Tag: Hill

  • UNC Chapel Hill Won’t Sign Compact

    UNC Chapel Hill Won’t Sign Compact

    The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill made clear Friday that it won’t sign the federal “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that has been extended to all institutions after seven of the original nine universities invited rejected the offer, WRAL reported. 

    Last month the Trump administration floated a plan for preferential treatment on federal funding in exchange for universities overhauling admissions and hiring practices, freezing tuition for five years, capping international enrollment at 15 percent, and making various other concessions that many critics have warned will undermine academic freedom.

    UNC Chapel Hill chancellor Lee Roberts said Friday that while the university has not received a formal invitation from the Trump administration, he is not interested in the arrangement.

    “There are some parts of the compact that we are already doing and there are some parts that would be difficult or impossible,” Roberts said in a faculty council meeting, according to WRAL. “There’s no way we can sign the compact as written and we don’t plan to.”

    Invitations to the compact were initially sent to Brown University, Dartmouth College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Arizona, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University. All but two declined—Vanderbilt said it would provide feedback and Texas has yet to offer a public response.

    Multiple others also announced pre-emptive rejections after the initial invitation went out, including Emory University, Pennsylvania State University, Syracuse University and the University of Kansas. So far, only two institutions have announced intentions to sign the compact: New College of Florida and Valley Forge Military College in Pennsylvania.

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  • Former Provost Sues UNC Chapel Hill

    Former Provost Sues UNC Chapel Hill

    A former provost at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill accused the Board of Trustees of systematically violating open records and meetings laws on multiple occasions, including to retaliate against him, according to a lawsuit filed earlier this week.

    At the heart of the lawsuit from Chris Clemens, who resigned in April, is a delayed tenure vote.

    In March, the UNC Board of Trustees postponed a vote to grant tenure to 33 faculty members. At that meeting, held March 20, the board moved into closed session, with Clemens present, apparently to discuss individual tenure cases. Instead, trustees launched into a debate over the value of tenure, with some voicing their philosophical opposition to the practice and others arguing that they should delay such approvals for financial reasons, according to the lawsuit.

    The board eventually approved tenure for all 33 candidates in June via an email vote.

    According to the lawsuit, Clemens shared details from the meeting with other academic leaders, noting that no tenure decisions were made or individual candidates considered and that the board instead “engaged in a sweeping policy discussion about tenure’s institutional value and global costs.” Following that briefing, the Board of Trustees allegedly communicated through Signal, a private messaging application that includes a feature to automatically delete messages after they are read, to call for a vote of no confidence in Clemens. UNC leadership asked Clemens to step down shortly thereafter, according to the lawsuit.

    But even if Clemens’s suit is successful and the violations are proven to be true, the board will likely face few repercussions given past precedent.

    A Systemic Pattern

    Clemens’s lawsuit also accused Jed Atkins, director and dean of the School for Civic Life and Leadership, of relaying the former provost’s briefing to then–board chair John Preyer via Signal. (Clemens had taken issue with the hiring practices at the civic life school before stepping down.)

    The lawsuit alleges that Atkins “requires that his leadership team subscribe to a Signal group and conducts a substantial portion of official communications via Signal with auto-delete enabled not only in exchanges with trustees but as a routine practice,” in violation of state law. Atkins did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

    Beyond the tenure flap, Clemens has accused the board of defying state open meetings laws on multiple occasions in an effort to “hide policy debates from public view,” according to his lawsuit.

    “Over the past four years, the Board has engaged in a pattern and practice of systematically violating the Open Meetings Law by improperly invoking closed session exemptions to shield policy and budget deliberations from public scrutiny,” the former provost alleged.

    Contacted by Inside Higher Ed, Clemens declined to comment.

