Tag: Higher

  • Why Higher Ed Must Be Intentional With AI

    Why Higher Ed Must Be Intentional With AI

    Walk into almost any office on a campus right now and you’ll hear the same thing: “We’re experimenting with AI.” Someone is drafting social posts in ChatGPT. Someone else is piloting a chatbot for admissions FAQs. Another is tinkering with predictive models in the CRM.

    These efforts are well intentioned, but nearly three years into the ready availability of generative AI tools, higher ed needs to understand that dabbling isn’t enough anymore.

    Higher education is under immense pressure. From the demographic cliff to the search cliff, the drop in international enrollment to the decline in the public perception of higher education, our industry is fraught with challenges. When we combine these challenges with the escalating expectations from students and families and the “experience economy,” we’re setting ourselves up to fall dangerously behind.

    AI can be part of the solution to those challenges. But if we limit ourselves to scattered experiments, we risk wasting resources and missing the opportunity to use AI as a true strategic advantage.

    The Risks of Dabbling 

    When AI adoption is fragmented, several challenges emerge:

    • Duplicated work and tool sprawl. Different units adopt different tools, leading to confusion, inconsistent data and hidden costs.
    • Inconsistent brand voice. Without shared guidelines, AI-generated content can erode the consistency of a university’s storytelling.
    • Ethical blind spots. Dabbling often means no governance. Sensitive student data can inadvertently end up in AI tools.
    • Staff frustration. When AI feels like extra work instead of a supportive tool, teams become skeptical. That makes adoption harder later.
    • Lost momentum. When experiments aren’t connected to measurable outcomes, leadership may conclude that AI “doesn’t work here.”

    The paradox is this: Dabbling may feel safer, but it is actually riskier than intentional adoption.

    What Intentional Adoption Looks Like 

    Intentional adoption doesn’t mean rushing into automation or replacing staff. It means aligning AI with institutional goals, building literacy across teams, creating ethical guardrails and sharing results transparently.

    Take admissions chatbots. Many institutions piloted them to handle high-volume FAQs. Some fizzled out because there was no plan for training, governance or integrating insights back into the enrollment strategy. But at campuses where chatbots were tied to yield goals, tested with student input and connected to human follow-up, they became powerful tools for reducing melt and increasing student satisfaction.

    Or consider content creation. I’ve seen marketing teams use AI to repurpose one student story into dozens of assets, like email copy, Instagram posts, video scripts. When done thoughtfully, this allowed teams to do more with the same staff, freeing time for higher-level strategy. When done haphazardly, it can lead to a flood of off-brand content that students recognize as AI, eroding trust.

    A Framework for Readiness 

    So how can institutions move from dabbling to adopting? One approach I use with teams is the AI Maturity Matrix.

    The matrix evaluates readiness across six dimensions—vision, leadership support, skills, governance, collaboration, and technology—and places organizations on a five-stage curve:

    1. Nascent: AI is barely leveraged, or individual experiments happen in silos.
    2. Developing: Small pilots exist but aren’t connected to strategy.
    3. Scaling: Multiple projects are coordinated and tied to goals.
    4. Optimized: AI is part of daily workflows, with governance and training in place.
    5. Transformational: AI is a true differentiator, fueling innovation and efficiency across the institution.

    Most higher ed teams that I speak with fall in the second and third categories. They are experimenting and maybe scaling, but without the governance or strategy to optimize. The matrix helps teams see their starting point clearly and, more importantly, identify what it will take to get to the next stage.

    The key is not to leap from nascent to transformational overnight, but instead move steadily, stage by stage, building capacity along the way.

    A Call to Action for Higher Ed Leaders 

    The issue isn’t whether higher education will use AI; it’s whether we’ll use it well.

    If you’re leading a team, here are three questions to start with:

    1. Do we know where we stand on the AI maturity curve?
    2. Are our current experiments connected to our overarching goals?
    3. What’s one step we could take in the next 30 days to build intentional capacity?

    These questions are urgent. Students are already comparing their campus experience to the seamless, personalized interactions they get from Amazon, Spotify or Netflix. Faculty and staff are already using AI tools in their personal lives, whether institutions acknowledge it or not. The longer we leave AI adoption uncoordinated, the greater the gap grows between what higher ed delivers and what students expect.

    I still hear from people who believe AI is a passing fad. Meanwhile, the world around us is shifting in significant ways that have the potential to leave us far behind. Institutions must approach their AI adoption with clarity and intentionality. Those that treat it as a novelty risk being left behind.

