Tag: Higher

The Experts in My Neighborhood – Teaching in Higher Ed
This post is one of many, related to my participation in Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery workshop.

The topic of how expertise is no longer valued today is often discussed. I realize that I am walking through well-trodden pathways, as I bring it up in these reflections on experts today. In The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, Tom Nichols writes:

These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had access to so much knowledge, and yet been so resistant to learning anything.

In today’s post, I want to think less about the societal and educational concerns I have about the death of expertise and more about how I might continue to attempt to inculcate habits that can keep me from dying that same death, myself. Part of that practice involves finding and curating many experts to help shape my thinking, over time.

PKM Roles from Harold Jarche

For this topic, Jarche invites us to use a map of personal knowledge mastery (PKM) roles to determine where we currently reside and where we would like to go, in terms of our PKM practice. He offers this graphic as part of his Finding Perpetual Beta book:

On the Y axis, we can sort ourselves into doing high or low amounts of sharing. As I wrote previously, my likelihood of sharing is in direct relation to the topic I’m exploring. However, as Jarche recommended social bookmarking as one way of sharing, perhaps I was selling myself short when I categorized myself as not likely to share anything overly controversial. I have over 35 thousand digital bookmarks on Raindrop.io and add around 10-20 daily. However, I’m more likely to be categorized as highly visible sharing in terms of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast and the topics I write about on the Teaching in Higher Ed blog.

On the X axis, our activities are plotted on a continuum more toward high or low sense-making. A prior workshop participant of Jarche’s wrote:

We must make SENSE of everything we find, and that includes prioritising–recognising what is useful now, what will be useful later, and what may not be useful.

Given my propensity for saving gazillions of bookmarks and carefully tagging them for future use, combined with my streak of weekly podcast episodes airing since June of 2014, when it comes to teaching and learning, I’m doing a lot of sense-making on the regular.

These are the (NEW) Experts in My Neighborhood

Taking inspiration from Sesame Street’s People in Your Neighborhood and from Jarche’s activity related to experts, I offer the following notes on experts. When I searched for people within teaching and learning on Mastodon, I found that I was already following a lot of them. I decided to then look at who people I already follow are following:
- Ethan Zuckerman – UMass Amherst, Global Voices, Berkman Klein Center. Formerly MIT Media Lab, Geekcorps, Tripod.com
- Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D. – Professor, researcher, writer, teacher. I care about content moderation, digital labor, the state of the world. I like animals and synthesizers and games. On the internet since 1993. Mac user since they came out. I like old computers and OSes. I love cooking. Siouxsie is my queen.
  
  I was intrigued by her having written a content moderation book called Behind the Screen. I know enough about content moderation to know that I know pretty much nothing about content moderation.
  
  She hasn’t posted in a long while, so I’m not sure how much I’ll regularly have ongoing opportunities to see what she’s currently exploring or otherwise working on
Other Things I Noticed

As I was exploring who people I follow are connected with on Mastodon, I noticed that you can have multiple pinned posts, unlike other social media I’ve used. Many people have an introduction post pinned to the top of their posts, yet also have other things they want to have front and center. One big advantage to Bluesky to me has been the prevalence of starter packs. The main Mastodon account mentioned an upcoming feature involving “packs” around twenty days ago, but said that they’re not sure what they’ll call the feature.

Sometimes, scrolling through social media can be depressing. I decided that the next time I’m getting down on Mastodon, I should just check out what’s happening on the compostodon hashtag. It may be the most hopeful hashtag ever.

The Biggest Delight From the Experience

Another person who was new to me as an expert on Mastodon was JA Westenberg. According to JA Westenberg’s bio, Joan is a tech writer, angel investor, CMO, Founder. A succinct goal is also included on the about page of JoanWestenberg.com:

My goal: to think in public.

As I was winding down my time doing some sensemaking related to experts, I came across a video from Westenberg that was eerily similar to what Jarche has been stressing about us making PKM a practice. I can’t retrace my steps for how I came across Joan’s video on Mastodon, but a video thumbnail quickly caught my eye. Why You Should Write Every Day (Even if You’re Not a Writer) captured my imagination immediately, as I started watching. In addition to the video, there’s a written article of the same title posted, as well.

As I continue to pursue learning through the PKM workshop, I’m blogging more frequently than I may ever have (at least in the last decade for sure). Reading through Joan’s reactions to the excuses we make when we don’t commit to writing resonate hard. We think we don’t have time. How about realizing we’re not writing War and Peace, Joan teases, gently. Too many of us get the stinking thinking that we don’t have anything good to say or that this comes naturally to people who are more talented and articulate than we are. Joan writes:

Writing every day is less about becoming someone who writes, and more about becoming someone who thinks.

