Tag: Jobs

Four Principles for Hosting More Impactful Gatherings (opinion)

Have you attended a research seminar that managed to deepen faculty members’ understanding of the topic, while also encouraging trainees new to the field to engage with the speaker? When you hosted your last career panel, were you able to intentionally moderate conversations with professionals from different fields while also allowing serendipitous tangents inspired by audience questions?

Higher education is filled with gatherings intended to engage various audiences and deepen understanding of diverse topics. Hosting and facilitating these gatherings (be they large-scale conferences, interactive workshop discussions or weekly team meetings with office staff) is no easy feat and rarely comes with a guidebook.

Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering (Riverhead, 2018) is that guidebook. Reading it has influenced how I think about organizing and facilitating seminars, events and group meetings for graduate students and postdocs.

Reflecting ahead of time on defining the event’s purpose, inviting with intention, understanding your role as a host and ending well can elevate professional gatherings and make even a simple seminar more meaningful.

Establish the Purpose

An alum is coming to visit your department: The first idea you have is, “They should give a department seminar!” I’ve done this, too, but it’s not the starting point. When picking the type of event to have, don’t conflate its classification with its intention.

Applying the purpose filter to your event planning will help dictate the format to best serve your specific goal. If an occasion requires many goals to be met, consider creating multiple avenues to address these different purposes and audiences. If your intent is too broad, no one will feel like the event is for them.

Maybe an alum visiting is a great chance for graduate students to learn about alternative career paths. With this purpose in mind, a roundtable discussion could be a more effective format. Maybe the alum is a star in the field and the faculty will want to learn about their research. In this case, a seminar would be best. Maybe the alum has made it big in the business world and the department is looking for a new donor. Perhaps a lab or building tour and one-on-one meetings can serve this goal.

Make the Invite Clear

No event can please everyone, and that shouldn’t be the goal. We should not be discriminatory in our invitations, but instead think of protecting those who are attending. In the above example, if the purpose of an alum visiting the department is for career development programming and to expose trainees to unique career paths, the invites and advertising should be consistent with that purpose.

Intentional invitations can start even earlier when contacting guest speakers or panelists. If you’ve decided a department symposium should be focused on allowing trainees to share their research, inviting an alumnus of the department to talk about their current research could enhance this intention. Carefully considering and reaching out to potential guests requires an understanding of the purpose first.

Another element of the invite is physical logistics: the number of people attending, where it is, the setup of the venue. Again, these should be influenced by the goals of the gathering. A roundtable discussion limited to 20 people could be more conducive to trainees learning about the career journey of an alum. In contrast, if the speaker is giving a groundbreaking research talk, a large lecture hall with a high capacity would suit better.

As Parker writes, “Gatherings that please everyone occur, but they rarely thrill. Gatherings that are willing to be alienating—which is different from being alienating—have a better chance to dazzle.” Anyone can see a seminar poster hanging in the hall and decide to come. The content, however, should be clear, and the invite specific enough, so the guests understand whom the seminar is intended for.

Be an Intentional Host

I have been organizing events, outside and inside higher ed, for many years. But only recently have I understood the power and influence that the host can have. For years, I strove to have oversight of all logistics and ensure an airtight planning timeline—but once the event started, I took a hands-off approach so as to not interfere with the guest’s experience. I have come to realize that abdicating host power in an attempt to be easygoing is actually counterproductive.

The host sets the stage, from the first announcement email to when people enter the room. Rules and limitations are necessary and appreciated. Having a generous authority lets people know what to expect early on. This can be achieved by finding the right balance of warmth and order—by developing a method to confidently run a gathering and steer the ship, while selflessly protecting the guest’s connection and experience. The host isn’t controlling the situation but is responsible for creating a container for the experience to expand into.

With seminars and panel discussions, the host is crucial for orchestrating the flow of conversation. If multiple people are on a panel, being clear whom your question is addressed to and directing the order eases the speakers and creates less tension. It may feel uncomfortable having this power, but this is not the time to relinquish it.

When moderating a Q&A or panel discussion, listen carefully to the speakers and be perceptive of the audience and energy flow. Summarizing and synthesizing what was said, transitioning to new topics, and keeping the momentum is tricky when all eyes are on you.

It is vulnerable to be a host, and it’s a responsibility from start to finish.

Finish Strong

People often remember the beginning and end of something (a movie, a speech, an event) the most. Finishing strong means making the event memorable. As a host, you’ve constructed this container for others to learn and connect. You’ve thought of all the logistical details and brought the speakers and audience through a journey. Now it’s time to be mindful about how you end by facilitating looking inward and turning outward.

Looking inward is about asking the guests to reflect on what they’ve learned or experienced. If you’ve been moderating a panel discussion, pose a final question that requires reflection. Ask the speakers to reiterate the one thing they hope everyone takes away from the session. Technology has made it easier to request interaction from the audience. Ask everyone to share one lesson learned, or how they’re feeling now. This can be typed in the chat box for an online event or submitted using programs such as Slido. The goal is to make space for synthesis.