    The time for dabbling is over. The time for intentional adoption is now. 

    Jaime Hunt is president of Solve Higher Ed and an adjunct faculty member at West Virginia University teaching courses in higher ed marketing and emerging media.

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  • A Compact for Control (opinion)

    A Compact for Control (opinion)

    For more than 80 years, the system of higher education in the United States has partnered with the federal government to produce the best science, technology and scholarship in the world. Competing for federal research support on the basis of merit, universities have produced countless innovations and spurred enormous economic growth. The Trump administration has now proposed a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that threatens to destroy this partnership.

    Holding hostage federal loans and grants, the “compact” is essentially a unilateral executive decree that cannot be refused. Although it sounds in high and unobjectionable ideals, it is in fact designed to undermine the traditional academic independence and freedom that have sustained the greatness of American universities. The compact should be immediately and forcefully rejected by all self-respecting institutions of higher education.

    Universities and colleges have two essential missions. They serve to increase our knowledge of the world and to educate our young. Knowledge cannot be increased if it is assessed by political criteria, as distinguished from standards of intellectual merit. But the compact requires that institutions of higher education abolish “institutional units that … belittle … conservative ideas.” What exactly counts as conservative is unstated and left in the control of the administration. The compact seeks to supplant intellectual competence with explicitly political criteria, to be determined by a political agency. This demand violates not only academic freedom, but also free speech. It imposes government orthodoxy on private entities.

    The compact demands that universities offer empirical verification that each institutional field, department and unit represent a “broad spectrum of viewpoints.” It thus invites government to overrule scientific consensus on the range of acceptable inquiry. Most colleges of environmental sciences, for example, teach that global climate change is accelerated by human conduct. But Trump himself, speaking before the United Nations, branded this view the “greatest con job.” Most medical schools teach that vaccines are important to health. But Trump’s secretary of health and human services “has been crusading against vaccines for decades.” Under the compact, government might insist that every biology department house a vaccine denier, or that every environmental science program contain a climate change skeptic. Political control of this kind would quickly degrade the intellectual integrity of university scholarship.

    Early in the 20th century, American universities were managed by laypersons who attempted to censor and control the scholarship of professors. But in 1915, the newly established American Association of University Professors defined and defended academic freedom in the canonical Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure. The declaration set forth principles that are now enshrined in contracts at virtually every American college and university. These principles protect academic freedom, which rests on the axiom that scholarly excellence is to be determined by academic rather than political standards. Trump’s proposed compact wantonly violates this essential principle, even as it purports to protect academic freedom.

    The declaration also makes clear the educational goal of American colleges and universities, which is to equip students to think for themselves. The compact, in contrast, requires universities to suppress “support for entities designated by the U.S. Government as terrorist organizations.” Government may of course create such designations, but unfortunately they may also be problematic, overbroad or erroneous. Students and professors should be allowed to criticize such errors, but the compact would prevent this. It would require American colleges and universities to become instruments of official thought control. This is what happened in the United States during World War I, when professors were fired for opposing the war. We have spent a century repenting those mistakes, and now the Trump administration demands that we repeat them.

    Some provisions in the compact are unobjectionable because they merely restate existing law. The Supreme Court has outlawed the use of race in admissions. Congress has laid out procedures for enforcing antidiscrimination law under Title VI and Title IX. These tools are adequate to enforce the law. But the compact has a larger goal: It seeks to break the independence of American higher education, an independence that has fueled the ascent of American colleges and universities to greatness. The compact goes far beyond the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action to require that all admissions decisions “be based upon and evaluated against objective criteria.” It also requires “grade integrity,” freezing tuition rates for five years, disclosure of postgraduate earnings and free tuition for students in the hard sciences at universities with large endowments. It limits the percentage of foreign students and requires screening for anti-American bias.

    The diversity of American institutions of higher education is commonly understood to be a source of its enormous strength. Competing against each other for students, American colleges and universities admit students based on their own distinct and legal criteria. But the administration seeks to end that heterogeneity. For many institutions what matters is the creativity of a student’s essay, the qualitative assessment of recommendations and the resilience of an applicant’s personality as revealed in a résumé. The administration would have universities ignore all that. It would turn our colleges and universities into drab, bureaucratic and uniform institutions, under the shadow of the continuous threat of government interference.