Before I conclude this post, I want to be sure to stress the importance I’m gleaning of not thinking of individual experts as the way to practice PKM. Rather, it is through engaging with a community of experts that we will experience the deepest learning. A.J. Jacobs stresses that we should heed his advice:

Thou shalt pay heed to experts (plural) but be skeptical of any one expert (singular)

By cultivating many experts whose potential disagreements may help us cultivate a more nuanced perspective on complex topics. When we seek to learn in the complex domain, the importance of intentionality, intellectual humility, and curiosity becomes even more crucial. Having access to a network of experts helps us navigate complexity more effectively.
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October 31, 2025
Higher education postcard: Totley Hall Training College

Back in 1943 the UK government knew that more school teachers would be needed. The school leaving age was to be raised: this and other planned changes meant that 70,000 extra teachers would be needed over the coming years. The teacher training colleges then in place trained 7,000 a year, so there was a problem.

The solution? Emergency Training Colleges. A compressed curriculum was piloted at Goldsmiths College, and in five years about 50 such colleges produced about 35,000 teachers. But it was a short-term scheme, and many of the colleges were wound up after 1950 or 1951.

Nevertheless, there continued to be a need to grow base capacity to train teachers. The emergency colleges had dealt with the immediate shortfall, but with more children attending schools every year, there was still work to be done. Some of the emergency colleges became regular training colleges, and some local authorities established new colleges of their own. And this is where Totley Hall enters the stage.

Not shown on the card is Totley Hall, built in 1623 and in 1949 passed to Sheffield Council. This was to be the heart of a new training college – the Totley Hall Training College of Housecraft. Its mission: training domestic science teachers.

There’s a wonderful account of the college’s foundation and development, written by Anna Baldry, who was one of the first lecturers at the college. It’s well worth a read. Highlights include her nerves at interview; problems with electricity blackouts; HMI inspections; the admission of men; its opening by Violet Attlee; and some lovely photographs.

More prosaically, the college had by 1963 become the plain Totley Hall Training College, focusing on training primary teachers. In 1967 men were admitted; in 1969 the best students could continue to study for a fourth year to gain a Bachelor of Education (BEd) degree from the University of Sheffield, rather than the Certificate in Education. And in 1972 – there being simultaneous vacancies in the principalships – Totley Hall Training College and the nearby Thornbridge Hall Training College were merged, to form the Totley/Thornbridge College of Education.

In 1976 the College became part of Sheffield Polytechnic, which was renamed Sheffield City Polytechnic – and this in turn became Sheffield Hallam University in 1992, and I’ve written about it here.

Here’s a jigsaw of the card.

The card was posted, but I can’t read the postmark, so don’t know when. The 3p stamp shows it was after decimalisation. If it was in 1971 or 1972 it was sent first class; if it was 1973 it was sent second class. Those are the only options for that stamp.

An engagement? A wedding? A pools win? A baby? What do we think?

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October 31, 2025
More College Leaders Speak Out Against Trump’s Compact

More universities are signaling opposition to the Trump administration’s compact for higher education, which would require institutions to make changes to their policies and practices in order to receive an unspecified edge in grant funding.

In comments to faculty groups and student journalists, a handful of university leaders have made clear that they won’t sign on to the compact in its current form. But those comments don’t amount to a formal rejection of the agreement, several university spokespeople told Inside Higher Ed. Each said that because their institution hasn’t been formally asked to sign, they haven’t officially considered the administration’s proposal.

For instance, at Miami University in Ohio, Provost Chris Makaroff told the University Senate that “right now, there is no appetite to even consider joining it,” according to the Miami Student.

“The administration is totally against it in every way possible, and probably the only way that it would possibly go through is if somehow or another, they threaten to cut off all funding to the university,” Makaroff added.

When asked about those comments and whether that constituted a rejection, Seth Bauguess, the university’s senior director of communications, noted that Miami wasn’t part of the first group of universities asked to sign, so “therefore we have not formally considered it.”

When the administration initially invited nine universities to give feedback on the document, Trump officials sent each institution a signed cover letter and a copy of the agreement. Another three universities were invited to an Oct. 17 White House meeting to discuss the compact.

Beyond those overtures, President Donald Trump wrote on social media platform he owns, Truth Social, that universities that prefer to “return to the pursuit of Truth and Achievement” are “invited to enter into a forward looking Agreement with the Federal Government to help bring about the Golden Age of Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told media outlets that the post was an invitation to all colleges to sign on to the compact.

