Tag: Higher

What’s So Conservative About Civics, Anyway? (opinion)
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.

Earlier this year, IHS president and CEO Emily Chamlee-Wright asserted that President Trump’s “tariff regime isn’t just economically harmful—it reverses the moral and political logic that made trade a foundation of the American experiment.” Rather than classifying that column through a partisan lens, we might consider a more expansive query: Is it historically accurate and analytically robust? Does it help readers understand intersections among the rule of law, individual freedom and dignity?

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.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
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September 23, 2025
Generic AI cannot capture higher education’s unwritten rules

Some years ago, I came across Walter Moberley’s The Crisis in the University. In the years after the Second World War, universities faced a perfect storm: financial strain, shifting student demographics, and a society wrestling with lost values. Every generation has its reckoning. Universities don’t just mirror the societies they serve – they help define what those societies might become.

Today’s crisis looks very different. It isn’t about reconstruction or mass expansion. It’s about knowledge itself – how it is mediated and shaped in a world of artificial intelligence. The question is whether universities can hold on to their cultural distinctiveness once LLM-enabled workflows start to drive their daily operations.

The unwritten rules

Let’s be clear: universities are complicated beasts. Policies, frameworks and benchmarks provide a skeleton. But the flesh and blood of higher education live elsewhere – in the unwritten rules of culture.

Anyone who has sat through a validation panel, squinted at the spreadsheets for a TEF submission, or tried to navigate an approval workflow knows what I mean. Institutions don’t just run on paperwork; they run on tacit understandings, corridor conversations and half-spoken agreements.

These practices rarely make it into a handbook – nor should they – but they shape everything from governance to the student experience. And here’s the rub: large language models, however clever, can’t see what isn’t codified. Which means they can’t capture the very rules that make one university distinctive from another.

The limits of generic AI

AI is already embedded in the sector. We see it in student support chatbots, plagiarism detection, learning platforms, and back-office systems. But these tools are built on vast, generic datasets. They flatten nuance, reproduce bias and assume a one-size-fits-all worldview.

Drop them straight into higher education and the risk is obvious: universities start to look interchangeable. An algorithm might churn out a compliant REF impact statement. But it won’t explain why Institution A counts one case study as transformative while Institution B insists on another, or why quality assurance at one university winds its way through a labyrinth of committees while at another it barely leaves the Dean’s desk. This isn’t just a technical glitch. It’s a governance risk. Allow external platforms to hard-code the rules of engagement and higher education loses more than efficiency – it loses identity, and with it agency.

The temptation to automate is real. Universities are drowning in compliance. Office for Students returns, REF, KEF and TEF submissions, equality reporting, Freedom of Information requests, the Race Equality Charter, endless templates – the bureaucracy multiplies every year.

Staff are exhausted. Worse, these demands eat into time meant for teaching, research and supporting students. Ministers talk about “cutting red tape,” but in practice the load only increases. Automation looks like salvation. Drafting policies, preparing reports, filling forms – AI can do all this faster and more cheaply.

But higher education isn’t just about efficiency. It’s also about identity and purpose. If efficiency is pursued at the expense of culture, universities risk hollowing out the very things that make them distinctive.

Institutional memory matters

Universities are among the UK’s most enduring civic institutions, each with a long memory shaped by place. A faculty’s interpretation of QAA benchmarks, the way a board debates grade boundaries, the precedents that guide how policies are applied – all of this is institutional knowledge.

Very little of it is codified. Sit in a Senate meeting or a Council away-day and you quickly see how much depends on inherited understanding. When senior staff leave or processes shift, that memory can vanish – which is why universities so often feel like they are reinventing the wheel.

Here, human-assistive AI could play a role. Not by replacing people, but by capturing and transmitting tacit practices alongside the formal rulebook. Done well, that kind of LLM could preserve memory without erasing culture.

So, what does “different” look like? The Turing Institute recently urged the academy to think about AI in relation to the humanities, not just engineering. My own experiments – from the Bernie Grant Archive LLM to a Business Case LLM and a Curriculum Innovation LLM – point in the same direction.

The principles are clear. Systems should be co-designed with staff, reflecting how people actually work rather than imposing abstract process maps. They must be assistive, not directive – capable of producing drafts and suggestions but always requiring human oversight.

They need to embed cultural nuance: keeping tone, tradition and tacit practice alive alongside compliance. That way outputs reflect the character of the institution, reinforcing its USP rather than erasing it. They should preserve institutional knowledge by drawing on archives and precedents to create a living record of decision-making. And they must build in error prevention, using human feedback loops to catch hallucinations and conceptual drift.

Done this way, AI lightens the bureaucratic load without stripping out the culture and identity that make universities what they are.

The sector’s inflection point

So back to the existential question. It’s not whether to adopt AI – that ship has already sailed. The real issue is whether universities will let generic platforms reshape them in their image, or whether the sector can design tools that reflect its own values.

And the timing matters. We’re heading into a decade of constrained funding, student number caps, and rising ministerial scrutiny. Decisions about AI won’t just be about efficiency – they will go to the heart of what kind of universities survive and thrive in this environment.