    Under the compact, universities also must commit to institutional neutrality, the idea that university leaders and departments will not officially comment on social and political issues of the day that do not affect the university. This is an ideal embodied in the 1967 Kalven report at the University of Chicago, but its adoption and interpretation is a very local matter, and it should not be required as a condition for receipt of federal funds.

    Institutional neutrality is important because it protects the maximum freedom of students and faculty to vigorously inquire, without battling the pall of official ideas. But some institutions might have specific missions that they deem essential. For example, a religious institution of higher learning might have a certain set of principles that require leaders to speak out. If government gets to decide what counts as a social or political issue, a medical school might not be able to opine on the safety of vaccines, an environmental department on the impacts of climate change or a law school on violations of the rule of law. Of course, universities may choose not to opine on these matters, but for the administration to impose this silence is truly inimical to a marketplace of ideas.

    The compact insists that universities “commit to defining” gender roles “according to reproductive function and biological processes.” Gender troubles certainly abound in universities, and prior administrations may have contributed to these difficulties. But these quandaries are for universities to settle. The diversity of approaches taken by American colleges and universities is our greatest strength. The compact unaccountably seeks to impose its own ideology on all institutions of higher education. It seeks to replace a pluralist market with a single orientation set by Washington, D.C.

    The architect of America’s public-private research partnership, Vannevar Bush, asserted that “scientific progress” required “the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown.” The Trump administration would do well to recognize that a genuine marketplace of ideas requires academic freedom for scholars and a competitive environment for institutions.

    For the administration to attempt to use federal funds to force colleges and universities to toe a conservative line is to create what our constitutional law calls unconstitutional conditions. No university that is committed to independently searching for the truth, or to producing students who can think for themselves, should submit to the deliberate and possibly illegal humiliations contained in the compact. Institutions that do so may very well cease being universities in the full sense of the term. They should just say no.

    Robert Post is the Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where he served as dean from 2009 to 2017. His research specialties include issues of free speech and academic freedom.

    Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago Law School and director of Chicago’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression.

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  • Federal Union Sues Trump Admin Over Political OOO

    Federal Union Sues Trump Admin Over Political OOO

    Employees who had the messages put on their accounts told Inside Higher Ed that it was “wild to see your name attached to a message that you had nothing to do with.”

    J. David Ake/Getty Images

    The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing federal workers, sued the Trump administration Friday, challenging the automated out-of-office email responses it placed on many employees’ email accounts when the government shut down. 

    The message, which was placed on the email accounts of all furloughed staff members without their consent, blamed Democrats in the Senate for causing the shutdown.

    AFGE’s members, who will be represented by the legal firms Democracy Forward and Public Citizen Litigation Group, argue in the complaint that the message Trump attached to their email accounts is “partisan political rhetoric.” Not only does it violate the Hatch Act, a federal law that requires nonappointed government staff to stay nonpartisan, but it also violates the First Amendment rights of the individual employees, they argue. 

    “The Trump-Vance administration is losing the blame game for the shutdown, so they’re using every tactic to try to fool the American people, including taking advantage of furloughed civil servants,” Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, said in a news release. “Even for an administration that has repeatedly demonstrated a complete lack of respect for the Constitution and rule of law, this is beyond outrageous. The court must act immediately to stop this flagrant unlawfulness.”

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  • Getting Curious About Network Mapping – Teaching in Higher Ed

    Getting Curious About Network Mapping – Teaching in Higher Ed

    I’ve just embarked on Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) Workshop (October–November 2025). The first invitation Jarche gives is to examine our networks. We begin with a naming exercise: the top four people who come to mind in response to prompts like:

    • Who do you most frequently communicate with to get work done?
    • Who do you approach for career or work advice?
    • Who are the main people you socialize with informally?
    • Who do you contact when facing complex work problems?

    After listing names, we reflect on their demographics, roles, ages, and how much diversity (or lack thereof) we see in our knowledge network. Jarche encourages us to spot gaps and opportunities for expanding who we include.

    Because the prompt focuses on recent months, I observed that some of the questions hit harder than others, given what I’ve been up to, lately. For example, I haven’t been actively job-searching for a long while, so the aspect of the career advice question focused on who I reach out to when considering whether to accept a job or leave my organization felt a bit hypothetical. But answering using a longer time span than solely these last few months nudged me to think about past seasons in which those questions were more pressing.