    In his legal filing, Clemens cited three specific examples beyond the March tenure discussion in which he alleged the board violated open meetings laws. He specifically pointed to a closed session discussion in November 2023, when UNC discussed athletic conference realignment; further secret deliberations over athletics in May 2024 involving both conference realignment and finances; and an “emergency meeting” in December 2024 to hire a head football coach. At the December meeting, UNC Chapel Hill hired NFL legend Bill Belichick on a $10 million annual contract.

    (Responding to a separate legal complaint over the May 2024 meeting, trustees previously agreed to reaffirm their commitment to open meetings laws and pay $25,000 in attorneys’ fees.)

    “Each episode follows the same pattern: the Board invokes a statutory exemption, enters closed session, then discusses broad policy or budget matters that must be debated publicly,” the lawsuit states.

    Despite being allegedly pressured to step down, Clemens isn’t seeking a payout or his job back. Instead, he’s asking the court to prevent the board from continuing its alleged defiance of open meetings laws, to produce minutes or a transcript of the March 20 closed session and to mandate that trustees participate in training on state open meetings and public records laws.

    Responses

    Contacted by Inside Higher Ed, UNC Chapel Hill spokesperson Kevin Best wrote by email, “We’re aware of the litigation and are reviewing it closely,” but he declined to comment further given the pending nature of the case.

    The Board of Trustees released a more forceful statement Wednesday.

    “The former Provost’s baseless assault on this volunteer Board and how it conducts its business stands in stark contrast to the widely recognized excellence the University has achieved under this Board’s leadership,” chair Malcom Turner said. “His allegations are disappointing and inaccurate, not to mention a waste of taxpayer dollars, for which this former officer of the University shows no regard. His claims will not withstand scrutiny.”

    Most of the individuals named in the lawsuit either declined to comment or did not respond to media inquiries. Multiple faculty and staff members at the School of Civic Life and Leadership (none of whom are defendants in the lawsuit) also did not respond to requests for comment.

    However, one source alleged that the former provost instructed employees to use Signal and that he also used it for university business, which Inside Higher Ed confirmed via screenshots.

    Allegations that Clemens used Signal come amid an opaque investigation by outside counsel into the School of Civic Life and Leadership that was announced earlier this month. While Chapel Hill leadership has said little about the investigation, it comes after multiple resignations from faculty members in the school, some of whom have alleged it has “lost sight of its mission.”

    Dustin Sebell, a School of Civic Life and Leadership professor, told Inside Higher Ed via text message that Clemens “habitually used Signal for university business” and encouraged others to do so. To Sebell, the lawsuit seems like an effort by Clemens to sidestep the investigation.

    “By hastily filing a hypocritical lawsuit, Chris is trying to avoid investigators’ questions about his misconduct as Provost by claiming privilege pending ongoing litigation,” Sebell wrote.

    But some faculty members, such as Michael Palm—president of the UNC Chapel Hill chapter of the American Association of University Professors—expressed concern about political influence on the board.

    “Open meetings laws are important for public universities. Unfortunately, right now we don’t need them to know that the UNC [Board of Trustees] considers UNC faculty to be their enemy,” Palm wrote to Inside Higher Ed via email. “The crisis we’re in is political, not procedural.”

    Although North Carolina has historically been considered a swing state, the UNC Chapel Hill board appears to be overwhelmingly comprised of Republicans. Some have previously worked for Republican officials, while others have donated heavily to GOP candidates and causes.

    Of 14 voting members on the UNC Chapel Hill board, at least 10 have donated to conservative politicians and organizations, some contributing tens of thousands of dollars, according to a review by Inside Higher Ed. Several others have direct GOP connections, including Preyer, who previously worked for former senator Lauch Faircloth. Three other trustees previously held state office: Robert Bryan III, James Blaine II and Patrick Ballantine. All were elected as Republicans.

    Potential Consequences

    Should the allegations in the lawsuit be proven true, consequences will likely be fairly light—at least, that has been the outcome in other cases where boards allegedly violated sunshine laws.

    The Pennsylvania State Board of Trustees, for example, was required to complete training on the state’s Sunshine Act recently as part of a settlement with the news organization Spotlight PA over alleged violations of opening meetings laws related to secretive practices by the board.

