Tag: Higher

  • Predictions for Governance This Academic Year (opinion)

    Predictions for Governance This Academic Year (opinion)

    The start of the new academic year has all eyes looking ahead. As we all know, prediction is very difficult, particularly about the future, as physicist Niels Bohr cheekily put it. At the same time, the future is already here—it is just unevenly distributed, as writer William Gibson said. In other words, while predictions are difficult, we have evidence of what we might expect. This essay applies those logics to higher education governance.

    If predictions about the future are difficult, predictions about the future of governance might be outright foolish. Nevertheless, it is worth speculating and preparing.

    On the Board’s Radar

    Since higher education is in the headlines—if not the headline in the news—boards are likely to be more aware and informed of the issues and trends in higher education than they were in the past. This is particularly true because of federal action (I once would have said “policy,” but we are not seeing policy being made or even discussed) making news in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and other outlets read by trustees. Boards read about the Trump executive orders, drastic and devastating reductions in federal research funding, and attacks on institutional autonomy, as well as on specific universities: Harvard, Penn, Columbia, George Mason. The attacks on inclusion and student support for underrepresented groups (even the phrase “underrepresented groups”), DEI or its dismantling, and antisemitism are all subjects of conversations among trustees. Many are having parallel conversations in their corporate and law offices.

    The demographic cliff—the long-foretold decline in the numbers of traditional-age students—has only gotten closer. Boards are worried about enrollment. There is concern over international students who are expected to seek alternatives other than the U.S.

    For those universities with Division I athletics, there are complexities associated with name, image and likeness rights; the coaching hiring carousel; the transfer portal; and direct student athlete compensation. Boards like to be associated with winning.

    Inflation over the past few years has made costs higher and budgets tighter. This means not only that there are fewer operational resources, but fewer dollars have gone into infrastructure. Therefore, deferred maintenance is growing and worrying many.

    Then there is AI. As a Princeton University professor wrote in a recent article in The New Yorker, “The White House’s chain-jerk mugging feels, frankly, like a sideshow. The juggernaut actually barreling down the quad is A.I., coming at us with shocking speed.”

    Underlining all of this is finances. For boards, particularly those at tuition-dependent institutions as well as those at research funding–dependent institutions, financial well-being is still king. It can and will continue to dominate board conversations. And in extreme cases, it risks becoming the only thing these boards care about.

    Governance Crystal Ball

    What does the above mean regarding the near-term future for governance? Before answering that question, I need to acknowledge the tremendous variation in boards and their composition as well as in the mission and geographic contexts in which they are operating. Governance generally is not governance locally. At the risk of overgeneralizing:

    • Expect more anxiety and energy in the board room. Board members feel the pressure on higher education and their institutions. Some boards will amplify that pressure and others will help dissipate it. Nevertheless, expect boards to be 1) well-read on higher education because it’s in the national headlines and 2) animated about what they are reading and how they are translating that into the institutional context.
    • Anticipate activist trustees and activist boards. In some instances, activism will be instigated by individual board members. Activist trustees as well as donors will likely continue to borrow approaches from their corporate brethren, driving agendas, trying to influence board composition, leveraging philanthropy and working behind the scenes. Ten years ago, the Harvard Business Review published an article about corporate activism. While there are clearly lessons to be learned and translated, the most striking part was that one named example of a corporate activist is now a familiar name to many in higher education after playing a key role in forcing the leadership change at Harvard University.

    In other instances, the boards themselves (or at least a majority of members) may be activist. We have seen such examples in Florida, Idaho, Texas and Virginia. This is a different conversation altogether, when it is the full board as compared to individuals.

    • Increased questioning of the role if not value of faculty governance. Many more boards are likely to openly question the value of faculty governance and how it can be improved. They may have done this privately in the past, but don’t expect quiet conversations about faculty decision-making. Given the enrollment and other external pressures and the “entrenched problems” with higher education (real and perceived, thus the quotation marks), boards may increasingly ask what faculty governance has contributed and in extreme instances why it exists. Most do not have it, or anything substantially similar, in their professional lives.
    • A desire to consolidate power in the presidency. When the chips are down, corporate leaders may see their roles as being about making hard decisions, leading change and making unpopular choices to right their organizations. Captains of industry steer the ships under their charge. In higher education boardrooms, they then wonder why the college president—the institutional CEO—seems to have such comparatively little power in relation to their corporate peers. Often without realizing the differences in organizational contexts, they think that their approach to leadership, which typically works for them because they are successful (otherwise they most likely would not be trustees) should apply to colleges and universities. Presidents will be presented with corporate playbooks.
    • Increased focus on what is taught. The idea of viewpoint diversity will likely gain increased weight this year in board rooms. Boards may see it as part of their oversight role to ensure a range of ideas is being taught. This means that boards may be focusing on the curriculum and in some instances on the content of individual courses. This also means that boards may want to create new structures and centers, particularly those focused on conservative thought. This too requires much unpacking. Some boards will likely approach this issue with a genuine sense of inquiry and interest, with student learning at heart. Other boards—not so much.
    • Increased focus on how the curriculum is taught. Boards may be asking new and more pointed questions about how teaching and learning is conducted. The AI conversation may be driving some of this focus, but not all. Instructional costs, program enrollments, challenges of postgraduation employment and strained resources may also be behind their interest in curriculum.
    • More time on campus issues and on campus. I sense that all of these will mean that board members will be increasing their engagement with higher education trends and issues and also spending more time on or in close contact with the campus. I anticipate calls and texts to presidents and possibly others on campus will increase—first in response to the day’s headlines. And second because they will simply have more questions or solutions.

    Near-Term Action Agenda for Campus Leaders

    While the above are predictions, solid and careful preparation may suit presidents well. It’s best to take that umbrella rather than get caught out in the rain.