If institutions want to preserve their distinctiveness, they cannot outsource AI wholesale. They must build and shape models that reflect their own ways of working – and collaborate across the sector to do so. Otherwise, the invisible knowledge that makes one university different from another will be drained away by automation.

That means getting specific. Is AI in higher education infrastructure, pedagogy, or governance? How do we balance efficiency with the preservation of tacit knowledge? Who owns institutional memory once it’s embedded in AI – the supplier, or the university? Caveat emptor matters here. And what happens if we automate quality assurance without accounting for cultural nuance?

These aren’t questions that can be answered in a single policy cycle. But they can’t be ducked either. The design choices being made now will shape not just efficiency, but the very fabric of universities for decades to come.

The zeitgeist of responsibility

Every wave of technology promises efficiency. Few pay attention to culture. Unless the sector intervenes, large language models will be no different.

This is, in short, a moment of responsibility. Universities can co-design AI that reflects their values, reduces bureaucracy and preserves identity. Or they can sit back and watch as generic platforms erode the lifeblood of the sector, automating away the subtle rules that make higher education what it is.

In 1989, at the start of my BBC career, I stood on the Berlin Wall and watched the world change before my eyes. Today, higher education faces a moment of similar magnitude. The choice is stark: be shapers and leaders, or followers and losers.

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September 22, 2025
The Next System Teach-Ins and Their Role in Higher Education
In a time when higher education grapples with systemic challenges—rising tuition, debt burdens, underfunding, and institutional inertia—the Next System Teach-Ins emerge as a powerful catalyst for critical dialogue, community engagement, and transformative thinking.

A Legacy of Teach-Ins: From Vietnam to System Change

Teach-ins have long functioned as dynamic forums that transcend mere lecturing, incorporating participatory dialogue and strategic action. The concept originated in March 1965 at the University of Michigan in direct protest of the Vietnam War; faculty and students stayed up all night, creating an intellectual and activist space that sparked over 100 similar events in that year alone.

This model evolved through the decades—fueling the environmental, civil rights, and anti-apartheid movements of the 1970s and 1980s, followed by the Democracy Teach-Ins of the 1990s which challenged corporate influence in universities and energized anti-sweatshop activism. Later waves during Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter sustained teach-ins as a tool for inclusive dialogue and resistance.

The Next System Teach-Ins: Vision, Scope, and Impact

Vision and Purpose

Launched in Spring 2016, the Next System Teach-Ins aimed to broaden public awareness of systemic alternatives to capitalism—ranging from worker cooperatives and community land trusts to decentralized energy systems and democratic public banking.

These teach-ins were designed not just as academic discussion forums but as launching pads for community-led action, connecting participants with toolkits, facilitation guides, ready-made curricula, and resources to design their own events.

Highlights of the Inaugural Wave

In early 2016, notable teach-ins took place across the U.S.—from Madison and New York City to Seattle and beyond. Participants explored pressing questions such as, “What comes after capitalism?” and “How can communities co-design alternatives that are just, sustainable, and democratic?”

These gatherings showcased a blend of plenaries, interactive workshops, radio segments, and “wall-to-wall” organizing strategies—mobilizing participants beyond attendee numbers into collective engagement.

Resources and Capacity Building

Organizers were provided with a wealth of support materials including modular curriculum, templates for publicity and RFPs, event agendas, speaker lists, and online infrastructure to manage RSVPs and share media.

The goal was dual: ignite a nationwide conversation on alternative systemic models, and encourage each teach-in host to aim for a specific local outcome—whether that be a campus campaign, curriculum integration, or forming ongoing community groups.

2025: Renewed Momentum

The Next System initiative has evolved. According to a May 2025 update from George Mason University’s Next System Studies, a new wave of Next System Teach-Ins is scheduled for November 1–16, 2025.

This iteration amplifies the original mission: confronting interconnected social, ecological, political, and economic crises by gathering diverse communities—on campuses, in union halls, or public spaces—to rethink, redesign, and rebuild toward a more equitable and sustainable future.

Why This Matters for Higher Education (HEI’s Perspective)

Teach-ins revitalize civic engagement on campus by reasserting higher education’s role as an engine of critical thought and imagination.

They integrate scholarship and practice, uniting theory with actionable strategies—from economic democracy to ecological regeneration—and enrich academic purpose with real-world relevance.

They also mobilize institutional infrastructure, offering student-led exploration of systemic change without requiring prohibitive resources.

By linking the global and the local, teach-ins equip universities to address both planetary crises and campus-specific challenges.

Most importantly, they trigger systemic dialogue, pushing past complacency and fostering a new generation of system-thinking leaders.

Looking Ahead: Institutional Opportunities
- Host a Teach-In – Whether a focused film screening, interdisciplinary workshop, or full-scale weekend event, universities can leverage Next System resources to design context-sensitive, action-oriented programs.
- Embed in Curriculum – The modular material—especially case studies on democratic economics, energy justice, or communal models—can integrate into courses in sociology, environmental studies, governance, and beyond.
- Forge Community Partnerships – By extending beyond campus (to community centers, labor unions, public libraries), teach-ins expand access and deepen impact.
- Contribute to a National Movement – University participation in the November 2025 wave positions institutions as active contributors to a growing ecosystem of systemic transformation.
A Bold Experiment

The Next System Teach-Ins represent a bold experiment in higher education’s engagement with systemic change. Combining rich traditions of activism with pragmatic tools for contemporary challenges, these initiatives offer HEI a blueprint for meaningful civic education, collaborative inquiry, and institutional transformation.