So far, nearly a dozen universities have publicly rejected the deal, and White House officials are reportedly planning to update the document in response to the feedback from universities. Only New College of Florida has said that it’s ready to sign, though it hasn’t yet been formally asked. The White House hasn’t said how interested universities can join, but officials have threatened the federal funding of institutions that don’t sign the compact.

Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, said the mixed messages from universities likely stem from “the general confusion around how the administration is handling this.”

“Even the statement by New College raises the question of how would anyone actually sign up if they wanted to?” he said, adding that the compact’s terms don’t appear to be final and there’s no form or website where colleges and universities can go to sign it.

Fansmith said he’s not surprised that some campus leaders are seeking to make their concerns clear while not definitively turning down something they haven’t been offered.

“Why pick an unnecessary fight?” he said.

The growing cohort of presidents and leaders speaking out about the compact includes Arizona State University president Michael Crow, who told the State Press on Oct. 24 that the compact is no “longer a viable thing” and that he’s “been trying to guide people in a different direction.”

Crow was invited to the Oct. 17 White House meeting to discuss the compact, which also included representatives from Dartmouth College, the University of Arizona, the University of Kansas, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis. After that meeting, an ASU spokesperson said the university was engaging in dialogue with Trump’s team.

After the State Press published its interview with Crow, Inside Higher Ed followed up to see if “no longer a viable thing” meant “no.”

“It’s important to note that ASU has not been asked to sign the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” an ASU spokesperson responded. “So we can’t be ‘reviewing’ or ‘negotiating’ or ‘weighing’ it. ASU has long been a voice for change in higher education, something the university has been pushing for more than 20 years. If the administration looks for new and innovative approaches to serve the needs of the country, ASU is likely one to be consulted. President Crow is happy to share his vision for the future of higher education with anyone, if asked, whether they’re students, parents, alums, members of the public, or the administration.”

But some universities, including Emory and Syracuse, have chosen to reject the compact before receiving a formal ask. And on Thursday, University of Kansas provost Barbara Bichelmeyer told The Kansan, “Fundamentally, there’s no way, with the compact as it is written and sent out to other institutions, that KU could sign that.”

Bichelmeyer also noted that KU wasn’t asked to sign the compact.

Brendan Cantwell, a higher education professor at Michigan State University, said there’s no reason for colleges to say no at this moment.

“The basic tenet of college administration is don’t make a decision until you have to,” he said. “No one is forcing their hand right now … and they don’t want to antagonize the administration, particular donors or state officials. If I wasn’t explicitly invited, I wouldn’t explicitly decline to participate.”

Cantwell added that the president’s social media post and other communications from Trump officials have created a lot of ambiguity, and institutions are using that to their advantage.

“What the president has said, by saying that anyone can apply, but not specifically inviting anyone beyond the 12, has created an opportunity for campuses to message ‘no’ to students and ‘not yes’ to everyone else,” he said.

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October 30, 2025
4 Weeks Into Shutdown, Colleges, Students Running Out of Options

The government has been shut down for a month and Congress remains locked in a stalemate. Students are going hungry, veterans have been deserted and vital research has been left in the lurch. The longer the shutdown drags on, the more harm it will do to higher education.

Most urgently, the USDA will not use emergency funds to help cover the costs of the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program. More than a million college students who rely on SNAP for their basic needs won’t have that support starting Saturday. Mark Huelsman, the director of policy and advocacy at the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, said the situation will force students and colleges into “an impossible situation” and could lead to many students dropping out.

The crisis extends beyond food insecurity into student support programs, with the shutdown throwing veterans’ education into limbo. Nobody is answering the GI Bill hotline that thousands of veterans use each month to get information on tuition, eligibility and housing allowances. Staff at Veterans Affairs regional offices are furloughed, putting an end to career counseling and delaying GI Bill claims.

As direct services to students falter, colleges are moving into mitigation mode. Gap funds, meant to serve institutions in these circumstances, are dwindling. Inside Higher Ed reported last week that institutions are limiting travel, research and job offers in order to preserve cash while hundreds of millions in research funds are on pause. A training program funded by a grant from the Labor Department is on hold because a federal program officer isn’t at work to approve the next tranche of cash.

