Tag: Higher

Higher education postcard: Teesside University
In August 1856, Joseph Constantine was born in Schleswig-Holstein (then Denmark, later Germany, famously questionable) to British parents: his father, Robert, was an engineer working on the Schleswig-Holstein railway. Joseph went to Newcastle Grammar School and in 1881 moved to Middlesbrough. There he set up in the shopping business, and did very well for himself.

He was obviously imbued with a passion for Middlesbrough. We learn from the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer on 2 July 1930 that:

Mr Constantine was an active member of the Tees Conservancy Commission, whose work was closely associated with Mr Amos, the general manager. It was to him that Mr. Constantine first broached the idea, in June 1916, of doing something substantial for Middlesbrough. The idea that should connected with higher education was his own, but it was Mr. Amos who suggested that a visit should be made to Armstrong College Newcastle.

Mr Constantine was greatly impressed with the good work of that institution, and made up his mind to provide the youth of his own town with similar educational facilities. It was is the office of the Mayor, then Mr Joseph Calvert, that Mr Constantine disclosed his proposal and the terms of his gift. The prolongation of the war prevented Mr Constantine from seeing the fulfilment of his dream, and the changed conditions made the gift of £40,000 inadequate for the scheme. But the generosity of Mr Constantine’s widow and his family in giving the same amount, enabled the building of the college to be accomplished.

On 6 November 1922 (we read in the next day’s Leeds Mercury) the Middlesbrough Education Committee met, and in order to progress the scheme for a college, constituted itself, with representatives of Joseph Constantine (who may by then have been frail: he died six weeks later), as the governing body of the new college. A site had by then been bought, but commencing the build had run into difficulties. The governing body hence formed a sub-committee to look at other colleges to get ideas for buildings.

In April 1927 the Town Council awarded the building contract – £65,000 – to Messrs Easton, a Newcastle firm (one alderman objected, arguing that the tender should go to a Middlesbrough firm which had bid at only £100 more). Building work was completed in time for the first students to be enrolled in September 1929. Constantine Technical College was born (Joseph Constantine was, apparently, against the college being named for him, but was persuaded by the mayor).

It offered what we would now think of as both further and higher education, including University of London external degrees. By 1931 it was appointing its second Principal: Dr T J Murray was appointed from the Smethwick Municipal College, on an annual salary of £900, rising to £1200. ICI was offering scholarships for degree students and the students’ guild was organising its third charity rag, starting on 2 July and lasting for almost two weeks. The events list (from the South Bank Express, 18 June 1932) looked – mostly – good:
- Saturday: motorized treasure hunt
- Monday: students night at the Gaumont Palace, including a male beauty chorus and a female beauty competition (the latter open to all girls in Teesside over 16 years old)
- Wednesday: opening of the amusement park by the beauty queen
- Thursday: rag dances, three held simultaneously in Middlesbrough, Redcar and Stockton
- Friday: boxing
- Saturday: rag day, street collection, parade and jazz concert
- Monday: mock civic night (presumably some sort of debating competition?)
- Wednesday: sports day
The college continued to develop through the 1950s and 1960s. It expanded, as can be seen by the relocation of its art school. In the 1960s there was some agitation for the creation of a technical university for the north east, for which Constantine College must have been in the frame. But these hopes were dashed in 1967, with the Secretary of State confirming that no funds would be available.

The college renamed itself as Constantine College of Technology before becoming the Teesside Polytechnic in 1969. The local college of education was incorporated in the 1970s, and in 1992 it became the University of Teesside (this is the point where, as I wrote about last week, it was in partnership for a while with Durham University for the creation of University College Stockton). In 2009 it was renamed again, as Teesside University.

Teesside is one of the few universities to have a biological organism named after it. Pseudomonas teessidea is a bacterium which can help to clean contaminated soil, and was discovered by Dr Pattanathu Rahman, then a Teesside University microbiologist.

Here’s a jigsaw of the postcard – unposted but I guess dates from the 1930s, not long after the college was opened. Unposted, but there’s still a message:
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January 16, 2026
Students Should Insure an Investment as Important as College

To the editor:

We appreciate the opportunity to respond to the recent opinion essay “Degrees of Uncertainty” (Dec. 15, 2025). The author raises important questions about rising college costs, institutional incentives and the risks of oversimplifying complex financial challenges facing students and families.  We are pleased that she recognizes Loan Repayment Assistance Programs (LRAPs) help address affordability challenges and provide many benefits for students and colleges.

However, the author questions whether students should benefit from a guarantee that their college degree will be economically valuable.

LRAPs are, at their core, student loan insurance. It can be scary to borrow large student loans to finance an expensive college degree. There is a market failure, however, every time a student does not attend their preferred college, study their preferred major or pursue their preferred career because they are afraid of student loans. Students should be free to pursue their passions—not forced into second-best choices because of the cost of the degree or the prospect of a lower income in the future.

Society also loses out—especially if the lower-income career a student wants to pursue is a human service profession, such as education, where they will invest in improving the lives of others.

Most purchases come with a warranty or guarantee. Why should college be different? Colleges promise to provide value to students. We applaud those colleges and universities that stand behind that promise with a financial guarantee.

As consumers, we routinely insure our biggest risks and largest purchases. We insure our homes, cars, boats and lives—and even our pets. Why shouldn’t we insure an expensive investment in college?

