Tag: Higher

Strategies for Personalized Learning in AI Age (opinion)
How do we teach effectively—and humanly—in this age of AI?

New advances in artificial intelligence break news at such a rapid pace that many of us have difficulties keeping up. Dinuka Gunaratne gave a detailed summary of many different AI tools in his “Carpe Careers” article published in July; yet more tools will likely appear in the next months and years in an exponential explosion. How do we, as educators (new and established Ph.D.s) design curriculum and classes with these new AI tools being released every few weeks? How do we design effective assignments that teach critical analysis and logical thought while knowing that our students, too, have access to these tools?

Many existing AI tools can be used to assist with course design. However, I will provide some insight on methods of pedagogy that emphasize personalized learning regardless of what new technology becomes available.

Some questions educators are now thinking about include:
1. How do I design an assignment so the student cannot just prompt an AI tool to complete it?
2. How do I design the course so that the student can choose whether or not to use AI tools—and how do I assess these two groups of students?
Below, I outline some wise teaching practices with an eye toward helping students develop core skills including critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, creativity and—the most essential skill of all—curiosity.

Making the Most Out of Class Time

An effective course utilizes a combination of teaching strategies. I outline three here.
1. Make sure that your class is generative so that when you give an assignment, it reaches as far back as day one. A generative learning model is one in which each week is built upon the previous one, and in which a student is assessed on the knowledge they have cumulatively accrued.
1. Hold interactive in-person activities in each class, building upon the previous assignments and content.
2. Flip the classroom so that class time is used for discussion and not a monologue presentation from you. If you can assign videos or reading assignments for students to view or read prior to class, then you can use class time to discuss the content or reinforce the learning with group activities.
Here is an example of combining these tools in the buildup to a presentation from one of my classes.
- Week 1: Each student writes and brings a one-page summary of their research so that peers can provide feedback. I provide feedback training in class before the peer readings take place.
- Week 2: Using the peer feedback of the summary, each student creates one slide summarizing their research for a three-minute thesis (3MT) and brings the slide to class to receive peer feedback.
- Week 3: Students practice presentation skills through an activity called “slide karaoke,” in which a student has one minute to present a simple slide they have never seen before. They are then given feedback by peers and the instructor on general presentation skills. I provide peer feedback training before the presentations.
- Week 4: Students implement the general feedback from slide karaoke and give practice 3MT presentations to receive specific peer and mentor feedback on the content. These mentors are usually students from the year before who revisit the class.
- Week 5: Students give the final 3MT in front of judges and peers for evaluation.
- Week 6: Students write a summary of what was learned from the entire generative experience.
This sequence of assignments is personalized so that the final report can only be about the student’s individual experience. While students might want to use AI tools to edit or organize their ideas, ChatGPT or other AI tools cannot possibly know what happened in the classroom—only the student can write about it.

For larger classes in which a presentation from each student may not be possible, here is another example.
- Week 1: A video or reading assigned to students to view/read before class discusses the basics of DNA and inheritance. An in-class assignment involves a group discussion on Mendelian inheritance problem sets.
- Week 2: Before class, students read an article on how DNA is packaged; the in-class discussion focuses on the molecules involved in chromatin structure.
- The next classes all have either prereads or videos, which students discuss in class, and the content builds up to a more complex genetic mechanism, such as elucidating the gene for a disease. The final report could be “summarize how one could find a gene responsible for a certain disease using the discussion points we had in class.” In this scenario as well, the student is taking the personalized class experience and incorporating the ideas into the final report, something that cannot be wholly outsourced to any AI tool.
If you decide to embrace AI tools in the classroom, you can still teach critical thinking and creativity by asking the students to use AI to write a report on a topic discussed in class—and then in part two of the assignment, ask them to assess the AI-generated report, cite the proper references and correct any mistakes, content or grammar-wise.

I sometimes show an example of this in class to demonstrate to students that AI makes mistakes, rather than giving it as an assignment. But it is something you might want to try making an optional method for an assignment. Students can declare whether they used AI or not on their submission. As an instructor, you will need to design two rubrics for these different groups. Group one will have a rubric based on content, grammar, references, logical thought and organization, and clarity. Group two (those who use AI) will have a rubric consisting of the same components in addition to an evaluation of how well the student found the AI mistakes.

Applying for Teaching Positions

If you are applying for a teaching position, you should address AI in your teaching dossier and how you may or may not incorporate it—but at the very least, discuss its effects on higher education. Many articles and books on this topic exist, including Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning, by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson (Johns Hopkins Press, 2024); Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, by Joseph E. Aoun (MIT Press, 2017); and Generative AI in Higher Education, by Cecilia Ka Yuk Chan and Tom Colloton (Routledge, 2024).

Yet even as we consider how to integrate AI in our teaching, we must not forget the human experience at work in all that we do. We can emphasize things like 1) encouraging students to meet with us in person or even for a walk as opposed to a virtual meeting and 2) assessing what emotions students bring to the meeting or class and how that may affect the dynamics. We as educators should harness the human side of teaching, including the classroom experience and the in-class group work, so that the “final” assessments build directly out of these personalized learnings.