    Serendipitous Invitations and Saying Yes

    One outcome of doing the naming exercise is that it reminded me of an invitation to co-facilitate a book study with two other friends. The topic was not related to my formal role at work. The three of us had joked throughout the month-long study about whether we chose the worst possible evening for it. I teach a multi-hour block on Monday afternoons and my fellow facilitators also had all sorts of things going on in their professional and personal contexts. And yet, we were ultimately all glad to have said yes to the commitment.

    It ended up being challenging, yet hopeful: people with shared values, diverse perspectives, different paradigms, and a desire to consider our role in the work to live out what we believe. It made me appreciate intentionally saying no to lesser priorities so that I can say yes to what matters most.

    After browsing and reflecting on some of the supporting materials that Jarche includes about network mapping, I realized that this experience may be emblematic of “The Strength of Weak Ties,” an idea brought forth by Mark S. Granovetter back in 1973. Granovetter defines the strength of a tie as a composite of time spent, emotional intensity, intimacy (mutual confiding), and reciprocal services. He shows that as tie strength increases, so does overlap in one’s social circle (i.e. your strong ties tend to know each other). Weak ties, being more distant, often serve as bridges between clusters in a network. He reveals about the strength of ties:

    Most intuitive notions of the “strength” of an interpersonal tie should be satisfied by the following definition: the strength of a tie is a (probably linear) combination of the amount of time, the emotional intensity, the intimacy (mutual confiding), and the reciprocal services which characterize the tie.

    Granovetter also shares the understandable emphasis on strong ties, yet also cautions us about what is lacking in our personal and societal development, were we to focus exclusively on strong ties. He writes:

    Treating only the strength of ties ignores, for instance, all the important issues involving their content. What is the relation between strength and degree of specialization of ties, or between strength and hierarchical structure?

    The article is pretty dense reading and I am only skimming the surface here, no doubt not quite getting the richness of what he shares.

    The Teaching in Higher Ed Network

    I’ve long been grateful for my Teaching in Higher Ed podcast and the network is has helped me to cultivate since June of 2014. Over the 11+ years, it’s connected me with people across disciplines and invited discussions about assessment, AI, pedagogy, digital literacy, and more..

    By the way: Harold Jarche has been a guest on Teaching in Higher Ed (Episode 213). It was an honor to speak with him, after having followed his work for such a long time. In that episode, he says, “You can’t turn data into information until you have the knowledge to understand the data.”  That line struck me again as I think about how PKM is about sense-making, not just accumulation of information.

    My Most Frequently-Mentioned Name

    As I reviewed my responses, the name that surfaced most often was Dave (my husband). That shouldn’t surprise me: we met while earning our master’s degrees, later pursued doctoral work together, and share many disciplinary interests. He is also someone who regularly challenges my thinking while supporting me. His name appeared in questions about deep matters, who I talk to when launching something new, someone I informally socialize with, a person I want to talk to about complex problems, and finally to get career advice from.

    Informal Socializing: Breaking the Rule

    One of the prompts asked: Who do you socialize with informally?

    I confess: I broke the rule of listing specific names. First off, I really don’t socialize informally very often, at all. Most time I spend with others is somehow geared toward an aim of some kind. My informal socializing is mostly with my immediate family (Dave and our two, curious children).

    I also reflected on the recent optional activity I did with the students enrolled in my personal leadership and productivity class, while answering the questions posed by Jarche for this activity. They have an assignment to plan their 85th birthday party, which is based off of a prompt offered by Stephen Covey in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. After students reflect, they can optionally sign up for a time to join me on campus or online for a time to celebrate and reflect together on what they learned.

    That, plus I bring cupcakes and play Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday song (which thus far, 100% have agreed is the best of the birthday songs).

    Reflections & Next Moves

    A few reflections and intentions as I begin Jarche’s PKM workshop this week:

    • New seasons evolve my network ties. My closer-knit network in recent months reflect my focus during that time. In a different season, I would have listed different people.
    • Mix strong and weak ties. I already see how much value my core, close relationships (like Dave) bring. But I also am thankful for the times when my podcast allows me to reach outward, diversify, and surface my weaker ties that bring novelty and new perspectives.
    • Nurture the giving habit. As Rob Cross (in his work on networks) says, effective networks often grow when people give first and who go beyond the superficial.

    I have enjoyed this opportunity to reflect on my networks and look forward to continuing to explore some of the resources that Harold includes. I’m also ready to get to learn more about the others participating in the PKM workshop these next couple of months. If I know anything about PKM and about Harold, it is what will become “us” as a cohort that will make the biggest difference in our learning.