Turning outward involves encouraging everyone to take the experience back out into the world. Ask the audience, “What is one action you plan to do following this?” Or ask the speakers to suggest the next small step someone can take. Help the audience bring what they learned to others outside of the event. Remind everyone what the purpose of the gathering was, what was achieved and where they can go from here.

After an event ends, there are ways to continue the inward and outward response. Follow up thank-you notes and feedback forms can be methods to encourage participants to look inward and offer ideas for the future. Providing any resources or content from the event can help the audience turn outward and use their learnings in the real world.

When you build in time to define a gathering’s purpose, incorporate intentional invitations and pay attention to your influence as a host, you can shape the event from beginning to end and revolutionize how we connect. These are the first steps to take a program or event from routine to meaningful.

What’s one upcoming gathering that you can apply even one of these four principles to?

Anne Meyer-Miner is the manager of graduate and postdoctoral affairs in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of British Columbia. She holds a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from the University of Toronto and is an active member of the Graduate Career Consortium—an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders. The views expressed here are Anne’s alone.

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June 23, 2025
Financial Pressures Could Have Cascading Effects (opinion)
In April, Harvard University, despite its $53.2 billion endowment, announced plans for a $750 million bond issuance to bolster liquidity amid uncertainties over federal funding. Similarly, Brown University concluded its decade-long BrownTogether fundraising campaign, raising more than $4.4 billion, yet soon after secured a $300 million loan in the face of a structural budget deficit and the cancellation of federal grants. And in May, Columbia University announced layoffs of approximately 180 staff members after the federal government revoked $400 million in federal grants and contracts, citing the university’s handling of antisemitic harassment on campus.

Together, these actions underscore that even the nation’s most selective and well-resourced universities are vulnerable to financial strain and are recalibrating rapidly in response to shifting economic and political forces. By contrast, less well-resourced, tuition-dependent institutions often confront the same headwinds, or their downstream effects, with fewer financial options and diminished capacity to respond.

Liquidity and the Endowment Misconception

A common misconception is that universities can freely tap into their endowments to address financial shortfalls. In reality, a significant portion of endowment assets are legally restricted by external donor agreements, regulatory frameworks and board policies. According to the NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments, an average 71.1 percent of endowment funds are restricted by donor agreements alone. These funds are typically earmarked for specific purposes such as scholarships, endowed faculty positions or capital projects.

Endowments are vital to institutional operations but are not unbounded. In fiscal year 2024, colleges and universities withdrew a total of $30 billion from their endowments, representing a 6.4 percent increase over the prior year, with nearly half of that spending (48.1 percent) dedicated to student financial aid. On average, endowments funded 15.3 percent of institutional operating budgets, underscoring their importance in day-to-day fiscal planning.

At the same time, most institutions cap annual withdrawals at approximately 4.5 to 5 percent of a rolling three-year average to preserve long-term value. Exceeding these thresholds can jeopardize an endowment’s sustainability and may violate both donor restrictions and regulatory requirements. Consequently, when immediate cash needs surpass allowable draws, universities often turn to bond markets or bank loans, trading short-term liquidity for future debt obligations. According to a Forbes report, U.S. universities issued a record $11.6 billion in municipal bond debt in the first quarter of 2025 to safeguard operations amid federal funding cuts.

Fiscal and Legal Acumen: A New Leadership Imperative

In the current climate, effective university leadership requires not only academic vision but also robust financial and legal expertise. Leaders must navigate complex debt covenants, bond rating pressures and donor restrictions while transparently communicating difficult decisions to trustees, faculty, students and the public. These challenges, at least financially, arguably surpass those faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, when federal relief funds temporarily masked underlying vulnerabilities.

Rising Insolvency Risk Beyond Public Campuses

Recent announcements by private Research-1 universities suggest several well-known institutions—among them Duke and Northwestern Universities—could encounter significant fiscal strain if current federal research funding trends persist. While nonselective public research universities are often viewed as the most vulnerable to federal funding cuts, some prominent private institutions also face rising risk. High fixed costs, tuition and/or research dependency, and limited unrestricted endowment income create financial fragility as grants plateau.

Enrollment Shocks: A Cascade in Waiting

An often-overlooked but potentially destabilizing factor is the cascading effect on enrollment should elite institutions expand freshman classes and nonresearch focused graduate programs by aggressively tapping wait lists to compensate for financial shortfalls. While larger cohorts can spread overhead costs and generate additional tuition revenue, rapid expansion without strategic planning can strain housing, advising and support services, potentially degrading the student experience and affecting retention.

For example, if the top 50 universities each increase enrollment by even 5 percent, thousands of well-qualified students may shift upward, siphoning tuition dollars from regional publics, tuition-dependent privates and community colleges. For institutions already operating on thin margins, this loss of yield could prove existential.

This scenario recalls the 2008 financial crisis: a shock at the top reverberated across sectors. Here, if highly selective colleges “catch a cold,” more vulnerable campuses may suffer a deeper freeze.

Equity and Access Under Pressure

The most severe consequences are likely to impact lower-income students. Potential elimination of federal support programs like federal TRIO programs and Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, coupled with the potential cascading effects outlined above, risk widening the affordability gap. To shore up budgets, financially stressed institutions may tighten aid packages and prioritize full-pay applicants. Simultaneously, regional institutions that disproportionately serve these populations face their own budget constraints, compounding threats to access and social mobility. Conversely, other financially stressed colleges may opt to elevate unfunded tuition discount rates to unsustainable levels in order to meet enrollment targets, an action we have witnessed during less stressful periods.