For those venturing into a career that involves teaching or mentoring, develop teaching strategies and tools that center the human experience and include them in your teaching dossier. Your application will shine.

Nana Lee is the director of professional development and mentorship, special adviser to the dean of medicine for graduate education, and associate professor, teaching stream, at the University of Toronto. She is also a member and regional director of the Graduate Career Consortium—an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.
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September 15, 2025
A Disenchanted Provost Discusses Why He Ditched the Job

Throughout his 20-year career in higher education, Julian Vasquez Heilig has steadily climbed the career ladder, moving from assistant to associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin; into a full professorship at California State University, Sacramento; and then to a dean position at the University of Kentucky’s College of Education, Human Development and Sport Science. Being dean was rewarding, he said. The wins were visible, the feedback loop was short and he was well supported. Hoping to expand his impact, Heilig stepped onto the next career-ladder rung and became provost at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. But as provost, he didn’t feel emboldened to make change, he said; he felt isolated and exposed.

After two years, he stepped down, and he now serves as a professor of educational leadership, research and technology at Western Michigan. His frustrations with the provost role had less to do with Western Michigan and more to do with how the job is designed, he explained. “Each person sees the provost a little differently. The faculty see the provost as administration, although, honestly, around the table at the cabinet, the provost is probably the only faculty member,” Heilig said. “The trustees—they see the provost as a middle manager below the president, and the president sees [the provost] as a buffer from issues that are arising.”

Inside Higher Ed sat down with Heilig to talk about the provost job and all he’s learned about the role through years of education leadership research, conversations with colleagues and his own experience.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: You stepped down from the provost role at Western Michigan in January, two years after taking the position. What tipped you off that the position wasn’t for you?

A: In general, provosts are judged on student success, retention, faculty hiring and academic quality, and yet the purse strings of those things often truly sit with the president or the chief financial officer. That split means the provost really answers for outcomes without the levers to fund them. The job really asks you, as a leader, to redesign programs and diversify pipelines while working with multiple stakeholders—trustees, donors and faculty. If you push too hard on innovation, you face backlash. If you move too slowly and the role becomes ceremonial, then that might violate your own personal mission and beliefs. I’m not specifically talking about Western Michigan—all institutions have to decide whether they value transformation or whether they want tranquil optics.

For most provosts, the average tenure is three years, based on the research I’ve seen. But durable change, sustainable change could take five, seven, 10 years. A lot of the things that [provosts] initiate outlive the job—it’s difficult to be around to see your agenda finished.

Q: You’ve described the provost role as being “structurally exposed.” What does that mean, exactly?

A: The relationship between presidents and provosts can be—especially at research universities—really fraught. One of the ways that it can be helped is by, from the outset, sitting down with your president to talk about how you’re going to make decisions, what the expectations are for resource commitments and joint accountability for decisions. A lot of times provosts are enforcing decisions and policies they didn’t make, but they’re held accountable to those policies, and having a compact [with the president] would be a better foundation.

Leaders need to be able to have buffers to take smart risks without constant political whiplash. Those could look like multiyear resource agreements or protocols for handling disputes among vice presidents. That is super important—insulation is not isolation; it’s a structure that enables courage among leaders. Higher education is always the first to call for change and the last to make it because we have to align authority with responsibility. We have to be committed to change. We can’t avoid crises because there are some people that aren’t interested in making change and are completely satisfied with the status quo.

Q: Did pushback to your equity work factor into your decision to ultimately step down?

A: When controversy hits, the easiest release valve is the provost … It’s important for institutions to see the provost role not as disposable if they expect the provost to be bold stewards of academic affairs.

Someone told me on LinkedIn that the provost role is not actually the chief officer of academic affairs; they’re actually the associate dean of academic affairs. Because pressure comes at the provost from the side from other vice presidents, from above you from the president and from below you from the deans, without the opportunity to respond to all those stakeholders in all the ways you would like. If you reallocate resources and challenge the institution’s sacred cows, then you’re going to take immediate fire. A lot of provosts will last many, many years in the job because caretaking is much safer than transforming under the current norms of higher education. So we need to think about how you reward measured disruption in the provost role and protect those who are doing the hard work of solving problems.

There’s a high burnout cost to this job because you have nonstop negotiation between all these different stakeholder groups and competing demands. Each of these stakeholder groups want something different. Emotional labor mounts for you as a provost because the wins are very diffused … and if something goes wrong with accreditation or something else, the blame is very concentrated. So without structural support from each of those stakeholder groups, even the best leaders get drained.

A lot of people go right from dean to president nowadays; they don’t want to get sidelined by the provost role. They just decide that this type of leadership is not worth it. That means that institutions are losing people who would build in this role, who would innovate in this role, and are rewarding people who just simply want to manage and caretake. Instead of hiring leaders, they’re just going to hire a manager.

Q: You’ve written that provosts are almost always destined for a falling-out with their president. How do you think those roles are pitted against each other?