In any class, we can expect some students will earn less than their peers. It is reasonable for students to fear being among that group. An individual student cannot diversify that risk. That is the function of insurance.

LRAPs spread the risk across many students, just as insurance does with other familiar risks. Most drivers can’t protect themselves from the chance of being in a car accident and facing large repair and medical expenses. Insurance spreads that risk, turning a small chance of a very large cost into a small premium that protects against that loss.

LRAPs serve the same function for students—without the cost—because colleges cover the program, giving students peace of mind and the freedom to attend their preferred college and pursue their passions.

By doing this, LRAPs are a tool that can help colleges increase enrollment and revenue. This additional revenue can be invaluable at a time when colleges face many structural challenges—from regulatory changes to the disruption of AI to declining enrollment caused by the demographic cliff.

LRAPs provide meaningful protection to students while maintaining clear incentives to focus on completion, career preparation and postgraduation outcomes.

Peter Samuelson is president and founder at Ardeo Education Solutions, a loan repayment assistance program provider.

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January 15, 2026
Faculty Merit Act Is Meritless (opinion)

A recent op-ed by David Randall, executive director of the Civics Alliance and director of research at the National Association of Scholars, argues that faculty hiring in American universities has become so corrupt that it requires sweeping legislative intervention. NAS’s proposed Faculty Merit Act would require public universities to publish every higher ed standardized test score—SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT and more—of every faculty member and every applicant for that faculty member’s position across different stages of a faculty search. The goal, they claim, is to expose discrimination and restore meritocracy.

Letter to the editor

A letter has been submitted in response to this article. You can read the letter here , and view all of our letters to the editor here.

The proposal’s logic is explicit: If standardized test scores are a reasonable proxy for faculty merit, then a fair search should select someone with a very high score. If average scores decline from round to round, or if the eventual hire scored lower than dozens—or even hundreds—of rejected applicants, the public, Randall argues, should be able to “see that something is wrong.”

But the Faculty Merit Act rests on a serious misunderstanding of how measurement and selection actually work. Even if one accepts Randall’s premise that a standardized test score “isn’t a bad proxy for faculty merit,” the conclusions he draws simply do not follow. The supposed red flags the proposed act promises to reveal are not evidence of corruption. They are the expected mathematical consequences of using an imperfect measure in a large applicant pool.

I am a data scientist who works on issues of social justice. What concerns me is not only that NAS’s proposal is statistically unsound, but that it would mislead the public while presenting itself as transparent.

A Statistical Mistake

The proposed act depends on a simple idea: If standardized test scores are a reasonable proxy for faculty merit, then a fair search should select someone with a very high score. If the person hired has a lower score than many rejected applicants, or if average scores decline from round to round, something must be amiss.

This sounds intuitive. It is also wrong.

To see why, imagine the following setup. Every applicant has some level of “true merit” for a faculty job—originality, research judgment, teaching ability, intellectual fit. We cannot observe this truth directly. Instead, we observe a standardized test score, which captures some aspects of ability but misses many others. In other words, the test score contains two parts: a signal (the part related to actual merit) and noise (everything else the test does not measure).

Now suppose a search attracts 300 applicants, as in Randall’s own example. Assume—very generously—that the search committee somehow identifies the single best applicant by true merit and hires that person.

Here is the crucial point: Even if test scores are meaningfully related to true merit, the best applicant will almost never have the highest test score.

Why? Because when many people are competing, even moderate noise overwhelms rank ordering. A noisy measure will always misrank some individuals, and the larger the pool, the more dramatic those misrankings become. This is the same reason that ranking professional athletes by a single skill—free-throw percentage, say—would routinely misidentify the best overall players, especially in a large league.

How Strong Is the Test-Merit Relationship, Really?

Before putting numbers on this, we should ask a basic empirical question: How strongly do standardized tests actually predict the kinds of outcomes that matter in academia?

The most comprehensive recent research on the GRE—the test most relevant to graduate education—finds minimal predictive value. A meta-analysis of more than 200 studies found that GRE scores explain just over 3 percent of the variation in graduate outcomes such as GPA, degree completion and licensing exam performance. For graduate GPA specifically—the outcome the test is explicitly designed to predict—GRE scores explained only about 4 percent of the variance.

These studies assess near-term prediction within the same educational context: GRE scores predicting outcomes for the very students who took the test, measured only a few years later—under conditions maximally favorable to the test’s validity. The NAS proposal extrapolates from evidence that is already weak even under these favorable conditions. It would evaluate faculty hiring using test scores—often SAT scores—taken at age 17, applied to candidates who may now be in their 30s, 40s or older. Direct evidence for that kind of long-term extrapolation is scarce. However, the limited evidence that does exist points towards weak relationships rather than strong ones. For instance, Google’s internal hiring studies famously found “very little correlation” between SAT scores and job performance.

Taken together, the research suggests that any realistic relationship between standardized test scores and faculty merit is weak—certainly well below the levels needed to support NAS’s proposed diagnostics.

What This Means in Practice

The proposed Faculty Merit Act raises an important practical question: Even if standardized test scores contain some information about merit, how useful are they when hundreds of applicants compete for a single job?