Summer Melt: An Immediate Barometer

The impending summer melt period—when students who have submitted deposits ultimately decide not to enroll—may serve as a real-time stress indicator. Historically, national melt rates hover around 10 to 20 percent, but even a two- to three-percentage-point uptick for small, tuition-driven colleges can force emergency cuts. If selective universities reach deeper into their wait lists this summer, downstream institutions could experience sudden enrollment gaps as fall semesters are about to begin.

Toward Long-Term Resilience: Strategic Levers

As the financial headwinds intensify, universities must couple urgency with discipline. Ensuring alignment among institutional leaders, preserving trust and activating institutional flexibility will be key. The following strategic levers offer a practical framework for leaders aiming to build resilience without losing sight of mission.
1. Ensure board and leadership alignment: Any misalignment between governing boards and executive teams can slow decision-making and erode credibility. Clear alignment around scenario planning, liquidity thresholds and contingency triggers is paramount.
2. Embrace shared governance: Genuine engagement with faculty, staff and students in fiscal deliberations can enhance adaptability and morale. Institutions that bypass shared governance risk midcareer talent attrition, as well as diminishing instructional quality and grant productivity.
3. Rethink spending policies: Regular reassessment of endowment draw methodologies, debt covenants and liquidity lines is essential. Short-term borrowing can bridge operational gaps but should be paired with disciplined multiyear plans that include potential program realignment and other austerity measures.
4. Diversify revenue streams: Institutions must increase nontraditional tuition income, such as from online certificates, executive education and micro-credentials. Commercializing research can generate revenue, however, safeguards are necessary to prevent a slide into “University Inc.” cynicism—the sense that institutions are prioritizing profit over scholarship.
5. Strengthen financial transparency: Open dashboards tracking liquidity ratios, debt service coverage ratios and aid spending cultivate trust and temper rumor-driven resistance. Responsible transparency should extend to explaining why certain programs may face review in the name of institutional sustainability.
The Faculty and Staff Dimension

Financial pressures inevitably affect human capital. Institutions that announce austerity plans without clear road maps invite uncertainty and, ultimately, attrition among faculty and staff. Retention of human capital is crucial not only for educational quality but also for grant productivity and student success. Engaging employees in strategic trade-offs—such as phased retirement options, the cross-training of staff to handle multiple roles as part of new revenue initiatives or shared services efficiencies—can transform potential resistance into collaborative resilience. But these strategic trade-offs also impact human capital.

What About Academic Mission?

Some argue that larger entering classes could enhance diversity or increase institutional reach. Others worry that an aggressive growth mindset dilutes faculty engagement and student mentorship. Both perspectives merit consideration. Growth for growth’s sake, particularly when propelled by crisis rather than strategy, risks eroding the very qualities that make a campus distinctive.

A Crucible Moment

Higher education has weathered wars, recessions and a global pandemic, but today’s convergence of shrinking research support, demographic shifts and rising debt costs presents a challenge not witnessed in recent history. Liquidity stress is reaching even elite campuses.

The lessons from recent bond issuances, emergency loans and layoffs are clear: Action must come before distress spreads further. Institutions that act now by aligning leadership, engaging stakeholders, adjusting spending, diversifying revenue and communicating clearly will emerge stronger and more mission‑focused.

Those that delay risk letting early warning signs become full‑blown alarms.

As summer melt data arrives and fiscal year budgets close, we will soon learn whether these echoes from the Ivies were just noise—or the first tremors of something more.

Joseph E. Nyre served as president of Seton Hall University from 2019 to 2023 and of Iona University from 2011 to 2019. He is the founder and managing director of Veritas Solutions Advisors, a higher education and nonprofit consulting company.
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June 23, 2025
Assignments for Politically Disaffected Students (opinion)

Joe Rogan is no fan of my work, obviously. The chart-topping conservative influencer famously insists that universities are “cult camps” where professors like me indoctrinate students with leftist ideas. Typically, I do not worry about my haters, but increasingly it seems that if I want to create a meaningful learning experience, I need to.

I teach first-year undergraduate humanities electives. Like most universities, ours offers large-format 200-student lectures for training in academic writing and critical theory. This would be the “indoctrination” in question, as I introduce students to canonical thinkers from Karl Marx to Sylvia Wynter. These electives are degree requirements, snaring students who might intentionally avoid liberal arts in an otherwise professional degree.

In the current political climate, many of my students come to the classroom with their minds made up based on authorities who directly undermine my scholarship and profession. Rogan is just one of many conservative anti-intellectuals who regularly attack liberal, feminist, social justice–oriented biases in university education. The result is a polarized atmosphere antithetical to learning: a tangibly mistrustful, sometimes even resentful classroom.

Although only a small handful of students typically adhere to anti-intellectual doctrine, their small group undermines my authority with risky jokes in the classroom and intense criticism in student back channels (as reported by concerned classmates). This causes undecided students to falter in their trust of my authority, while students who do not share their views nervously censor their contributions.