    But in other cases, universities have largely escaped consequences for clandestine actions.

    Kentucky attorney general Russell Coleman has found that multiple state institutions have violated open records laws, adding up to 10 times this year alone. Coleman found that the University of Kentucky violated open records law four times and had four partial violations, while Northern Kentucky University had one violation and the University of Louisville had a partial violation. However, none of those violations resulted in punitive actions from the state.

    Last year Indiana’s public access counselor found that Indiana University’s Board of Trustees violated open meetings laws when members claimed that they were holding a private meeting to discuss litigation. But trustees also discussed IU president Pamela Whitten’s performance and a campus climate review, expanding the private meeting beyond its stated aims. A complaint from a news organization prompted scrutiny from state officials, but no punitive or corrective actions.

    UNC Chapel Hill was also previously accused of violating state open meetings laws, including in 2021 when it hired Clemens as provost, choosing to approve “Action 1” on its agenda with a vague reference to personnel matters, raising concerns that trustees violated state law via a secretive vote. Board leadership defended the vote and Clemens remained in place until April.

    This story has been updated with a statement from the UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees.

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  • For Learning, You Have to Ride Up the Hill

    For Learning, You Have to Ride Up the Hill

    On a recent vacation in the southwest portion of Ireland, as I was slogging away, trying to get the bicycle I was peddling up a reasonably daunting hill, I started thinking about generative AI.

    I was thinking about generative AI because my wife, who is quite fit, but historically not as a strong a biker as I am, had disappeared into the distance, visible only because we were on twisting roads and she was several switchbacks ahead.

    She also powered past my older brother, who competes in triathlons, and (I was told later) a French couple that muttered some apparent swears in their native language. Ultimately, she arrived only three or four minutes ahead of me at the top-of-the-hill way station, but as I huffed and puffed the final couple hundred yards, down to my next-to-lowest gear, moving at a just-above-walking pace, the gap felt enormous.

    If you haven’t figured it out, my wife was riding an e-bike, while I was on a conventional (though very nice) bike. For the most part, the biking was very doable, but there were moments where I was not entirely sure I could or should keep peddling.

    But I made it! Because we were touring with Backroads, an active vacation company, there was a delicious snack waiting for me at the top, which I enjoyed with great relish, knowing that I’d burned quite a few calories with many more to come that day.

    I believe those French riders might’ve said something about “cheating” by using an e-bike, but this is obviously a case where what is cheating is in the eye of the beholder and significantly dependent on what you’re valuing about the experience.

    If the point of our Ireland cycling vacation was to expend maximum effort on physical activities while cycling around the southwestern Ireland countryside, using an e-bike would prevent you from achieving your objective. But this is not the point of these kinds of trips. Yes, we have a desire to be active, outside and engaged, but the point is to use these methods to experience the place we’ve traveled to, and if—as happened to me a different day—you are perspiring so hard that the sweat dripping into your eyes has temporarily blinded you, it is tough to say that you are maximizing the experience.

    Having the “best” vacation on this kind of trip is often a matter of balance. At times, I actively wished for the boost an e-bike could’ve given me. Other times, particularly on a day where we did 60 miles, and my brother and I were the only ones doing the whole itinerary, and we managed to go fast enough on the closing stretch to beat the Backroads van back to the hotel, I was thrilled with what it felt like to put my full physical effort behind the task.

    I think my body paid for that big effort for a couple of days afterward, but I don’t regret it.

    Like I said, it’s a matter of balance and values.

    The e-bikes are great because they made it easier for my wife and me to ride together. The bottom-level boost had her toasting me up the hills, but on the flats, we were essentially the same speed, with us both working at levels we were comfortable with. The e-bike isn’t a motorcycle. You are still working plenty hard at the lower levels of boost.