    Plus that whole thing about getting out of something what you put into it…

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  • ED Pushes Workforce Readiness as a Priority

    ED Pushes Workforce Readiness as a Priority

    The U.S. Department of Education is doubling down on its emphasis on workforce development. Education Secretary Linda McMahon recently proposed adding career pathways and workforce readiness to her list of priorities for discretionary grant funding, possibly guiding how the department spends billions of dollars.

    “After four years of the Biden Administration pedaling [sic] divisive ideology and racial preferencing, the Trump Administration will prioritize discretionary grants to education programs that actually improve student outcomes by using evidence-based strategies for instruction and creating pathways to high-demand fields,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement late last month. “The department looks forward to empowering states to close achievement gaps and align education with the evolving needs of the workforce.”

    McMahon’s plan would channel federal funds toward efforts to align workforce-development programs with state economic priorities. The department proposed supporting projects dedicated to identifying and promoting strong industry-recognized credentials, building tools for students to compare costs and earnings of different educational pathways and growing work-based learning opportunities, like apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships. It also encouraged support for skilled trades and the development of talent marketplaces, digital platforms run by states to connect job seekers and potential employers based on skills.

    “For decades, the dominant ‘college for all’ narrative has led to a narrow focus that often leaves students with degrees and debt but limited job prospects,” the grant priority proposal reads. “By expanding the range of options so that a broader array of education providers can access existing funding in a manner that aligns outcomes with the demands of today’s workforce, the government can foster both economic mobility for students and sustained competitiveness for the nation.”

    McMahon has named other grant priorities since becoming secretary as well, including mathematics education, evidence-based literacy education, education choice, patriotic education and returning education to the states. The Education Department takes its priorities into account and can give them extra weight when approving discretionary grant awards.

    The department’s workforce-readiness proposal mirrors other plans from the Trump administration to put workforce development center stage. An April executive order, for example, charged federal officials with better addressing the nation’s workforce needs, including by reaching, and surpassing, one million new active apprenticeships. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in July, established workforce Pell, allowing Pell Grants, starting next year, to flow to low-income students in short-term programs.

    The Department of Labor also came out with a report outlining “America’s talent strategy” in August and is moving forward with a controversial interagency agreement with the Department of Education for a more “coordinated federal education and workforce system.” (The agreement would move administration of career and technical education programs to the DOL.)

    Education and workforce advocates say the new grant priority—open for public comment until Oct. 27—is a welcome win for causes they’ve long championed, but their celebration is tempered by some questions and concerns. Some argue ED’s workforce goals could be disrupted by other Trump administration policies. Others worry the department’s focus on nondegree pathways could lead to an underinvestment in traditional higher ed. And while some are cautiously optimistic about the proposed plan, they’re waiting to see how it works in practice.

    “When we look at this functionally, in theory, all of this looks like things that we like,” said Jennifer Stiddard, senior director of government affairs for Jobs for the Future, an organization focused on the intersection between education and the workforce. “Career-connected learning … creating better pathways for students, creating better opportunities to learn about careers—these are all things that are included in here. Where we always have pause is understanding how all of this is going to be applied.”

    Hopes and Worries

    The proposal has sparked hope for workforce development wonks, as some of their long-held goals are becoming national priorities.

    Erica Cuevas, director of education policy at Jobs for the Future, said she’s still reviewing the grant priority language, but she’s heartened to see the administration using its “bully pulpit and its discretionary grant authority to promote career-connected learning within the broader K–12 educational ecosystem,” beyond career and technical education programs, which reach a limited number of students.

    Katie Spiker, chief of federal affairs for the National Skills Coalition, a research and advocacy organization focused on workforce training, said it’s clear the Education Department is focused on aligning education offerings with workforce needs, fostering industry partnerships and expanding work-based learning opportunities. She also applauded the department for its focus on forging connections between high school programs, apprenticeships and other workforce development programs, which “really reflects how the work is done on the ground,” as a “holistic effort across education and workforce.”

    But she also worries that the Trump administration is simultaneously pushing policies that don’t serve these goals. For example, the president’s budget for fiscal year 2026 proposed zeroing out funding for adult education, which she views as critical for training adults in basic skills so they can fill workforce gaps.

    “The funding conversations and the massive shifts and reductions in investments that we’ve seen both from the House appropriations process and from the president’s budget request are really incongruent with these important priorities that they’re setting out in this document,” Spiker said.