As the 2025 wave approaches, universities have a timely opportunity to be centers of both reflection and action in building the next system we all need.

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September 22, 2025
Why Did College Board End Best Admissions Product? (opinion)

Earlier this month, College Board announced its decision to kill Landscape, a race-neutral tool that allowed admissions readers to better understand a student’s context for opportunity. After an awkward 2019 rollout as the “Adversity Score,” Landscape gradually gained traction in many selective admissions offices. Among other items, the dashboard provided information on the applicant’s high school, including the economic makeup of their high school class, participation trends for Advanced Placement courses and the school’s percentile SAT scores, as well as information about the local community.

Landscape was one of the more extensively studied interventions in the world of college admissions, reflecting how providing more information about an applicant’s circumstances can boost the likelihood of a low-income student being admitted. Admissions officers lack high-quality, detailed information on the high school environment for an estimated 25 percent of applicants, a trend that disproportionately disadvantages low-income students. Landscape helped fill that critical gap.

While not every admissions office used it, Landscape was fairly popular within pockets of the admissions community, as it provided a more standardized, consistent way for admissions readers to understand an applicant’s environment. So why did College Board decide to ax it? In its statement on the decision, College Board noted that “federal and state policy continues to evolve around how institutions use demographic and geographic information in admissions.” The statement seems to be referring to the Trump administration’s nonbinding guidance that institutions should not use geographic targeting as a proxy for race in admissions.

If College Board was worried that somehow people were using the tool as a proxy for race (and they weren’t), well, it wasn’t a very good one. In the most comprehensive study of Landscape being used on the ground, researchers found that it didn’t do anything to increase racial/ethnic diversity in admissions. Things are different when it comes to economic diversity. Use of Landscape is linked with a boost in the likelihood of admission for low-income students. As such, it was a helpful tool given the continued underrepresentation of low-income students at selective institutions.

Still, no study to date found that Landscape had any effect on racial/ethnic diversity. The findings are unsurprising. After all, Landscape was, to quote College Board, “intentionally developed without the use or consideration of data on race or ethnicity.” If you look at the laundry list of items included in Landscape, absent are items like the racial/ethnic demographics of the high school, neighborhood or community.

While race and class are correlated, they certainly aren’t interchangeable. Admissions officers weren’t using Landscape as a proxy for race; they were using it to compare a student’s SAT score or AP course load to those of their high school classmates. Ivy League institutions that have gone back to requiring SAT/ACT scores have stressed the importance of evaluating test scores in the student’s high school context. Eliminating Landscape makes it harder to do so.

An important consideration: Even if using Landscape were linked with increased racial/ethnic diversity, its usage would not violate the law. The Supreme Court recently declined to hear the case Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board. In declining to hear the case, the court has likely issued a tacit blessing on race-neutral methods to advance diversity in admissions. The decision leaves the Fourth Circuit opinion, which affirmed the race-neutral admissions policy used to boost diversity at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, intact.

The court also recognized the validity of race-neutral methods to pursue diversity in the 1989 case J.A. Croson v. City of Richmond. In a concurring opinion filed in Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) v. Harvard, Justice Brett Kavanaugh quoted Justice Antonin Scalia’s words from Croson: “And governments and universities still ‘can, of course, act to undo the effects of past discrimination in many permissible ways that do not involve classification by race.’”

College Board’s decision to ditch Landscape sends an incredibly problematic message: that tools to pursue diversity, even economic diversity, aren’t worth defending due to the fear of litigation. If a giant like College Board won’t stand behind its own perfectly legal effort to support diversity, what kind of message does that send? Regardless, colleges and universities need to remember their commitments to diversity, both racial and economic. Yes, post-SFFA, race-conscious admissions has been considerably restricted. Still, despite the bluster of the Trump administration, most tools commonly used to expand access remain legal.

The decision to kill Landscape is incredibly disappointing, both pragmatically and symbolically. It’s a loss for efforts to broaden economic diversity at elite institutions, yet another casualty in the Trump administration’s assault on diversity. Even if the College Board has decided to abandon Landscape, institutions must not forget their obligations to make higher education more accessible to low-income students of all races and ethnicities.

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September 22, 2025
A Better Way to Prepare for Job Interviews (opinion)
One of the things that makes interviews stressful is their unpredictability, which is unfortunately also what makes them so hard to prepare for. In particular, it’s impossible to predict exactly what questions you will be asked. So, how do you get ready?

Scripting out answers for every possible question is a popular strategy but a losing battle. There are too many (maybe infinite?) possible questions and simply not enough time. In the end, you’ll spend all your time writing and you still won’t have answers to most of the questions you might face. And while it might make you feel briefly more confident, that confidence is unlikely to survive the stress and distress of the actual interview. You’ll be rigid rather than flexible, robotic rather than responsive.