A: If you’re thinking about becoming a provost, you have to take the measure of the person you’re working for. You’ve got to figure out: How is this hard decision going to be made? How are resources going to be committed? How is there going to be joint accountability for decisions that the president wants you to make? Will there be shared goals and shared power, rather than performative communications and performative statements? A real relationship and a real compact is the foundation for success for a partnership like this.

Deans operate in a bounded area of things with very visible outcomes and very tight feedback loops, but the provost has a very diffuse set of responsibilities and is responsible for not just one but [many] colleges. The clarity that deans have really fuels that work. Vice president of academic affairs is a title that suggests influence, but its insulation and authority are very thin. Visibility is high, but when things go wrong, they go very wrong. We’ve got to pair the prestige of that position with clear powers and clear protections, because, again, each of the stakeholder groups has different interests, and so they see you either as their friend or their enemy.

Q: Is there anything in particular that you would like to see from presidents in general to better support their provosts?

A: [Provosts] can’t be seen as expendable by design. So when a controversy hits—and you have controversies day after day after day—the main job of the provost is to fix things, hard problems that weren’t fixed before they got to your desk. And so when things go really wrong, from what I hear from my colleagues, the easiest release valve is the provost.

As you look across campuses, people are saying provost is the hardest job. And there’s a reason why they say that.

Q: Inside Higher Ed with Hanover Research is releasing its annual survey of provosts tomorrow, and one of the things we found is that 86 percent of respondents said they enjoyed being provost, but only 29 percent of them felt that they consistently have the resources they need to implement initiatives. Do you feel like your experience aligned with that?

A: Yeah, I think it’s particularly difficult when you come in as a vice president rather than as an executive vice president. When you’re on the same level with other VPs, it creates a Game of Thrones in terms of resources. The finance people want money for building, and the VP of research wants money for research, and so one of the challenges when you come into the provost role is you need to have more flexibility, especially around equity. When equity moves from emails and speeches to actual budget shifts, you get resistance. Leaders who are expected to redirect resources to close gaps, they become targets.

Q: Also in our survey, more than half of provosts said their job was more about fixing problems than planning ahead. Would you agree that the role is like playing crisis manager?

A: Part of the challenge is that provosts are having to deal with decisions that other people made. And so you have to deal with decisions that faculty made that may be problematic. You’ve got to implement decisions that the president made. You have a cabinet wanting to implement their decisions for academic affairs, and some of those things go wrong. So you’ve got to work with your team to fix all the different things, and sometimes you can’t fix it fast enough.

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September 15, 2025
Higher education mergers are a marathon not a sprint

When the announcement came last Wednesday that the universities of Kent and Greenwich are planning to merge, the two institutions did a fine job of anticipating all the obvious questions.

In particular, announcing that the totemic decision has already been taken on who should lead the new institution – University of Greenwich vice chancellor Jane Harrington – was a pragmatic move that will save a great deal of gossip and speculation that could otherwise have derailed the discussions that will now commence on how to turn “intention to formally collaborate” to the “first-of-its-kind multi university group.”

But even with that really tricky bit of business out of the way, there is still a lot to work through. Broadly those questions fall into two baskets: the strategic direction and the practical fine detail. Practicalities are important for giving reassurance that people’s lives aren’t about to radically change overnight; albeit there are inevitably lots of issues that are either formally unknown at this stage or which can only be tackled in light of the evolution of the final agreement and organisational structure.

With that in mind, it is really worth emphasising that the notion of a “multi university group” is a brand new idea, given a conceptual shape in the very recent publication Radical collaboration: a playbook from KPMG and Mills & Reeve, produced under the auspices of the Universities UK transformation and efficiency taskforce. The idea of a “multi university trust” explored in that report, derived from the school sector, posits the creation of a single legal entity that can nevertheless “house” a range of distinct “trading entities” with unique “brands” each with an agreed level of local autonomy.

It answers the question of how you take two (or more) institutions, each with their own histories and characteristics and find ways to create the strength and resilience that scale might offer, while retaining the local distinctive characteristics that staff, students, and local communities value and feel a sense of affinity to. It also, as has been noted in the coverage following the announcement, leaves an option open for other institutions to join the new structure, if there’s a case for them to do so.

“It is very positive to see institutions taking proactive steps to finding new ways to work together,” says Sam Sanders, head of education, skills and productivity for KPMG in the UK. “The group structure proposed is a model we have seen be successful elsewhere, where brand identity is retained but you get economies of scale, meaning institutions can focus on their core activities while sharing the burden of the overheads. If it goes well it could act as a blueprint for other similar ventures.”

Sam’s reflection is that establishing a new entity might be the most straightforward part of the process: “The complicated part is moving to a new model that simultaneously preserves the right culture in the right places while achieving the savings you might want to see in areas like IT, infrastructure, and estates. These are multi-year agendas so everyone involved needs to be prepared for that.”

The long and winding road

With lots to work through, it’s really important to step back, and give space to the institutions to work this out. Because the big picture is about mapping what that critical path looks like from single-institution vulnerabilities to strength in numbers – and that is a path that these institutions and their governing bodies are, to a large extent, carving out as they go, potentially doing the wider sector a service in the process as others may look to follow the same path in the future.

