Tag: Jobs

Where Is Higher Ed Now and Where Is It Going? The Key

In the latest episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, two economists highlight opportunities that college and universities can grab to improve engagement with their local communities, create greater access for first-generation students and increase transparency around pricing.

David Hummels, professor of economics and dean emeritus, and Jay Akridge, trustee chair in teaching and learning excellence, professor of agricultural economics and former provost, both at Purdue University, are co-authors of a Substack newsletter on higher education, Finding Equilibrium.

They join Sara Custer, editor in chief of Inside Higher Ed, and this episode’s host, Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed’s editor for special content, to analyze the findings from the Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents.

In response to two-thirds of presidents having some serious doubts about the value of tenure, Hummels cautions that not offering faculty tenure means institutions are “going to have to pay faculty the way they’re paid in industry or you won’t be able to attract anyone.”

Tenure is similar to executive stock options in the private sector, he argues: “It causes faculty to invest far more than they otherwise would in critical functions—like developing curriculum, hiring, developing and evaluating other faculty—because their tenure is going to be a lot more valuable if they’re part of a thriving institution,” he says.

Akridge agrees with the 50 percent of survey respondents who say higher ed has a real affordability problem, even if his research shows that the value of college remains high and the debt students take on is overblown.

“The sticker price and the debt they take on becomes how they think about cost. And that’s real,” he says. “Part of the fear for us is, who hears that message? Students with means and whose parents went to college are going to go to college. The evidence is quite clear that lifetime earnings, wage premiums, quality of life, even life span are better for those that go to college, and these families know that. Students that are first generation, that are maybe lower income, maybe underserved—I think they’re quite susceptible to that message and may write off college as perhaps their ticket to a better life, and that’s concerning from an equity standpoint.”

A mere 3 percent of surveyed presidents said that higher ed has been very or extremely effective at responding to the diploma divide that is increasingly predictive of voter behavior. In response, Custer encourages colleges and universities to take accountability for, and be responsive to, valid critiques of higher education as a sector, while building on the confidence that many communities retain in their local institutions. She shared an example of a messaging campaign by one regional college that highlighted how graduates are contributing to the local area in everyday but fundamental ways. “‘We are putting really valuable people back into the community who are supporting you and your families and making it possible for you to live here,’” she summarizes.

Hummels also stresses the importance of making the case for academic research, currently under threat. “Science broadly is essential to the competitiveness of the economy, to our firms and to the success of our students. It’s not just this cute thing faculty do in their spare time. We do it because it is central to who we want to be as a country and what our firms want to become. And I think we have been neglectful about maintaining awareness of how important this is.”

Listen to the full episode.

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April 24, 2025
Demands of Harvard Are Blueprint for Repression (opinion)

Harvard University’s courageous refusal to obey the demands of the Trump administration—and its subsequent filing of a lawsuit this week seeking restoration of its federal funding—has inspired praise across academia. But there has been less attention to just how terrible those demands were. No government entity in the United States has ever proposed such repressive measures against a college. By making outrageous demands a condition of federal funding—and freezing $2.2 billion in funds because Harvard refused to obey—the Trump administration is setting a precedent for threatening the same authoritarian measures against every college in America.

The April 11 letter to Harvard from Trump administration officials proposed a staggering level of control over a private college. Although at least one of the authors reported that the letter was sent in error while negotiations were still ongoing, this mistake didn’t stop the Trump administration from punishing Harvard for refusing to accept its dictates.

After Harvard rejected the demands, Trump himself posted further threats to Harvard’s tax-exempt status on social media, even though federal law bars presidents from directly or indirectly requesting Internal Revenue Service investigations against specific targets: “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’” Of course, if Harvard obeyed the Trump regime’s orders to silence political speech, it would be pushing a right-wing ideological agenda.

Among the stipulations in the April 11 letter, the Trump administration demanded the power to compel hiring based on political views to, in effect, give almost complete preference to political conservatives: “Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity.” Since most people who enter academia are liberal, as are most current academics, this demand for ideological balance would effectively ban the hiring of liberal professors in virtually all departments for many years.

Decisions on how to measure the presence or lack of viewpoint diversity would be made by “an external party” hired by Harvard with the approval of the federal government (meaning Trump). Government-imposed discrimination based on viewpoint would also apply to students, since the letter requires the “external party … to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.” If every department “must be individually viewpoint diverse,” then students with underrepresented viewpoints (Nazis, perhaps?) must receive special preferences in admissions. This concept that every department’s students, faculty and staff must match the distribution of viewpoints of the general population is both repressive and crazy to imagine.

The Trump administration letter also ordered Harvard to commission a Trump-approved consultant to report on “individual faculty members” who “incited students to violate Harvard’s rules following October 7”—and asserted that Harvard must “cooperate” with the federal government to “determine appropriate sanctions” for these professors. Retroactively punishing professors who violated no rules for allegedly encouraging student protesters is an extraordinary abuse of government power.

Not to stop there, the Trump administration letter seeks to suppress the right to protest: “Discipline at Harvard must include immediate intervention and stoppage of disruptions … including by the Harvard police when necessary to stop a disruption.” Since the Trump administration seems to regard every protest as a “disruption” (and Harvard itself has wrongly banned silent protests), this could require immediate police intervention to stop a broad range of actions.