Ironically, part of Democrats’ resistance to reopening the government is serving to protect higher ed funding. Democrats are trying to prevent Republicans from clawing back approved funding through the rescissions process, like they did this summer with grants to public broadcasting and USAID. The risk to education funds that don’t align with the White House’s priorities is real. In a potentially illegal move of impoundment, the Department of Education has canceled or rejected funding for at least 100 TRIO programs affecting more than 43,000 disadvantaged students. Last month it reallocated $132 million in funds away from minority-serving institutions to historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration—never one to let a good crisis go to waste—is using the shutdown to further gut the Education Department. Most of the department has been furloughed, and 10 days into the shutdown the administration fired nearly 500 more Education Department staff. A federal judge indefinitely blocked the layoffs this week, but the administration will likely challenge the ruling. If the cuts happen, the department will have fewer than half the employees it started with in January. The offices that handle civil rights complaints, TRIO funding and special education will be decimated.

The staff cuts set the stage for Education Secretary Linda McMahon to reiterate her plans to shutter the department. In a post on X two weeks into the shutdown, she said the fact that millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid and schools are operating as normal during the shutdown “confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary, and we should return education to the states.”

“The Department has taken additional steps to better reach American students and families and root out the education bureaucracy that has burdened states and educators with unnecessary oversight,” she added.

Policy experts predict the shutdown will end around mid-November, when enough people feel the pain of not getting a paycheck and start to complain to their senators and representatives. But colleges won’t pick up where they left off. A significant pause in funding derails education journeys for disadvantaged students and throttles valuable scientific research. Subject matter expertise and human resources will be lost through Education Department staffing cuts. Already on the defense after nearly a year of attacks on DEI, academic freedom and research funding by the administration, higher ed will struggle to recover from yet another blow.

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October 30, 2025
The Future of the New England Transfer Guarantee

How does an initiative achieve sustainability beyond the life cycle of the grants that funded its implementation? This is the question that the transfer initiatives team at the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) set out to answer earlier this month during a convening of higher education leaders from across the New England region.

Background

First launched in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 2021 and scaled to Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont in 2024, the New England Transfer Guarantee is NEBHE’s landmark transfer initiative. Associate degree–holding community college graduates can transfer seamlessly to participating four-year schools in the same state with guaranteed admission, provided they meet a minimum GPA set by the receiving institution. There are no application fees or essay requirements for students transferring through this program. As of October 2025, there are 53 participating four-year institutions across all six New England states.

Planning and implementation of this initiative in the six states mentioned above has been made possible through funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Davis Educational Foundation, the Lloyd G. Balfour Foundation and the Teagle Foundation.

As was highlighted in a previous column and further contextualized in the longer-form “Third Annual Guarantee Enrollment Report,” students who have transferred through this initiative are performing well above the minimum GPA requirements receiving institutions set for their admission.

Beyond that, guarantee students are retained at their transfer destination at an impressive rate of 94 percent. Analyzing this annual data has also revealed that many of the students that transfer through this initiative are from traditionally underserved backgrounds, with over 47 percent of students who have enrolled through the initiative being Pell Grant recipients.

The Future of the New England Transfer Guarantee

With the grant-funded phase of this work coming to an end in December 2025 (March 2026 for the grant from the Balfour Foundation), the time is ripe for creating a plan to sustain the guarantee for future generations of students. NEBHE gathered state higher education system leaders from across all six New England states for a hybrid meeting at the Eagle Mountain House in Jackson, N.H.

Those who attended included individuals who lead public two- and four-year systems but also those who represent four-year independent colleges. The meeting was focused on determining NEBHE’s ongoing role in administering the guarantee beyond the life of the grant, and attendees discussed what kind of coalition-based governance structure would assure that the program adapted to future trends in the higher education landscape in a way that preserved its longevity for future generations of students.

Attendees described how the initiative has improved transfer pathways and simplified the transfer landscape for students in their respective states. “I just want to say how much we appreciate it,” Nate Mackinnon, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of Community Colleges, told the group. “From the community college perspective, we’re constantly interested in making sure our students lose as few credits as possible on their pathway.”

Other participants suggested incorporating artificial intelligence and credit for prior learning into the structure of the guarantee and offered examples of successful implementations of these ideas at their institutions.

Next, the meeting’s facilitator engaged participants in a conversation regarding the roles required to sustain the initiative in the long term. In addition to collecting and analyzing student-level enrollment data on an annual basis, NEBHE has committed to continue to publish the annual enrollment report for the New England Transfer Guarantee.

NEBHE will also continue to solicit any updates to the eligible programs that each four-year institution opens to guarantee students. Attendees recommended that NEBHE should engage the webmasters to whom they send such updates each year—to see what will be required for them to continue to keep these student portals up-to-date with information that community college students need to evaluate their transfer choices through the guarantee.