Ironically, my dissenting students often do not recognize that I am interested in their views. I am convinced that the way out of this explosive historic moment is through rigorous discussion in educational forums. Like any academic, this is why I teach: I love sincere inquiry, debate and critical engagement, and I was a rabble-rouser myself as a student. But the current classroom mood is less debate and more deadlock.

So, I spent this year brainstorming with my students to build creative assignments to spin resentment into passion, no matter how opposite my own, welcoming self-directed research and encouraging deeply engaged reading. I offer any one of these assignments, with the goal to bring disaffected, anxious students back to a love of learning and democratized engagement. This is a work in progress, and I welcome suggestions.

Turn Tensions Into Data: This introductory exercise eases students into an atmosphere of open collegial discussion. Surveys or anonymous polls quantify disagreements, and then we analyze the results as a class.

Example: Class Belief Inventory—anonymously poll students on hot-button questions (e.g., “Is systemic racism a major problem?”). The objective here would be to compare the class’s responses to national survey data. Potential discussion topics: Why might differences exist? What shapes our perceptions?

Hostile Influencers as Primary Sources: This in-class activity treats figures like Rogan or Jordan Peterson not as adversaries but as authors of texts to analyze, to disarm defensiveness and position students as critical investigators.

Example: “Compare/contrast an episode of [X podcast] with a peer-reviewed article on the same topic. How do their arguments differ in structure, evidence and rhetoric? Whom do you find more persuasive, and why?”

Gamifying Ideological Tensions: This class activity turns assigned readings into structured, rule-bound games where students must defend positions they don’t personally hold.

Example: Role-Play a Summit—Students are assigned roles (e.g., Jordan Peterson, bell hooks, climate scientist, TikTok influencer) and must collaborate to solve a fictional problem (e.g., redesigning a curriculum). They must cite course readings to justify their choices.

Therapy for Arguments: This fun early activity teaches students to diagnose weak arguments—whether from Rogan, a feminist theorist or you—using principles of logic.

Example: Argument Autopsy—Students dissect a viral social media post, podcast clip or course reading. Identify logical fallacies, cherry-picked evidence or unstated assumptions. Reward students for critiquing all sides.

Intellectual Sleuthing: This is a scaffolded midterm writing assignment building up to a final essay. Ask students to trace the origins of their favorite influencers’ ideas. Many anti-establishment figures borrow from (or distort) academic theories—show students how to connect the dots.

Example: Genealogy of an Idea—Pick a claim from a podcast (e.g., “universities indoctrinate students”). Research its history: When was this idea popular in mainstream news or on social media? Are there any institutes, think tanks, influencers or politicians associated with this idea? What are the stated missions and goals of those sources? Where do they get their funding? Which academics agree or disagree, and why?

Leverage “Forbidden Topics” as Case Studies: If students resent “liberal bias,” lean into it: make bias itself the subject of analysis. This might work as a discussion prompt for tutorials or think-pair-share group work.

Example: “Is This Reading Biased?”—Assign a short text students might call “woke” (e.g., feminist theory) and a countertext (e.g., Peterson’s critique of postmodernism). Have students evaluate both using a rubric: What counts as bias? Is objectivity possible? How do they define “truth”?

Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Assignments: The final essay assignment gives students agency to explore topics they care about, even if they critique my field. Clear guardrails are important here to ensure rigor.

Example: Passion Project: Students design a research question related to the course—even if it challenges the course’s assumptions. They must engage with three or more course texts and two or more outside sources, as in favorite influencers or authorities, even those who oppose course themes.

Red Team vs. Blue Team: For essays, students submit two versions: one arguing their personal view and one arguing the counterpoint. Grading is based on how well they engage evidence, not their stance.

Elisha Lim is an assistant professor of the technological humanities at York University in Toronto. They used generative AI tools to assist with the editing of this piece.

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June 20, 2025
Judge Says Harvard Can Enroll International Students for Now

A federal judge granted Harvard an injunction on Friday that temporarily blocks the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke its ability to enroll international students.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | greenleaf123/iStock/Getty Images | APCortizasJr/iStock/Getty Images

District Judge Allison Burroughs granted a preliminary injunction to Harvard University on Friday in its case challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to prevent the university from enrolling international students. It’s the latest development in a tit-for-tat legal battle over the ability of more than a quarter of Harvard’s students to remain enrolled.

The injunction prevents the Department of Homeland Security from stripping Harvard of its Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification until Burroughs issues a final ruling in the lawsuit. It does not address President Donald Trump’s executive proclamation from earlier this month banning the State Department from issuing visas to international students and researchers attending Harvard; a temporary restriction on that ban expired June 20.

Burroughs has not issued an injunction on the Trump administration’s second attempt to revoke Harvard’s SEVP certification, which could take effect Wednesday if she declines to take further action, as Harvard has requested.

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June 20, 2025
Judge Orders Mahmoud Khalil to Be Released

A federal judge ordered that Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and student protest leader who was detained by ICE agents in March, be released from a detention center in Louisiana. News outlets reported that he walked out of the detention center around 6:40 Central time Friday evening.