    But at the higher levels, you might find yourself speeding through the itinerary, as a group of four gentlemen in our group seemed to do, frequently arriving at our stopping points 20 minutes ahead of the rest of us.

    I was thinking of generative AI because of the different lenses through which you can look at the use of an e-bike in the context of a bike-touring vacation.

    You could see it as supplementary, allowing someone to experience something (like the view from a particular peak) that they wouldn’t otherwise unless they substituted something entirely nonbiking, like a car.

    You could see it as substitutive, removing effort in exchange for feeling less tired and taxed at the end of the day.

    You could see it as cheating, as those French riders did.

    Because I don’t bike all that often at home, my primary “training” for the trip has been my regular Peloton rides, and for sure, those helped. My metrics on the stationary bike suggested I was well prepared. And I was, but well prepared doesn’t mean you aren’t going to face some very challenging moments.

    There were several times—like that sweat-pouring-down-my-face period—where I would have gladly kicked in an e-bike boost in order to reduce my effort to conserve something for a different aspect of the trip, e.g., not being exhausted over dinner. But at no point did I need the boost to continue or finish the route, and if I was so inclined, Backroads is happy for you to hop in the van and get a ride the rest of the way.

    I’m stubborn enough to not do that, but knowing myself, there were many times when an e-bike boost wouldn’t have been necessary or even desirable, when I would’ve switched it on in order to alleviate some measure of present discomfort. If it’s available, why not use it?

    This would have signaled a shift in the values I initially brought to the trip. Whether or not it should be viewed as a betrayal or merely a change with its own benefits is a more complicated question, but at least for this trip, I was glad to not have the temptation.

    I like to look at my opportunities to travel through the lens of experience. We aren’t going somewhere to check a box, but instead to literally spend time in a different place doing different things than our regular routines. I often know that I’ve had a good trip by the number of pictures I take—the fewer the better, because it means I was too absorbed in the experience to bother reaching for my phone to document something.

    As we consider how to teach in a world where students have a superpowered e-bike instantly and constantly available, I’ve found looking at learning through the lens of experience is helpful, because focusing on the experience is a good way of identifying the things we should most value.

    For my focus, writing, it seems almost irrefutable that if we want students to develop their writing practices, they should be doing the work without the assistance. The work must be purposeful and focused on what’s important in a given experience, but if that’s been achieved, any use of a boost is to miss out on something important. Learning is about riding up that hill under your own steam.

    For writing especially, it’s axiomatic that the more you can do without the boost, the more you could potentially do with the boost.

    Perhaps more importantly, the more you do without the boost, the greater knowledge you will gain about when the boost is truly an aid or when it is a way to dodge responsibility.

    Figuring out where these lines must be drawn isn’t easy, and ultimately, because of the nature of school and the fact that students should be viewed as free and independent actors, the final choice must reside with them.

    But we can act in ways that make the consequences of these choices and the benefits to opting for unboosted ride as apparent and inviting as possible.

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  • Julian Hill addresses The PIE Live Asia Pacific

    Julian Hill addresses The PIE Live Asia Pacific

    The post Julian Hill addresses The PIE Live Asia Pacific appeared first on The PIE News.

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  • Conservative Org. Requests Materials for 70 Chapel Hill Courses

    Conservative Org. Requests Materials for 70 Chapel Hill Courses

    The Oversight Project, a spinoff of the conservative Heritage Foundation known for deluging government agencies with public records requests, has set its sights on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    According to Chapel Hill’s open records request database, Mike Howell, the Oversight Project’s president, submitted a sweeping request to the university on July 2, asking for syllabi and class materials presented to students in roughly 70 courses that contain “any of the following search terms, whether in titles, body text, footnotes, metadata, or hyperlinks.” He then listed 30 search terms he wanted Chapel Hill to use, including “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging”; “gender identity”; “intersectionality”; “white privilege”; “cultural humility”; “racial equity”; “implicit bias”; “microaggressions”; “queer”; and “sexuality.”