Attendees also expressed an interest in NEBHE’s continued involvement in promoting the initiative to community college transfer advisers on a regular basis by integrating the guarantee into existing statewide meetings and events that focus on transfer. Additionally, attendees saw potential in partnering with third-party student success organizations to reach students and ensure that they are aware of all the options available to them when it comes to earning a baccalaureate credential.

Next Steps

While the convening succeeded in outlining system-level stakeholder priorities, there are still details that must be ironed out. Given each state’s unique higher education landscape, a one-size-fits-all model for community college transfer adviser engagement would be ineffective, highlighting the need for more nuanced state-by-state plans. Outreach to student success organizations to explore opportunities for collaboration is another option that the transfer initiatives team at NEBHE must fully explore in the coming months.

There are questions that remain unanswered for the time being; however, this meeting affirmed that the region’s higher education leaders are committed to ensuring that the guarantee can continue to serve students for years to come.

Rob Johnston is the senior program coordinator for transfer initiatives at the New England Board of Higher Education.

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October 30, 2025
Loan Forgiveness Becomes Tool for Authoritarianism (opinion)

By now, it’s obvious that the Trump administration’s efforts to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities go far beyond enforcing federal immigration policy. The near-daily stories of inhumane detainment conditions, open violence against citizens and noncitizens alike, wanton civil rights violations, and purposeful shielding of these abuses from any form of public accountability lay bare that President Trump is now using ICE as a key component for advancing his administration’s hateful agenda.

This context is essential to evaluate why the administration has sung such a different tune with the advertised $60,000 student loan forgiveness offers to new ICE recruits, compared to the normal song and dance about how higher education is evil incarnate. Trump and his political allies didn’t suddenly discover the societal benefits of affordable education, as evidenced by his simultaneous efforts to strip loan forgiveness pathways from those who are deemed obstructors to Trump’s political goals. What’s clear is that federal student loan forgiveness is now a poverty draft, coercing increased ICE and military enlistment from among those experiencing economic desperation.

Weaponizing educational debt to fuel armed forces conscription from lower-income individuals is essentially socioeconomic hostage taking. It deprives people of their agency in choosing whether conscription is truly the career and life pathway they desire by forcing the decision as a survival tactic, especially when nearly half the country is approaching an economic recession deliberately caused by Trump’s policies.

A History of Weaponizing College Affordability

The easiest way for an authoritarian regime to maintain a highly militarized state is to make enlistment the only means of socioeconomic survival for the masses. This is exactly why the Trump administration is promoting student loan forgiveness for ICE recruits while curtailing eligibility for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. By passing the reconciliation bill that nearly tripled ICE’s budget while restricting Pell Grant eligibility for some students and cutting back basic needs programs like food stamps and Medicaid, congressional leaders have identified themselves as active participants in this strategy.

Though Trump’s tactics are an unprecedentedly naked attempt to weaponize student loan relief in the service of authoritarianism, this is a foundational concept in federal higher education policy that he’s taking the opportunity to exploit. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, the first federal educational assistance program for veterans, and most follow-up educational assistance programs were more focused on rewarding military service in already-declared conflicts than using benefits as a recruitment draw.

That shift came with the larger 1960s push to align higher education with the Cold War. California’s Master Plan of 1960 provided an opening for later attacks on college affordability, because it codified into public policy the idea that some types of institutions were worth attending more than others, mainly by segregating various types of educational experiences offered by different institutions. Later in the decade, then–California governor Ronald Reagan slashed public university budgets, in this way punishing students for antiwar protests. Reagan’s camouflaging of draconian education funding cuts as a necessary tool to combat the “filthy speech movement” became the groundwork for today’s deep inequality across all levels of the educational system.

Over the next several decades, federal and state policymakers abandoned their responsibilities to fund public higher education, which has strengthened the ties between college (un)affordability and militarization. In 2022, 20 Republican House members—14 of whom are still in office—wrote a joint letter to then-president Biden expressing concern that his efforts to provide widespread student loan forgiveness would harm the ability of the military to use higher educational benefits as a recruitment tool.

Last fall, 48 percent of 16- to 21-year-olds surveyed by the Department of Defense identified “to pay for future education” as a main reason they would consider joining the armed forces. This was the second-most common reason expressed in the survey, behind only “pay/money.”