Taking the GRE meta-analysis at face value, standardized test scores correlate with relevant academic outcomes at only about 0.18. Treating that number as a proxy for faculty merit is already generous, given the decades that often separate testing from hiring and the profound differences between standardized exams and the actual work of a professor. But let us grant it anyway.

Now, consider a search with 300 applicants. With a correlation of 0.18, I calculate that the single strongest candidate by true merit would typically score only around the 70th percentile on the test—roughly 90th out of 300. In other words, it would be entirely normal for around 90 rejected applicants to have higher test scores than the eventual hire.

Nothing improper has happened. No favoritism or manipulation is required. This outcome follows automatically from combining a weak proxy with a large applicant pool.

Even if we assume a much stronger relationship—say, a correlation of 0.30, which already exceeds what the evidence supports for most academic outcomes—the basic conclusion does not change. Under that assumption, I calculate that the best candidate would typically score only around the 80th percentile, corresponding to a rank near 60 out of 300. Dozens of rejected applicants would still have higher test scores than the person who gets the job.

This is the point the proposal gets exactly backward. The pattern it treats as a red flag—a hire whose test score is lower than that of many rejected applicants—is not evidence of corruption. It is the normal, mathematically expected outcome whenever selection relies on an imperfect measure. Scaling this diagnostic across many searches does not make it informative; it simply reproduces the same expected misrankings at a larger scale.

Why ‘Scores Dropped Each Round’ Proves Nothing

The same logic applies to the claim that average test scores should increase at each stage of a search.

Faculty hiring is not one-dimensional. Early stages might screen for general competence; later stages may emphasize originality, research direction, teaching effectiveness and departmental fit—traits that standardized tests measure poorly or not at all. As a search progresses, committees naturally place less weight on test scores and more weight on other information. When that happens, average test scores among finalists can stay flat or even decline. That pattern does not signal manipulation. It signals that the committee is selecting on dimensions that actually matter for the job.

Transparency, Justice and Bad Diagnostics

Randall’s op-ed, published by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, frames the proposal as a response to injustice. But transparency based on invalid diagnostics does not mitigate injustice; it produces it.

Publishing standardized test scores invites the public to draw conclusions that those numbers cannot support—and those conclusions will not fall evenly. Standardized test scores are strongly shaped by socioeconomic background and access to resources. Treating them as a universal yardstick of merit—especially for faculty careers—will predictably disadvantage scholars from marginalized and nontraditional paths.

From the standpoint of justice, this is deeply concerning. Accountability mechanisms must rest on sound reasoning. Otherwise, they become tools for enforcing hierarchy rather than fairness.

If the goal is genuine academic renewal, it should begin with renewing our understanding of what numbers can—and cannot—tell us. Merit cannot be mandated by publishing the wrong metrics, and justice is not served by statistical arguments that collapse under careful inspection.

Chad M. Topaz is a faculty member at Williams College; co-founder of the Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity; and winner of the Mary and Alfie Gray Award for Social Justice from the Association for Women in Mathematics. He is the author of Unlocking Justice: The Power of Data to Confront Inequity and Create Change, forthcoming from Princeton University Press in May, and can be found on Bluesky at @chadtopaz.

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January 15, 2026
State Lawmakers Enacted 21 Censorship Bills in 2025

Fourteen of last year’s 21 enacted bills contain gag orders, which PEN defines as direct censorship.

Last year was a record-setting one for education censorship; more than half of U.S college and university students now study in a state with at least one law or policy restricting what can be taught or how college campuses can operate, according to a new report from PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for campus free speech and press freedom.

Last year, lawmakers in 32 states introduced a combined 93 bills that censor higher education. Of those, 21 bills were enacted across 15 states: Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

“Censorship is, sadly, now an intractable reality on college and university campuses, with serious negative impacts for teaching, research, and student life,” Amy Reid, program director of Freedom to Learn at PEN America, said in a news release. “With threats of formal sanctions and political reprisals coming from both state and federal governments, campus leaders and faculty feel they have no choice but to comply, and are increasingly acting preemptively out of fear. Politicians are expanding a sweeping web of political and ideological control over higher education in American campuses, reshaping what can be taught, researched, and debated to fit their own agenda. That’s dangerous for free thought in a democracy.”

The report highlighted Ohio’s Senate Bill 1, a sweeping higher education bill that mandated institutional neutrality on “any controversial belief or policy,” established a post-tenure review policy, banned DEI initiatives and required institutions to demonstrate “intellectual diversity.” It also called out Indiana’s House Bill 1001, Ohio’s House Bill 96 and Texas’s Senate Bill 37, which all curb or eliminate faculty senates’ decision-making power.

Fourteen of last year’s 21 enacted bills contain gag orders, which PEN defines as direct censorship. Seven of those laws apply to higher education (the others apply only to K–12 education). In addition to the enacted laws, PEN documented five gag-order policies set by state or university system boards, including Texas Tech’s rules that effectively ban teaching on transgender topics and Texas A&M’s weaponized ban on teaching race or gender “ideology.”

Most of the proposed bills introduced last year contained some kind of indirect censorship, the PEN report states. It divides such bills into six categories: curricular control; tenure restrictions; institutional neutrality mandates; accreditation restrictions; diversity, equity and inclusion bans; and governance restrictions.