    The courses whose materials he asked the university to search included Gender and Sexuality in Islam, Increasing Diversity in STEM Research and Black Families in Social and Contemporary Contexts, as well as Right-Wing Populism in Global Perspective; First-Year Seminar: Mobility, Roads, NASCAR, and Southern Culture; and Introduction to the American Stage Musical.

    Howell also asked the university to waive any fees for searching for or providing these possibly voluminous records. His explanation for why the Oversight Project deserved to pay nothing suggested what he was seeking to do with the information.

    “Disclosure of these records will contribute significantly to the public’s understanding of university operations and student-facing programming, particularly considering ongoing public concern regarding institutional compliance with current Executive Orders issued by the President of the United States,” Howell wrote, specifically mentioning President Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders from January. The records “will shed light on potential inconsistencies between internal practices and public representations made by officials in a matter of substantial national importance,” he wrote.

    Government agencies that are subject to open records requests such as the one the Oversight Project has submitted often charge for such work; the State Department’s fees range from $21 to $76 per hour, depending on the personnel fulfilling the request, and $0.15 per page, for example.

    It’s another example of conservatives using open records laws to target what’s being researched or taught—or what they think is being taught—at public universities. And using keyword searches for terms such as “DEI” echoes the approach federal agencies under Trump have adopted to search grants to determine which might be canceled. Some universities have also conducted their own similar hunts to find content on internal websites and within courses that may run afoul of federal or state prohibitions related to DEI.

    In February, the UNC system ordered its 16 public universities to immediately stop requiring “course credits related to diversity, equity and inclusion,” without defining what that meant. Some university administrations used keyword searches of course descriptions, looking for terms such as “cultural” to choose which courses to review. The system allowed institutional chancellors to grant waivers for dozens of courses with diversity themes that remain necessary for certain degrees. A system administrator said about 95 percent of programs identified for exemptions “had accreditation and licensure requirements attached.”

    The request for syllabi is also another example of conservative groups targeting UNC system campuses for allegedly continuing to practice DEI, despite multiple efforts by the UNC system Board of Governors to stamp it out. Since April, another group, Accuracy in Media, has released undercover videos allegedly showing staffers at other UNC institutions still promoting DEI.

    Chris Petsko’s business course, Leading and Managing, was among those the Oversight Project requested records for. Petsko, an assistant professor of organizational behavior, said a small part of the course includes segments on stereotyping and prejudice as they relate to workplace outcomes, such as hiring.

    Petsko said the university notified him of the request, and he looked up what the Oversight Project was. Based on what he found, he won’t give up his course materials, he said. He didn’t like the request’s implication that he was violating executive orders and said those sympathetic to the Trump administration seem “perfectly willing to make outlandish legal arguments that they know will lose in lower courts simply to give their ideology some kind of legitimacy.” The Oversight Project has been accused of releasing misleading information before.

    Petsko said he didn’t want to give the Oversight Project something to “twist” in its mission to keep “targeting public universities for doing the work they need to do.”

    ‘Meant to Intimidate’

    Chapel Hill says it’s a faculty member’s right not to share their course information. Though the media relations office didn’t provide an interview Monday, a university spokesperson wrote in an email, “The University has not responded to this public records request and is still in the process of identifying what—if any—records will be produced. Course materials, including but not limited to exams, lectures, assignments and syllabi, are the intellectual property of the preparer and are owned by the preparer as non-traditional work.”

    The Oversight Project also didn’t provide an interview to Inside Higher Ed. In an email, Howell wrote, “UNC is a public school which has a long track record of discrimination. Syllabi are public records and belong to the public. We intend to let the public know what is being taught at a public school. That’s not intimidation, it’s good governance and transparency. If a professor is too much of a wimp to let me read his syllabus then he’s in the wrong business.”

    When asked to provide a list of donors to the Oversight Project, Howell responded, “And no of course I’m not sending you a list of donors but please do send donors to our website.”