Student Loan Forgiveness Is Not Siloed Public Policy

Public policy is rarely siloed into neat categories, and we are now experiencing the widespread consequences of allowing an inequitable and unaffordable higher education system to exist for so long in the United States. Trump isn’t the only federal policymaker endorsing this strategy, but he is the primary beneficiary. The more people willing to join ICE’s march toward martial law or forced to join ICE due to socioeconomic necessity, the easier it is for Trump to fully embrace authoritarianism and stay in power past January 2029.

This is the framing that should be used in every policy conversation about student loan forgiveness moving forward, not just for the offers given to new ICE recruits. These actions are not distinct or separate from the administration’s federalizing of the National Guard, ICE’s vast increase in weapons spending or Trump’s public consideration of invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy more troops to U.S. cities; they’re a vital complement. Ransoming access to an affordable higher education, along with its associated socioeconomic benefits, based on how willing someone is to inflict terror on immigrant communities or any other population that the administration deems undesirable, is a deliberate tactic to build an authoritarian military state.

Ideally, the current scenario facing higher education will end the usual hemming and hawing from policymakers about universal student loan forgiveness or tuition-free higher education being too expensive. Are the cost savings from not offering widespread forgiveness truly worth militarizing the country against the estimated 51.9 million immigrants living in the U.S., including more than 1.9 million immigrant and undocumented higher education students? Is appeasing Trump’s desire to play dictator dress-up so vital that policymakers feel compelled to willingly eradicate recent progress in national college affordability, discourage or outright bar international students from coming to learn in the United States, and shrink the economies of every state and congressional district due to the loss of international students?

State Legislatures Are the Last Line of Defense

The Trump administration is desperate to expand domestic militarization through ICE, as evidenced by advertisements on popular media streaming services and during nationally televised football games, public commitments to keep paying ICE agents as roughly 1.4 million federal workers go without pay during the government shutdown and the elimination or loosening of recruitment and training requirements for new ICE agents in relation to their age, physical fitness and ability to speak Spanish. As the Trump administration through ICE utilizes every available tool to further its authoritarian agenda, policymakers and institutions must use every available tool to combat said authoritarianism.

State legislatures wield vast amounts of legal authority over education policy in comparison to the federal government. However, that authority is useless if states capitulate or are otherwise unwilling to use that authority to protect their education systems and their larger communities.

Efforts like Connecticut’s new statewide student debt forgiveness program, California’s prohibition on campus police departments providing personal student information for immigration enforcement purposes and Colorado’s adoption of a new state law requiring public campuses to limit federal agents’ access to campus buildings are all welcome ways that state policymakers can fight back against ICE.

These efforts must be expanded to more states as ICE continues to ramp up its domestic terrorism and congressional leadership remains content to abandon its constitutional responsibilities to hold the executive branch in check. For institutions, advocates and concerned community members, resources available through the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration and its Higher Ed Immigration Portal, and from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, provide essential guidance on how to act in protecting immigrants and their families.

Student loan forgiveness, and the larger concept of an affordable and equitable higher education, could now be a matter of life and death for millions of people. The traditional willingness of policymakers to resist supporting higher education during times of economic surplus, while eagerly cutting educational funding at the first sign of economic distress, has now imperiled American democracy. Every image of ICE committing authoritarian violence is a stark call for policymakers to ask themselves what they value more: the fiscal savings of making no meaningful effort to address the more than $1.6 trillion owed in student debt, or American democracy itself.

Christian Collins is a policy analyst with the education, labor and worker justice team at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit organization focused on reducing poverty and advancing racial equity.

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October 30, 2025
Europeans Fear Trump-Style Attacks on Higher Ed Will Spread

The attacks on universities by the Trump administration have proven that higher education has “enemies” among authoritarian populist leaders and left other sectors wondering when they will be next, European leaders warn.

Michael Ignatieff, who was rector of the Central European University between 2016 and 2021, when the institution was expelled from Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, said the Hungarian prime minister had provided enormous inspiration to politicians around the world.

Speaking at the Going Global conference, Ignatieff, also a former opposition leader in Canada, said Orbán was “the master” who had learned that controlling the universities that recruit and train elites means they can eventually control the political system.

“Authoritarian populists have grasped the crucial strategic importance of universities … [which] gives them the possibility of ideological control of a society as a whole.”

As Trump continues to put pressure on U.S. universities, Ignatieff, now professor of historical studies at the CEU, which has relocated to Austria, likened higher education to sitting on a mountaintop “watching a storm forming on the horizon” over a nearby village.

“That village has been hit by lightning and thunder and storm, and our question now is how long will it be before that storm hits us?”

“We’re in a political battle. We cannot assume that the higher education sector in any of our countries is secure going forward. If the higher education sector can be attacked in the United States, let me tell you folks, it can be attacked anywhere,” he added.