    1. Make more time for governance. We all know the complexities and demands of presidential schedules. Yet, be prepared to increase the time dedicated to the board. Board engagement is something that for the most part only presidents can do. That will mean delegating other tasks and responsibilities to the team. One might consider extending the time of board meetings and creating ways to meet with the board between meetings (briefings and updates are good strategies). There will likely be more governance work to do; don’t let old meeting structures impede good governance.
    2. Increase communication with board leaders and with the board as a whole. It’s better to shape the narrative of information rather than constantly respond. Increase regular communications; send out special messages. Be sure to spend more time helping the board understand what they need to know and appreciate.
    3. Prepare the board for crises. We don’t know what will happen this year, but one can safely assume there will be crises of some magnitude across a range of institutions. Have a clear communications plan—know who speaks for the campus and who speaks for the board. Clarify the process for the board of how messages get crafted and vetted. Be clear on who will communicate to the individual trustees. Set expectations for which trustees will know what and when. Remind trustees of the importance of confidentiality. Finally, consider conducting tabletop activities in which the board can work through a crisis before one occurs.
    4. Lay the foundation for discussions about faculty governance. Be prepared to explain and possibly defend the idea, its structures and the culture of shared decision-making. A simple point to remind the board is that making decisions and actually implementing them are two different things. While shared governance may result in slower decision-making processes, it expedites implementation and ensures a greater likelihood of success because faculty were involved and have a sense of ownership. Bring faculty into board conversations as experts and contributors. Demonstrate their value, which is more powerful than explaining their value.
    5. Invest in board education. Board members will want to engage. So it’s best to prepare them to do so from the point of knowledge and information. If boards are going to question academic freedom, for example, get ahead of the inquiries.
    6. Bolster the board chair. Chairs play exceedingly important roles in effective governance. These are volunteer roles in which they manage the board and its personalities; set governance expectations and run interference, when need be; facilitate meetings (again running interference when need be); and support the president and serve as a strategic thought partner.
    7. Ensure you have a top-notch board professional. Just as chairs play pivotal roles, so do board professionals. Good ones are worth their weight in gold, as they work mostly behind the scenes on governance, but they also engage directly with trustees. And speaking of gold, do your best to ensure they have the resources needed to do their jobs.
    8. Spend more time on the development of committee and board meeting agendas. Boards do much of their work through meetings. Make sure the president and the senior team are intentional about the content of the agendas, the anticipated outcomes of each meeting and the materials boards need to have informed discussions. This point should go without saying, but too many board agendas are rote, poorly framed and lack focus.
    9. Finally, intentionally address issues of finances—again particularly for those tuition-dependent and research funding–dependent institutions. Boards will be concerned and want action: By addressing financial well-being intentionally, you can then get the board to focus on other strategic priorities without being distracted. Attending to trustee priorities is important, but ensuring a balanced board agenda will better play the long game needed right now.

    Conclusion

    This calendar year has been one like no other. A safe bet is to predict that this academic year will be no different. The ideas above may be alarmist. Many boards will continue to govern effectively and do so in ways consistent with past practices. For that be thankful. Other boards may take it upon themselves to look in the mirror and move forward in new, positive and more constructive ways. Be even more thankful for that. As one experienced general counsel said to me, “If trustees truly want to guide their institutions and make sure that their problem-solving and future planning decisions are the best they can be, they need to keep their governance blades sharp.”

    Peter Eckel is a senior fellow and director of the Global Higher Education Management program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. He thanks two humans, a ChatGPT-generated novice board chair and a long-serving president for their feedback on the essay. The humans offered better insights, which could be due to the prompt writing or the caliber of the humans.

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  • DOJ Sues Illinois Over In-State Tuition for Noncitizens

    DOJ Sues Illinois Over In-State Tuition for Noncitizens

    The U.S. Department of Justice sued Illinois on Tuesday over its policy to allow in-state tuition rates for undocumented students. Illinois is the fifth state targeted by such a lawsuit.

    The DOJ filed a complaint in the Southern District of Illinois against the state, Gov. JB Pritzker, the state attorney general and boards of trustees of state universities. The complaint argues that it’s illegal to offer lower tuition rates to undocumented students if out-of-state citizens can’t also benefit.

    Illinois passed a law in 2003 that grants in-state tuition to undocumented students who meet certain criteria. To qualify, students need to reside and attend high school in the state for three years, graduate from an Illinois high school, and sign an affidavit promising to apply to become a permanent resident as soon as possible. Pritzker then signed a bill into law last year that would loosen these criteria, starting in July 2026. Students will be able to pay in-state tuition rates if they meet one of two sets of requirements, including attending an Illinois high school for at least two years or a combination of high school and community college in the state for at least three years.

    “Under federal law, schools cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a news release. “This Department of Justice has already filed multiple lawsuits to prevent U.S. students from being treated like second-class citizens—Illinois now joins the list of states where we are relentlessly fighting to vindicate federal law.”

    In Texas and Oklahoma, the DOJ successfully ended in-state tuition for undocumented students; attorneys general in the two red states swiftly sided with the federal government’s legal challenges. Lawsuits against Kentucky and Minnesota are still ongoing.

    This latest lawsuit will likely escalate the Trump administration’s battle with the state of Illinois. President Donald Trump has said he wants to send the National Guard to Chicago, a move that Pritzker forcefully pushed back on. Since Trump took office, Pritzker has been an outspoken critic.

    April McLaren, deputy press secretary for the Illinois attorney general’s office, said officials are reviewing the case and have “no further comment.” Representatives at Eastern Illinois University, Northeastern Illinois University and Southern Illinois University, whose boards were among those named in the lawsuit, similarly told Inside Higher Ed that they can’t comment on pending litigation.

    A spokesperson for the governor’s office defended the state’s policy and called the lawsuit “yet another blatant attempt to strip Illinoisans of resources and opportunities.” 

    “While the Trump Administration strips away federal resources from all Americans, Illinois provides consistent and inclusive educational pathways for all students—including immigrants and first-generation students—to access support and contribute to our state,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “All Illinoisans deserve a fair shot to obtain an education, and our programs and policies are consistent with federal laws.” 

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  • The Transfer Credit Myth: How Everything We Know About Excess Credits May Be Wrong

    The Transfer Credit Myth: How Everything We Know About Excess Credits May Be Wrong

    The Transfer Credit Myth: How Everything We Know About Excess Credits May Be Wrong

    quintina.barne…

    Thu, 09/04/2025 – 03:00 AM

    Part One: Through the lens of records and registration.

    Byline(s)
    Wendy Kilgore

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  • College Students With Kids More Likely to Lack Basic Needs

    College Students With Kids More Likely to Lack Basic Needs

    An estimated one in five college students is a parent, juggling coursework with caring for a dependent and, often, holding down a paid job. The competing priorities of working and caregiving students can put them at heightened risk for stopping out or quitting higher education, requiring additional investment from colleges and universities to help them succeed.

    A recent report from Trellis Strategies, using data from its Fall Financial Wellness Survey, identifies key trends among student caregivers, the role that time poverty can play in their academic pursuits and recommendations for additional supports.

    Who are caregiving students? Eighteen percent of respondents indicated they were a parent or guardian of a child, or approximately 9,500 of the survey’s 53,000-plus respondents. Seven percent of respondents said they were a caregiver to another individual, not a dependent, and 6 percent said they provided care for a child and another individual, identifying them as a double caregiver.

