apply to, and whether there are exceptions, particularly for displays and conversations held in private offices or for conversations outside of the classroom.
Angelo State spokespeople did not answer any of the questions Inside Higher Ed asked about the new policies, and instead provided the following statement: “Angelo State University is a public institute of higher education and is therefore subject to both state and federal law, executive orders and directives from the President of the United States, and executive orders and directives from the Governor of Texas,” spokesperson Brittney Miller wrote. “As such, Angelo State fully complies with the letter of the law.”
Miller also sent a link to a Jan. 30 letter from Abbott that said, “All Texas agencies must ensure that agency rules, internal policies, employment practices, and other actions comply with the law and the biological reality that there are only two sexes—male and female,” as well as President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order stating that the United States only recognizes two genders, male and female.
What type of legal case faculty could bring in response—and whether they may have a case at all—will depend largely on the policy details, said Eugene Volokh, a professor of law emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law.
There are no Texas state laws that explicitly prohibit faculty members from discussing LGBTQ+ topics in classrooms. Even Brian Harrison, the Texas state representative who is largely responsible for making the Texas A&M video go viral, said as much during an interview Sept. 13 on a conservative radio show.
“The governor and lieutenant governor and speaker have been telling everybody for two years now that we passed bans on DEI and transgender indoctrination in public universities,” Harrison said. “The only little problem with that? It’s a complete lie. The bill that was passed to ban DEI explicitly authorizes DEI in the classroom—same thing with transgender indoctrination.” Harrison has introduced several bills to ban these topics, but so far none have been passed.
The legislation Harrison referred to is Texas Senate Bill 17, which bans diversity, equity and inclusion efforts by public institutions. It was signed into law in 2023 and includes carve-outs for academic instruction, scholarly research and campus guest speakers. Meanwhile, House Bill 229 took effect on Sept. 1 and specifies that the state recognizes two genders. It applies to data collection by government entities only and does not restrict academic instruction or speech.
Public employers, because they only speak through their employees, can generally tell people what to say as part of their job, Volokh said. “A police department may order police officers to talk in certain ways to their citizens and to not talk in other ways to citizens, right? In fact, we expect the police department to do that,” he said. “The question is whether there’s a specific, special rule that protects the rights of college or university professors.”
The courts are largely undecided on that, he added. “It’s being litigated right now in other federal courts. It’s been raised in past cases, and there isn’t really a clear answer,” he said.
“It’s certainly possible that [professors] may have First Amendment rights to choose to teach what they want to teach, but it’s also possible that boards will also say, ‘No, when you’re on the job and talking to a captive audience of students that the university provided for you … we, the university, get to tell you what to teach.’”
Other state university systems have implemented similar policies with the opposite effect. For example, the University of California system requires university-issued documents to offer three gender identity options—male, female and nonbinary—and for all university documents and IT systems to include an individual’s “lived name” instead of their legal name. If an individual’s lived name is different from their legal name, their legal name must be kept confidential.
This article has been updated to correct the Texas Senate bill number.
This September when classes started, it wasn’t the first time I had met with the students who walked through the door. That’s because during the week before they arrived on campus, I had conducted online group interviews with students who expressed an interest in taking my courses. All the students had to do was show up at one of the times I had set aside to meet with them.
The interviews are a tradition at Sarah Lawrence College, where I teach, and they are designed to let students get to know more about us as individual faculty in order for them to see if they want to take one of our courses. It’s a practice other colleges should try.
The interviews, which typically last about 30 minutes, are not a substitute for the descriptions of my courses or the syllabi I post. They are best described as the academic equivalent of a movie trailer.
The difference in this case is that the students, unlike moviegoers, are not asked to sit quietly in their seats. They are invited to ask questions after I have conducted a short presentation of what I hope will happen in my class. In these precourse interviews the students are the ones with the decision-making power. When an interview ends, they can simply decide my class is not for them and go off to another interview.
Some of the questions I get are of the nuts-and-bolts variety. How much reading do I assign a week? How many papers do I require over a term? But many of the questions are substantive. Why Book X rather than Book Y? What was the most interesting essay I got back last year?
If there is enough time, I will ask the students interviewing me to say why my course might interest them and how it fits in with the other courses they are contemplating. Students are welcome to stay after the group interview is formally over and have a one-on-one conversation.
During the interviews, I also try to explain my thinking about teaching. I don’t, for example, subscribe to the tonnage theory of assigned reading. A course in which a student races through 500 pages a week is not, I believe, better than a course in which a student closely reads 200 pages a week.
Equally important, I don’t think students should be strictly on their own when it comes to writing their papers. In the so-called real world, my editors don’t wait until I have published a book or an essay to offer up their advice. They do it before I publish, and I try to apply that practice in my classes. I see myself as my students’ editor before I ever become their judge and jury.
When it comes to AI and ChatGPT, I don’t have a lot to say these days. I think the subject has been talked to death. I tell my students to stay away from AI and ChatGPT as much as possible. Why, I ask, pay good money for an education, then turn to software that limits your critical thinking and research? The writing assignments I give are, I hope, sufficiently thoughtful that AI and ChatGPT can only be of minimal value. When it comes to long-form essays, I want my students to think about the material they are analyzing with a depth that is impossible on a timed test.
Looking back on a week of interviews, I often worry that I have imposed too much of myself on students. But in the end that is, I think, a risk worth taking. What precourse interviews offer is a chance for students to see that a course is more than a rote plan. It’s an undertaking that depends on mutual engagement that resists easy prediction.
Nicolaus Mills is chair of the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College and author of Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America’s Coming of Age as a Superpower (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
What is Full-Funnel Marketing for Higher Education?
At its core, full-funnel marketing means investing in upper-funnel awareness and mid-funnel consideration strategies to drive lead generation efforts and investing in post-inquiry marketing to continue to nurture prospects into students.