U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled on Friday that Khalil, a legal permanent resident who has not been accused of any crime, should be released on bail and that continuing to hold him was highly unusual and could constitute “unconstitutional” punishment for his political beliefs. The Trump administration had sought to keep Khalil imprisoned based on a minor alleged immigration infraction after another judge ruled earlier this month that it could not continue to hold him purely based on the State Department’s claim that his continued presence in the U.S. posed a foreign policy threat.

Khalil’s arrest made national headlines and kicked off the Trump administration’s months-long campaign of detentions, visa revocations and threats of deportation against international students.

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June 20, 2025
Universities Sue, Judge Blocks DOD’s Indirect Costs Cap

Johns Hopkins, Arizona State and Cornell Universities are among a coalition of 12 higher education institutions and three trade groups that filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense on Monday over the agency’s plan to cap universities’ indirect research cost rates at 15 percent.

While DOD secretary Pete Hegseth said in a memo last month that the policy is aimed at “accountability” and rooting out “waste,” the lawsuit argues that slashing indirect costs rates “will stop critical research in its tracks, lead to layoffs and cutbacks at universities across the country, badly undermine scientific research at United States universities, and erode our nation’s enviable status as a global leader in scientific research and innovation.”

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Boston issued a temporary restraining order, prohibiting the DOD from enacting the cap. A hearing in the case is set for July 2.

The litigation filed this week is the latest legal challenge universities and their advocates have mounted against the federal government’s attempts to cap the amount of money it gives universities for the indirect costs of conducting federally funded research. The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy have all attempted to unilaterally enact similar caps, and federal judges have blocked those efforts for now.

For decades, universities have periodically negotiated with the federal government to calculate bespoke indirect cost reimbursement rates to pay for research costs that support multiple grant-funded projects, such as facilities maintenance, specialized equipment and administrative personnel. Universities factor those rates into their institutional budgets.

For example, Johns Hopkins and the DOD currently have in place a negotiated indirect cost rate of 55 percent. In 2024 JHU received $32 million from the DOD to cover indirect costs, according to the lawsuit. If the DOD’s plan moves forward, however, the university would lose $22 million.

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June 20, 2025
After Texas, DOJ Targets Kentucky’s In-State Tuition Policy

Undocumented students and immigrant advocacy organizations are still reeling after Texas, earlier this month, swiftly sided with a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against its policy of permitting in-state tuition for undocumented students. The two-decade-old law, which Republican state lawmakers had recently tried and failed to quash, was dismantled within a matter of hours in a move some critics called collusive.

Now the DOJ is employing the same strategy all over again—this time in Kentucky. The department filed a complaint in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky on Tuesday challenging the in-state tuition policy for undocumented students. The lawsuit, which names Democratic governor Andy Beshear, Commissioner of Education Robbie Fletcher and the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, takes issue with a policy that allows graduates of Kentucky high schools who live in the state, regardless of citizenship, to access in-state tuition benefits.

“No state can be allowed to treat Americans like second-class citizens in their own country by offering financial benefits to illegal aliens,” U.S. attorney general Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “The Department of Justice just won on this exact issue in Texas, and we look forward to fighting in Kentucky to protect the rights of American citizens.”

Beshear is trying to distance himself from the legal battle. Crystal Staley, communications director for the governor’s office, said in a statement that the office hasn’t been served with a lawsuit, nor did it receive advance notice or hold prior conversations with the department about the regulation. She emphasized that the in-state tuition policy was established by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education more than a decade ago.

“Under Kentucky law, CPE is independent, has sole authority to determine student residency requirements for the purposes of in-state tuition, and controls its own regulations,” Staley wrote. “The Governor has no authority to alter CPE’s regulations and should not be a party to the lawsuit.”

The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education also only became aware of the lawsuit Wednesday morning and reported that afternoon that it had not yet been served legal documents.

“Our staff General Counsel is reviewing pertinent federal laws and state regulations at this time to determine next steps,” Melissa Young, the council’s communications senior fellow, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed.

As of Wednesday evening, no new developments in the case had taken place, but Kentucky attorney general Russell Coleman, a Republican, indicated in a statement to Inside Higher Ed that his office planned to support the lawsuit.

“Preserving in-state tuition for our citizens at the commonwealth’s premier public universities is important to fostering Kentuckians’ potential and encouraging a vibrant state economy,” Coleman said in the statement. “Our Office will support the Trump Administration’s efforts to uphold federal law in Kentucky.”

As in Texas, a group of Republican lawmakers proposed legislation earlier this year to prevent noncitizens in Kentucky from qualifying as residents and accessing in-state tuition benefits. But the bill didn’t proceed further.

The new lawsuit heightens fears among undocumented students’ advocates that the Trump administration could target in-state tuition policies across the country, which help undocumented students in 23 states and D.C. pay for college when they can’t access federal financial aid. Advocates also worry the Trump administration could continue to sue red states to secure policy wins desired by both Republican state lawmakers and the federal government. (In Kentucky, Republicans control the attorney general’s office and the State Legislature.)