“Our research shows that legislators are more frequently adopting indirect means to achieve their end goal of censoring higher education, effectively expanding their web of control over the sector in numerous directions,” the report states. “Indirect censorship measures exploded in popularity, with state legislators introducing more than twice as many of them as they did educational gag orders (78 vs 33).”

In total, state lawmakers passed 20 out of 78 bills that contained indirect censorship—some of which also included gag orders. The 26 percent rate of passage is “remarkably strong,” the report states. Among the new laws are Indiana’s aforementioned HB 1001; Idaho’s Senate Bill 1198, which prohibits faculty from making “critical theory” courses a requirement for majors or minors; and Kansas’s Senate Bill 78, which allows institutions to sue their accreditor if punished for following state law—useful primarily because several of Kansas’s state laws violate accreditors’ academic freedom standards.

The PEN report also covers federal pressure to censor colleges and universities. In 2025, the Departments of Justice and Education launched more than 90 investigations into alleged Title VI violations. The Trump administration targeted $3.7 billion in research funding and Trump signed 19 executive orders related to education, including an order to end DEI initiatives at colleges and universities. Also last year, the administration suggested 38 universities should be suspended from federal research partnerships because of their hiring practices.

“The administration frequently justifies its actions in the name of protecting free expression, but the record shows its aim is to censor speech and exert control over the circulation of ideas,” Jonathan Friedman, the Sy Syms managing director of U.S. free expression programs at PEN, said in the news release. “The ‘viewpoint diversity’ they are pushing is not a value-neutral proposition about true debate or diversity of thought, or even free speech. It’s just a coded phrase being used to censor certain progressive ideas, while promoting conservative ones. The apparent aim is to turn colleges and universities into mouthpieces for the government. That’s not what our higher education institutions are supposed to be.”

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January 15, 2026
China Aims for “Quality” Overseas Students With Entry Exam

China’s introduction of a standardized admissions exam for international students shows that efforts to build a world-class university system matter more to the country than increasing enrollments, according to experts.

Beginning with the 2026 intake, most international applicants will be required to take the China Scholastic Competency Assessment (CSCA), a centrally designed test intended to benchmark students from different education systems against a common academic standard.

The exam will be compulsory for recipients of Chinese government scholarships starting this year and later phased in more widely, becoming mandatory for all international undergraduate applicants by 2028.

It will be delivered primarily as an online, remotely proctored test, with some countries also offering off-line test centers.

Richard Coward, CEO at Global Admissions, an agency that helps international students apply to universities, said the policy was “one of the biggest changes” he had seen for international students studying in China.

“This is more about the shift in focus away from quantity to quality, which is happening all over the world. Previously China had the target of 500,000 students; now the target is towards world-class universities by 2050 with the double first-class initiative.”

“There is a great deal of variation in students with different academic backgrounds and it can be challenging to assess,” Coward said. “There are also many countries that don’t have the equivalent level of maths compared with China. This change aims to make all international applicants have the same standard so they’ll be able to follow the education at Chinese universities and so they are at least at the same level as local students.”

Under the new framework, mathematics will be compulsory for all applicants, including those applying for arts and humanities degrees.

Coward said this reflected “the Chinese educational philosophy that quantitative reasoning is a fundamental baseline for any university-level scholar.”

Those applying to Chinese-taught programs must also sit for a “professional Chinese” paper, offered in humanities and STEM versions. Physics and chemistry are optional, depending on program requirements. Mathematics, physics and chemistry can be taken in either Chinese or English.

Gerard Postiglione, professor emeritus at the University of Hong Kong, said the CSCA should be understood as part of a broader shift in China’s approach to internationalization.

“The increasing narrative in China in all areas is to focus on quality,” he said. “That also means in higher education. If China has the plan by 2035 to become an education system that is globally influential, there’s going to be more emphasis on quality.”

Postiglione added that the move also reflected how China approaches admissions locally.

“If you look at how China selects students domestically, there is no back door,” he said, pointing to the importance of the gaokao, China’s national university admissions test taken by local students. “The gaokao is the gaokao, and I don’t think there will be much of a back door for international students, either.”

He cautioned, however, that the framework may favor applicants with certain backgrounds.

“Language proficiency and subject preparation will inevitably advantage some students over others,” he said. “Students who have already studied in Chinese, or who come from systems with stronger mathematics preparation, may find it easier to meet the requirements.”

While the exam framework is centrally set, Postiglione said, individual universities are likely to retain autonomy over admissions decisions.

“The Ministry of Education will provide a framework and guidelines,” he said, “but it would be very difficult for a central agency to make individual admissions decisions across the entire system.”

Pass thresholds have not yet been standardized, and Coward said that in the future, universities may set minimum score requirements, but this is not in place yet.

He added that the additional requirement was unlikely to reduce demand. “Some more casual students may be deterred,” he said. “But for top-tier universities, it reduces administrative burden by filtering for quality early.”

In the longer term, though, “it signals that a Chinese degree is becoming more prestigious, which may actually increase demand from high-caliber students.”

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January 15, 2026
Indiana University Cancels MLK Celebration Dinner

The Black Student Union held an annual dinner, first convened in 1969, honoring Martin Luther King Jr., that has been canceled this year.

Indiana University in Indianapolis canceled a dinner in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. hosted annually in January by the Black Student Union, Mirror Indy reported. This year’s would have been the 57th consecutive annual MLK dinner, which was first convened in 1969.