“The sector response has been overwhelmingly positive,” says Jane Harrington, who is already fielding calls from heads of institution who are curious about the planned new model. Both Jane and University of Kent acting vice chancellor Georgina Randsley de Moura have experience with group structures in schools and further education, knowledge they drew on in thinking through the options for formal collaboration – starting with ten different possible models which were narrowed down to two that were explored in more depth.

“We started with what we wanted to achieve, and then we looked for models,” says Georgina. “We kept going back to our principles: widening participation, education without boundaries, high quality teaching and research, and what will make sense for our regions. Inevitably there is some focus in the news around finances and that is an important part of the context, but this would not work if our universities didn’t have values and mission alignment.”

“We also had examples in mind of where we don’t want to end up,” adds Jane. “You see mergers where the brand identity is lost and it takes a decade to get it back. We have, right now, two student-facing brands that are strong in their own right. And in five or ten years time it might be that we have four or five institutions that are part of this structure – we don’t think it would make sense for them to become part of one amorphous brand.”

It’s frequently observed that bringing together two or more institutions that are facing difficult financial headwinds may simply create a larger institution with correspondingly larger challenges. So having a very clear sense strategically of where the strengths and opportunities lie, as well as the where risks and weaknesses might also be subject to force-multiplier effects, is pretty important at the outset.

It’s clear that there is an efficiency agenda in play in the sense that merging allows for the adoption of a single set of systems and processes – an area where Jane is especially interested in curating creative thinking. But the wider opportunities afforded by scale are also compelling, especially in being more strategic about the collective skills and innovation offer to the region.

Kent and Medway local councils and MPs have also responded enthusiastically to the universities’ proposal, the two heads of institution tell me – not least because navigating politics around different HE providers can be a headache for regional actors who want to engage higher education institutions in key regional agendas.

“There are cold spots in our region where nobody is offering what is needed,” says Jane. “But developing new provision is much harder when you are acting alone. This region has pockets of multiple forms of deprivation: rural, urban and coastal. The capacity and scale afforded by combining means we can think strategically about how to do the regional growth work, and what our combined offer should be, including to support reskilling and upskilling.”

Georgina makes a similar case for combining research strengths. “Our shared research areas, like health, food sustainability, and creative industries, play to regional strengths,” she says. “When research resources are constrained, by combining we can do more.”

We can work it out

The multi university group is not, in theory, a million miles from a federation in structure in that in federations generally there is a degree of autonomy ceded by the constituent elements to a single governing body – but in a federation each entity retains its individual legal status. A critical difference is the extent to which a sharing economy among the entities would have to be painstakingly negotiated for a federation, which could erode the value that is created in collaborating. It could also raise tricky questions around things like VAT.

But the sheer novelty of the multi university group also raises a bunch of regulatory questions, covered in all the depth you’d expect by DK elsewhere on the site – to give a flavour, can you use the word “university” for your trading entity without that existing as a legal entity with its own degree awarding powers?

The supportive noises from DfE and OfS at the time of the initial announcement should give Kent and Greenwich some degree of comfort as they work through some of these questions. The sector has been making the argument for some time now that if the government and regulator want to see institutions seizing the initiative on innovative forms of collaboration, there will need to be some legal and regulatory quarter given, up to and including making active provision for forms of collaboration that emerge without a legal playbook.

Aside from the formal conditions for collaboration, how OfS conducts itself in this period will be watched closely by others considering similar moves. While nobody would suggest that changing structure offers an excuse for dropping the ball on quality or student experience – and both heads of institution are very clear there is no expectation of that happening – OfS now has a choice. It can choose to be highly activist in requesting reams of documentation and evidence in response to events as they unfold, from institutions already grappling with a highly complex landscape. Or it can work out an approach that offers a degree of advance clarity to the institutions what their accountabilities are in this time of transition, and how they can/should keep the regulator informed of any material risks arising to students from the process.

Despite the generally positive response, there is no shortage of scepticism about whether a plan like the one proposed can work. The answer, of course, depends on what you think success looks like. Certainly, anyone expecting a sudden and material shrinkage in costs is bound to be disappointed. Decisions will be made along the way with which some disagree, perhaps profoundly.

But I think what is often forgotten in these discussions is that the alternative to the decision to pursue a new structure is not to carry on in broadly the same way as before, but to pursue a different but equally radical and equally contentious course of action. If the status quo was satisfactory then there would be no case for the change. In that sense, being as useful as possible in helping these two institutions make the very best fist that they can of their new venture is the right thing for everyone to do, from government downwards.

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September 15, 2025
How Higher Education Mirrors a Vegas-Style Economy

Higher education in the United States has become its own high-stakes game, where students—particularly those from working-class backgrounds—risk their futures on degrees that may never deliver the promised payoff. Like Las Vegas, the system thrives on speculation, scams, and extraction, creating a casino economy in which the house almost always wins.