While we like to think of the student journey as a linear process and clear path that every student follows, the reality is that every student journey is unique, and it rarely follows the exact path we proscribe. In spite of this reality, it is helpful to understand the stages of the journey that all prospective students must go through in some form. Understanding the stages of the student journey allows us to deploy a full funnel approach to our marketing and enrollment management efforts – one that takes a holistic approach and creates a student-centered experience that is more likely to result in better outcomes for your marketing efforts and ultimately your students.
Rather than focusing marketing efforts on lead generation efforts, a full funnel marketing approach invests in upper funnel activities and post-inquiry student engagement opportunities. Upper funnel marketing builds awareness and educates prospective future students. Down funnel pre-post-inquiry marketing nurtures prospective students, builds a relationship and helps the student move from consideration to enrollment and graduation.
In this article we will discuss the following topics:
Understanding the Student Journey
The student enrollment funnel is a critical framework for understanding the path prospective students take from initial awareness to becoming enrolled students. By recognizing the key stages and the specific needs of students at each point, institutions can tailor their outreach and support to maximize enrollment success.
Here’s a breakdown of the key stages of the student enrollment funnel:
When prospective students are just starting to consider higher education or specific programs, they are forming their first impressions on a variety of universities. This broad stage is your institution’s opportunity to grab their attention and inform them of who you are. The goal here is the craft and deliver messaging that excites your prospective students to learn more and easing them into the next stages of their decision-making journey.
You must lead with your brand story and values. This is where you establish your reputation as a forward-thinking innovator, a career catalyst or a community builder. Use powerful visual storytelling on social and video. Use organic content to expose the authentic student experience. This is how you bypass the noise and build a foundation of trust before a student even knows your name.
Grab the attention of these prospective students so that they’re aware of your institution through these channels:
Search
Social media
Over-the-top (OTT) advertising
Program Display
Audio
Video
Crafting and delivering messaging that focuses on your institution’s unique strengths such as innovative programs, a vibrant campus life, outstanding online options, or personalized student support can be beneficial for guiding potential students through the early stages of their decision-making journey.
2. Consideration: The Value Proposition
At this stage, students have narrowed their focus to a few institutions and are actively researching their options. This consideration stage is recognized as the longest in the student journey, lasting from the moment they first become aware of colleges all the way through enrollment. During this extended period, prospective students constantly revisit and refine their choices, narrowing down their top pick schools. According to our latest Engaging the Modern Learner Report, a majority of students have at most three schools in their consideration set. This highlights the importance of maintaining engagement throughout this critical phase.
The content here must prove your value. Forget the general brochures. Provide dynamic, personalized content that highlights your reputation in a way that’s relevant to the student’s specific interests. If you’re known for a top-tier nursing program, the content must show career outcomes, job placements and alumni stories. This is about converting curiosity into tangible desire by connecting your brand promise to a student’s personal ambition.
Highlight your strengths through informative content across various channels:
Search
Social media
Over-the-top (OTT) advertising
Program Display
Audio
Video
By providing informative, clear and confidence-building content that addresses student concerns, your institution can increase its visibility and solidify your institution as a top contender in the prospective student’s final selection process.
3. Conversion: The Proof of Promise
Prospective students compare their top choices and make their final decision. The communication strategy here should focus on addressing the prospective student’s final concerns, offering reassurance and providing clear and accessible information about their next steps.
During the conversion phase of the student enrollment funnel, prioritize creating a frictionless experience. By offering clear communication, readily available resources, and a streamlined application process, you can significantly increase your chances of converting prospective students into enrolled students, solidifying their decision to choose your institution.
Your admissions process is not just an application. It is a live reflection of your brand. The communication must be consistent with the brand promise. If your reputation is built on student-centric support, every email, phone call and text must be empathetic and helpful. Use hyper-personalized messaging and AI-powered tools that make the student feel heard and valued. The goal is to make the application feel like the first step in a personalized relationship not the end of a transaction.
Channels for increasing the likelihood of conversion during the conversion phase:
Search
Social
Email
SMS
By providing clear guidance, addressing concerns and showcasing the value proposition of your institution, you can ensure a seamless transition from prospective student to applicant.
Your institution has successfully captured the attention of prospective students and established an initial connection. At this stage, students are dedicating time to carefully consider their top options for advancing their education. Maintain and deepen prospective students’ interest by delivering messaging that is personalized, detailed and addresses each prospect’s specific concerns and questions. The key to a successful lead nurturing strategy is to provide a supportive, no-pressure environment while supporting their decision-making process and nudging them closer to taking the next step with your school.
This is where you double down on your brand. Your nurturing strategy should not just remind students of deadlines. It should make them feel like a part of your community before they ever set foot on campus. Use targeted campaigns that introduce them to their future classmates, faculty and student support services. Reinforce the values they fell in love with during the awareness stage. This mitigates “melt” and transforms an accepted student into an enrolled student.
Channels that can maximize your lead nurturing efforts include:
Search
Social
OTT
Program Display
Audio
Video
Email
SMS
Truly cultivate an understanding and support for prospective students navigating through the application process by delivering messaging that inspires them to complete their educational journey, personalized guidance and reminds them of the enriching experiences that await them at your institution.
5. Enrollment: The Starting Line
At this stage, prospective students have become applicants, now it’s a matter of getting them to enroll and move forward at your institution. Offering content that effectively addresses any final concerns and provides reassurance that their decision to enroll at your institution is the right choice, right fit and right time for them.
Enrollment is not the end of the funnel. It’s the beginning of a lifetime of brand loyalty. Acknowledge and celebrate this moment. Use this stage to welcome them to the community and prepare them for their new life as a student and future advocate for your brand.
Convert your applicants into enrolled students with these channels:
Feature content that addresses barriers such as affordability, mental burnout, and enrollment complexity by highlighting the availability of financial aid, scholarships, flexible payment options and personalized support services to promote streamlined enrollment process.
Utilizing email and SMS will be the most effective in delivering this type of content. Incorporating strategies such as targeted email campaigns and personalized phone calls can be effective. As long as the content you are offering provides clear and easy-to-follow instructions for the enrollment process, your institution can help eliminate any confusion or frustration and solidifying that the students’ decision to enroll at your school was the right one.