Officials in the Division of Student Affairs told the Black Student Union the event was canceled at the end of the fall semester, citing “budget constraints,” according to a letter the Black Student Union executive council posted on Instagram.

“For months prior, we had been diligently seeking guidance and confirmation on whether the dinner would be approved, funded and supported,” the executive council wrote. “This is not just about a dinner. This is about the erosion of Black traditions under vague justifications. This is about institutional decisions being made without Black voices at the table.”

In a letter to campus Tuesday, IU Indianapolis chancellor Latha Ramchand said, “The MLK Dinner is not going away—rather we are in a moment of transition,” and described a new task force that will “help us reimagine our affinity dinners and related events.” The task force will complete its work by April 10, she said.

In their response letter to the Division of Student Affairs, the Black Student Union’s executive council questioned whether the current political climate may have influenced administrators’ decision to cancel the dinner. The university in May closed its diversity, equity and inclusion office, which included the Multicultural Center and the LGBTQ+ Center; student organizations within the office were transferred to the Office of Student Involvement. A student with the Queer Student Union told Mirror Indy that the Harvey Milk Dinner, typically held in October, was also canceled this academic year.

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January 15, 2026
Questions About Youth Perceptions of Access to American Dream

An impressively brilliant African American 14-year-old sent a thoughtful response to the column I published yesterday on the policing of Black men in America. He began by characterizing what I had written as “fascinating,” which could have meant a multitude of things coming from a teenager. He then explained that his eighth-grade English class included recent discussions about immigrant pursuits of the American dream. Accordingly, one major takeaway from those conversations with his teacher and peers was that many people come to the U.S. because it is perceived as a land of opportunity. My article complicated this presumption for him.

In addition to the racial profiling, harassment, abuse and police killings of unarmed Black Americans that I wrote about yesterday, this middle schooler’s perspective has me wondering how other youth his age, as well as collegians in the U.S. and abroad are thinking about the possibility of the American dream at this time for themselves and others. I am especially interested in knowing how attainable it feels among Asian, Black, Latino and Indigenous youth here and elsewhere across the globe. Juxtapositions of their perspectives with those of their white counterparts also fascinate me.

The Trump administration includes few people of color in leadership roles—certainly much, much fewer than in the Obama and Biden administrations. Programs and policies that were designed to ensure equitable opportunities for citizens who make our nation diverse have been ravaged (in some instances outlawed) during Donald Trump’s second presidential term.

Black, Latino and international student enrollments at Harvard University and other elite institutions have declined since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled race-conscious admissions practices unconstitutional. Immigrants are being threatened, terrorized and deported. It is possible that these challenges and realities have done little to erode immigrants’ and prospective international students’ faith in U.S. structures and systems. This is a researchable topic.

It would also be good for social scientists and education researchers to study how students in K–12 schools and on college campuses across the U.S. are appraising the equitable availability of the American dream to all citizens. Results collected via surveys and other research methods should be disaggregated by race, socioeconomic status, gender and gender identity, citizenship and documentation status, sexual orientation, religion, state and geographic region, political party, and other demographic variables. Those findings should be compared within and across groups. Furthermore, sophisticated analyses should be done at the intersection of identities (for example, perceptions of Asian American transgender immigrant youth).

In another column published earlier this week, I wrote about what I teach students in my classrooms. One statement therein seems worthy of amplification here: “To be absolutely sure, I have never instructed [students] to hate or in any way despise America.” I do, however, teach them truths about our nation’s racial past and present. Those lessons are not based on my opinions or so-called divisive ideologies, but instead rigorous statistics and other forms of high-quality, trustworthy data substantiate my teachings. As a responsible educator and citizen, I understand that the problem of inequitable access to the American dream requires a lot, including but not limited to consciousness raising, truth telling, reparations and restorative justice, and the implementation of equity-minded public policies, to name a few.

I want youth of color to love our country. I want immigrants who believe in the availability of the American dream to come here. But I also want access to the American dream to be fair and equitable. I want our nation to disable and permanently destroy structures and systems that cyclically reproduce disparate outcomes that disadvantage people who make our country beautifully diverse. I got a very real sense that the Black teenage boy who thoughtfully responded to what I wrote yesterday wants the same thing, too. Again, I think it would be “fascinating” to know how other adolescents and young adults, including those who are white, are thinking about who has full access to the American dream at this time.

Shaun Harper is University Professor and Provost Professor of Education, Business and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership. His most recent book is titled Let’s Talk About DEI: Productive Disagreements About America’s Most Polarizing Topics.

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January 15, 2026
N.C. Elections Board Rejects Campus Polling Centers

Some students protested the decision.

David Walter Banks/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Ahead of the 2026 primaries, the North Carolina State Board of Elections rejected a plan Tuesday to open an early-voting center on the Greensboro campus of North Carolina A&T State University, according to NC Newsline.

The Republican-controlled board also voted to close the existing early-voting centers at Elon University and Western Carolina University.

After the vote, a group of N.C. A&T students who traveled to Raleigh for the board meeting gathered in the boardroom, protesting the decision. But Francis De Luca, chair of the board, threatened to call the cops if they didn’t leave, according to the news outlet.