The dynamics at play in universities mirror those of Las Vegas. Tuition fees have tripled over the last two decades, and in 2025, outstanding student loan debt in the U.S. exceeds $1.9 trillion, carried by over 45 million borrowers. For many graduates, the return on investment is uncertain: nearly 40% of college-educated workers report being in jobs they do not enjoy or that do not require a degree.

Las Vegas itself provides a cautionary tale. The city’s economy depends on high-risk speculation, from manipulated gaming odds to predatory pricing and real estate bubbles. Hospitality and gaming workers are trapped in precarious jobs, and tourists are increasingly voicing dissatisfaction with hidden fees and scams. The parallels with higher education are striking: both systems rely on extracting value from participants while minimizing risk for those in control.

Labor unrest in both arenas highlights the human cost. University adjuncts, graduate assistants, and service staff face low pay, unpredictable schedules, and limited benefits—even as administrators and shareholders reap the gains. Similarly, culinary and hospitality workers in Vegas struggle under similar dynamics, a reminder that exploitation scales across sectors.

Casino capitalism—the U.S. default—demonstrates that short-term profits often trump long-term stability. In higher education, the consequences include credential inflation, student debt crises, and a growing divide between those who can gamble successfully and those for whom the system is rigged. Just as Vegas may eventually face a tourist backlash, higher education risks a reckoning if working-class students continue to shoulder the losses of a speculative system.

In this economy, whether the stakes are on the strip or in the classroom, the house may always win—but only until the players refuse to play.

Sources

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September 13, 2025
Higher Education Inquirer covered Charlie Kirk and Turning Point for nearly a decade

For almost a decade, the Higher Education Inquirer investigated right wing influencer Charlie Kirk and his Turning Point Empire. Kirk was groomed by Bill Montgomery (a surrogate for Richard Nixon in Florida for Nixon’s Reelection Campaign) and Steve Bannon when Bannon was at Breitbart. Kirk quickly learned the dirty tricks of the Nixon-Reagan era and the dog whistles of white supremacy and misogyny. He also quickly gained funding from right wing billionaire Foster Freiss.

In mid-2016, we communicated our concerns with Michael Vasquez at Politico, who later moved on to the Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE). CHE later reported that Kirk created a plan to win student elections using outside (illegal) money. We also contacted the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League who both listed TPUSA as a hate group.

For nearly a decade and a half, Kirk and Turning Point USA incited violence on campus and on social media through its playbook of dirty tricks, racist and sexist agitation, and surveillance. That’s why we warned folks not to engage with TPUSA before this semester started.

As we reported in 2018:

Charlie Kirk, with no evidence whatsoever, alleged that a less qualified woman of color took his slot at West Point.

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September 13, 2025
Trump Administration Withholds Millions for TRIO Programs

Normally, back-to-school season means that the staff who lead federally funded programs for low-income and first-generation college students are kicking into high gear. But this month, the Trump administration has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in TRIO grants, creating uncertainty for thousands of programs. Some have been forced to grind to a halt, advocates say.

Colleges and nonprofits that had already been approved for the award expected to hear by the end of August that their federal funding was on its way. But rather than an award notice, program leaders received what’s known as a “no cost extension,” explaining that while programs could continue to operate until the end of the month, they would not be receiving the award money.

Over all, the Council for Opportunity in Education, a nonprofit advocacy group that focuses on supporting TRIO programs, estimates that the Trump administration has withheld about $660 million worth of aid for more than 2,000 TRIO programs. (Congress allocated $1.19 billion to TRIO for the current fiscal year.)

As a result of the freeze, COE explained, many colleges and nonprofit organizations had to temporarily pivot to online services or shutter their programs and furlough staff. Roughly 650,000 college students and high school seniors will lack vital access to academic advising, financial guidance and assistance with college applications if the freeze persists, they say.

“For many students, these first few weeks of the year are going to set the trajectory for their whole semester, especially if you’re an incoming freshman,” said COE president Kimberly Jones. “This is when you’re making critical choices about your coursework, trying to navigate the campus and just trying to acclimate to this new world. If you’re first-gen, you need the guidance of a program to help you navigate that.”

Jones said that Education Department officials said this week that the pause is temporary. However, the Department of Education did not immediately respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment Friday.

TRIO Under Threat

Originally established in the 1960s, TRIO now consists of seven different programs, each designed to support various individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds and help them overcome barriers of access to higher education.

Not all the TRIO programs have had funding withheld. Roughly 1,300 awards for certain programs—such as Upward Bound Math-Science, Student Support Services and any general Upward Bound projects with a June 1 start date—were disbursed on time, Jones said. But that’s only 40 percent of the more than 3,000 TRIO programs.

Other programs, including Upward Bound projects with a Sept. 1 start date, Veterans Upward Bound, Educational Opportunity Centers and Talent Search, are still waiting for checks to land in their accounts.

Policy experts added that funding for the McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement program, a TRIO service focused on graduate students, also has yet to be distributed. But unlike most of the programs, funding for McNair is not due until Sept. 30. Still, Jones and others said they are highly concerned those funds will also be frozen.