    Women were more likely to say they were caregivers (73 percent) than non-caregivers (55 percent), and more than twice as many Black students indicated they had caregiver (27 percent) or double-caregiver (34 percent) responsibilities, compared to non-caregivers (12 percent). Two-year students were more likely to report being a caregiver (25 percent) than their four-year peers (13 percent).

    A majority of non-caregivers in Trellis’s study were under 24 years old (84 percent), but caregivers were more evenly represented across age brackets from 18 to 45, representing a variety of identities and priorities. For example, younger caregivers were more likely to say they spent less than 20 hours per week providing care for their dependents, compared to their peers aged 25 to 40, but young parents were also more likely to say they missed at least one day of class due to a lack of childcare (32 percent), versus their peers in their early 30s (27 percent).

    Competing priorities: A high percentage of caregiving students are also employed; 71 percent worked while enrolled and 85 percent agreed it was important for them to support their family financially while in college. In addition to supporting themselves, caregiving students said they offered financial support to their spouse (34 percent), parents or guardians (24 percent), or other family members (22 percent).

    Affordability is a top barrier to student persistence nationally, but the cost of higher education can be an even greater burden for students with dependents. A 2014 report by EdTrust found that a student parent working a minimum-wage job would have to work 52 hours per week to afford both childcare and net tuition at a public four-year institution in the U.S.

    Caregiving students were also more likely to consider themselves a “worker that goes to school” (63 percent) than “a student who works” (37 percent)—the direct inverse of non-caregiving students, a majority of whom said they were a student who works (72 percent). Sixty-eight percent of student parents who were employed reported working more than 40 hours per week.

    “The time poverty caused by work and caregiving commitments can have a substantial impact on the student experience,” according to the report.

    The financial and personal pressures of being a caregiver can also impact a student’s academic performance; 24 percent of parenting students said they missed at least one day of class in the past semester due to a lack of childcare.

    Parenting students are more likely to report financial insecurity; 70 percent indicated they would have difficulty securing $500 in cash for an emergency expense. More than four in five caregivers said they’d run out of money at least once in the past year, and nearly 40 percent ran out of money eight or more times in the past year.

    Seventy-two percent of caregivers reported experiencing some level of basic needs insecurity, including food insecurity, housing insecurity or homelessness. Research from New America and the Princeton Eviction Lab published earlier this year found that student parents who faced eviction were 23 percent less likely to complete a bachelor’s degree and more likely to experience a lower quality of life.

    ED Cuts CCAMPIS for Some Colleges

    The Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program aims to provide campus-based childcare services for low-income student parents, but President Trump’s proposed 2026 budget would eliminate program funding.

    The Department of Education this week said it discontinued some grants for CCAMPIS because “they would have taught children about gender identity and racial justice and didn’t hire staff based on merit,” according to The Washington Post.

    Supporting success: Based on their findings, Trellis researchers believe institutional investment in caregivers could improve retention, academic success and degree completion for parenting students. They suggest collecting and disaggregating data on student enrollment to identify caregivers, including dependent-care expenses in students’ cost of attendance and providing priority registration for caregivers.

    Childcare remains a critical need, but institutions can help bridge the gap through on-campus facilities, sharing information about community childcare resources and referral services, and partnering with community organizations for support resources.

    We bet your colleague would like this article, too. Send them this link to subscribe to our newsletter on Student Success.

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  • Now Is the Time to Overhaul Federal Regulations

    Now Is the Time to Overhaul Federal Regulations

    Researchers spend more than 40 percent of their research time complying with regulations.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | kyoshino/iStock/Getty Images

    The rise of generative artificial intelligence and the Trump administration’s deregulation push make now the right time to streamline and reduce federal scientific research regulations, argues a report the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine published Wednesday.

    “At a time when the scientific enterprise is under a lot of pressure—we don’t want to pretend that’s not true—this is also a wonderful opportunity to streamline the workload not only of researchers, but of institutions and other individuals,” Alan Leshner, chair of the NASEM committee that produced the report, said at a public briefing. “We would be foolish not to take advantage of the policy climate that favors deregulation and unburdening our scientific enterprise from unnecessary, duplicative and uncoordinated rules and regulations.”

    The 125-page report, entitled “Simplifying Research Regulations and Policies: Optimizing American Science,” lays out a three-pronged framework to guide a cohesive national strategy toward implementing more economical regulations. Those prongs include harmonizing regulations and requirements across federal and state agencies and research institutions, ensuring that regulatory requirements match the risk related to the project, and using technology to make regulation-compliance processes more efficient.

    From there, the report offers a menu of 53 potential options across all aspects of research compliance, including research security, misconduct and grant management, designed for interagency adoption.

    It’s all part of an effort by the National Academies to seize this political moment and accomplish their long-standing goal of freeing scientists from the weight of often redundant, expensive and excessive regulations.

    Currently, researchers whose work is supported by grants from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense spend more than 40 percent of their research time complying with each agency’s varying administrative and regulatory requirements, “wasting intellectual capacity and taxpayer dollars,” according to Federal Demonstration Partnership data cited in the report.

    “There’s no question that regulation is necessary to ensure that the science we produce is of the best quality, the highest integrity and is conducted with full accountability and transparency to the American public,” said Leshner, who has previously held leadership positions at the NIH and the NSF. “Having said that, the current regulatory environment has grown to a point that it’s actually hampering innovation.”

    Despite previous calls by the NASEM and other groups to reduce regulatory burdens on researchers, few of those plans have come to fruition. Instead, data from the Council on Government Relations (COGR) shows that 62 percent of the regulations and policies federal agencies adopted or changed since 1991 were issued from 2014 to 2024.

    For example, both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare regulate animal research, but in some cases, their requirements conflict.

    When a research project is subject to both agencies’ requirements, it can create “confusion, redundancy, and extra work,” the report says. “The natural result is for academic institutions to create additional requirements of their own to manage the complexity and risk of noncompliance stemming from regulatory complexity.”

    ‘An Urgency to This’

    Complying with inconsistent or redundant regulations also costs a lot for universities, which are now facing significant cuts to federal research funding. In 2022, COGR estimated that institutions receiving more than $100 million in federal research funds spent an estimated $1.4 million a year to comply with the NIH’s Data Sharing and Management Policy while smaller institutions spend just over $1 million a year.

    The burden of regulatory compliance can also further exacerbate research inequities.