    She also emphasized that the proposed grant priority doesn’t put any focus on “reaching and engaging with communities that have not traditionally had access” to certain high-demand jobs, including women, communities of color and workers with disabilities. She believes filling workforce shortages will require actively recruiting, and building up supports for, workers underrepresented in industries with workforce gaps.

    Businesses “are scrambling to try and build broader pipelines of folks, both because of job openings that they have today, as well as those that they are projecting for next year, five years from now and into the future,” Spiker said.

    In a similar vein, Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, said she found it “frustrating” that McMahon’s announcement of the grant priority described workforce readiness and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as at odds.

    “We know that employers are insisting that their employees be able to speak across differences, work in diverse teams and engage in cross-cultural understanding,” based on surveys AAC&U conducts with employers, Pasquerella said.

    She supports aligning education programs with workforce needs and offering students more experiential learning opportunities. But she believes liberal arts education is also a part of training students for the workforce and fears such offerings could be sidelined in the department’s vision for supporting workforce readiness.

    “The risk is always that if we focus too narrowly on career preparation—without recognizing that career preparation must involve skills, competencies and dispositions central to a liberal education—that we will have a group of students who are narrowly technically trained without the capacity to grapple with the grand challenges that will confront us in the future,” she said. “We shouldn’t create a false dichotomy between career preparation and liberal education.”

    John Colborn, executive director of Apprenticeships for America, believes the proposed grant priority is over all a “positive development” for learners.

    “I think it brings some more balance to the educational enterprise, which has been overwhelmingly focused on getting everyone into college,” he said. “I think we’ve realized the limitations of that particular approach.”

    But while he favors exposing K–12 students to a broader range of career pathways, including apprenticeships, he also wants to make sure career-focused programs prepare students for both careers and college. He said one of the problems with vocational training in high schools in the past was that students too often were “constrained into a particular pathway.”

    “We don’t want to go down that road or repeat some of those mistakes,” he said.

    He noted that the partnership between the Education Department and the Department of Labor raises these types of concerns, because the DOL has less of an academic focus. But he believes stronger ties between the agencies is a net positive.

    The long-term effects of the proposal, and other workforce-development plans, “is really going to turn on whether or not that nuance can be represented in the grant making and priority setting for the department,” Colborn said.

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  • Tapping Alumni to Be Career Mentors for Students

    Tapping Alumni to Be Career Mentors for Students

    For students at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, alumni mentors are becoming embedded in their experience. A recently launched mentorship program pairs each rising junior with a graduate from the college to provide advice and encouragement as they finish their last two years of college.

    The initiative, part of Gettysburg’s reimagining of career development, helps students build a professional network before they leave college and hopefully eases the transition into life after graduation, said Billy Ferrell, director of external relations in Gettysburg’s Center for Career Engagement.

    What’s the need: Professional mentors can be an asset for early-career professionals, offering insights into navigating the workforce and their specific industry, as well as personal support and encouragement. But a majority of Americans say they don’t have a mentor, according to a 2023 survey by the University of Phoenix, and one-third of respondents said a lack of mentorship has held them back in their careers.

    Within higher education, many students are asking their institutions for assistance in identifying role models.

    A spring 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed found that 29 percent of students believe their college or university should focus more on connecting students to alumni and other potential mentors. And a 2023 student survey found that 45 percent of students think their career center should help them find a professional mentor.

    However, only a fraction of students have participated in a formal mentoring program, either through their college or outside the institution, according to a 2021 survey by Inside Higher Ed.

    How it works: Gettysburg’s Alumni Mentoring Program launched this fall with the Class of 2027, who coincidentally were the first class to participate in the college’s guided co-curricular pathways, Ferrell said.

    Students could opt to add an alumni mentor to their advising team, which already includes a faculty adviser, career adviser and co-curricular adviser, who coaches students on their pathway. Alumni advising is focused on the student’s career but could include job exploration, the postcollege transition, networking and industry-specific trends, Ferrell said.

    The goal is for students to learn “real world” skills to navigate life after college, according to the college’s website.

    Students will meet with their mentor at least once a month starting in October and conclude in March, Ferrell said.

    Gettysburg recruited mentors through email campaigns, social media posts and the alumni magazine, Ferrell said. Interested alumni signed up through connectGettysburg, the college’s career networking platform, and completed a short intake survey. Students completed a similar questionnaire and a computer algorithm made the mentor match, Ferrell said.

    Mentors participated in an online training module to prepare them to take on an advising role. Additionally, the college established a handbook for mentor pairs to outline expectations for the relationship and offer topical sessions for students to choose from to guide conversations with mentors.