The Importance of Full-Funnel Marketing
At EducationDynamics, we have always taken a holistic approach to student recruitment and believe it is essential for long-term growth and sustainability. We have seen several shifts in the landscape that make a full-funnel marketing strategy more valuable than ever before.
Increasing Complexity in the Media Landscape
First, we see increasing complexity in the media landscape, from consumer behavior to advances in marketing channels. The average number of streaming hours consumed continues to rise. At the same time, ad-supported streaming platforms are growing in popularity and the social media landscape is fragmenting. In our latest Online College Students Report 2024, about 70% of online college students utilize primarily ad-supported streaming services and use YouTube, Spotify, YouTube TV, Netflix, and Hulu daily. These landscape changes are important in that they tell a story about where prospective students are spending their time online and how we can effectively reach them with advertising.
Changes in Prospective Students’ Search and Decision-Making Habits
Secondly, we are seeing changes in how prospective students are searching for and making decisions about higher education. As the focus on student loan debt and the value of higher education continues to be top of mind for students, we are seeing this manifest in prospective students doing more research even after the point of inquiry. In our 2024 Online College Students Report, 40% of online college students initially inquired at two schools and 21% inquired at three. Once they narrowed their selection 30% of online college students applied to two schools and 16% applied to three. Students are motivated to find the best value. They are therefore continuing to research past the point of inquiry and application to confirm their decision to invest—not just in tuition, but also their time and energy. Higher education marketers aim to respond by continuing to leverage various marketing channels to keep schools in the mix and reassure students why these schools are right for them and their circumstances.
With all these changes in the market, winning universities and colleges are shifting their marketing strategies to meet this dynamic environment. By implementing a full-funnel marketing approach, institutions can benefit from:
Increased Brand Awareness: A full-funnel strategy keeps your institution at the forefront of prospective students’ minds throughout their entire research journey. This consistent presence across various channels significantly increases brand awareness and strengthens institutional identity.
Improved Student Conversion Rates: By nurturing leads with targeted messaging and valuable content at each stage of the funnel, you effectively guide them towards enrollment. This personalized approach fosters trust and increases the likelihood of conversion from initial inquiry to final acceptance.
Stronger Return on Investment (ROI): Full-funnel marketing allows for targeted campaigns and data-driven optimization. This ensures your marketing budget is spent efficiently, reaching the right audience with the right message at the right time. You’ll see a significant improvement in ROI as you convert more qualified leads into enrolled students.
A Better Student Experience: At the heart of a full-funnel marketing strategy is a desire to deliver a better student experience by meeting the student wherever they are on the journey. A strong full-funnel marketing strategy is empathetic to the prospective student, listens to their direct and indirect engagement cues, and delivers an experience that provides the right information at the right time and on the right platform.
By embracing a full-funnel strategy, institutions can effectively navigate the complex media landscape, address the evolving needs of prospective students, and ultimately achieve their enrollment goals.
Growing Enrollment with Full-Funnel Marketing
While the execution of a full-funnel marketing approach will vary depending on the institution, there’s a common thread: measuring success through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) tailored to each stage of the funnel. This means monitoring and measuring the micro-conversions and engagements along the journey in addition to the more obvious traditional conversion points like requests for information, application and enrollment.
Here’s a breakdown of KPIs for different funnel stages:
Top-of-Funnel (TOFU):
Brand Awareness: Focuses on metrics like impressions, reach, and brand recall to gauge how effectively your campaigns are building familiarity with your institution.
Website Traffic: Tracks overall website visits and unique visitors to understand how well your TOFU efforts are attracting potential students.
Engagement Rates: Measures user interaction on your website, such as time spent on pages, click-through rates on calls to action, and social media engagement, indicating deeper interest.
Mid-Funnel (MOFU):
There are two types of ‘Mid-Funnel’ stages in higher education marketing. We refer to the portion of the stage where the focus of marketing is on lead generation as pre-inquiry activities. Whereas, in admissions, enrollment and new student starts are the goal. We refer to this portion of the stage post-inquiry activities.
Pre-inquiry activities
Pre-inquiry activities include efforts made to connect with prospective students prior to directly contacting an institution for information. When tracking the effectiveness of these activities, higher ed marketers may consider these key metrics to determine their strategies’ ability to attract, engage and convert prospective students:
Lead Generation: Tracks cost-per-lead (CPL) alongside the volume of qualified leads generated by your mid-funnel activities (e.g., webinars, downloadable content).
Inquiry Volume: Measures the number of inquiries received through various channels, indicating a stronger interest in your programs.
Content Engagement: Analyzes how users interact with your mid-funnel content (e.g., white papers, blog posts) to assess its effectiveness in nurturing leads.
Post-inquiry activities
Following prospective students’ application submissions, your institution should prioritize a smooth transition into enrollment. A frictionless enrollment streamlines the process, ensuring a higher conversion rate while enhancing the overall student experience. To track the effectiveness of your post-inquiry activities, consider the following metrics:
Application Yield: Analyzes the percentage of applicants who complete the application process and submit their materials.
Offer Acceptance Rate: Measures the proportion of admitted students who accept your institution’s offer which indicates program interest after the students’ initial hurdle.
Lead Conversion Rates: Tracks the percentage of leads nurtured through email marketing or other channels that convert into applications.
Application Completion Rates: Measures how many inquiries progress towards completing the application process.
Bottom-of-Funnel (BOFU):
Enrollment Conversion Rate (Yield Rate): Tracks the percentage of admitted students who finalize registration and officially become enrolled to assess the effectiveness of the enrollment process.
Cost-per-Enrollment (CPE): Analyzes the total marketing spend divided by the number of enrolled students, reflecting the overall efficiency of your marketing efforts.
Deferral Rate: Analyzes the breakdown of admitted students who request to postpone their start date, providing insights into reasons for enrollment delays.
Monitoring these KPIs across the funnel stages provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your full-funnel marketing strategy. This allows for data-driven adjustments to optimize each stage and ultimately improve your return on investment (ROI) for student recruitment.