This article outlines an interview-preparation strategy that is both easier and more effective than frantic answer scripting, one that will leave you able to answer just about any interview question smoothly.

Step 1: Themes

While you can’t know what questions you will get, you can pretty easily predict many of the topics your interviewers will be curious about. You can be pretty sure that an interviewer will be interested in talking about collaboration, for example, even if you can’t say for sure whether they’ll ask a standard question like “Tell us about a time when you worked with a team to achieve a goal” or something weirder like “What role do you usually play on a team?”

Your first step is to figure out the themes that their questions are most likely to touch on. Luckily, I can offer you a starter pack. Here are five topics that are likely to show up in an interview for just about any job, so it pays to prepare for them no matter what:
1. Communication
2. Collaboration (including conflict!)
3. Time and project management
4. Problem-solving and creativity
5. Failures and setbacks
But you also need to identify themes that are specific to the job or field you are interviewing for. For a research and development scientist position, for example, an interviewer might also be interested in innovation and scientific thinking. For a project or product manager position, they’ll probably want to know about stakeholder management. And so on.

To identify these specific themes, check the job ad. They may have already identified themes for you by categorizing the responsibilities or qualifications, or you can just look for patterns. What topics/ideas/words come up most often in the ad that aren’t already represented in the starter pack? What kinds of skills or experience are they expecting? If you get stuck, try throwing the ad into a word cloud generator and see what it spits out.

Ideally, try to end this step with at least three new themes, in addition to the starter pack.

Step 2: Stories

The strongest interview answers are anchored by a specific story from your experience, which provides a tangible demonstration about how you think and what you can do. But it’s incredibly difficult to come up with a good, relevant example in the heat of an interview, let alone to tell it effectively in a short amount of time. For that, you need some preparation and some practice.

So for each of your themes, identify two to three relevant stories. Stories can be big (a whole project from beginning to end), or they can be small (a single interaction with a student). They can be hugely consequential (a decision you made that changed the course of your career), or they can be minor but meaningful (a small disagreement you handled well). What is most important is that the stories demonstrate your skills, experiences and attitudes clearly and compellingly.

The point is to have a lot of material to work with, so aim for at least 10 stories total, and preferably more. The same story can apply to multiple themes, but try not to let double-dipping limit the number of stories you end up with.

Then, for each of your stories, write an outline that gives just enough context to understand the situation, describes your actions and thinking, and says what happened at the end. Use the STAR method, if it’s useful for keeping your stories tight and focused. Shaping your stories and deciding what to say (and not say) will help your audience see your skills in action with minimal distractions. This is one of the most important parts of your prep, so take your time with it.

Step 3: Approaches

As important as stories are in interviewing, you usually can’t just respond to a question with a story without any framing or explanation. So you’ll want to develop language to describe some of your usual strategies, orientations or approaches to situations that fall into each of the themes. That language will help you easily link each question to one of your stories.

So for each theme, do a little brainstorming to identify your core messaging: “What do I usually do when faced with a situation related to [THEME]?” Then write a few bullet points. (You can also reverse engineer this from the stories: Read the stories linked to a particular theme, then look for patterns in your thinking or behavior.)

These bullet points give you what you need to form connective tissue between the specific question they ask and the story you want to tell. So if they ask, “Tell me about a time when you worked with a team to achieve a goal,” you can respond with a story and close out by describing how that illustrates a particular approach. Or if they ask, “What role do you usually play on a team?” you can start by describing how you think about collaboration and your role in it and then tell a story that illustrates that approach.

Though we are focusing on thematic questions here, make sure to also prepare bullet points for some of the most common general interview questions, like “Why do you want this job?” and “Tell us about yourself.”

Step 4: Bring It All Together

You really, really, really need to practice out loud before your interview. Over the years, I’ve found that many of the graduate students and postdocs I work with spend a lot of time thinking about how they might answer questions and not nearly enough time actually trying to answer them. And so they miss the opportunity to develop the kind of fluency and flexibility that helps one navigate the unpredictable environment of an interview.

Here’s how to use the prep you did in Steps 1-3 to practice:
- First, practice telling each of your 10-plus stories out loud, at least three times each. The goal here is to develop fluency in your storytelling, so you can keep things focused and flowing without needing to think about it.
- Second, for each of the bullet points you created in Step 3, practice explaining it (out loud!) a few times, ideally in a couple of different ways.
- Third, practice bringing it all together by answering some actual interview questions. Find a long list of interview questions (like this one), then pick questions at random to answer. The randomness is important, because the goal is to practice making smooth and effective connections between questions, stories and approaches. You need to figure out what to do when you run into a question that is challenging, unexpected or just confusing.
- And once you’ve done that, do it all again.
In the end, you’ve created a set of building blocks that you can arrange and rearrange as needed in the moment. And it’s a set you can keep adding to with more stories and more themes, keep practicing with new questions, and keep adapting for your next interview.

Derek Attig is assistant dean for career and professional development in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Derek is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium, an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.
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September 22, 2025
Online Course Gives College Students a Foundation on GenAI

As more employers identify uses for generative artificial intelligence in the workplace, colleges are embedding tech skills into the curriculum to best prepare students for their careers.