Given the unpredictability of everything this year around education, we can’t make any assumptions. Until we get those grants in the hands of our constituents, we have to assume the worst.”

—COE president Kimberly Jones

President Donald Trump proposed cutting all funding for TRIO in May, saying that the executive branch lacks the ability to audit the program and make sure it isn’t wasting taxpayer dollars. But so far, House and Senate appropriators have pushed back, keeping the funding intact.

When confronted by Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican and longtime TRIO advocate, at a budget hearing in June, McMahon acknowledged that “Congress does control the purse strings,” but went on to say that she would “sincerely hope” to work with lawmakers and “renegotiate” the program’s terms.

And while advocates hope that funds will eventually be reinstated, most experts interviewed remain skeptical. With 18 days left until the end of the fiscal year, any unallocated TRIO funds will likely be sent back to the Department of Treasury, never to reach the organizations they were intended for.

The Trump administration has tried to freeze or end other education-related grant programs—including a few TRIO programs that were cut off in June—which officials said “conflict with the Department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help; or constitute an inappropriate use of federal funds.”

And while some of the funding freezes have been successfully challenged in court, the judicial process needed to win back federal aid is slow. Most colleges don’t have that kind of time, the advocates say.

“Given the unpredictability of everything this year around education, we can’t make any assumptions,” Jones said. “Until we get those grants in the hands of our constituents, we have to assume the worst.”

‘Crippling’ Effects

For Summer Bryant, director of the Talent Search program at Morehead State University in Kentucky, the funding freeze has been “crippling.”

Talent Search is a TRIO program focused on supporting middle and high school students with college preparation. And while the loss of about $1 million hasn’t forced Bryant to shut down her program quite yet, it has significantly limited her capacity to serve students.

After paying the program’s 10 staff members for the month of September, Bryant has just over $1,000 left—and that’s between both of the grants she received last year.

“It may sound like a lot, but when you take into account that we’re providing services to eight counties and 27 target schools, coupled with the fact that driving costs about 50 cents a mile and some of our schools one-way are almost 120 miles away, that’s not a lot of money,” she said. “So instead, I had to make a Facebook post notifying our students and their guardians that we would be pausing all in-person services until we receive our grant awards.”

Even then, Morehead TRIO programs are based in a rural part of Appalachia, so broadband access and choppy connections are also a concern.

“Doing things over the phone or over a Zoom is just not as effective as doing it face-to-face—information is lost,” Bryant said. And because this freeze is happening during the most intensive season for college applications, “even a one month delay could lead to a make-or-break moment for a lot of our seniors,” she added.

It’s not just Bryant facing these challenges. Of Morehead’s nine preapproved TRIO grants, only four have been awarded. The same scenario is playing out at campuses across the country.

Democratic senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, along with 32 other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, demanded in a letter sent Wednesday that the administration release the funds. Collectively, they warned that failure to do so “will result in irreversible damage to our students, families, and communities, as many rely on the vital programs and services provided by TRIO programs.”

They wrote that TRIO has produced over six million college graduates since its inception in 1964, promoting a greater level of civic engagement and spurring local economies.

“The data proves that TRIO works,“ the senators stressed. “Students’ futures will be less successful if they do not receive their appropriated funds immediately.”

Rep. Gwen Moore, a Wisconsin Democrat and TRIO alumna, and 53 fellow House members sent a similar letter the same day.

The freeze is hitting community colleges particularly hard; they receive half of all TRIO grants, said David Baime, senior vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges.

Baime said he has “no idea” why the department is withholding funds and added that while he is hopeful the federal dollars will be restored, there is an “unusual degree of uncertainty.”

Between a handful of TRIO grants that were terminated with little to no explanation earlier in the year and the recent decision to cancel all grant funding for minority-serving institutions, worries among TRIO programs are high, Jones from COE and others said.

Still, Baime is holding out hope.

“The department has gone on record saying that fiscal year 2025 TRIO funds would be allocated,” he said. “So despite the very concerning delays, we remain optimistic.”

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September 12, 2025
3 More Faculty, Staff Removed for Kirk Comments

Right-wing X accounts are pushing for universities to dismiss any employees that have disparaged Kirk in the days following his death.

Photo illustration by Inside Higher Ed | LeoPatrizi/E+/Getty Images

At least five faculty and staff members have been fired so far for comments they made in response to the death of Turning Point USA founder and conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed Wednesday during an event at Utah Valley University.

Investigators announced Friday they arrested a suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who is now being held in a Utah jail without bail. Utah governor Spencer Cox said during a press conference Friday that a family friend turned Robinson in to authorities after the suspect suggested to a relative that he’d killed Kirk. Robinson was not a student at Utah Valley.

The Utah Board of Higher Education said in a statement that Robinson is a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College and that he attended Utah State University for one semester in 2021.

Among the latest college employees terminated for their responses to Kirk’s killing, Lisa Greenlee was removed as a part-time instructor from Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, N.C., on Thursday after she made comments criticizing Kirk to students during an online class, saying, “I’ll praise the shooter; he had good aim.” A video of her remarks made the rounds on X, where right-wing accounts encouraged the college to fire her.