By incorporating the costs associated with all stages of the funnel, you can leverage blended cost-per-enrollment (CPE) metrics. This provides a more holistic view of marketing effectiveness and allows you to utilize directional or causal analyses. These techniques go beyond simply observing correlations between upper funnel activities (such as brand awareness campaigns) and lead generation/bottom funnel results (like applications). They can help you understand the cause-and-effect relationships between these stages. Directional analyses can point you in the right direction, while causal analyses can provide more definitive evidence of the indirect impact that upper funnel activities have on lead generation and bottom funnel results.
Embracing a Full-Funnel Approach
As prospective students continue to search for higher education options and make decisions based on value, it is crucial for institutions to adapt their marketing strategies to meet this demand. Embracing a full-funnel approach will ensure that institutions stay competitive in the higher education market and achieve their enrollment goals.
Are you ready to transform your transform your marketing strategy to grow enrollment? Start a conversation with EducationDynamics today to discuss how we can help you implement a customized full-funnel strategy that drives enrollment growth and achieves your unique goals.
Amid rising political violence, the need for nonpartisan civic education has never been clearer. Yet saying, “civic thought” or “civic life and leadership” now reads conservative. Should it?
With the backing of a legislature his party dominated, Republican governor Doug Ducey created Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership in 2016. Both SCETL and its founding director, Paul Carrese, are now understood as key leaders in a movement for civic schools and centers.
In a March 2024 special issue on civic engagement in the journal Laws, Caresse outlines a deepening American civic crisis, including as evidence, “the persistent appeal of the demagogic former President Donald Trump.”
He’s not exactly carrying water for the MAGA movement.
Whether MAGA should be considered conservative is part of the puzzle. If by “conservative” we mean an effort to honor that which has come before us, to preserve that which is worth preserving and to take care when stepping forward, civic education has an inherently conservative lineage.
But even if we dig back more than a half century, it can be difficult to disentangle the preservation of ideals from the practices of partisanship. The Institute for Humane Studies was founded in the early 1960s to promote classical liberalism, including commitments to individual freedom and dignity, limited government, and the rule of law. It has been part of George Mason University since 1985, receiving millions from the Charles Koch Foundation.
The editors at Persuasion, which ran the column, certainly would seem to think so. But Persuasion also has a bent toward “a free society,” “free speech” and “free inquiry,” and against “authoritarian populism.” The founder, Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, has been a persistent center-left critic of what he and others deem the excesses of the far left. Some of the challenges they enumerate made it into Steven Pinker’s May opinion piece in The New York Times, in which Pinker defended Harvard’s overwhelming contributions to global humanity while also admitting to instances of political narrowness; Pinker wrote that a poll of his colleagues “turned up many examples in which they felt political narrowness had skewed research in their specialties.” Has political narrowness manifested within the operating assumptions of the civic engagement movement?
Toward the beginning of this century, award-winning researchers Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahne pushed for a social change–oriented civic education. Writing in 2004, in the American Educational Research Journal, they described their predispositions as such: “We find the exclusive emphasis on personally responsible citizenship when estranged from analysis of social, political, and economic contexts … inadequate for advancing democracy. There is nothing inherently democratic about the traits of a personally responsible citizen … From our perspective, traits associated with participatory and justice oriented citizens, on the other hand, are essential.”
Other scholars have also pointed to change as an essential goal of civic education. In 1999, Thomas Deans provided an overview of the field of service learning and civic engagement. He noted dueling influences of John Dewey and Paulo Freire across the field, writing, “They overlap on several key characteristics essential to any philosophy of service-learning,” including “an anti-foundationalist epistemology” and “an abiding hope for social change through education combined with community action.”
Across significant portions of the fields of education, service learning and community engagement, the penchant toward civic education as social change had become dominant by 2012, when I inhabited an office next to Keith Morton at Providence College. It had been nearly 20 years since Morton completed an empirical study of different modes of community service—charity, project and social change—finding strengths and integrity within each. By the time we spoke, Morton observed that much of the field had come to (mis)interpret his study as suggesting a preference for social change over project or charity work.
While service learning and community engagement significantly embraced this progressive orientation, these pedagogies were also assumed to fulfill universities’ missional commitments to civic education. Yet the link between community-engaged learning and education for democracy was often left untheorized.
In 2022, Carol Geary Schneider, president emerita of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, cited real and compounding fractures in U.S. democracy. Shortly thereafter in the same op-ed, Geary Schneider wrote, “two decades of research on the most common civic learning pedagogy—community-based projects completed as part of a ‘service learning’ course—show that student participation in service learning: 1) correlates with increased completion, 2) enhances practical skills valued by employers and 3) builds students’ motivation to help solve public problems.”
All three of these outcomes are important, but to what end? The first serves university retention goals, the second supports student career prospects and the third contributes broadly to civic learning. Yet civic learning does not necessarily contribute to the knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs necessary to sustain American democracy.
There is nothing inherently democratic about a sea of empowered individuals, acting in pursuit of their separate conceptions of the good. All manner of people do this, sometimes in pursuit of building more inclusive communities, and other times to persecute one another. Democratic culture, norms, laws and policies channel energies toward ends that respect individual rights and liberties.
Democracy is not unrestrained freedom for all from all. It is institutional and cultural arrangements advancing individual opportunities for empowerment, tempered by an abiding respect for the dignity of other persons, grounded in the rule of law. Commitment to one another’s empowerment starts from that foundational assumption that all people are created equal. All other democratic rights and obligations flow from that well.
Proponents of civic schools and centers have wanted to see more connections to foundational democratic principles and the responsibilities inherent in stewarding an emergent, intentionally aspirational democratic legacy.
In a paper published by the American Enterprise Institute, Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey consider next steps for the movement advancing civic schools and centers, while also emphasizing responsibility-taking as part of democratic citizenship. They write, “By understanding our institutions of constitutional government, our characteristic political philosophy, and the history of American politics in practice as answers to the challenging, even paradoxical questions posed by the effort to govern ourselves, we enter into the perspective of responsibility—the citizen’s proper perspective as one who participates in sovereign oversight of, and takes responsibility for, the American political project. The achievement of such a perspective is the first object of civic education proper to the university.”