    “Typically, the more underresourced institutions—regional state institutions, minority-serving institutions, HBCUs and tribal colleges—may not have as large of a research infrastructure or staff to handle some of the regulations that filter down from the federal level,” said Emanuel Waddell, committee member and chair of the nanoengineering department at North Carolina A&T State University. “When the infrastructure isn’t there to answer questions, that burden falls on the researchers themselves to seek out answers, and it takes away time from pursuing intellectual curiosity.”

    And with looming cuts to federal research budgets, including mass layoffs at the federal agencies that oversee research, members of the committee believe now is the time to reduce the cost of regulatory compliance if the United States wants to remain a competitive producer of scientific innovation.

    “There’s an urgency to this. We really have to get this done. Think about how constrained budgets are—we have $37 trillion debt in this country and it continues to grow,” said Kelvin Droegemeier, a member of the committee and a professor and special adviser to the chancellor for science and policy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “With relatively little cost, we can unlock a lot of money that is now being directed toward things which are not helpful and put that money toward doing research.”

    But making it happen will be up to the federal government.

    Matt Owens, president of COGR, urged federal policymakers in a statement Wednesday afternoon “to act this fall on the most actionable and timely of the options.”

    “If the administration and Congress are rightly interested in reducing regulatory burden and to promote scientific advancements, then they now have a clear roadmap for doing so efficiently and effectively,” he wrote. “What remains to be seen is whether federal policymakers will get behind the wheel, step on the gas, and accelerate through the finish line to fully deliver.”

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  • Judge Rules Harvard Funding Freeze Illegal

    Judge Rules Harvard Funding Freeze Illegal

    A federal judge in Boston ruled in favor of Harvard University Wednesday.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Mandel Ngan and Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images

    A judge ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration illegally froze more than $2 billion in research funding at Harvard University over how officials handled alleged campus antisemitism.

    Judge Allison Burroughs of the U.S. District Court in Boston found that the federal government violated Harvard’s First Amendment rights and the U.S. Civil Rights Act in her 84-page opinion, writing, “We must fight against antisemitism, but we equally need to protect our rights, including our right to free speech, and neither goal should nor needs to be sacrificed on the altar of the other.” She added that Harvard is “currently, even if belatedly” taking action against antisemitism.

    Harvard sued the Trump administration in April after the federal government froze $2.2 billion in funding when the Ivy League university rejected demands to enact a far-reaching slate of changes that would have overhauled admissions, governance, hiring and much more.

    Burroughs, an Obama appointee, appeared skeptical of the Trump administration’s claims in a July hearing, telling government lawyers that they failed to back up claims Harvard did not appropriately address antisemitism. She also ruled against the administration in another case in June, temporarily blocking the government from halting Harvard’s ability to host international students.

    Burroughs wrote Wednesday that “Harvard was wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did,” but “the record … does not reflect that fighting antisemitism” was the “true aim” of the defendants and such efforts “cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment.”

    The ruling comes as rumors of a Harvard settlement with the federal government continue to swirl. The Trump administration has demanded a $500 million settlement that would force other changes to admissions and discipline policies, similar to agreements made by its Ivy League peers Columbia University and Brown University.

    Harvard President Alan Garber said in a statement Wednesday that “the ruling affirms Harvard’s First Amendment and procedural rights, and validates our arguments in defense of the University’s academic freedom, critical scientific research, and the core principles of American higher education.”

    Wednesday’s legal ruling also prompted celebration from free speech groups and others.

    “Today, a federal court echoed what [the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression] has said all along: The Trump administration trampled Harvard University’s First Amendment rights and broke civil rights law when it yanked billions in federal grants and contracts over alleged Title VI violations,” FIRE wrote in a statement.

    “This is a huge win for all of American higher education, for science, and for free and critical thought in this country,” said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors. “Time and again, Trump has tried to restrict speech and cripple lifesaving university research. As today’s victory shows, Trump’s war on higher education is unconstitutional. We will continue to stand up and fight back against these attempts to dismantle our universities, terrify students and faculty, and punish hospitals and scientists for not bowing to authoritarianism. And we will win.”

    The American Council on Education praised Burroughs’s ruling.

    “We are pleased to see a federal court affirm what we always knew to be true: The Trump administration has ignored the law in pursuing politically motivated attacks on Harvard and other institutions,” said Peter McDonough, general counsel for ACE. “We urge the administration to abandon these harmful attacks and instead work to restore the partnership that has made colleges and universities the engine of American innovation for decades.”

    Judging from the Department of Education’s response to the ruling, that seems unlikely.

    “In an unsurprising turn of events, the same Obama-appointed judge that ruled in favor of Harvard’s illegal race-based admissions practices—which was ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court—just ruled against the Trump Administration’s efforts to hold Harvard accountable for rampant discrimination on campus,” spokesperson Madi Biedermann wrote in an emailed statement. “Cleaning up our nation’s universities will be a long road, but worth it.”

    In a post on X, Education Secretary Linda McMahon added, “The Trump Administration is fully committed to appealing this erroneous decision and will ensure that new taxpayer funding is not invested at any university that steadfastly refuses to uphold civil rights for all students.”

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  • Senator Who Banned DEI Set to Be Texas Tech Chancellor

    Senator Who Banned DEI Set to Be Texas Tech Chancellor

    In 2023, Texas became one of the first red states to institute a sweeping ban on diversity, equity and inclusion in public colleges and universities.

    Following pro-Palestinian protests and a police crackdown on an encampment at the University of Texas at Austin in 2024, the Texas Legislature this year passed another law restricting free speech on public campuses, including banning all expressive activities from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.

    The Legislature also this year passed a wide-ranging bill that allows public college and university presidents to take over faculty senates and councils, prohibits faculty elected to those bodies from serving more than two years in a row, and creates an “ombudsman” position that can threaten universities’ funding if they don’t follow that law or the DEI ban.

    The lead author listed on all three laws is Sen. Brandon Creighton, chair of the Texas Senate education committee. Having overhauled higher ed statewide, he’s about to get the chance to further his vision at one large university system: On Thursday, the Texas Tech University System plans to name Creighton the “sole finalist” for the system chancellor and chief executive officer job.

    His hiring by the system’s Board of Regents—whose members are appointed by the governor with confirmation from the Senate—marks another example of a Republican politician in a large red state, namely Texas and Florida, being installed as a higher ed leader. The trend reflects an evolution in how Republicans are influencing public universities, from passing laws to directly leading institutions and systems. For universities, having a former member of the Legislature in the presidency can help with lobbying lawmakers, but it could also threaten academic freedom and risk alienating faculty.