    Petsko shared his research into the rules regarding responding to Howell’s group with other faculty on LinkedIn.

    “At many public universities, syllabi are considered intellectual property,” he wrote in a post. “As such, at many schools (mine included) professors are not required to share their syllabi in response to public records requests. My advice is to check what your university policy is prior to complying with requests in advance.”

    He also wrote that “at public universities, you have a legal right to decide how to teach your course and to decide what topics to include” if it’s relevant to the course.

    “Keep doing the work you were trained to do,” he wrote. “Keep educating others. Keep sharing your expertise. And don’t let vague references to executive orders make you question whether you have a right to be sharing your knowledge with the world.”

    Zach Greenberg, a First Amendment attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said his organization advocates for narrow exemptions to open records laws to keep private faculty records, correspondence and other written materials for the purpose of scholarship, research and teaching.

    “These very broad and vague requests for faculty academic records such as syllabi and faculty communications about their academic pursuits chill free speech by putting a large burden on the faculty members and revealing private academic information they use to teach their classes,” Greenberg said. Forcing disclosure, he said, can result in altering these courses.

    Joan Scott, a member of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure and one of the founders of Chapel Hill’s women’s studies program, said this use of open records requests is “not a new tactic.” She said these requests are “meant to intimidate” and suggested the targeting of Chapel Hill is part of a pressure campaign on state legislators to overturn the Democratic governor’s veto of anti-DEI legislation.

    “Whatever they’re claiming the legal right is, it’s a violation of academic freedom, it’s a violation of individual free speech rights and it’s an intrusion into the teaching of university faculty in the name of, it seems to me, a right-wing ideological agenda,” Scott said.

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  • Scott Pelley BASHES Trump Admin During Wake Forest Commencement (The Hill)

    Scott Pelley BASHES Trump Admin During Wake Forest Commencement (The Hill)







    Higher Education Inquirer : Scott Pelley BASHES Trump Admin During Wake Forest Commencement (The Hill)




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  • UNC Chapel Hill Provost Stepping Down Amid Civic Life Strife

    UNC Chapel Hill Provost Stepping Down Amid Civic Life Strife

    The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s provost is stepping down next month to return to the faculty there, a development that news articles last week suggested is tied to his disagreement with hiring practices at the School of Civic Life and Leadership, or SCiLL.

    In a statement Friday to Inside Higher Ed, Chris Clemens, the outgoing provost, said, “I made the decision to step down as provost. During my time as provost, I’ve been able to address challenges I care deeply about and make meaningful progress. However, the issues that have arisen in recent days are not ones I can solve, and I don’t feel the same passion for them.”

    His statement didn’t explain what these recent issues are, and Chapel Hill spokespeople didn’t provide further information beyond campus chancellor Lee Roberts’s April 3 announcement that Clemens had decided to step down.

    Clemens will return May 16 to being the Jaroslav Folda Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Roberts said in that announcement. Clemens has been provost since early 2022, starting under former chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz, who’s now president of Michigan State University. Roberts credited Clemens with, among other things, helping establish the School of Data Science and Society, the Program for Public Discourse, and SCiLL.

    SCiLL was established after Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees passed a resolution in January 2023 asking the campus administration to “accelerate its development” of this new school. The then–board chair called SCiLL an effort to “remedy” a shortage of “right-of-center views” on campus. Controversy quickly ensued. Faculty said they didn’t know a whole school was in development.

    The Republican-controlled State Legislature then passed a law requiring Chapel Hill to establish the school and hire 10 to 20 faculty from outside the university, plus make them eligible for tenure. It became one of many civics or civil discourse centers—critics have called them conservative centers—that Republican lawmakers and higher education leaders have established at public universities in recent years.

    In January 2025, Clemens canceled the latest SCiLL tenure-track faculty searches before reversing course days later. Articles in The Assembly and the conservative Real Clear Investigations have now implied that Clemens’s departure was connected to his involvement in the disagreements over hiring within SCiLL.