This sounds familiar. During the Obama administration, the Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement National Task Force called for the “cultivation of foundational knowledge about fundamental principles and debates about democracy.” More than a half century before, the Truman Commission’s report on “Higher Education for American Democracy” declared, “In the past our colleges have perhaps taken it for granted that education for democratic living could be left to courses in history and political science. It should become instead a primary aim of all classroom teaching and, more important still, of every phase of campus life.” And in the era of the U.S. founding, expanding access to quality education was understood as central to the national, liberatory project of establishing and sustaining democratic self-government. Where does this leave us today?
Based on more than 20 years of research, teaching and administration centered around civic education, at institutions ranging from community colleges to the Ivy League, I have six recommendations for democratic analysis, education and action to move beyond this hyperpartisan moment.
Advance analysis rather than allegations. I started this essay with two critiques of President Trump advanced by leaders at centers ostensibly associated with conservativism. More recently I demonstrated alignments between current conservative appeals and civic aspirations under two popular Democratic presidents. We should spend far less time and ink debating whether something emerges from Republican or Democratic roots. Our proper roles as academics and as citizens direct us to consider specific policies and practices, to compare them historically and cross-nationally, and to gather evidence of impacts. We now have a landscape that includes more than a dozen new civic schools and centers. We therefore have opportunities to assess their differences, similarities and impact.
Demonstrate that rights derive from shared governance. Work with students to understand the relationship between good government and everyday functions such as freedom to move, freedom to associate, freedom to contract and freedom to trade. These rights manifest through the promise made in the Declaration of Independence. “Governments are instituted,” it reads, “to effect … Safety and Happiness.” Danielle Allen’s Our Declaration is an indispensable aid in any such effort.
Encourage historic political-economic comparisons of rights. Diving deep into history from all corners of the world clarifies various kinds of colonizing forces and diverse approaches to good government, from imperial China to the Persian Empire and American expansion. Last year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson, received the award for research demonstrating that societies with well-established rule of law and individual rights are more likely to become economically prosperous. Consider this and other, disciplinarily diverse explorations of the structural conditions for human flourishing. Push past dichotomizing narratives that sort history into tidy buckets. Rights as we know them—expanded and protected through state institutions—are tools of liberation with an extended, colonial and global heritage. Mounk’s podcast is an excellent resource for contemporary, comparative interrogation of the structures and cultural commitments that advance rights.
Wrestle with power and violence. Despite national and global history riven with conflict and conquest, many progressives came to imagine that democracy is a given, that having rights in conditions of comparative peace is the natural state. Yet those rights only manifest through the disciplined commitments of state officials doing their jobs. In a recent article in Democracy, William A. Galston, a Brookings Institution senior fellow, professor at the University of Maryland and former Clinton administration official, suggests democracy is on the defensive because citizens too frequently “regard the movement toward tolerance at home and internationalism abroad as irreversible.” Nonsense, argues Galston. History shows us societies descend into evil, governments revoke liberties and armies invade. Democratic liberties are co-created political commitments. They have always depended upon judicious, democratic stewardship of policing power at home and military power abroad. Questioning state structures of enforcement should be part of university-level civic education, but so too should respecting them and understanding the reasons for their persistence. Here and throughout, civic education must balance respect for the past, its traditions and its empirical lessons, with possibilities for the future.
Embrace and interrogate foundational democratic values. Meditate on the intentionally aspirational commitment to American democracy, embodied in the assertion that all people are created equal. Nurture the virtue of respect for others implied by inherent equality. Foster—in yourself and in your students—an embrace of human dignity so strong that you seek bridging opportunities across the American experiment, working to find the best in others, seeking connections with individuals who seem most unlike you. Even if they offer no reciprocity, never forget any person’s basic humanity. Before analyzing or convincing, listen and find ways to listen well beyond your normal circles. My colleague at the University of Pennsylvania Lia Howard is modeling such efforts with systematic approaches to democratic listening across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Most of all, if principled, rigorous, honest analysis beyond partisan dichotomizing appeals to you, know that you are not alone. Danielle Allen (Harvard University), Kwame Anthony Appiah (New York University) and Eboo Patel (Interfaith America) lead among numerous scholars and organizers refreshing democratic ideals for our era. They demonstrate that democracy does not manifest without attention to our shared heritage, our collective institutions and our willingness to respect one another. They hold a pragmatic space between civic education as unquestioning nation-building on one extreme and as unmoored social justice activism on another. Readers curious about their approaches can begin with Allen presenting “How to Be a Confident Pluralist” at Brigham Young University, Appiah making a cosmopolitan case for human dignity and humility in The New York Times Magazine, and Patel in conversation with American University president Jonathan Alger in AU’s “Perspectives on the Civic Life” series.
This essay, it must be noted, was almost entirely completed before the political assassination of Charlie Kirk. It now becomes even clearer that we must identify ways to analyze beyond partisan pieties while embracing human dignity. Some leaders are reminding us of our ideals. Utah governor Spencer Cox’s nine minutes on ending political violence deserves a listen. Ezra Klein opened his podcast with a reflection on the meaning of the assassination, followed by his characteristic modeling of principled disagreement with a political opponent (in this case, Ben Shapiro). It is the second feature of that Klein podcast—extended periods of exploration, disagreement and brief periods of consensus regarding critical democratic questions—that we must see more of across campuses and communities. One of the worst possible, and unfortunately plausible, outcomes of this movement for civic schools and centers could be the continuing balkanization of campuses into self-sorted identity-based communities, with very little cross-pollination. That would be bad for learning and for our country.
Whatever the political disposition of civic centers or other programs across campus, we need more and better cross-campus commitment to democratic knowledge, values and beliefs if we wish to continue and strengthen the American democratic tradition.
Eric Hartman is a senior fellow and director of the executive doctorate in higher education management at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.