“This sector has enemies. The American experience has shattered my confidence that the sector that I’ve spent my entire life in is safe.”

Speaking at the British Council event in London, Ignatieff said the “renationalization” of one of the most outward-looking educational systems in the world had put international education under threat for the first time in his lifetime.

He warned that European universities were also at risk because of how reliant they are on the state for research funding—allowing authoritarian governments to use funding against them to shut down academic freedom.

“I worry going forward that an authoritarian political regime could come to power … and begin to look at the way in which cutting off state funding or using the threat of cutting off state funding becomes an instrument to secure control of the higher education sector.”

Another weakness of the European sector is the lack of statutory protection for academic freedom, which makes universities vulnerable, he added, as do rising tuition fees in many countries.

“The increasing costs of higher education are weakening domestic popular political support for higher education,” he said. “It becomes easier and easier for populist politicians to attack higher education as a kind of elite luxury that the taxpayer pays for.”

Speaking at the same session, Maddalaine Ansell, director of education at the British Council, said the values that underpin higher education are coming under threat because of populism and polarization.

“In some places, academic freedom is challenged from without and highly polarized views amongst students and staff can affect robust debate within institutions,” she said.

“As nations focus on domestic issues, it can be harder to win arguments that internationalization of higher education deserves government support through regulatory support, including an enabling visa system and funding for international collaboration.”

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October 30, 2025
Blexit Escorted Off Hampton University Campus

Campus security at Hampton University escorted members of Blexit off the historically Black university’s campus this past weekend after the Black conservative group tried to join homecoming festivities as part of its “Educate to Liberate” HBCU tour. The group claims it was silenced by the university. Hampton leaders say Blexit didn’t follow proper protocols for visiting the campus.

Blexit, which is affiliated with the Charlie Kirk–founded Turning Point USA, planned to visit 10 HBCUs during homecoming events with the goal of “bringing conservative values to life, fostering critical thinking, and sparking powerful conversations on HBCU campuses,” according to Blexit’s website. The group also made stops at Howard University and other campuses, though it canceled a visit to Florida A&M University, promising to announce a new date.

Craig Long, a Blexit member, claimed on Instagram that Hampton University shut down the group’s dialogue with students.

“Instead of celebrating that spirit of open discussion, the university shut it down—claiming we ‘didn’t go through the proper channels,’” Long wrote. “Let’s be honest: this wasn’t about paperwork. It was about politics. We were silenced because we are Blexit—because we stand for Christian values, conservative principles, and independent thought that challenge the mainstream narrative.”

Hampton University leaders pushed back on Long’s description of the incident. They wrote in a statement that Blexit didn’t complete the application to participate in homecoming as a vendor or pay the associated fees. Out of 36 vendor applications submitted, the university approved 18, and Blexit “was among those that did not meet the stated requirements,” according to the statement. Those vendors were notified the week before the event that they would not be allowed on campus. University leaders framed the procedures as a “matter of public safety” to know who’s on campus, with nearly 15,000 people visiting for homecoming.

“Hampton University welcomes organizations and speakers representing a variety of perspectives, provided they follow established protocols,” the statement read. “BLEXIT failed to meet those standards.”

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October 30, 2025
Accreditors Start to Endorse Short-Term Credential Providers

Major accreditors are following through on their plans to bring new quality checks to the short-term credentialing landscape.

After years of preparation, the Higher Learning Commission is launching a new process to evaluate and endorse short-term credential providers this week, according to a Tuesday announcement from the HLC. The accreditor will be accepting applications for its first cohort of endorsed providers through Jan. 23.

Higher Learning Commission president Barbara Gellman-Danley said in the announcement that HLC’s goal is “to expand the nation’s pool of valuable, HLC endorsed providers, thereby increasing pathways for students to gain the qualifications they need to get ahead and succeed.”

The New England Commission of Higher Education also announced its inaugural cohort of eight recognized noncredit program providers last week, including higher ed institutions and external organizations.

“We know that there are increasing numbers of students enrolled in non-credit programs,” Michaele Whelan, chairperson of NECHE, said in a news release. “There has also been a growing need for quality assurance in this space. NECHE has taken the bold step to address this need and we are excited to expand our work into this area.”

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October 30, 2025
How One Big Beautiful Bill Act Threatens Student Success

Nearly 60 percent of all college students in the U.S. experience at least one form of basic needs insecurity, lacking stable housing and/or consistent access to food, according to national surveys.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Congress passed in July, creates sweeping changes to higher education—including a new tax rate for university endowments and accountability metrics for student income levels after graduation. It also directly impacts college students, threatening their access to food assistance programs and their ability to pay for college, which experts warn could hamper their persistence and completion.