    Creighton wasn’t the only, or even the highest-ranking, politician considered for the position, which historically pays more than $1 million a year. As The Texas Tribune earlier reported, Rep. Jodey Arrington, chair of the U.S. House Budget Committee and shepherd of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which affected higher ed nationwide, was also in the running. Unlike Creighton, Arrington has worked in higher ed—specifically as a vice chancellor and chancellor’s chief of staff in the Texas Tech system. Arrington, who didn’t provide Inside Higher Ed an interview, issued a statement Sunday congratulating Creighton.

    Faculty leaders offered a muted response to Creighton’s impending appointment. Neither the president of the Faculty Senate at the main Texas Tech campus, the president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors nor the state AAUP conference publicly denounced Creighton. In an emailed statement, the state conference said, “We have concerns about the future of academic freedom and shared governance in the Texas Tech University System given the positions Sen. Creighton has taken in the legislature.”

    “We hope that Texas Tech’s strong tradition of shared governance and academic freedom continues so that Texas Tech can thrive,” the statement said.

    Cody Campbell, the system board chair, said Creighton is “a fantastic fit with our culture and is clearly the best person for the job.” He added that he likes the higher ed legislation Creighton has passed. (Creighton was also lead author of a new law that lets universities pay athletes directly.)

    “He shares the values of the Texas Tech University System,” Campbell said. Both the system and the wider community of Lubbock, where the main Texas Tech campus is located, are “conservative,” he said.

    “We do not subscribe to the ideas around DEI and are supportive of a merit-based culture,” Campbell said, adding that Creighton is well positioned to continue the system’s growth in research, enrollment and academic standing.

    For Creighton, the job could come with a big payout. Retiring Texas Tech system chancellor Tedd L. Mitchell made $1.3 million in 2023, ranking him the 12th-highest-paid public university leader in the country, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education’s database. The system didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s open records request for Mitchell’s current contract in time for this article’s publication, and Campbell told Inside Higher Ed Creighton’s pay is “yet to be determined.”

    “The contract or the compensation were never part of the discussion with any of the candidates,” Campbell said.

    Creighton didn’t provide Inside Higher Ed an interview or answer written questions. But he appeared to accept the position in a post on X.

    “Over the past six years, no university system in Texas has taken more bold steps forward,” he wrote. “Serving as Chairman of the Senate Education Committee and the Budget Subcommittee has been the honor of a lifetime—especially to help deliver that success for Texas Tech and its regional universities. I feel very blessed to have been considered for the role of Chancellor. There is no greater purpose I would consider than working to make generational changes that transform the lives of young Texans for decades to come.”

    Cowing Faculty Senates

    Campbell said he doesn’t recall whether Creighton and Arrington initially expressed interest in the position to the board or whether the board reached out to them. Dustin Womble, the board’s vice chair, declined to comment. Campbell said the board “actively recruited” some candidates.

    “There wasn’t really a formal application process, necessarily,” he said. But dozens of candidates across the country expressed interest in the “high-paying position” leading a large system, he said.

    The system says it has more than 60,000 students across five institutions and 20 locations, including one in San José, Costa Rica. The five institutions are Texas Tech (which has multiple campuses), Texas Tech Health Sciences Center (which also has multiple campuses), the separate Texas Tech Health Sciences Center El Paso, Angelo State University and Midwestern State University.

    Asked about Creighton’s lack of higher ed work experience, Campbell said that wasn’t unusual for system chancellors, contrasting the position with those of the presidents who lead individual institutions on a day-to-day basis.

    “Our past chancellor was a medical doctor, the chancellor before him was a state senator, the chancellor before him was a former U.S. congressman and a state politician; we’ve had businessmen in that position, we’ve had all different types of people,” Campbell said.

    Aside from serving in the Senate for a decade and the state House for seven years before that, Creighton is an attorney.

    Andrew Martin, the tenured art professor who leads the Texas Tech University main campus’s AAUP chapter, noted that “our chapter has actively opposed some of the legislation that Sen. Creighton has authored.”

    “Our hope now is that Sen. Creighton, in apparently assuming the role of chancellor, will spend time learning more about the campuses in the TTU System and will meet as many students, faculty [and] administrators on our campuses as possible to see how these institutions actually operate day in and day out,” Martin said. “I’m not sure how clear that’s been from his perspective as a lawyer and legislator.”

    Martin—who stressed that he was speaking for himself and colleagues he’s spoken to, but not on behalf of his university—said the AAUP is concerned with maintaining academic freedom for faculty and students, upholding tenure protections, and preserving the faculty’s role in determining curriculum, conducting research and exercising shared governance.

    When the Legislature passed Senate Bill 37—the Creighton legislation that, among other things, upended faculty senates—Creighton issued a news release saying, “Faculty Senates will no longer control our campuses.” He said his legislation “takes on politically charged academic programs and ensures students graduate with degrees of value, not degrees rooted in activism and political indoctrination.”

    Among other things, SB 37 requires university presidents to choose who leads faculty senates. Ryan Cassidy, a tenured associate librarian, was elected to lead the Texas Tech University main campus’s Faculty Senate before SB 37 took effect, and the institution’s president has allowed him to stay in that role.

    Asked about Creighton being named chancellor, Cassidy said, “I haven’t really had time to reflect on it.”

    Creighton’s bio on the Legislature’s website touts his conservative values outside of higher ed, too. “He has relentlessly hammered excessive taxation, pursued ‘loser pays’ tort reform, passed drug testing for unemployment benefits, stood up for Texas’ 10th Amendment rights and effectively blocked Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion,” the bio says.

    Martin said Texas Tech aspires to become a member of the Association of American Universities, a prestigious group of top research universities, of which UT Austin and Texas A&M University are already members. That would be hard if faculty are “marginalized,” he said.

    “You can’t get there without the huge investment of faculty,” he said.

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  • Engaging policy review to smooth lumpy futures into transformative higher education

    Engaging policy review to smooth lumpy futures into transformative higher education

    Hamish Coates, Ellen Hazelkorn, Hans de Wit, Tessa Delaquil, and Angel Calderon

    Hans de Wit, Ellen Hazelkorn and Hamish Coates are editors and Tessa DeLaquil is associate editor of Policy Reviews in Higher Education. Angel Calderon is a member of the PRiHE Editorial Board. This blog is based on their editorial for issue 2, 2025.

    It often feels like there is lots more ranting and moaning than imagining and evidencing around higher education these days. With excellent policy research, it does not have to be this way.