Monica Andrade, director of state policy and legal strategy at the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education, predicted after the Texas lawsuit, “This might only be the beginning, and there might be future actions that extend beyond Texas.”

Now she worries she’s been proven right.

Pushback in Texas

The move in Kentucky comes as undocumented students and civil rights organizations are fighting back in Texas.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a Latino civil rights organization, filed a motion on behalf of undocumented students in Texas to intervene in the DOJ lawsuit. The motion argues that the speed at which Texas and the DOJ came to an agreement and the judge closed the case provided no opportunity for a hearing or for the public to weigh in.

“Our federal courts are public agencies,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel at MALDEF. “They’re supposed to undertake their work in the public eye. The two parties and the court did all of this behind closed doors in one afternoon, without setting a public hearing … That is a complete abuse of the judicial system.”

“To come up with a consent judgment like that, they had to have been planning this for weeks,” he said. “Every Texan should be offended if something their legislators passed and then never repealed was so easily killed by the attorney general acting in collusion with the Department of Justice.”

MALDEF is representing unnamed affected students, including three DACA recipients: a third-year biomedical science student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley who is planning to pursue medical school, a student earning a master’s in higher education at University of Houston who was planning to apply to Ph.D. programs and a master’s student in clinical mental health counseling at the University of North Texas.

“She cannot afford to pay out-of-state tuition and will likely be forced to drop out of her program,” the motion says of one student.

The goal is for the student group to become a party in the lawsuit so that it can appeal the decision. Texas and the federal government have until early July to oppose MALDEF’s motion to intervene, but if the judge denies an intervention, MALDEF could appeal that decision as well.

Andrade said that what MALDEF is doing could possibly be replicated in other states if the DOJ challenges more in-state tuition laws, though some states might face different challenges that require different approaches. For example, Republican lawmakers in Arizona included a provision in their House budget, approved June 12 by the House Appropriations Committee, that colleges can’t use public money to reduce tuition for noncitizens, The Arizona Capitol Times reported. Some cited the Texas lawsuit.

The Presidents’ Alliance is in “close coordination with legal, with advocacy and institutional partners to explore—whether it’s immediate or longer-term—actions that we can take” to prepare for different kinds of attacks, Andrade said. “Folks in the states where we’re having conversations, their laws comport with federal law. But given everything that’s been going on, that doesn’t mean that folks should not be preparing for any type of challenge.”

The organization is also trying to advise Texas undocumented students who are “scrambling,” in the absence of any state guidance to higher ed institutions as to when the tuition rate change goes into effect and to whom the shift applies. It’s unclear, for example, whether students with DACA or Temporary Protected Status are included.

“We’re telling students to continue to take their classes and do not make any drastic changes based on this,” Andrade said.

TheDream.US, a scholarship provider for undocumented students, is also gearing up to help Texas students find more affordable programs if they can’t pay their colleges’ out-of-state tuition prices. MALDEF predicted some students’ costs would increase up to 800 percent—in some cases, from $50 to $450 per credit hour.

Gaby Pacheco, president and CEO of TheDream.US, said the organization is prioritizing helping students connect with online programs, because many live in Texas border towns, where commuting to a more distant college could require having to cross immigration control checkpoints.

In the meantime, Texas institutions and students are embroiled in “confusion and uncertainty and chaos” as they await more information, she said.

Daniel I. Morales, an associate professor of law and Dwight Olds Chair at University of Houston Law Center, said what happened in Texas is the latest example of a national trend: the “absolute erasure” of state and local issues in favor of the administration’s priorities.

Morales said two decades ago, Texas’s in-state tuition policy was born out of Republican governor Rick Perry’s recognition of “the reality locally in Texas, that we have an enormous undocumented population that is enormously productive if given the opportunity to go to college,” which benefits the state economy. But now, state lawmakers fear risking their career trajectories if they don’t prioritize partisan national interests, he said.

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen in Kentucky. But if it goes the way of Texas and the attorney general files a joint motion with the DOJ, civil rights organizations such as MALDEF would have to be the ones to fight it, with students as the plaintiffs, he said.

“Students, if they don’t have the resources to pay out-of-state tuition, they don’t have the resources to litigate, either,” at least not on their own, he said. “There’s very little recourse.”

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June 20, 2025
How Senate Republicans Want to Hold Colleges Accountable

More than a week after the Senate education committee released its draft plan to overhaul the federal student aid system, higher education leaders across the sector are still breathing a sigh of relief over key provisions concerning how to hold colleges accountable for student outcomes.

The high chamber’s proposal, which ties a university’s access to federal loans to how much their students earn after graduation, is simpler and more productive than the House proposal, known as risk-sharing, which would require colleges to pay an annual penalty based on their students’ outstanding loan balances, they say.

“More than any other factor, a program having low earnings is the thing that is most connected with the prevalence of students defaulting or struggling to pay down their loans,” said Jordan Matsudaira, director of the Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center at American University. “This is a serious and sensible proposal to establish what I think of as a very necessary accountability in the higher education space.”

The Senate plan seems to be based on an existing regulation known as gainful employment, which uses students’ earnings and debt to measure whether for-profit and non-degree programs adequately prepare their students for the workforce. But Republicans who sponsored the bill and expanded its reach to all degree programs have been wary of drawing attention to the overlap, as lawmakers have avoided calling it anything like “gainful employment 2.0” or “gainful for all.”