“We deeply regret that students, employees, and the community were impacted by her comments. Greenlee’s behavior is not consistent with the college’s values and mission to serve Guilford County. Her statement regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk does not support the open and respectful learning and working environment that GTCC provides every day,” GTCC president Anthony Clarke said in a statement. “We want to reiterate that supporting violence is reprehensible and will not be tolerated at the college.” Greenlee did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment.

Two employees at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tenn., were dismissed Thursday for making “inappropriate comments on the internet related to the tragic shooting of Charlie Kirk,” university president Paul Stumb wrote in a statement posted on X. He identified the employees as Michael Rex, an English and creative writing professor, and Max Woods, an assistant esports coach, but he did not share what they said. Like Greenlee, both had been the subject of online campaigns advocating for their firing.

“This decision was not made lightly,” Stumb wrote. “We understand the importance and the impact of this action, and we want to emphasize that we conducted a comprehensive investigation prior to making our decision.”

Before Stumb’s statement was publicized, Rex posted an apology on his Facebook page. “No one deserves to be murdered,” he wrote. “I did not think about the pain and anger that my words would create. My comments were not meant to celebrate nor to foster political violence and for any traums [sic] my words caused, I am truly sorry.” Rex and Wood did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment.

The recent firings follow the dismissals of Laura Sosh-Lightsy, a student affairs administrator at Middle Tennessee State University, and an unnamed staff member at the University of Mississippi.

A Clemson university professor is also subject to an ongoing push by X users to have him fired for statements on Kirk’s death. On Friday afternoon, the university posted a statement that alluded to the situation. “We stand firmly on the principles of the U.S. Constitution, including the protection of free speech. However, that right does not extend to speech that incites harm or undermines the dignity of others. We will take appropriate action for speech that constitutes a genuine threat which is not protected by the Constitution.”

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September 12, 2025
What Higher Education Should Know

The rollback of remote work policies across industries is reshaping labor markets, household economics, and ultimately, higher education. At the heart of this shift are competing forces: employers eager to reassert control over the workplace, families struggling with the cost of childcare, and an economy that risks losing productivity and talent when workers are forced into rigid arrangements.

For higher education, these developments are not distant trends—they directly affect students, employees, and the value of degrees in a labor market already strained by inequality.

One of the most pressing issues is the cost of childcare. In many parts of the United States, childcare now exceeds the cost of tuition at public universities. The rollback of flexible work means more parents—particularly mothers—face impossible choices between income and caregiving. Gender economists warn that this will have long-term consequences for workforce participation, with ripple effects on GDP.

When high performers, especially women in mid-career, exit the workforce due to a lack of flexibility, the loss is not only personal but systemic. Research has shown that reduced female participation translates into billions of dollars in lost GDP. For colleges and universities, this contraction weakens alumni networks, shrinks the pipeline of potential graduate students, and destabilizes family incomes that support tuition payments.

Higher education institutions are also employers. As universities push staff and faculty back into offices while offering minimal support for caregiving, they risk alienating the very professionals who sustain research and teaching. This compounds the long-standing crisis of adjunct labor and the broader erosion of academic working conditions. Many contingent faculty members already juggle multiple jobs while managing caregiving responsibilities—conditions made worse by rigid scheduling and the absence of benefits like paid leave or childcare subsidies.

The student debt crisis, too, is inseparable from these dynamics. Families already strained by high tuition and predatory lending practices cannot absorb the additional shock of rising care costs. For many working parents, pursuing higher education has become nearly impossible without flexible employment. In this way, the rollback of remote work further narrows access to education and entrenches inequality.

The rollback has been framed by some employers as a way to restore collaboration and productivity. But the evidence suggests the opposite may occur if flexibility is stripped away without accounting for the realities of modern family life. Gender economists argue that the choice is not simply between home and office but between an inclusive economy and one that sidelines caregivers.

For universities, the lesson is clear. If higher education is to prepare students for the future of work, it must also examine how it treats its own employees, how it supports student-parents, and how it positions itself in debates about labor, family, and equity. Ignoring the economics of care will only deepen inequality and accelerate the ongoing college meltdown.

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September 12, 2025
Teaching and Learning Can’t Happen Under These Circumstances

I’m hoping everyone working in higher education is aware of the recent events at Texas A&M, where a student recording of an exchange with an instructor ultimately led to the dismissal of the instructor and the demotion of both the department chair and college dean that had backed the instructor’s classroom autonomy.

I looked at the big-picture academic freedom implications in a newsletter for the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, where I note that one of the people who initially defended the instructor’s autonomy was Texas A&M president Mark Welsh, who told the student complainant that firing the instructor was “not happening,” only to reverse course after a storm of right-wing outrage and political pressure rained down.

The instructor was a model of professionalism—watch the video yourself if you don’t believe me—and yet this student set out with a plan deliberately engineered to get the instructor fired, and it worked.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this student, about what has to happen for a young person to enter college seeing something like this—personally targeting and destroying another human being who is just doing their job—as what they want to spend their college years doing.