De Luca, who voted against the early-voting sites, said he’s not in favor of them for numerous reasons. “There’s no parking,” he said. “They may set aside parking; if it’s filled, you’re going to get a ticket. We don’t put sites where there’s no parking anywhere else.”

But Siobhan Millen, a Democratic member of the board who voted for the voting centers, said the move puts “student voting is in the crosshairs.”

Without voting sites on campus, students—including many who don’t own cars—will have to travel to off-campus precincts, though some in favor of axing campus polling centers have described them as redundant. Zayveon Davis, a voter engagement leader at N.C. A&T, said the HBCU would provide shuttles to take students to the nearest polling place.

Nonetheless, he called the decision “disappointing” and reflective of broader Republican-led efforts to restrict voting access, especially for marginalized communities.

“I hope that everybody leaves here knowing that your voice does matter. Your vote does matter,” he told NC Newsline. “And if it didn’t, they wouldn’t be working this hard to take it away.”

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January 15, 2026
DOJ Report Compounds MSI Advocates’ Worries

Minority-serving institutions sustained another blow after the U.S. Department of Justice released a December legal report declaring funding to many of these institutions as unconstitutional. That memo could reach further than the Education Department’s move to defund some of these programs, ramping up uncertainty for the institutions.

Much like the Education Department in September, the DOJ argued these programs are unconstitutional because they require colleges to enroll a certain percentage of students from a particular racial or ethnic background to qualify, among other criteria. ED ultimately redirected hundreds of millions of dollars intended for Hispanic-serving institutions and other MSIs for fiscal year 2025; it remains unclear whether the DOJ memo will result in more of the same.

But the 48-page document offers new insight into the dangers a wide range of MSI grant programs could be facing and how the administration is legally justifying its stance against the institutions.

The Trump administration seems to be “doubling down” on its attacks on MSIs, offering some “legal justification for what they’ve already done, and in light of that justification, extending it to some additional programs that they did not pursue in the first go-around,” said John Moder, interim CEO of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.

Mandatory Funds at Risk

Similar to ED, the report by the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel uses an expansive interpretation of the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that barred considering race in admissions.

But the DOJ went further and called into question not just discretionary dollars but also congressionally mandated funds to MSIs, said Amanda Fuchs Miller, former deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs in the Biden administration and now president of the higher ed consultancy Seventh Street Strategies. The Education Department left mandatory funds alone in September, acknowledging in a news release that those funds “cannot be reprogrammed on a statutory basis,” but it would continue “to consider the underlying legal issues associated with the mandatory funding mechanism in these programs.”

The DOJ implied that “they don’t have to give out the mandatory money as required anymore—in their opinion,” Miller said. But as far as she’s concerned, “the executive branch has to enforce statutes,” including discretionary and mandatory funding authorized by Congress.

“They don’t have the authority to declare a statute unconstitutional,” she added.

In contrast, the legal memo argued that the president may be able to reject statutes altogether “even if only parts of them are noxious.” And it concluded that “the race-based portions” of various programs—including funds for Hispanic-serving institutions, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian–serving institutions and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander–serving institutions—are “inseverable,” meaning the unconstitutional parts, according to the DOJ, can’t be removed.

The DOJ did, however, make some exceptions, including competitive grants to predominantly Black institutions (but not mandatory funds) and the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program; the department claimed these programs could be stripped of “race-based provisions.” The memo also scrutinized two TRIO programs, the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program and Student Support Services, but ultimately considered them constitutional, provided the grants aren’t used “to further racially discriminatory ends.”

This approach raises questions, Miller said. For example, the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program was specifically designed to bolster engineering and science programs at MSIs, so what would it mean to continue the program without MSI status as a factor? She also stressed that Native Americans aren’t a racial category, according to federal law, which the administration has acknowledged in the past. But the DOJ memo seems to muddy the administration’s take on the issue, she said, by arguing that Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian–serving institutions and Native American–Serving nontribal institutions rely on “racial and ethnic classifications rather than political classifications.”

Ultimately, “Congress needs to stand up and fight back for these schools that play key roles in their districts” and make sure its statutory authority is respected, Miller said.

Some members of Congress have called out the DOJ and ED for stepping out of bounds. Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the House education committee, called the DOJ memo “deeply at odds with the fundamental goal of the [Higher Education Act] to ensure all students, regardless of their background, can access an affordable, quality degree.” Sen. Alex Padilla, chair of the Senate Congressional Hispanic-Serving Institutions Caucus, said the DOJ opinion “ignores federal law.” But lawmakers have yet to share a game plan on if or how they plan to push back.

Next Steps

What happens next is unclear.

Moder said the administration might withhold new funding for the flagged programs, rescind funds already given, or both.

In that case, institutions could sue, he said, but that’s an expensive ordeal for colleges and universities that, by definition, are underresourced. To qualify for most of the programs targeted by the DOJ, institutions are required to have low per-student expenditures compared to similar institutions, meaning they have relatively few resources to spend on students. They also need to serve at least half low-income students, in addition to a certain percentage of students from a particular racial or ethnic background.

“It’s an expensive proposition and a time-consuming proposition,” Moder said. Although MSIs could have already sued over their lost discretionary funds, “it’s not surprising that there hasn’t been a flurry of legal challenges presented to date.”