Q: What is a fractional COLO? What types of schools might this service be a good fit for? Why would a college or university invest in a fractional COLO instead of recruiting for a full-time online learning leader?
A: A fractional COLO is a senior-level executive, chief online learning officer, who embeds within an institution on a part-time basis, providing executive-level expertise without the full-time commitment.
This service is particularly well suited for small to midsize universities that recognize the need to invest in online learning but lack the start-up capital for a full-time executive position, which can be quite expensive when you factor in salary and benefits at the senior level.
Many institutions approach fractional COLO services because they need to see a return on investment before making larger commitments. Building online learning programs requires significant up-front investment, and schools don’t always see returns in the first year. (I recently wrote an article exploring this: “Can You Build a Brand New Online Program for Half a Million Dollars?”)
Essentially, many schools know they need to make the investment in online learning leadership, but they can’t commit to a full-time hire right out of the gate. A fractional COLO allows them to get started with expert guidance while building revenues, which go towards that larger investment.
Q: Help us understand the fractional COLO from the provider perspective. How do you provide this service? How scalable is the model? How does the fractional COLO idea differ from the work of consultants/consulting companies, in terms of methods, deliverables, costs and outcomes?
A: I offer several service levels to meet schools where they are. Some institutions want an assessment of their current online operations—essentially an outsider’s perspective on their strengths and opportunities. I’ve developed a comprehensive rubric covering 10 key areas, from strategic planning to marketing, admissions, course design, faculty support and student services. I spend two days on campus meeting with staff, faculty and administrators to understand how they holistically support online students, then deliver a report with actionable improvements for six- and 12-month time frames.
From there, service levels scale up. Some schools need help launching specific programs, while others commit to the full fractional COLO engagement.
When I begin working with any institution, I always visit campus first to meet everyone, from senior leaders to registrars, financial aid staff, instructional designers and the entire support team. After conducting my assessment, we then develop a six- to 12-month strategic plan tailored to that institution’s specific needs.
Regarding scalability, that’s a great question. As a new venture, I haven’t reached my bandwidth limit yet. Hopefully, that becomes a good problem to have! If demand grows, I’d look for individuals with a similar mindset: individuals with a teacher’s heart who want to roll up their sleeves and help institutions learn and implement best practices. I like to say I “teach institutions how to fish.”
What differentiates my approach from traditional consulting or vendors is the hands-on, DIY element. There are many excellent consultants and companies that do great work for institutions and achieve results. I focus on teaching and blending consultation with implementation. I’ll conduct assessments and provide strategic guidance, but I also get my hands dirty helping different departments across the institution implement those strategies.
This approach works best for institutions that want to build online learning capabilities internally [and] retain all tuition revenue and can commit to a one- to two-year development timeline. The costs are significantly less than a full-time hire, without the overhead of salary and benefits, and deliverables are always scaled to meet each institution’s specific needs.
Q: Why have you decided to build up this fractional COLO business instead of pursuing a more traditional COLO role at a single institution? Tell us about your educational and professional background and how that prepared you to create this concept.
A: I’ve always had an entrepreneurial itch, even though I spent over 20 years of my career in higher education in traditional roles. I was fortunate to serve as COLO at an institution for eight years. That was a valuable experience since fewer than 10 percent of institutions have an online learning leader serving on the cabinet or reporting directly to the president. That role gave me a unique perspective on integrating online learning throughout an institution rather than keeping it siloed.
My educational background combines business and education, which prepared me for this venture. My undergraduate degree was in business, which seeded those entrepreneurial interests, but I transitioned to education for my master’s and completed a Ph.D. in learning sciences.
In my previous role, we were essentially building from scratch, so I referred to our team as a start-up. We developed new standard operating procedures, created budget models and hired new team members. In some ways, I felt like I was running a business within the university. That unique combination of business skills, educational expertise and start-up experience prepared me for this role. Also, maybe most importantly, if you’re going to start a new company, you’d better have a supportive spouse because it’s not easy, lol.
One last comment related to the intro—my goal isn’t to replace full-time COLOs. It’s actually the opposite. My intent is that as institutions work with me and see the value a COLO brings, they’ll eventually hire their own full-time leader once operations are established. I hope this work helps more schools recognize the importance of dedicated online learning leadership, ultimately growing the pool of full-time COLO positions across higher education. I don’t want to take work away from anyone. I want to grow the position and demonstrate the value these roles bring to institutions.
The Biden and Trump administrations have both stepped up enforcement of Title VI in the last two years.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Etienne Laurent/AFP/Getty Images | Scott Olson/Getty Images
A new report released Monday by the American Association of University Professors and its Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure argues that the Trump administration has weaponized federal civil rights laws with a goal of discrediting colleges and compromising their academic freedom and institutional autonomy.
The report focuses in part on a surge of investigations that have been launched by the Department of Education since Oct. 7, 2023, especially those that involve national origin and religion. Based on an analysis of those cases, AAUP argues that in many instances the Trump administration has targeted types of speech or programming that do not actually qualify as legally actionable discrimination. Rather, the association says, the Trump administration has used this surge to sidestep historical procedures and enforce its own interpretation of the law.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations stepped up their enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, after the Hamas attack on Israel prompted a number of protests on college campuses and an increase in reports of antisemitism. Their approaches, however, have been quite different.
Biden civil rights officials took issue with how colleges responded to reports of antisemitic harassment and found severalcolleges in violation of that law.
However, the Trump administration has moved aggressively to cut off funds and to demandsweeping changes at institutions—all in the name of combating antisemitism. More recently, the administration has used Title VI as a way to restrict and investigate race-based practices and programs as well as admissions decisions.
“In a perverse reading of DEI, the administration makes it an instance of racial discrimination rather than an attempt to dismantle the structures of discrimination based on race,” the report notes.
Over all, the AAUP argues that the Trump administration is attempting to “unmake” and “hijack” Title VI.
The Trump administration is “unmooring the Civil Rights Act from its foundational commitments to addressing structures of discrimination that prevent educational access,” the report stated. And doing so “is nothing less than an attempt to rewrite the history of the nation.”