Republicans have historically opposed the Democratic policy, which was first put in place during the Obama administration, saying it unfairly targeted for-profit programs and that a free market would be the best way to regulate the quality of academic programs. (The first Trump administration rescinded the policy, and then the Biden administration enacted a stricter version that remains in place today.)

But now, as congressional Republicans grow increasingly concerned about student debt and skeptical of higher education, some have started to change their tune.

Some say the Senate’s proposed earnings test is likely to succeed and become law, as it’s the lesser of two evils and aligns more with a conservative federalist ideology when compared to the House’s plan. But others view this new accountability measure as just that—new.

“They’re not looking at the Biden gainful-employment rules and saying, ‘Oh, this was a good thing. Let’s do it like they did.’ They’re taking a different approach,” said Jason Altmire, president of Career Education Colleges and Universities, the national trade association representing for-profit institutions, which criticized the Biden regulations. He also noted that including all types of colleges is “a huge difference from the way the two last Democratic administrations approached gainful employment.”

Either way, the provision is now up for consideration as part of a broader legislative package—the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—that would cut spending in order to finance Trump’s tax cuts and immigration policies. The House bill passed by a one-vote margin last month; now, senators are aiming to pass their version by July 4.

Since lawmakers are using a process known as reconciliation, they only need 51 votes to pass the bill in the Senate, down from the typical 60 votes. But it also means the legislation has to adhere to a specific set of rules.

Some policy experts question whether the Senate’s accountability measure for colleges will pass the sniff test. If it does, they expect the proposal to be included in the final bill.

How Does It Work?

The crux of the Senate’s accountability measure is tracking the median earnings of students program by program and comparing them to the average earnings of adults ages 25 to 34 with only a high school diploma. If students don’t earn more than adults without a college degree for two out of three consecutive years, then the program would lose access to federal loans for at least two years.

Earnings for baccalaureate degree programs will be measured four years after a student leaves the program regardless of age—a time frame that some experts say is too short to truly gauge a program’s value. Meanwhile, the median income of high school graduates would not be evaluated until they hit at least 25 years old, or seven years after the typical high school graduation. Some higher ed lobbyists say that comparison isn’t fair.

“You’re comparing a 23-year-old, let’s say, cosmetology graduate just getting started with her book of business to a 34-year-old flight attendant who’s been on the job for 16 years who only has a high school diploma,” Altmire said.

A similar process would be used for graduate and professional programs, except the income level would be compared to adults with a bachelor’s degree and earnings will be evaluated further out from when the student left the program.

The Senate hasn’t released any data on its plan, but studies on the Biden gainful-employment rule offer some insights into which types of college programs could be affected most.

Data collected by the Department of Education in 2022 showed that about 1.3 percent of programs not currently subject to gainful employment would fail. About half of the programs failed because of the earnings test, according to an Inside Higher Ed analysis of department data.

Other studies show that of those programs, the ones most impacted will likely be graduate studies and for-profit bachelor’s degrees. For example, about 20 percent of students in each of these sectors failed the Biden earnings test, said Matsudaira, who worked for the Department of Education during the Biden administration and is very familiar with gainful employment. That’s compared to only about 4 percent of nonprofit bachelor programs.

Altmire, from CECU, however, disagreed. He pointed to a 2023 study conducted by Monroe College, a for-profit institution, which showed that nearly 90 percent of the undergraduate degree programs that would fail the earnings test are at public and private nonprofit colleges.

But just because more nonprofit colleges fail doesn’t mean they have a high rate of failure proportionally, Matsudaira responded.

“About 90 percent of enrollment is in the nonprofit sector, and only 10 percent of enrollment is in the for-profit sector, so of course, that should tilt in the direction of the nonprofit sector,” he said. “I would think about it a little bit more within each one of those sectors.”

A Fairer Gainful?

The Senate plan does keep the current gainful-employment rules in place while House Republicans want to repeal them. The Trump administration is currently defending the regulations in federal court, but a judge could throw them out.

Still, policy experts cautioned against thinking of the Senate proposal as an add-on to Biden’s version of gainful employment.

“I think it would be inaccurate to say the Senate took the Biden gainful-employment rules and tinkered around the edges,” Altmire said. “They took one concept from the Biden rules but then did a lot of other things that greatly improved that concept and made it more fair across all schools.”

Beyond covering all degree programs, the Senate plan doesn’t specifically include credential programs, which currently fall under gainful employment. That’s a change that some experts say is a mistake, especially when the Senate is looking to expand the Pell Grant to cover some of these credentials. However, that plan comes with its own guardrails.

“Certificates, beyond any other type of program, are most typified by extremely low earnings, and having those low earnings leads to a lot of loan defaults over all. So the fact that the Senate proposal ignores the certificate space altogether is baffling,” Matsudaira said.

The Senate also changed the test itself. This version only measures a student’s earnings, while the Biden rule measures both income and whether students can pay off their loans. Furthermore, the Senate’s calculation includes all program enrollees, regardless of whether they completed their degree. The current gainful-employment regulations only count completers.