    These resources can address a common barrier to mentorship for students: a lack of awareness of what the relationship entails. A 2021 survey by Inside Higher Ed found that among students who lacked a mentor, 45 percent didn’t know what they would ask a mentor and 27 percent didn’t know what they would do with one.

    What’s next: Eighty-one juniors and alumni are participating in the initial program, and Gettysburg will survey students and alumni throughout the term to gauge the effectiveness of the initiative and ensure students are getting the kind of support they’re looking for, Ferrell said.

    Next year, Gettysburg will expand the program to junior and senior-level students.

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  • Colleges Must Pursue All Legal Paths for Diversity (opinion)

    Colleges Must Pursue All Legal Paths for Diversity (opinion)

    Two years ago, the Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to opportunity in America when it gutted access to higher education for underrepresented groups. That decision was not only legally misguided but also turned a blind eye to the deep inequities that have long shaped our education system. Our colleges and universities scrambled to find lawful tools to ensure that their student bodies still reflected the breadth of talent and promise in this country.

    One of those tools was Landscape, a program recently canceled by the College Board that gave admissions officers data about a student’s high school and neighborhood while explicitly excluding race or ethnicity.

    Standardized test scores and GPAs never tell the whole story. Median family income, access to Advanced Placement courses, local crime rates and other key indicators help admissions officers see the full picture and provide crucial context to help identify high-achieving students from disadvantaged communities. These are students whom universities might otherwise overlook. Tools that give context level the playing field—not by lowering standards, but by lifting students up according to their merit and the obstacles they have overcome.

    The Supreme Court, even in striking down diversity initiatives, still made clear that universities could explore race-neutral alternatives to achieve equity. The use of socioeconomic and geographic factors is exactly such an alternative. Despite U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi’s recent nonbinding guidance warning against the use of geographic indicators as “proxies” for race, make no mistake: Abandoning consideration of these elements of an applicant’s background is not a legal requirement but a political choice, reflecting fear rather than courage.

    Without tools that account for the barriers students face, colleges will fall back on practices that overwhelmingly favor the privileged, shutting out low-income and first-generation students who have already beaten the odds. This spoils opportunity for millions, and our campuses and our nation will suffer for it. Diversity is not a box to check; it is a vital engine of education and democracy. Classrooms that bring together students from different walks of life prepare all graduates to lead a diverse society, foster innovation and strengthen our communities.

    We cannot allow the Supreme Court’s decision—and the chilling effect in its wake—to undo decades of progress. And we cannot allow educational institutions to abdicate their responsibility in this moment of crisis. The data that provides broader context for applicants remains available, but without the will to use it, too many doors will remain closed for the students who need them most.

    America has always promised to reward hard work and perseverance, no matter where you come from. That promise rings hollow if we allow the wealthy and well connected to monopolize educational opportunity. Colleges and universities must honor that promise by continuing to seek out and support students who have succeeded against the odds. Fairness demands it, equal opportunity requires it and the future of our country depends on it.

    The authors all serve as state attorneys general: New York Attorney General Letitia James, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark and Washington Attorney General Nick Brown.

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  • Higher Education must help shape how students learn, lead and build the skills employers want most

    Higher Education must help shape how students learn, lead and build the skills employers want most

    For the first time in more than a decade, confidence in the nation’s colleges and universities is rising. Forty-two percent of Americans now say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, up from 36 percent last year.  

    It’s a welcome shift, but it’s certainly not time for institutions to take a victory lap. 

    For years, persistent concerns about rising tuition, student debt and an uncertain job market have led many to question whether college was still worth the cost. Headlines have routinely spotlighted graduates who are underemployed, overwhelmed or unsure how to translate their degrees into careers.  

    With the rapid rise of AI reshaping entry-level hiring, those doubts are only going to intensify. Politicians, pundits and anxious parents are already asking: Why aren’t students better prepared for the real world?  

    But the conversation is broken, and the framing is far too simplistic. The real question isn’t whether college prepares students for careers. It’s how. And the “how” is more complex, personal and misunderstood than most people realize.  

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. 

    What’s missing from this conversation is a clearer understanding of where career preparation actually happens. It’s not confined to the classroom or the career center. It unfolds in the everyday often overlooked experiences that shape how students learn, lead and build confidence.  

    While earning a degree is important, it’s not enough. Students need a better map for navigating college. They need to know from day one that half the value of their experience will come from what they do outside the classroom.  