In an effort to address a deep deficit caused by rising costs, declining international enrollment and flat state funding, University of Nebraska–Lincoln officials have proposed merging or cutting a slew of programs. But one proposal has sparked particular outrage—within the university and beyond: the plan to ax the educational administration department.
If the plan goes through, faculty members and students worry the state will be left without a key pipeline to fill leadership roles at local schools and colleges, particularly in rural areas. The University of Nebraska–Lincoln is the only university in the state that offers a Ph.D. program in educational leadership or higher education, which has a distinct scholarly focus, while Ed.D. programs and master’s degrees to train education leaders can be found elsewhere.
“It’s hard for me to imagine the flagship university in a state does not offer a program to prepare future principals, future superintendents, future leaders of colleges and universities,” said Crystal Garcia, an associate professor and Ph.D. coordinator in the department. Eliminating the department would be “really doing a disservice to education as a whole in the state of Nebraska.” She noted the department is “incredibly impactful,” serving 316 current and incoming graduate students.
Administrators have proposed nixing five other academic programs as well: community and regional planning; earth and atmospheric sciences; landscape architecture; statistics; and textiles, merchandising and fashion design. The plan would potentially retain the master’s degree program in educational administration but rehouse it elsewhere.
Through these cuts, the university aims to reduce the budget by $27.5 million, in part by eliminating 58 roles—17 from the educational administration department, including tenured and tenure-track positions. University officials also proposed two department mergers and budget cuts to the College of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences, amid other cuts to administrative and staff expenses.
The proposal will now be considered by the Academic Planning Committee, a group of faculty, staff and students. Members of affected programs can make their case before the committee in live-streamed hearings, and the public can weigh in through a feedback form. Then, the APC will come out with recommendations the chancellor can take or leave. If the chancellor decides to move forward with the proposed cuts, the issue will come before the Board of Regents in December.
Elizabeth Niehaus, a professor in the educational administration department, said faculty were stunned by the news and are preparing to defend the department to the committee—and the Board of Regents if need be. She and other faculty members believe the department is thriving.
The proposed cut was “quite honestly shocking, because we are a strong department with great students, great faculty, with a national reputation, folks who have been winning awards for teaching and research,” Niehaus said. “So, we did not see that coming.”
The Decision-Making Process
The university’s executive team undertook “a strategic, data-informed and holistic review of all academic programs,” said Mark Button, UNL’s executive vice chancellor.
The review weighed a variety of metrics, he said, including student success outcomes—such as retention rates and degree-completion rates over a five-year period—the ratio of student enrollments to faculty members, and demand for programs as measured in student credit hours and students joining majors.
Administrators also drew on metrics for research success used by the Association of American Universities; the university is seeking to regain membership in the organization, which it lost in 2011. Those measures include book publications, research citations and awards and fellowships. Administrators also compared programs to similar programs at other public AAU institutions, Button said, and considered more qualitative factors, like whether a program was distinctive in the state. The metrics were shared with college deans and then department chairs in May.
Button said the metrics used to review the academic programs reflected priorities already in the university’s strategic plan and the criteria used for past budget reductions. Education administration was among the departments that “didn’t perform as well,” he said.
Faculty members argue the process lacked transparency; they didn’t know until a day before the proposal came out that the department was on the chopping block. They say their specific questions have gone unanswered, including which particular measures caused them to fall short and whether the pandemic years were contextualized in the data.
“We were reduced to a single number that definitely does not reflect the depth and breadth of what we do and our contributions to the field, to the university, to the state,” Niehaus said of the scoring process.
The decision felt so at odds with how the department sees itself that associate professor Sarah Zuckerman said she wondered if it was being targeted for its outspoken faculty members. Zuckerman, who serves as president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said other members of the department are also active in the organization, as well as in Advocating for Inclusion, Respect and Equity, a faculty coalition focused on diversity issues.
“It gives me a little bit of a nauseous feeling,” Zuckerman said.
Button argued it’s “definitively not true” that the proposed cuts target outspoken departments. He said the proposal involved “very painful decisions.”
“I probably can’t underscore enough just how difficult this budget-reduction process is for our entire university community and for everyone who’s committed to an outstanding land-grant, flagship, Big Ten university here in Nebraska,” Button said. “I share the sense of pain and grief that everyone on our campus is going through now.”
If the cuts become a reality, tenured and tenure-track professors will have a year’s notice of their termination and the university has promised to develop teach-out plans for students. But students don’t have the details of those plans, and some said the uncertainty makes them ill at ease.
Korrine Fagenstrom, who is participating in the online Ph.D. program focused on higher ed administration from Montana, said she doesn’t know what she’s going to do.
Four years into her program, she doesn’t want to leave, she said, but “I don’t know what it would look like to stay—I don’t know that anybody does.”
“The idea of the program getting eliminated at my final hour is terrifying,” said Kathryn Duvall, a third-year student in the Ed.D. program. “I have made sacrifices to my family. I have made sacrifices to my own personal life and dedicated years to getting my education. And this program has spent years pouring into me and developing me as a researcher, as a writer, as an educator, as a leader.”
She also worries on a “macro level” that education in the state will suffer without the leadership training UNL provides.
“Eliminating a program like this is eliminating foundational training that produces equitable educational opportunities in our society,” Duvall said.
The Bigger Picture
University officials argue that other offerings in the state, such as Ed.D. programs at University of Nebraska–Omaha or small private universities, can fill the same needs as UNL’s educational administration programs.
But K–12 superintendents, who generally have doctorates, need more—not less—access to the affordable, high-caliber training public institutions like UNL historically provide, said Mónica Byrne-Jiménez, executive director of the University Council for Educational Administration. The proposal to cut the department has garnered national attention, because it’s an unusual move for a flagship campus or a university with a Research-1 Carnegie classification, she added.
“It’s nothing I’ve seen before,” Byrne-Jiménez said, noting most R-1 universities boast strong K–12 and higher ed leadership programs. “We don’t want it to become a national trend.”
Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, president and CEO of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, said that while UNL is a “unique case,” she has seen a growing number of education schools or colleges merge with other programs over the last decade. The Iowa Board of Regents also approved plans last week to end the University of Iowa’s graduate and doctoral programs in elementary education, secondary education, special education and science education.
Byrne-Jiménez said such programs may be extra vulnerable at a time when Americans are questioning the value of higher education and schools are “hyperscrutinized.” Educational administration programs also tend to attract smaller cohorts, she said, because a select few want to go into education leadership roles. She fears their size, combined with national skepticism, makes them susceptible to budget cuts. But she believes these programs have an outsize effect on the long-term success of state residents that needs to be considered.
“From an external perspective, it looks like these are small, sort of niche programs that might not be generating a lot of money for the university,” she said. But “the impact is great.” At UNL, “those 300 students are going to go out to 300 schools and 300 communities.”
The high cost associated with college is one of the greatest deterrents for students interested in higher education. A 2024 survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found that 68 percent of students believe higher ed institutions charge too much for an undergraduate degree, and an additional 41 percent believe their institution has a sticker price that’s too high.
A recent study by the National College Attainment Network found that a majority of two- and four-year colleges cost more than the average student can pay, sometimes by as much as $8,000 a year. The report advocates for additional state and federal financial aid to close affordability gaps and ensure opportunities for low- and middle-income students to engage in higher education.
Methodology: NCAN’s formula for affordability compares total cost of attendance (tuition, fees, housing, etc.) plus an emergency reserve of $300 against any aid a student receives. This includes grants, federal loans and work-study dollars, as well as expected family contribution and the summer wages a student could earn in a full-time, minimum-wage job in their state. Housing costs vary depending on the student’s enrollment: Bachelor’s-granting institutions include on-campus housing costs, and community colleges include off-campus housing rates.
A graphic by the National College Attainment Network demonstrating how the organization calculated affordable rates for the average college student.
National College Attainment Network
Costs that outweigh expected aid and income are classified as an “affordability gap” for students.
A recent Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab survey of 5,065 undergraduates found that 9 percent of respondents said an unexpected expense of $300 or less would threaten their ability to remain enrolled in college.
The total sample size covered 1,137 public institutions, 600 of which were community colleges.
Majority of colleges unaffordable: Using these metrics, 48 percent of community colleges and 35 percent of bachelor’s-granting institutions were affordable during the 2022–23 academic year. In total, NCAN rated 473 institutions as affordable.
Comparative data from 2015–16 finds slightly more community colleges were affordable then (50 percent) than in 2022–23 (48 percent), but that the average affordability gap, or total unmet need, has grown from $246 to $486.
Among four-year colleges, more public institutions were affordable in 2022–23 than in 2015–16 (29 percent) and the average affordability gap shrank slightly, from $1,656 to $1,554. The data indicates slight improvement in affordability metrics but highlights challenges for low-income students interested in a bachelor’s degree, according to the report.
NCAN researchers believe the $400 increase in the maximum Pell Grant in 2023 helped lower costs per student at bachelor’s-granting institutions, but community colleges appear less affordable due to the loss of HEERF funding and the increase in cost of attendance due to rising housing costs.
Affordability ranges by states: Access to affordable institutions is also more of a challenge for students in some regions than in others. NCAN’s analysis found that 14 states lacked a single institution with an affordable bachelor’s degree program for low-income students. In 27 states, 65 percent of public four-year colleges were unaffordable.
For two-year programs, five states lacked an affordable community college. Some states had a small sample (fewer than five) of community colleges analyzed; Delaware and Florida had no community colleges in NCAN’s sample.
In Kentucky, Maine and New Mexico, 100 percent of the two-year colleges analyzed were found to be affordable for students, along with at least 80 percent of the bachelor’s degree–granting institutions in those states.
Students pursuing a bachelor’s degree in New Hampshire ($8,239), Pennsylvania ($8,076) and Ohio ($5,138) had the largest affordability gaps. For community colleges, students in New Hampshire ($11,499), Utah ($7,689) and Pennsylvania ($4,508) had the greatest unmet need.
Conversely, some states had aid surpluses, which can help address other expenses associated with college, including textbooks and transportation.
Cost isn’t the only barrier to access, however. “For many students who live in rural or remote areas, far from the postsecondary institutions in their state, college may remain inaccessible,” the report noted.
Based on the data, NCAN supports additional funding for higher education at all levels, federal, state and local, to provide students with financial aid.
Get more content like this directly to your inbox. Subscribe here.
A tenured Texas State University professor who was terminated earlier this month after allegedly inciting violence during a speech has sued the university, CBS Austin reported. In the lawsuit filed in district court, Thomas Alter, the former associate professor of history, claims that university leadership violated his free speech and due process rights and breached his employment contract.
At a Sept. 7 conference organized by Socialist Horizon, Alter said in part that “without organization, how can anyone expect to overthrow the most bloodthirsty, profit-driven mad organization in the history of the world—that of the U.S. government.” His speech was recorded and circulated by a right-wing YouTuber who had infiltrated the event. Alter was terminated three days later.
In a statement announcing his termination, Texas State president Kelly Damphousse said Alter’s “actions are incompatible with their responsibilities as a faculty member at Texas State University.” Alter told CBS Austin that he did not associate himself with Texas State during the conference.
“The reasons Provost Aswrath provided for Dr. Alter’s termination are false and give every appearance of politically-motivated discrimination,” the lawsuit states. “In truth, Dr. Alter was terminated because he espoused views that are politically unpopular in today’s politically-charged climate, in violation of his First Amendment right to free speech.”
Alter told CBS Austin that his dismissal “turned my world upside down and my family’s world upside down.”
“Anyone should be able to express their views no matter how unpopular they are without facing the repercussions that many people are seeing,” he added. (Alter had earned tenure just 10 days before he was removed, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported.)
Texas State did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment, but a spokesperson told CBS Austin the university declined to comment on pending litigation.