HACU has been defending HSIs against a legal challenge from the state of Tennessee and the advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions, after ED declined to stand up for the institutions. The lawsuit argued that Tennessee institutions don’t meet the requirement for HSIs—enrolling 25 percent Hispanic students—and miss out on federal funds; therefore, the federal criteria are discriminatory based on race. HACU has since asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing it’s a moot issue now that ED took away the discretionary funds Tennessee protests.

The hope is “it will leave the possibility of … Congress voting for renewed funding,” and eventually “a new administration to continue to administer it,” Moder said.

Deborah Santiago, co-founder and CEO of Excelencia in Education, an organization focused on Latino student outcomes, believes the DOJ report could have a positive twist: It offers more insight into how the administration is thinking about MSIs—and more fodder to fight back, she said.

The DOJ memo “went a little bit deeper on examples, and in doing so, created opportunities to understand where they’re coming from,” and to “challenge some of the basic framing and concepts that are in dispute,” said Santiago, who previously worked as deputy director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

Notably, she said, the report didn’t take issue with the idea that “there is a clear federal policy goal in providing capacity-building for underresourced institutions.” Instead, it took aim at “racial quotas” and quibbled with whether “individual discrimination” against particular students or types of students occurred. But Santiago said it’s easy to argue back that MSI grants support underserved institutions, not individual students, and there’s a difference between racial quotas and enrollment thresholds.

“MSIs are about institutional capacity-building and not about redressing individual student discrimination. I think that was a false framing that they put out there,” she said. “At the core, this is about persistent structural disadvantages of institutions and how the federal government can fund them.” And when the federal government has limited funds to invest, “you can make the case” that increasing academic quality at institutions with a persistent lack of resources and a disproportionate number of historically underrepresented students “is a clear federal role and responsibility.”

She also pushed back on the idea that institutions that don’t get the money are discriminated against. By the same logic, “students who are not enrolled in military academies are being discriminated against because they’re not getting access” to investments in military academies, she said.

She believes that the DOJ memo will help hone how MSIs and their supporters advocate for the institutions to members of Congress and others.

“I think we need to reframe and make the case to our colleagues on the Hill,” she said.

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January 15, 2026
Shape the Future or Get Left Behind: The New Reality for Higher Ed Leaders

Higher education is fundamentally rewiring in ways most legacy playbooks can’t handle.

Declining birth rates, growing skepticism about the value of a traditional degree and the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence have exposed the fragility of many institutional models.

The leaders who treat this as a reset moment to rebuild for the Modern Learner will be the ones who thrive in the rewired landscape.

On a recent episode of the Job Ready podcast, EducationDynamics’ President of Enrollment Management Services, Greg Clayton, sat down with hosts Jeff Nelder and Charlie Nguyen to unpack what it will really take for institutions to thrive in this AI-powered, skills-driven market. Explore the key takeaways from that conversation and what they mean for any institution that intends to shape the future instead of being shaped by it.

You either evolve, or you don’t exist anymore.

Greg Clayton, President, Enrollment Management Services

Why Reputation and Revenue Now Drive Enrollment Growth

Revenue and reputation now function as the pillars of institutional viability.

Revenue growth is no longer just about filling seats. Institutions need diversified pathways, new program models and market strategies built around how learners actually discover, evaluate and choose programs today.

Reputation can no longer be reduced to prestige markers like rankings or athletics. Modern Learners quickly filter out surface-level messaging and evaluate institutions based on cost, convenience and career outcomes. Institutions that lead with tradition instead of value are losing ground.

Increasingly, learners also look for clear proof that an institution can deliver real job readiness and connect education to concrete career trajectories.

In this reality, reputation is revenue. It is earned by demonstrating academic rigor, employment relevance and a credible return on investment. Institutions that make those elements impossible to miss in the market win attention, trust and enrollment. Institutions that don’t are training Modern Learners to look elsewhere.

It’s not simply, ‘am I a flagship public institution with a football team’… What we’re talking about is, does the institution have a reputation for delivery of excellence that meets academic standards but also creates job readiness in the marketplace?

Greg Clayton, President, Enrollment Management Services

How AI Is Reshaping Discovery in Higher Education Marketing

Artificial intelligence is not a priority for tomorrow. It’s already here and rewriting the rules of search, discovery and decision-making.

Today, a large majority of .edu-oriented Google searches surface an AI overview before traditional organic results. For many prospects, the first touchpoint with an institution is now mediated by an AI-generated summary, not the homepage.

When institutions are not actively managing how they appear in those AI overviews, they effectively cede their first impression to an algorithm trained on everyone else’s narrative.

This shift changes how institutions are discovered. Program details, brand signals and reputation markers are being interpreted and condensed by AI systems, which means fragmented or inconsistent market signals are quickly reflected in fragmented AI outputs.

Because AI now influences how learners search, compare and choose, institutions need a new blueprint for understanding how brand, reputation and revenue actually work together.

EducationDynamics’ AI visibility pyramid provides that blueprint, making one thing clear: revenue is no longer a standalone goal, but the outcome of coordinated brand amplification and reputation building. When an institution’s digital footprint and third-party credibility are reinforced through AI density—the consistency with which an institution appears in AI-generated responses—revenue follows at the top.

In this environment, content, PR, advertising and enrollment operations can’t operate in isolation. Disconnected efforts dilute AI visibility and waste spend. Institutions that orchestrate these functions around a unified strategy for AI discoverability will be the ones that win attention and intent.