But identifying how and when to deliver that content has been a challenge, particularly given the varying perspectives different disciplines have on generative AI and when its use should be allowed. A June report from Tyton Partners found that 42 percent of students use generative AI tools at least weekly, and two-thirds of students use a singular generative AI tool like ChatGPT. A survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found that 85 percent of students had used generative AI for coursework in the past year, most often for brainstorming or asking questions.

The University of Mary Washington developed an asynchronous one-credit course to give all students enrolled this fall a baseline foundation of AI knowledge. The optional class, which was offered over the summer at no cost to students, introduced them to AI ethics, tools, copyright concerns and potential career impacts.

The goal is to help students use the tools thoughtfully and intelligently, said Anand Rao, director of Mary Washington’s center for AI and the liberal arts. Initial results show most students learned something from the course, and they want more teaching on how AI applies to their majors and future careers.

How it works: The course, IDIS 300: Introduction to AI, was offered to any new or returning UMW student to be completed any time between June and August. Students who opted in were added to a digital classroom with eight modules, each containing a short video, assigned readings, a discussion board and a quiz assignment. The class was for credit, graded as pass-fail, but didn’t fulfill any general education requirements.

Course content ranged from how to use AI tools and prompt generative AI output to academic integrity, as well as professional development and how to critically evaluate AI responses.

“I thought those were all really important as a starting point, and that still just scratches the surface,” Rao said.

The course is not designed to make everyone an AI user, Rao said, “but I do want them to be able to speak thoughtfully and intelligently about the use of tools, the application of tools and when and how they make decisions in which they’ll be able to use those tools.”

At the end of the course, students submitted a short paper analyzing an AI tool used in their field or discipline—its output, use cases and ways the tool could be improved.

Rao developed most of the content, but he collaborated with campus stakeholders who could provide additional insight, such as the Honor Council, to lay out how AI use is articulated in the honor code.

The impact: In total, the first class enrolled 249 students from a variety of majors and disciplines, or about 6 percent of the university’s total undergrad population. A significant number of the course enrollees were incoming freshmen. Eighty-eight percent of students passed the course, and most had positive feedback on the class content and structure.

In postcourse surveys, 68 percent of participants indicated IDIS 300 should be a mandatory course or highly recommended for all students.

“If you know nothing about AI, then this course is a great place to start,” said one junior, noting that the content builds from the basics to direct career applications.

What’s next: Rao is exploring ways to scale the course in the future, including by developing intermediate or advanced classes or creating discipline-specific offerings. He’s also hoping to recruit additional instructors, because the course had some challenges given its large size, such as conducting meaningful exchanges on the discussion board.

The center will continue to host educational and discussion-based events throughout the year to continue critical conversations regarding generative AI. The first debate, centered on AI and the environment, aims to evaluate whether AI’s impact will be a net positive or negative over the next decade, Rao said.

The university is also considering ways to engage the wider campus community and those outside the institution with basic AI knowledge. IDIS 300 content will be made available to nonstudents this year as a Canvas page. Some teachers in the local school district said they’d like to teach the class as a dual-enrollment course in the future.

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September 22, 2025
Higher Education Inquirer : Maria Ressa

Higher Education Inquirer : Maria Ressa – Fighting Back Against Trump’s Authoritarian Algorithm With Truth (The Daily Show)

Maria Ressa – Fighting Back Against Trump’s Authoritarian Algorithm With Truth (The Daily Show)

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September 20, 2025
Advocates Worry About McNair Scholars Program

Delays in the distribution of federal grants for undergraduates involved with TRIO, a series of college-access programs, combined with an ongoing lawsuit have raised concerns among proponents for the McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program—a TRIO grant designed specifically for those pursuing graduate school.

Legally, grants don’t have to be awarded for either the TRIO undergraduate programs or McNair until the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30. But in most years prior, the Department of Education has notified institutions about the status of awards in late August or mid-September.

That has not been the case so far this year.

Award notifications started to trickle out after Sept. 15 for the undergraduate programs that started Sept. 1, but according to a TRIO advocacy group, most of the college staff members who lead McNair are still waiting to hear from the department, though at least one program got approval Friday.

As with the other TRIO programs, the Education Department says it will issue notices by the end of the month. But with a lawsuit filed last year arguing McNair is discriminatory and President Trump calling to slash TRIO altogether in his recent budget proposal, uncertainty remains rampant.

“All of a sudden, we’re in sort of this panic mode,” one assistant program director said on condition of anonymity, fearing that speaking out could harm the students she serves. “That stress and panic has certainly been building since January, but this definitely accelerated it.”

And while the anonymous director said her program has yet to receive a status update, for some the fear of cancellation has already become a reality.

So far, the Council for Opportunity in Education, a TRIO advocacy group, has tallied 18 grant cancellations out of the more than 200 McNair programs. Collectively, McNair serves more than 6,000 first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students each year.