    The immediate post-millennium era was arguably a golden age for universities, with huge interest in massification, investment, especially in research, and institutional autonomy. But the global financial crisis followed a decade later by global pandemic shocked higher education into different worlds. Most countries still promulgate objectives for a sustainable and cost-efficient, equitable and accessible, high quality education system as the basis for growth. In OECD countries, however, assumptions that massification would on its own provide opportunities for everyone with mechanisms for social inclusion and social mobility are being heavily questioned. In developing and emerging economies, the challenge is meeting demand and being able to absorb graduates. Yet, too many countries and research-focused universities keep chasing ‘quick prestige’, leaving others to put up with disproportionately lower funding, as well as poorer facilities, resources and opportunities.

    Wealth and opportunity inequalities are increasingly greater within rather than between countries. At the same time, questions about educational outcomes such as employability, skills gaps and skills mismatches and over-qualification which have been long ignored by academic communities as irrelevant, are gaining public and policy traction. Governments and industries document the shift away from credentials towards greater focus on competencies – what people can do with what they know – and alternative accreditation processes.

    A few large countries are in the foothills of a demographic cliff, while others are (currently) privileged by demand. Traditional public systems in many countries face an identity crisis and appear too sluggish to grasp new opportunities. Parts of the private subsector are progressively active and more responsive to the needs of diverse and older learners and to competency-based learning, micro-credentials and other forms of just-in-time learning. Accordingly, the private sector is the fastest growing segment of postsecondary education worldwide.

    Countries vary considerably in their ability to cover costs associated with policy objectives due to revenue challenges and competitive demands elsewhere within society and the economy, alongside student and public unease about cost. Certain systems promote a laissez-faire or marketised approach whereby individual colleges and institutions (public and private) pursue their own agendas, while others grasp at opportunities for a more strategic state-led approach. Countries are beginning to examine the opportunities of a more joined-up post-secondary tertiary system (Hazelkorn, 2025). As Piketty has written, “it is access to skills and diffusion of knowledge that allow inequality to be reduced both within countries and at the international level” (2020: 534). But funding a mass system is very different from one catering to a small minority especially at a time when geopolitical/geoeconomic power shifts reshape the global landscape.

    Deglobalisation and populist nationalism are shaking these issues out differently around the world. In many countries, these tensions are contributing to a growing sense of people and communities being left behind, and to social unrest. The dominance of information technology over universities, challenging the value of graduates for entry-level work and of faculty, will spur heightened questioning of the value of higher education (Coates, 2017; The Guardian, 2025; Roose, 2025). While others look on in disbelief, there is a sense that this may not be a problem for higher education today, though it is likely to be so one day.

    It is too easy to blame governments and other external stakeholders. What role has higher education played itself, and what role can it play into the future? Is the sector, especially the public side, sufficiently strategic, forward-looking and adaptable? What are the implications for the governance of the system and of its many institutions? Or is it wandering unchained in the global wilds? Universities praise themselves as being one of the world’s oldest and most enduring institution, but as Darwin said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

    Once, such questions may have been ludicrous to provoke at the outset of a Policy Reviews in Higher Education (PRIHE) editorial. Not anymore. Accordingly, in the balance of this editorial we sketch frontier topics which higher education can embrace to drive positive reform, then current journal contributions (Figure 1). We conclude with a call to engage and transform.

    Figure 1: Current and frontier contributions

    Any higher education policy zealot who has read Arnold Lobel’s brilliant treatise on Owl’s strange bumps in the bed (in which the Owl is afraid to go to sleep because of two strange bumps at the bottom of his bed, which are, in fact, his feet) (Lobel, 1982) understands that fear is created by running scared and can be tackled by uncovering and addressing matters in ways that unlock innovation and progress.

    Policy Reviews in Higher Education plays this important role, though to date with fewer endearing drawings. Springing from inspiring intellectual dialogue with a member of the PRIHE Editorial Board and consequently guest author, Angel Calderon, we mark out a handful of narratives to carry forward policy research over the coming decades:

    • Moving beyond academic comfort communities
    • Handling looming demographic shifts and diversity
    • Addressing concerns about academic value
    • Creatively unpacking university clusterings and characteristics
    • Leaders who lead in smart ways.

    Higher education researchers must explore how universities and the academics who comprise them can move beyond comfort communities. This means finding ways to move beyond conservative research literatures and straightjacketing bibliometrics, beyond discipline and collegial communities, beyond the academic treadmill, beyond the subsector itself, and beyond naval-gazing research. A doctorate followed by decades toiling in the same institution is no prudent recipe for forging broader cognitive or tangible engagement with enterprise and industry (public and private) and the broader world. How can career trajectories be redefined to evoke and even provoke experimentation, fertilisation, and broader contribution?

    Policy researchers must find productive ways for helping universities handle looming demographic shifts. The Asian investment in higher education which has fuelled the last thirty years will plateau and in major instances decline. Smart countries and universities are already looking beyond increasingly risky ‘foreign and school-leaver markets’ at reconfigured alignments with career-inspiring work and adult life. As yet, however, few if any countries have policy and associated regulation or funding to spur new ventures and directions. Beyond the sensible need for regional or perhaps global ‘harmonisation’, what is the scope for more imaginative forward-thinking about the sort of institutional reconfigurations needed to deliver for societies in 2050? Also, universities continue to see international students as an alternative for demographic declines as well as for income generation, adopting imperialist approaches to new markets rather than anticipating global and local shifts. Internationalisation is still seen as an income source based on mobility flows, instead of as a possible change agent for innovation in education, research and service to society.

    Genuine political concerns about academic quality and value are unlikely to be assuaged by fluffing up the fame of elite researchers who typically have little to do with students or voting communities. Graduate outcomes and relevance are some of the most pressing challenges for all governments pushing people to question the value of higher education and ensure it translates into good jobs. Broadening rankings to include topics like sustainability, while useful, misses the more substantial need to focus on local engagement rather than global striving. It is folly to think that all the ~88,000 higher education institutions (UNESCO, 2022: 12) should aspire to look the same. Pursuit of ‘world-class’ sameness is no substitute for critical research and delivery of more robust and compelling public information on value, quality of educational delivery and outcomes, and at the same time nuanced differentiation of the difference each and every institution can make. And arguably rankings bear increasing responsibility for distorting funding allocations and institutional/government priorities across many post-secondary systems.