    To rebuild America’s trust, colleges must point beyond course catalogs and job placement rates. They need to understand how students actually spend their time in college. And they need to understand what those experiences teach them. 

    Ask someone thriving in their career which part of college most shaped their success, and their answer might surprise you. (I had this experience recently at a dinner with a dozen impressive philanthropic, tech and advocacy leaders.) You might expect them to name a major, a key class or an internship. But they’re more likely to mention running the student newspaper, leading a sorority, conducting undergraduate research, serving in student government or joining the debate team.  

    Such activities aren’t extracurriculars. They are career-curriculars. They’re the proving grounds where students build real-world skills, grow professional networks and gain confidence to navigate complexity. But most people don’t discuss these experiences until they’re asked about them.  

    Over time, institutions have created a false divide. The classroom is seen as the domain of learning, and career services is seen as the domain of workforce preparation. But this overlooks an important part of the undergraduate experience: everything in between.  

    The vast middle of campus life — clubs, competitions, mentorship, leadership roles, part-time jobs and collaborative projects — is where learning becomes doing. It’s where students take risks, test ideas and develop the communication, teamwork and problem-solving skills that employers need.  

    This oversight has made career services a stand-in for something much bigger. Career services should serve as an essential safety net for students who didn’t or couldn’t fully engage in campus life, but not as the launchpad we often imagine it to be. 

    Related: OPINION: College is worth it for most students, but its benefits are not equitable 

    We also need to confront a harder truth: Many students enter college assuming success after college is a given. Students are often told that going to college leads to success. They are rarely told, however, what that journey actually requires. They believe knowledge will be poured into them and that jobs will magically appear once the diploma is in hand. And for good reason, we’ve told them as much. 

    But college isn’t a vending machine. You can’t insert tuition and expect a job to roll out. Instead, it’s a platform, a laboratory and a proving ground. It requires students to extract value through effort, initiative and exploration, especially outside the classroom.  

    The credential matters, but it’s not the whole story. A degree can open doors, but it won’t define a career. It’s the skills students build, the relationships they form and the challenges they take on along the way to graduation that shape their future. 

    As more college leaders rightfully focus on the college-to-career transition, colleges must broadcast that while career services plays a helpful role, students themselves are the primary drivers of their future. But to be clear, colleges bear a grave responsibility here. It’s on us to reinforce the idea that learning occurs everywhere on campus, that the most powerful career preparation comes from doing, not just studying. It’s also on us to address college affordability, so that students have the time to participate in campus life, and to ensure that on-campus jobs are meaningful learning experiences.  

    Higher education can’t afford public confidence to dip again. The value of college isn’t missing. We’re just not looking in the right place. 

    Bridget Burns is the founding CEO of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA), a nationally recognized consortium of 19 public research universities driving student success innovation for nearly 600,000 students. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected]. 

    This story about college experiences was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter. 

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • Chatbots in Higher Education: Benefits, Challenges, and Strategies to Prevent Misuse – Faculty Focus

    Chatbots in Higher Education: Benefits, Challenges, and Strategies to Prevent Misuse – Faculty Focus

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  • UNC Professor Accused of Advocating Political Violence Reinstated

    UNC Professor Accused of Advocating Political Violence Reinstated

    University officials found “no basis” that Dixon posed a threat or violated university policy.

    Marin Herold/iStock/Getty Images Plus

    Dwayne Dixon, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was reinstated Friday after the university performed a “thorough threat assessment,” Dean Stoyer, vice chancellor for communications and marketing, said in a statement. 

    Dixon was placed on leave Monday following allegations that he was an advocate for political violence.

    “The Carolina Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management Team consulted with the UNC System security office and with local law enforcement, undertaking a robust, swift and efficient review of all the evidence. We have found no basis to conclude that he poses a threat to University students, staff, and faculty, or has engaged in conduct that violates University policy,” Stoyer said in a statement. “As a result, the University is reinstating Professor Dixon to his faculty responsibilities, effective immediately.”

    Dixon is a teaching associate professor of Asian and Middle Eastern studies at UNC Chapel Hill, and he’s been active at counterprotests to alt-right rallies, including at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. He’s also a strong advocate for gun rights and used to be a member of the Silver Spring Redneck Revolt, a chapter of the now-disbanded antifascist, antiracist, anticapitalist political group Redneck Revolt. Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, called for Dixon to be fired in an X post because of these affiliations.

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