ED deputy press secretary Ellen Keast said in a statement, “The department plans to issue continuation awards for the McNair Scholars program by the end of the fiscal year,” while also continuing to “evaluate the underlying legal issues raised in litigation.” In an email obtained by Inside Higher Ed, a legislative affairs officer at the department reinforced this statement to a staffer on Capitol Hill, saying that any grantees facing a cancellation would have been notified by Sept. 16.

Still, the director said she is scrambling to devise a backup plan.

“We have less than three weeks to figure out what’s going on, talk to our institutions and make a plan,” she said. “Jobs are going to be lost and students aren’t going to have services.”

‘Unacceptable Delays’

Worries about McNair have existed for months, but they kicked into a higher gear at a COE conference earlier this month.

The program director and COE president Kimberly Jones, both of whom attended the conference, say that Christopher McCaghren, ED’s deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs, spoke about the future of McNair on Sept. 10. And according to both of their recollections, when the secretary was asked if and when grant awards would be allocated, he said the department needed to wait on further rulings from the court before it could administer this year’s awards. (Jones noted that the session was not recorded, at the request of the department.)

Keast said the account of McCaghren’s comments was “unsubstantiated fake news” and reinforced that the department is committed to issuing McNair awards by Sept. 30. She declined, however, to provide a transcript or recording of his remarks.

The lawsuit McCaghren was likely referring to was filed last year by the Young America’s Foundation, a national conservative student group. It alleged the criteria for McNair eligibility was race-based and argued that in order to be constitutional, the program should be open to all students. The case was dismissed by a federal district court, but the plaintiffs have since appealed.

If the government is delaying grant allocation because of the lawsuit, Jones said, it would be an “absolutely unacceptable” practice.

“If the government couldn’t move on something every time they were sued, then they wouldn’t do anything,” she added. “I believe that this is an opportunity they’re taking advantage of to undermine the program and attempt to eliminate it.”

Amanda Fuchs Miller, the Biden administration appointee who previously filled McCaghren’s role, made similar comments.

“Just because there’s pending litigation doesn’t mean that you don’t fund a program that Congress has authorized and appropriated funds for,” she said. “That’s not the role of the executive branch.”

Both Jones and Fuchs Miller pointed to the department’s recent decision to end funding for grant programs that support minority-serving institutions as another reason they are worried about McNair’s future.

The MSI decision stemmed from a similar lawsuit that argued the criteria for Hispanic-serving institutions was illegal. And while no court ruling had been issued, a Justice Department official agreed with the plaintiffs and so did Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who expanded the determination to include similar grant programs.

‘Tapping Into Talent’

Named after Ronald McNair, a first-generation college student and astrophysicist who died during the launch of NASA’s space shuttle Challenger in 1986, the McNair Scholars program started in 1989 and receives about $60 million per year from Congress.

As with other TRIO programs, at least two-thirds of the students served under McNair must be first-generation and low-income. But what has sparked the legal scrutiny of the graduate program is a provision that allows up to one-third of the participating students to be admitted because they are “a member of a group that is underrepresented.”

Proponents for McNair say that this may include characteristics like race or sexuality, but aspects like gender and field of study often play a role as well. In many instances a student will tick all three boxes—first-gen, low-income and underrepresented—at once.

“There’s a perspective that McNair is only for students of color, which it is not,” said Jones. “It particularly looks for a demographic that is not usually sought after in postgraduate education … We’re tapping into talent that we would not have otherwise.”

For example, a white woman from a low-income household who is pursuing a career in STEM could be a prime candidate under the current regulatory statute.

But advocates worry that because of current political tensions, many eligible students of all races could lose access to this critical service.

The program leader who spoke with Inside Higher Ed said that until grant awards are sent out, her rural institution will lack $278,000. As a result, she will likely have to tell 27 students that the classes they have already signed up for, the workshops they were promised and the conferences they planned to attend will not be possible.

“This is the semester that our seniors’ grad applications are due, so to just yank the rug out from underneath them and say, ‘You’re on your own’ in this critical time is just cruel,” she said. “It’s also, in my opinion, a really shortsighted way of the administration understanding national security and participating in the global economy.”

Tara Ruttley, a McNair alumna who studied neuroscience and now works in the space industry, always knew she wanted a Ph.D. but wasn’t sure how to get there before she saw a poster advertising the grant program at Colorado State University. Through McNair she was able to pursue a paid research internship, present her findings at conferences, receive guidance on application essays and then give back to younger students. If funding were to be cut, Ruttley said, other aspiring graduate students won’t be so lucky.

“I’m kind of a scrapper, so I might have figured it out, but it definitely would have been delayed. The entire package wouldn’t have been as strong and it probably would have taken me a lot longer to get to where I was going,” she explained. “There’s a whole generation of scientists we may never see from varied backgrounds across the country.”

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September 19, 2025
What’s Next for Texas A&M?

When Texas A&M University president Mark Welsh resigned amid an academic freedom controversy last week, he became the institution’s second leader to step down due to scandal in two years.

Unlike his predecessor, Kathy Banks, who retired in 2023 after she was caught lying about a hiring scandal, Welsh remained popular on campus; faculty sent the Board of Regents letters of support last week following a controversy that prompted him to fire an instructor, and students rallied on his behalf. But he seemed to lose the support of the deep-red Texas Legislature: Several Republican lawmakers called for his dismissal after a discussion over gender identity between a student and a professor in a children’s literature class was captured on video and quickly went viral.