    Higher education sector growth in recent decades has spawned exciting, misunderstood and very important institutional and national configurations. There is an urgent need to creatively unpack university clusterings. Far too much time and money has been invested in studying groups characterised by bibliometric performance. More interestingly, there are university-defined groups, ranging from ‘presidents’ dinner clubs’ to disciplinary groups of nationally aligned associations. There are broader political, cultural and religious associations. There are groups connected through graduate or professional diasporas, or research connections. There is an emergent clustering of associations shaped by geopolitical/geoeconomic and national security imperatives. Ownership and tax-status has long been a means of shuffling universities into groups. What novel patterns and projections can be revealed?

    Leading universities and the sector in smart ways will be imperative to ensuring the sector’s promise does not demise. Finding effective leaders is an obvious necessary step, which surprisingly little research has clarified. Cultivating and developing leaders is an obvious next step, though it is tackled in so many perplexing ways. Diversity is important, of course, including in intellectual as well as manifest characteristics. Assuring value and delivery is paramount, with increasing suspicions but to date far too little warrant is given to importing governance techniques from other sectors. Strengthening institutional governance and management is required to ensure that the right leaders are appointed and that they have the capacity and capability to deal with more frequent and overlapping crises and conflicting externalities in uncertain circumstances. There should be willingness to find new ways to govern tertiary education sectors more robustly considering turbulence and increased uncertainty and the level of emergent discord between the public and universities. No doubt policy governance can be tricky, but it needs to be more strategic and forward thinking, willing to take innovative steps to ensure the education system meets the needs of all learners and society. Governance systems were designed based on periods of relative stability and the occasional minor disturbance. What can be done, for instance, to build more resilient leadership for public and private vocational and higher education, encouraging active engagement with each other and their communities beyond the campus? Is there renewed scope to refresh ‘old public management’?

    With the intent of curating even more purposeful contributions, PRIHErecently launched a call for experts around the world to curate cognate collections on a high-impact policy contributions. These contributions which relate to hot topics in higher education policy seek to engage a group of scholars around important themes, and work with the journal and related networks to convene hybrid global seminars and deliver substantial insights on consequential frontier issues. PRIHE’s Editorial Board and Editors have spotlighted six shaping themes which raise questions, insights and issues to be addressed by policy, drawing on experiences from around the world. These include:

    • Proving contributions: Restoring public trust in higher education and universities
    • Emerging formations: Transnational, online and private higher education, regulation, ethics
    • Geopolitical upheavals: Collaboration, sovereignty, nationalism, deregulation
    • Global challenges: Sustaining autonomy, academic freedom, purposeful research, independence
    • Lifelong learning: Valuing higher learning and skills across the lifespan, and
    • Valuing education: Raising the profile of large-scale teaching and learning.

    Higher education in many if not most countries is confronting strong headwinds and needs strident thinking and reform rather than rent-seeking complacency. Carving out intellectual architectures to stimulate dialogue from disorder creates tailwinds for the tough work then required to create and promulgate the evidence which may sway policy and reform practice. In this editorial we have advanced a handful of non-ignorable developments as a guide for authorship, deliberation, and reforming practice.

    Reference: Hazelkorn, E (2025) ‘Building a Unified Tertiary Education System. Trends and Propositions to Provoke Discussion, Trending Topics’ New Directions for Community Colleges  Forthcoming.

    Professor Ellen Hazelkorn is Joint Managing Partner, BH Associates. She is Professor Emeritus, Technological University Dublin.

    Hamish Coates is professor of public policy, director of the Higher Education Futures Lab, and global tertiary education expert.

    Hans de Wit is Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow of the Boston College Center for International Higher Education, Senior Fellow of the international Association of Universities.

    Tessa DeLaquil is postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Education at University College Dublin.

    Angel Calderon is Director of Strategic Insights at RMIT University and expert on global tertiary education.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • Guide Outlines Change Management for College Course Scheduling

    Guide Outlines Change Management for College Course Scheduling

    Timely college completion has benefits for both the student and the institution. Learners who graduate on time—within two or four years, depending on the degree program—hold less debt and have greater earnings potential because they’re able to enter the workforce sooner.

    National data reveals that only 17 percent of students at public two-year colleges complete a degree in two years, and 40 percent of students at public four-year institutions graduate on time. While a variety of personal challenges can limit students’ timely completion, institutional processes can also have an impact. According to the course scheduling software provider Ad Astra’s 2024 Benchmark Report, which included data from 1.3 million students, 26 percent of program requirement courses were not offered during the terms indicated in pathway guidance, leaving students without a clear road map to completion.

    A new resource from Ad Astra and Complete College America identifies ways institutions can reconsider class scheduling to maximize opportunities for student completion.

    What’s the need: Students report a need for additional support in scheduling and charting academic pathways; a 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found that 26 percent of respondents want their college to create or clarify academic program pathways. An additional 28 percent want their institution to introduce online platforms to help them plan out degree progress.

    Nontraditional students, including adult learners, parenting students and working students, are more likely to face scheduling challenges that can also impede their progress. A 2024 survey of online learners (who are primarily older, working and caregiving students) found that 68 percent of respondents considered time to degree completion a top factor in selecting their program and institution.

    But making the switch to a better system isn’t exactly a cakewalk for higher ed institutions, and establishing strong top-down policies can create its own hurdles. “Because leadership changes in organizations and institutions, because we get more and more students enrolling and registering, we still have to continue to reiterate this message about how important academic scheduling is,” said Complete College America president Yolanda Watson Spiva. “But we’re happy to do it because it still remains one of the best levers for helping students to persist and complete college.”

    Becoming a student-centered institution with predictable and flexible scheduling also benefits the institution because it means continuous enrollment, Watson Spiva said

    “Whether it’s Uber or Amazon, all these things are meant to make life easier, and yet for some reason, in higher ed, we haven’t caught up to that, that convenience is a major factor” in improving student enrollment and retention, Watson Spiva said. “Until we change our mindset in terms of embracing students as agents of change and having agency in and of themselves, I think we’re going to continue to grapple with this pervasive issue.”

    The new report is a playbook of sorts to help institutions prepare to make change, said Ad Astra’s president, Sarah Collins. “This is one of the next big things that institutions really need to get their arms around, I think, because it’s so culturally difficult and very big, very hairy and scary,” Collins said.

    How to make change: For institutions that want to do better and overhaul current practices, Ad Astra’s report provides starting points that administrators can consider, including:

    • Assessing the institution’s readiness for change, including current scheduling practices, faculty concerns and priorities, as well as the institution’s context, such as previous efforts and resource constraints. Administrators should identify existing inefficiencies, as well as resources and staff capacity, to implement and sustain change.
    • Being aware that making adjustments requires more than technical training; it also demands capabilities to engage in change leadership practices and sustained support to ensure changes are embedded into the institutional culture.
    • Celebrating and recognizing positive changes. Data and storytelling can measure impact as well as affirm how practices make a difference in student success.