How the Enrollment Cliff Is Exposing Fragile Models

The wave of closures and mergers over the past decade is not random. It is the predictable outcome of models built for a world that no longer exists.

The most vulnerable institutions tend to be heavily tuition dependent, slow to diversify revenue and reluctant to make structural changes even as market conditions shift around them.

Flagship publics and highly endowed privates have more buffer. Many regional and tuition-dependent institutions do not. As demographics tighten and competition increases, legacy models that once felt stable are now under significant strain.

Many of the institutions struggling most today share a common pattern: delayed pivots to online and hybrid delivery, continued reliance on tuition as the primary revenue source and limited attention to Modern Learner expectations around flexibility and cost. Those dynamics are now being tested by the market.

By contrast, institutions that are evolving have accepted that yesterday’s playbook is no longer sufficient. They are actively redesigning their models around revenue diversification, program-market fit and measurable outcomes. They understand that the expectations of Modern Learners have fundamentally changed and that tomorrow’s challenges will not be solved with yesterday’s solutions.

How Student Behavior Is Reshaping Enrollment Strategy

Modern Learner behavior has moved beyond traditional age-based segments. Preferences for online, hybrid and flexible formats cut across generations. Convenience, outcomes and affordability matter just as much to working adults and career switchers as they do to recent high school graduates.

Modern Learners are the architects of their own educational journeys. They don’t wait to be recruited and they don’t stay loyal when processes are rigid and difficult to navigate.

This is especially true for the roughly 43 million Americans with some college and no credential. Many institutions have struggled to reach this audience due to higher acquisition costs, limited capital or an assumption that these learners fall outside their “core” market.

That assumption no longer aligns with how learners actually make decisions. Strategies built for 18–22-year-old residential students do not automatically translate to working adults balancing jobs, family and study. Reaching this audience requires rethinking acquisition channels, messaging, support models and program design.

Institutions that are successfully engaging this segment treat education as a lifelong relationship, not a one-time transaction. They are building pathways for learners to return to upskill and reskill over time, often in partnership with employers, creating recurring value for learners and recurring revenue for the institution.

Attracting traditional students into your institution does not work when it comes to tapping into the 43 million [Americans with] some college, no credential. It’s two completely different things.

Greg Clayton, President, Enrollment Management Services

Why Employer Alignment Now Shapes Reputation and Outcomes

Employer partnerships remain one of the most underleveraged assets in higher education. At the same time, employers consistently report difficulty finding candidates with applied, job-ready skills, particularly as AI reshapes roles and workflows across industries.

That disconnect is not a minor gap. It is a credibility problem. When programs are not aligned with the roles employers are hiring for, institutions are asking students to fund an education the market does not fully value.

High-impact employer partnerships go far beyond tuition discounts and logo swaps. Those are table stakes. The partnerships that move the needle help define the skills and competencies programs should teach, inform curriculum refresh cycles and create structured pathways into internships, apprenticeships and full-time roles.

When job readiness is deliberately designed into every program — including comfort with AI tools and workflows — institutions are better able to prove their value to both learners and employers. That, in turn, strengthens reputation, improves outcomes data and creates new opportunities for sustainable revenue.

What Institutions Are Rebuilding to Compete

Across the sector, a distinct pattern is emerging among institutions that are gaining ground. They aren’t optimizing at the edges. They’re reworking the systems that drive growth.

These institutions treat revenue as mission fuel, not a dirty word. They understand that without sustainable margin, they can’t expand access, invest in innovation or support students at the level the market now expects.

They make ROI explicit — in their marketing, advising and student experience. Cost, convenience and career outcomes are addressed head-on, not buried in fine print. Modern Learners can clearly see how a program connects to specific skills, roles and advancement paths.

Program portfolios are tightly aligned with workforce needs. Curricula are refreshed frequently. Skills and competencies are mapped to real job requirements, not just internal assumptions. Job readiness and AI literacy are integrated into programs, not offered as optional extras.

Brand, marketing and enrollment are orchestrated around AI-driven discovery. These institutions understand that AI is now a primary gateway to information, so they actively manage how they show up in AI overviews and search — not just in traditional rankings and media.

Employer partnerships are deep and operational. Employers help shape programs, provide work-based learning, and validate the skills graduates bring to the table. B2B and workforce channels become meaningful contributors to both impact and revenue.

Institutions design for Modern Learners across ages and life stages. They build flexible pathways, stackable credentials and re-entry points so learners can return to upskill and reskill over time. Education becomes an ongoing relationship, not a one-time transaction.

The common thread is not size, sector or selectivity. It is a willingness to challenge internal inertia, reject the status quo and align every part of the institution with how learners and employers actually behave today. In this market, safety often masquerades as stability — and stagnation carries real risk.

The Decision Facing Higher Ed Leadership

Taken together, these dynamics create a defining choice for higher education leaders: optimize a fading model or rebuild for an AI-powered, skills-driven market. There is no middle ground.

Those that clearly communicate ROI, align programs with workforce demand, build AI into their discovery strategy and use reputation to drive growth will define what comes next.

At EducationDynamics, we’re partnering with leaders ready to make that shift. For a deeper look at how and where to begin, listen to Greg Clayton’s full conversation on the Job Ready podcast.

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January 14, 2026