In the short video, which has racked up more than five million views, a student questions whether an instructor is legally allowed to teach that there is more than one gender, which she suggests is “against our president’s laws.” Welsh initially defended the professor but quickly folded under considerable pressure from lawmakers, firing her and removing two administrators from their duties because they “approved plans to continue teaching course content that was not consistent” with the course’s description, he said in a Sept. 9 statement.

Amid the fallout, the American Association of University Professors and free speech groups accused Texas A&M of stifling academic freedom and bending to conservative political pressure. (Welsh countered that the case wasn’t about academic freedom but “academic responsibility.”)

But the incident also raises questions about what comes next for Texas A&M after legislators accused Welsh—a retired four-star general and former chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force—of spreading “leftist [diversity, equity and inclusion] and transgender indoctrination.”

A Mixed Reaction

Welsh largely skirted the controversy in a statement released Friday, his last day on the job.

“When I was first appointed as President of Texas A&M University, I told then Chancellor John Sharp and our Board of Regents that I would serve as well as I possibly could until it was time for someone else to take over,” he wrote. “Over the past few days, it’s become clear that now is that time.”

He added that serving as president for two years had been “an incredible privilege” and a “remarkable gift” and praised Texas A&M faculty, staff and students in his parting statement. On campus Friday, hundreds of supporters greeted Welsh outside an administrative building, according to social media and local coverage. The Texas A&M Student Government Association encouraged students and others to gather to “express gratitude” for Welsh’s service.

While Welsh’s parting remarks were restrained, state legislators and faculty members have been more passionate—and outraged—as both groups look ahead to the coming presidential search.

Leonard Bright, interim president of the Texas A&M AAUP chapter, told Inside Higher Ed that many faculty members had mixed feelings about Welsh. On the one hand, many professors viewed him as a stable leader who had served the university well since his time as dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service, which he led from 2016 until he was appointed interim president in July 2023, before being given the permanent job later that year.

On the other hand, Welsh’s dismissal of English instructor Melissa McCoul, the professor caught up in the gender ideology flap, raised questions about whether he would protect academic freedom. As Bright sees it, when Welsh’s job was threatened, he failed to stand up for academic freedom.

Bright added that he was somewhat surprised by Welsh’s resignation, arguing that “as horrible” as the president’s recent actions were, he thought they had appeased the conservative critics and that “the board did not want to create further upheaval” given recent turnover at the top.

But ultimately, only Welsh’s resignation would satisfy his fiercest critics.

Brian Harrison, a Republican lawmaker and Texas A&M graduate, noted in posts on X following Welsh’s resignation that he had been calling for the board to fire the president for nine months.

“Proud and honored to be the voice for millions of Texans who are fed up with being taxed out of their homes so their government can weaponize their money against them, their values, and their children by funding DEI and transgender indoctrination,” Harrison wrote on X on Friday.

An LGBTQ+ Crackdown?

Like all institutions in the state, Texas A&M has backed away from DEI as instructed by state law. But Welsh’s removal of McCoul for discussing gender identity in class is part of a broader retreat by Texas A&M from LGBTQ+ topics. That effort dates back to at least 2021, according to one anonymous source who previously told Inside Higher Ed they were discouraged from promoting LGBTQ+ materials in the university library’s collection when Banks was president.

Last year Texas A&M cut its LGBTQ studies minor, alongside other low-enrollment programs, after Harrison led a charge against the program, calling it “liberal indoctrination.”

Both the flagship and the Texas A&M system have also taken aim at drag shows.

Texas A&M defunded an annual student drag show without explanation in 2022. West Texas A&M University president Walter Wendler canceled a student drag show in 2023, claiming it was demeaning to women. Earlier this year, the Texas A&M University system Board of Regents passed a resolution banning drag shows across all 11 campuses, only to get hit with a First Amendment lawsuit; a judge ruled against the system in March on free speech grounds.

(Neither Texas A&M University or system officials responded to a request for comment.)

Texas Hiring Trends

With Welsh out of office, Texas A&M will soon begin a search for its next president. Chancellor Glenn Hegar announced Friday that an interim president will be named shortly, and in the meantime, James Hallmark, vice chancellor for academic affairs, will serve as acting president.

Hegar, who has only been on the job since July, is a former Republican politician, one of several hired to lead a Texas system or university in recent months in what is shaping up to be a trend.

Elsewhere in the state, the Texas Tech University system named Republican lawmaker Brandon Creighton as the sole finalist for the chancellor position. During his time in the Legislature, Creighton championed bills to crack down on DEI, restrict free speech at public institutions by banning expressive activities at night and undercut the power of faculty senates.

The University of Texas at Austin also opted for a politico, hiring as president Jim Davis, former Texas deputy attorney general, who had worked in UT Austin’s legal division since 2018. Davis was promoted to the top job after a stint as interim president, a role he had held since February. Similarly, the UT system tapped former GOP lawmaker John Zerwas as its next chancellor.