Policy and higher education leaders convened during an Oct. 28 webinar hosted by the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs at Temple University to discuss how the new legislation threatens student financial wellness and success.

“We are very, very worried that student basic needs insecurity will be increasing dramatically over the next few years,” said Bryce McKibben, senior director of policy and advocacy at the Hope Center.

For current students, experts outlined three major shifts in federal financial supports.

1. Cuts to SNAP Funding

OBBBA includes $186 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides support obtaining food for nearly three million young adults, according to U.S. Census data. The bill places more requirements on SNAP recipients; at present, all funding for SNAP is at risk due to the government shutdown. Some states expect to run out of SNAP dollars as early as Nov. 1.

“[SNAP] is our first line of defense against hunger. It reduces health care–related issues and it bolsters local economies,” said Gina Plata-Nino, interim director of the SNAP, Food Research & Action Center. “It also provides jobs; it provides federal income taxes. And all of this is going to be threatened.”

Under the bill, all adults ages 18 to 64 must demonstrate they work at least 20 hours per week to be eligible for SNAP, Plata-Nino said.

Approximately one in four college students experience food insecurity. SNAP resources are largely underutilized by college students, in part because of complicated enrollment processes. Instead, many rely on campus pantries, which are mostly privately funded by individual donors or campus budgets. Plato-Nino anticipates the changes to SNAP will impact funding and capacity for higher education institutions to provide resources, “because now they have to focus on these issues,” she said.

The federal cuts could cause further damage to an already fragile system.

“We have a threadbare social safety net that really hits students when they can least afford to meet what are pretty acute and deep costs as they’re trying to get through their degree program,” said Mark Huelsman, director of policy and advocacy at the Hope Center.

Many colleges and universities expanded emergency grant funding for students during the COVID-19 pandemic to address sudden expenses that could threaten a student’s ability to remain enrolled. While supplemental funding can help ease this gap, it’s not sufficient, Huelsman said.

“Campuses don’t often have the resources to help students meet what can be an acute financial emergency,” Huelsman said.

An August 2025 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found that 64 percent of respondents said they didn’t know whether their college provides emergency financial aid, and an additional 4 percent indicated that resource was not available at their institution. Only 12 percent of respondents said they knew how to apply for emergency aid at their college.

2. Changes to Pell Grants

The reconciliation bill also includes a variety of changes to student eligibility for the federal Pell Grant program, which provides financial aid to low-income students.

Over one-third of Student Voice respondents indicated paying for college was a top source of stress while enrolled, second only to balancing family, academic, work and personal responsibilities.

For the academic year 2026–27, those with a student aid index (SAI) over $14,790, as identified by the FAFSA, are no longer eligible for Pell Grants. Similarly, students who receive scholarships that meet the full cost of attendance (including books, housing, food, tuition and fees) are not eligible for Pell, regardless of their SAI.

“We anticipate that this will affect a very small number of students,” said Jessica Thompson, senior vice president at the Institute for College Access and Success. “But this remains to be seen how this takes effect and what it looks like on the ground.”

3. Limits on Graduate and Parent Borrowing

OBBBA caps loans on professional degree programs (which include medical, law, veterinary and dentistry programs, among others) at $200,000, and other graduate programs at $100,000. It also eliminates Grad PLUS loans, which are unsubsidized federal loans with no borrowing limits. Students currently enrolled can borrow from Grad PLUS for three academic years or the remainder of their credential program, whichever is shorter.

While these limits can be beneficial for keeping student borrowing down, there may be unintended consequences regarding who can access the programs, Thompson said. For example, students who enroll at historically Black colleges and universities or minority-serving institutions are more likely to utilize Parent PLUS loans to pay for college.

“This has been a really big lifeline for accessing credit in order to cover college costs for people’s children, and there will be a disproportionate impact on these new caps on those types of institutions,” Thompson said.

Thompson also noted that a lack of federal loan opportunities for graduate and professional students may cause a rise in private loan borrowing, which often has higher interest rates and fewer protections for borrowers.

“We want to keep a really close eye on what it means for the availability of programs in general … but also access and looking at increasingly less diverse pipelines in terms of historically marginalized populations being able to access graduate and professional programs,” Thompson said.

Similar to SNAP cuts, Thompson anticipates the loan caps will add significant financial pressure on colleges and universities due to loss of revenue and enrollment.

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October 30, 2025