    Clemens, a self-described conservative, had been an advocate for SCiLL. The Real Clear Investigations article was titled, before the headline was changed, “In North Carolina, Academic Conservatives Have Met the Enemy and It Is … Them.”

    In his Friday statement, Clemens said, “I look forward to returning to the faculty to resume work on optical design technology, with a particular focus on applications for the SOAR telescope and astronomy. This will allow me to spend more time in the classroom—an aspect of academic life I have greatly missed.”

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  • Bunker Hill Cancels Study Abroad Amid Federal Policy Shifts

    Bunker Hill Cancels Study Abroad Amid Federal Policy Shifts

    Bunker Hill Community College is canceling its summer study abroad programs in response to Trump administration immigration policies, WBUR reported.

    “Our first priority in any Study Abroad experience is the safety of our students and staff,” read a statement from the community college to WBUR. “With the changes in national immigration policy and enforcement that have emerged over the last several weeks, including the prospect of renewed travel restrictions, the College will redirect this year’s exploration and learning to U.S.-based sites.”

    The community college planned to send about 60 students to Costa Rica, Ghana, Japan, Kenya and Panama for two-week educational programs between May and July. The decision to cancel the trips came after news reports that the Trump administration is considering a travel ban on dozens of countries.

    Biology professor Scott Benjamin, who’s led the Costa Rica trip since 2002, told WBUR that college leaders were concerned for international students who planned to go on these trips. International students make up 7 percent of the college’s student body.

    “The school was just very worried about the probably remote, but still potential possibility that we could go away and come back, and a student couldn’t come back into the country,” Benjamin told the news outlet.

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  • CUPA-HR Participates in Hill Meetings With House Ways and Means Committee Member Offices – CUPA-HR

    CUPA-HR Participates in Hill Meetings With House Ways and Means Committee Member Offices – CUPA-HR

    by CUPA-HR | May 10, 2022

    Over the last month, CUPA-HR’s government relations team joined the American Council on Education (ACE) and other higher education organizations in virtual Capitol Hill meetings to discuss tax priorities for the higher education community. Meetings have been held with staffers of Members of the House Ways and Means Committee to advocate for tax policies and proposals to alleviate various burdens placed on students, employees and institutions alike.

    Specifically, the meetings have allowed the higher education community to encourage members’ action on the following issues:

    • Supporting the extension and expansion of the universal, non-itemizer charitable deduction;
    • Repealing the taxability of scholarships and grant aid, specifically for the Pell Grant and other scholarships for graduate and medical students;
    • Enhancing higher ed tax credits like the American Opportunity Tax Credit and the Lifetime Learning Credit;
    • Repealing the endowment tax;
    • Expanding and modernizing tax-free employer-provided educational assistance as granted under Section 127 of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC);
    • Reinstating advance refunding of tax-exempt bonds and expanding debt issuance with a Direct Pay Bonds program;
    • Creating “lifelong learning and training accounts” to provide workers and employers the opportunity to make tax-free contributions to pay for future training and credentials; and
    • Repealing the unrelated business income tax “basketing” provision.

    In June 2021, ACE sent a letter to House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee leadership requesting these proposals and others be included in the American Jobs and American Families Plans. CUPA-HR signed onto this letter, along with several other higher education groups.

    CUPA-HR joined the most recent meetings specifically to advocate for the Section 127 expansion and modernization. Section 127 of the IRC is an educational assistance program that allows employers to pay or reimburse an employee tuition or student loan repayments on a tax-free basis up to $5,250. CUPA-HR previously advocated for the program to include student loan repayments, which was granted under the 2020 CARES Act and the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, as well as to increase the annual exclusion cap of $5,250 to an amount closer to $12,000, to expand coverage to employee’s partners and dependents, and to expand coverage to gig workers and independent contractors, all of which were a focus during the meetings.

    CUPA-HR will continue to participate in these meetings and will keep members apprised of any legislative proposals that result from these meetings.



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