It is an act of great cruelty, and yet I must imagine this person does not see themselves as cruel. I’m sure they somehow have justified this cruelty, but there is simply no justification for it. If they are not cruel, what is left? It becomes an act of madness.

One of my favorite things about teaching college-age students is that they are ready for the whole deal, adults who have volunteered themselves for a potentially transformative experience. Look, I’m not naïve about the more transactional mindsets that students bring to college, but it always seemed to me that at least the potential for something more meaningful, more lasting, was always present.

I loved teaching because I knew that this was the goal, even as I only had vague notions of how it could be achieved. And when it was achieved for a particular student, it was clear that this was not necessarily replicable on a mass scale using the same approach. That difficulty is fascinating. The tension in not knowing if it can be pulled off, but trying anyway, was energizing, sometimes even intoxicating. This is very hard, but it is also very worth doing.

At least I think so.

Sometimes, when things were going well during a class, I would step outside myself for a moment and think, Look at all these people! Each one of them was a person, and together we were collectively being human, at least for a moment. What could be better?

Here we are. I honestly don’t know how anyone can teach and learn under the present circumstances. For the bulk of my career, I worked in places where my political and religious views were out of sync with those of most my students, but I could not imagine being afraid of them exacting punishment or revenge on me for the mere fact of these views. My students were fundamentally open and curious, not without convictions by any means, but also essentially trusting that everyone involved in the educational enterprise had their best interests at heart unless proven otherwise.

Now, it seems prudent to assume someone is out to get you, because it only takes one person of bad faith armed with a smart phone and ill intent to destroy your career. There is an essential fragility, a brittleness to this student who took down their instructor that makes them impossible to work alongside. There is no potential for community. Even if they are only one in a thousand, the whole deal is spoiled.

In my course policies, I would often share a quote from Cornel West regarding the project I hoped the students and I were embarking on together.

“I want to be able to engage in the grand calling of a Socratic teacher, which is not to persuade and convince students, but to unsettle and unnerve and maybe even unhouse a few students, so that they experience that wonderful vertigo and dizziness in recognizing at least for a moment that their world view rests on pudding, but then see that they have something to fall back on. It’s the shaping and forming of critical sensibility. That, for me, is what the high calling of pedagogy really is.”

There are places today where it seems like even articulating such a philosophy, let alone attempting to put it into practice, would disqualify me from the classroom.

As I was first working on drafting this column, I saw the news of the violent death of another young person who got his start as an antagonist to college professors and became quite wealthy and powerful primarily by calling down harassment on others—harassment that caused them to fear for their jobs and even sometimes their lives.

He had a wife and two children under 4 years old. More madness.

I honestly don’t know what to make of any of this. I am in a moment of Dr. West’s “pudding.”

Maybe tomorrow more helpful thoughts will come.

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September 12, 2025
Texas State Fires Professor Accused of Inciting Violence

Alter at Texas State is the second Texas professor fired this week.

Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman/Getty Images

Texas State University fired a professor Wednesday after he was accused of inciting violence during a speech at a socialist conference, The Texas Tribune reported.

In a video posted on X, associate professor of history Thomas Alter can be seen giving a speech over Zoom to attendees of the Revolutionary Socialism Conference. “Without organization, how can anyone expect to overthrow the most bloodthirsty, profit-driven mad organization in the history of the world—that of the U.S. government,” he said in the clip, which was circulated online by a YouTuber who infiltrated and recorded the event.

Texas State president Kelly Damphousse said in a statement Wednesday that the university reviewed the comments, which he said “amounted to serious professional and personal misconduct.”

“As a result, I have determined that his actions are incompatible with their responsibilities as a faculty member at Texas State University,” he added. “Effective immediately, his employment with Texas State University has been terminated.”

The video clip shared on social media was spliced and cut together. In the full version of his speech, which is posted on YouTube, Alter discusses the various tactics of different socialist groups.

“Another strain of anarchism gaining ground recently is that of insurrectionary anarchism,” Alter said in his speech. “Primarily coming out of those that were involved in the Cop City protest. These groups, individuals have grown rightfully frustrated with symbolic protests that do not disrupt the normal functioning of government and business. They call for more direct action and shutting down the military-industrial complex and preventing ICE from kidnapping members of their communities. Many insurrectionary anarchists are serving jail time, lost jobs and face expulsion from school. They have truly put their bodies on the line. While their actions are laudable, it should be asked, what purpose do they serve? As anarchists, these insurrectionists explicitly reject the formation of a revolutionary party capable of leading the working class to power. Without organization, how can anyone expect to overthrow the most bloodthirsty, profit-driven mad organization in the history of the world—that of the U.S. government.”

Alter didn’t respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

He is the second Texas professor to be fired from their post this week. On Tuesday, Texas A&M officials fired Melissa McCoul, a senior lecturer, and removed two faculty members from their administrative roles after a student complained that the material McCoul taught in a summer course violated President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

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September 12, 2025