Recent hiring trends in Texas are beginning to mirror Florida, which has hired multiple former Republican lawmakers and other political figures with connections to Governor Ron DeSantis.

As Texas A&M prepares to launch its search, faculty are calling for an open process.

“The search should be transparent. It shouldn’t be primarily behind closed doors,” Bright said. “The faculty need to be involved. This is academia—this is about teaching, research and service.”

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September 19, 2025
Education Dept. Subjects Harvard to More Financial Oversight

Harvard had a financial responsibility score of 2.8, well over the passing 1.5 required by the Education Department, in fiscal year 2023.

John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

The Education Department announced Friday that it placed Harvard University on heightened cash monitoring, a designation that allows greater federal oversight of institutional finances and is typically reserved for colleges in dire financial straits.

By all accounts, Harvard, with its $53 billion endowment, is not.

“It’s harassment,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education. “Harvard has the money, yes, but it is adding a headache. It’s adding staff. It’s interfering with students’ ability to access federal financial aid … The government’s making it harder for Harvard to support low-income students, which speaks to exactly what the administration’s goals are here—they’re not to help students, they’re not to improve education, they’re not even to address what they see as concerns at Harvard—they’re just to attack Harvard.”

Institutions placed on heightened cash monitoring are asked to put up a letter of credit that serves as collateral for the Education Department if the institution closes, or to award federal financial aid from their own coffers before being reimbursed by the department, explained Robert Kelchen, head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Harvard has been asked to do both.

According to a Friday news release from the Education Department, Harvard must put up a $36 million irrevocable letter of credit or “provide other financial protection that is acceptable to the Department,” department officials wrote.

“Students will continue to have access to federal funding, but Harvard will be required to cover the initial disbursements as a guardrail to ensure Harvard is spending taxpayer funds responsibly,” officials wrote.

The federal government froze $2.7 billion in federal grants for Harvard after the university rejected its sweeping demands in April. Harvard sued, and a judge ruled earlier this month that the freeze was illegal. The university has reportedly received some of the frozen funds, but the Trump administration says it’s still hoping to cut a deal with Harvard.

The release says three events triggered Harvard’s heightened cash monitoring designation: a determination by the Department of Health and Human Services that Harvard violated Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by allegedly allowing antisemitism on campus, accusations that the university isn’t complying with an ongoing investigation by the Office for Civil Rights, and the $1 billion in bonds Harvard has issued to make up for pulled federal funding. Harvard did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment Friday.

“Today’s actions follow Harvard’s own admission that there are material concerns about its financial health. As a result, Harvard must now seek reimbursement after distributing federal student aid and post financial protection so that the Department can ensure taxpayer funds are not at risk,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “While Harvard remains eligible to participate in the federal student aid program for now, these actions are necessary to protect taxpayers.”

The department also pointed to layoffs at Harvard and a hiring freeze instituted in the spring. Several other wealthy colleges have frozen hiring and shed staff this year, in part because of the administration’s actions related to federal funding. A few other universities have either issued bonds or taken out loans to get immediate cash. But so far, the department has made no public mention about putting those colleges on heightened cash monitoring.

As of June 1, 538 colleges and universities were on heightened cash monitoring, federal data showed. About one-third of those colleges are private nonprofits, while about 42 percent are for-profit institutions. Most of the institutions—464 of them—are based in the U.S.

Many on the list are private institutions that have low financial responsibility composite scores, Kelchen said. This test assigns institutions a score between -1.0 and 3.0 based on the institution’s primary reserve ratio, equity ratio and net income ratio. To be considered financially responsible, an institution must score at least a 1.5, which Harvard does.

During fiscal year 2023, the latest for which data is publicly available, Harvard’s financial responsibility composite score was 2.8. Harvard’s estimated primary reserve ratio in fiscal year 2023 was 7.6, meaning that the university could operate for about seven and a half years by spending only its existing assets. By comparison, Hampshire College, another private, nonprofit college placed on heightened cash monitoring with a financial responsibility composite score of 0.6, had an estimated primary reserve ratio of 0.3, meaning it could continue operations for about four months before running out of expendable assets. Drew University, another institution on heightened cash monitoring and also with a financial responsibility composite score of 0.6, has a primary reserve ratio of -1.06.

But beyond the financial responsibility score, there are plenty of reasons an institution can end up on heightened cash monitoring. Some institutions, including Hampshire and Arkansas Baptist College, were put on the list due to a late or missing compliance audit. Others have been put on the list while the department reviews their programs, or because their accreditation was revoked. But, “the department can also just specify that an institution is not financially responsible,” Kelchen said.

The political motivation behind the move is clear, Fansmith said.

“To the extent that there is a problem—and to be clear, there are real problems—it’s not Harvard’s ability to pay their bills or meet their obligations. That’s a problem this administration has created,” he said. “They caused a situation, and then they are blaming Harvard for taking reasonable steps to address that situation. It’s also ironic when they send letters to Harvard using terms like ‘enormous’ and ‘massive’ and ‘colossal’ to describe Harvard’s endowment, and now they’re suddenly determining that they’re worried that Harvard is at financial risk … It is absolutely Orwellian.”

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September 19, 2025