    Evaluating the organizational structure of the institution is one key piece, Collins said, because colleges tend to be designed around a strategy rather than a student. Institutions should also prioritize data collection and distribution, because that’s a frequent sticking point in change-management practices.

    “Making sure that the data tells a story, convincing people to believe the data, making sure that the things you’re trying to measure are the things that actually matter and they actually map to the bigger thing you’re trying to accomplish,” Collins explained.

    Additionally, prioritizing the student voice in conversations about course scheduling can ensure that the institution is centered on learners’ needs. “It should not just be the traditional-age student,” Watson Spiva said. “It should also include post-traditional students—working learners, parenting learners—because their scheduling needs are going to be very, very diverse.”

    We bet your colleague would like this article, too. Send them this link to subscribe to our newsletter on Student Success.

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  • AI Companies Roll Out Educational Tools

    AI Companies Roll Out Educational Tools

    Fall semesters are just beginning, and the companies offering three leading AI models—Gemini by Google, Claude by Anthropic and ChatGPT by OpenAI—have rolled out tools to facilitate AI-enhanced learning. Here’s a comparison and how to get them.

    Each of the three leading AI providers has taken a somewhat different approach to providing an array of educational tools and support for students, faculty and administrators. We can expect these tools to improve, proliferate and become a competitive battleground among the three. At stake is, at least in part, the future marketplace for their products. To the extent educators utilize, administrators support and students become comfortable with one of the proprietary products, that provider will be at an advantage when those students rise to positions that allow them to specify use of a provider in educational institutions, companies and corporations across the country.

    Anthropic, the company that makes the series of Claude applications, announced on Aug. 21 “two initiatives for AI in education to help navigate these critical decisions: a Higher Education Advisory Board to guide Claude’s development for education, and three AI Fluency courses co-created with educators that can help teachers and students build practical, responsible AI skills.”

    The board is chaired by Rick Levin, former president of Yale and more recently at Coursera. Anthropic notes in the announcement, “At Coursera, he built one of the world’s largest platforms for online learning, bringing high-quality education to millions worldwide.” The board itself is populated with former and current leading administrators at Rice University, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas at Austin and Stanford, as well as Yolanda Watson Spiva, who is president of Complete College America. Anthropic says the board will “help guide how Claude serves teaching, learning, and research in higher education.”

    The three AI Fluency courses that Anthropic co-created with educators are designed to help create thoughtful practical frameworks for AI integration:

    “AI Fluency for Educators helps faculty integrate AI into their teaching practice, from creating materials and assessments to enhancing classroom discussions. Built on experience from early adopters, it shows what works in real classrooms. AI Fluency for Students teaches responsible AI collaboration for coursework and career planning. Students learn to work with AI while developing their own critical thinking skills, and write their own personal commitment to responsible AI use. Teaching AI Fluency supports educators who want to bring AI literacy to their campuses and classrooms. It includes frameworks for instruction and assessment, plus curriculum considerations for preparing students for a more AI-enhanced world.”

    The courses and more are freely available at the Anthropic Learning Academy.

    Earlier last month, Google unveiled Guided Learning in Gemini: From Answers to Understanding: “Guided Learning encourages participation through probing and open-ended questions that spark a discussion and provide an opportunity to dive deeper into a subject. The aim is to help you build a deep understanding instead of just getting answers. Guided Learning breaks down problems step-by-step and adapts explanations to your needs—all to help you build knowledge and skills.”

    The Google Guided Learning project offers additional support to faculty. “We worked with educators to design Guided Learning to be a partner in their teaching, built on the core principle that real learning is an active, constructive process. It encourages students to move beyond answers and develop their own thinking by guiding them with questions that foster critical thought. To make it simple to bring this approach into their classrooms, we created a dedicated link that educators can post directly in Google Classroom or share with students.”

    Google announced an array of additional tools for the coming year:

    “We’re offering students in the U.S. as well as Japan, Indonesia, Korea and Brazil a free one-year subscription to Google’s AI Pro plan to help make the most of AI’s power for their studies. Sign-up for the free AI Pro Plan offer.

    Try new learning features in Gemini including Guided Learning, Flashcards and Study Guides. And students and universities around the world can get a free one-year subscription to a Google AI Pro plan.

    AI Mode in Google Search now features tools like Canvas, Search Live with video and PDF uploads.

    NotebookLM is introducing Featured Notebooks, Video Overviews and a new study panel; it’s also now available to users under 18.

    And to help students get the most out of all these new features, we’ve announced Google AI for Education Accelerator, an initiative to offer free AI training and Google Career Certificates to every college student in America. Over 100 public universities have already signed up. We’re also committing $1 billion in new funding to education in the United States over the next three years.”

    That brings us to OpenAI, which announced ChatGPT Study Mode on July 29, 2025. Noting ChatGPT’s overall leadership and success, OpenAI added, “But its use in education has also raised an important question: how do we ensure it is used to support real learning, and doesn’t just offer solutions without helping students make sense of them? We’ve built study mode to help answer this question. When students engage with study mode, they’re met with guiding questions that calibrate responses to their objective and skill level to help them build deeper understanding. Study mode is designed to be engaging and interactive, and to help students learn something—not just finish something.”

    The Study Mode function is available now in the Free, Plus, Pro and Team versions of GPT products providing an array of features:

    “Interactive prompts: Combines Socratic questioning, hints, and self-reflection prompts to guide understanding and promote active learning, instead of providing answers outright. Scaffolded responses: Information is organized into easy-to-follow sections that highlight the key connections between topics, keeping information engaging with just the right amount of context and reducing overwhelm for complex topics. Personalized support: Lessons are tailored to the right level for the user, based on questions that assess skill level and memory from previous chats. Knowledge checks: Quizzes and open-ended questions, along with personalized feedback to track progress, support knowledge retention and the ability to apply that knowledge in new contexts. Flexibility: Easily toggle study mode on and off during a conversation, giving you the flexibility to adapt to your learning goals in each conversation.”

    I encourage readers to visit each of the sites linked above to become familiar with the different ways Anthropic, Google and OpenAI are approaching providing support to educational institutions and individual instructors and learners. This is an opportunity to become more familiar with each of the leading AI providers and their apps. Now is the time to become experienced in using these tools that collectively have become the foundation of innovation and efficiency in 2025.

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