Of these changes, the most debated has been whether to include in the earnings calculation students who stopped out before completing their degrees.

Some policy experts argue that it’s fair to hold colleges accountable only for the earnings of students who complete their degree programs. If the goal is also to increase degree completion, that’s great, they say, but it should be handled through a separate provision than the one focused on return on investment.

“If the goal is to actually measure the ROI, we should be looking specifically at those who earned a degree,” said Craig Lindwarm, senior vice president for governmental affairs at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. “There are a lot of other ways of supporting efforts to boost college completion, like investment in the Postsecondary Student Success Grant program.”

But others say it is entirely fair.

“You shouldn’t be rewarded when a student chooses your school, takes a bunch of financial aid, doesn’t complete the program,” said Altmire from CECU. “That makes no sense.”

That said, higher education leaders from all sectors of the industry are generally pleased with the proposal and say it shows that the Senate has been listening to their concerns.

“We’re encouraged that the Senate is heading down a more productive path,” one collegiate lobbyist said. “This is a much fairer, simpler and [more] effective approach to accountability.”

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June 20, 2025
Swiss University, CIC to Help International Students

Following the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students, Franklin University Switzerland is opening up its doors to some of those who won’t be able to re-enter the United States.

About 40 slots are open to the students who attend institutions that are part of the Council of Independent Colleges, according to an email from CIC president Marjorie Hass. Franklin University is one of the association’s international members and is accredited in the United States and Switzerland. Students can receive an $11,250 scholarship per semester.

This partnership with Franklin University is just one way that colleges are working to support students amid the travel bans and visa restrictions. Experts have suggested that colleges could establish branch campuses in other countries as another option.

Hass wrote that she hopes students will be able to return to their original U.S. institution when possible, but the Franklin option could help them continue their studies in the meantime.

“I am proud to see an international member step up to offer this enriching academic opportunity to students at other CIC institutions,” she wrote. “I’d like to express my appreciation to Samuel Martín-Barbero, president of Franklin University Switzerland, for recognizing the plight of US CIC institutions and for stepping forward with a collegial offer of support.”

Since CIC announced the Franklin University partnership, Al Akhawayn University in Morocco and American University of Nigeria have alaso agreed to offer a similar deal to CIC member institutions.

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June 20, 2025
Helping Students Navigate Transitions, Addressing Teacher Shortages
Across Texas, students entering dual-credit programs with the goal of becoming educators often face unclear pathways and unnecessary obstacles. But in the North Texas region, a multisector group is working to change that—starting as early as high school.

Through programs like Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) and early-college high schools, students can begin working toward their teaching credentials before they graduate. The Acceleration to Credential (A2C) Working Group—convened by Educate Texas—brings together local independent school districts, Dallas College and four-year university partners to create clearly defined pathways that connect high school, community college and bachelor’s-level educator preparation.

While the intention behind many dual-credit programs is to offer students more opportunity, the reality is that inconsistent requirements across institutions often create confusion. A student may graduate high school having earned college credits, only to find those credits don’t transfer toward a four-year degree. Or they may complete an associate degree that doesn’t align with bachelor’s programs in education.

To address this, A2C partners designed a coordinated model known as Target Pathways, which:
- Aligns associate degree pathways to all bachelor’s education programs in the region.
- Meets both high school graduation and Texas Core Curriculum requirements.
- Creates space for local adaptation within a unified regional framework.
- Provides students with clear maps of all degree and certification requirements.
These streamlined pathways aim to improve student outcomes, reduce excess credit accumulation and increase the number of teacher candidates completing their degrees on time and with less debt.

The associate of art in teaching (A.A.T.) degrees that students earn in these P-TECH programs have shown promising outcomes when it comes to entering education careers. Between 2010 and 2023, 49 percent of A.A.T. earners in Dallas–Fort Worth became paraprofessionals or teachers or advanced into education leadership positions, according to an analysis by Wesley Edwards at the University of North Texas (Wesley Edwards, AAT Analysis, University of North Texas, April 23, 2024, and Sept. 21, 2024). As these pathways expand across more high schools, partners across the state should continue investing in the supports students need to enter the education workforce.

“Developing a robust pathway for high school students to not only earn credentials but also gain valuable exposure to industry is critically important as we look to meet workforce needs,” said Robert DeHaas, vice provost of the School of Education at Dallas College.

This work is about more than academic alignment—it’s about building the relationships and trust needed to create meaningful change.

“This work requires close coordination between large systems that haven’t always worked together,” DeHaas said. “The collaborative has helped foster the coalition-building needed to break down these historical silos and create a college road map that supports the upward economic mobility of our students.”

Educate Texas will continue supporting A2C by helping school districts implement these pathways and facilitating collaboration with higher education partners. By investing in regional alignment and early access, the A2C model offers a promising solution for expanding the teacher pipeline in Texas and beyond.

Joseph Reyes is deputy director of teaching and leading at Educate Texas, an initiative of Communities Foundation of Texas. In this role, he manages programs that increase access to high-quality educator preparation and works with school districts and higher education partners to strengthen the teacher workforce across the state.
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June 20, 2025