The Trump administration also demanded unprecedented control over Harvard’s disciplinary system to order punishments of student protesters without due process. Among other specific steps, the Trump administration ordered Harvard to ban five specific student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine and the National Lawyers Guild, and “discipline” all “active members of those student organizations,” including by banning them from serving as officers in any other student groups. And Harvard would be compelled to implement government-imposed punishments by “permanently expelling the students involved in the October 18 assault of an Israeli Harvard Business School student and suspending students involved in occupying university buildings.”

Shared governance is another target of Trump and his minions. The Trump administration’s demands for Harvard included “reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty” and “reducing the power held by faculty (whether tenured or untenured) and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship.” It’s bizarre to imagine that a university could be forced by the government to determine whether a professor is committed to “activism” before banning them from any position of power such as a department chair or committee member. The letter also demands “removing or reforming institutional bodies and practices that delay and obstruct enforcement [of campus rules governing protests], including the relevant Administrative Boards and FAS Faculty Council.”

Not surprisingly, the Trump administration’s letter also demands a complete ban on diversity programs: “The University must immediately shutter all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives, under whatever name.” This repression not only interferes with the ability of universities to run their own operations, but it is also designed to suppress speech on a massive scale by banning all programs anywhere in the university that address issues of diversity and equity, with no exceptions for academic programs.

There’s more. Harvard would be forced to share “all hiring and related data” to permit endless ideological “audits.” A requirement that “all existing and prospective faculty shall be reviewed for plagiarism” could be used to purge controversial faculty. Perhaps the most ironic part of the letter to Harvard is its command for ideological control over foreign students: “the University must reform its recruitment, screening, and admissions of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.” Trump’s regime is undermining the Constitution and shredding the Bill of Rights, while demanding that foreign students prove their devotion to the very documents that the Trump administration is destroying.

The Trump administration’s letter to Harvard should shock and appall even those conservatives who previously expressed some sympathy with the desire to punish elite universities by any means necessary. This is fascism, pure and simple. It portends an effort to assert total government control over all public and private universities to compel them to obey orders about their hiring, admissions, discipline and other policies. It is an attempt to control virtually every aspect of colleges to suppress free expression, ban protests and impose a far-right agenda.

It’s tempting to hope that the Trump administration merely wanted to target Harvard alone and freeze its funding by proposing a long series of absurdly evil demands, knowing that no college could possibly agree to obey.

But the reality is that the letter to Harvard is a fascist blueprint for total control of all colleges in America, public and private. The demand for authoritarian control by the Trump administration is an assault on higher education and free speech in general. If Trump officials can impose repression on any college they target, then private corporations (as the assaults on private law firms have indicated) and state and local governments will soon follow.

The government repression that began with Columbia University will not end with Harvard or the Ivy League institutions. These are the first volleys in a war against academic freedom, with the clear aim of suppressing free expression on campus or destroying colleges in the battle.

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April 24, 2025
Trump’s Latest Executive Orders Target Accreditation

President Donald Trump took aim at college accreditors in an executive order signed Wednesday that targets two accrediting agencies for investigation and suggests others could lose federal recognition altogether.

The order was one of seven issued Wednesday as Trump nears the end of his first 100 days. Others directed the Education Department to enforce the law requiring colleges to disclose some foreign gifts and contracts, aimed to support historically Black colleges and universities, and outlined several policy changes for K-12 schools. With the accreditation order and the others, Trump and White House officials argued they were refocusing the education system on meritocracy.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who was in the Oval Office for the signing, opened her follow-up statement by praising the accreditation order and saying it would “bring long-overdue change” and “create a competitive marketplace.”

“America’s higher education accreditation system is broken,” she wrote. “Instead of pushing schools to adopt a divisive DEI ideology, accreditors should be focused on helping schools improve graduation rates and graduates’ performance in the labor market.”

Some of the immediate public reactions from higher ed groups criticized the accreditation order, describing it as yet another attempt to put more power in the hands of the president and threaten academic freedom.

The Council of Higher Education Accreditation said Trump’s directive would “affect the value and independence of accreditation,” while the American Association of University Professors said it would “remov[e] educational decision making from educators and reshap[e] higher education to fit an authoritarian political agenda.”

Overhauling Accreditation

Rumored for weeks, the accreditation order was perhaps the most anticipated one of those signed Wednesday, and it will likely have widespread ramifications as Trump seeks to scrutinize and reform the system.

Historically, accreditors have operated under the radar with little public attention, but in recent years conservatives have focused on the agencies and their role in holding colleges accountable. (The accreditors do hold a lot of power, because universities must be accredited by a federally recognized agency in order to access federal student aid.)

During his presidential campaign, Trump himself called accreditation reform his “secret weapon” and accused accreditors of failing “to ensure that schools are not ripping off students and taxpayers.”

The order calls for McMahon to suspend or terminate an accreditor’s federal recognition in order to hold it accountable if it violates federal civil rights law, according to a White House fact sheet. The executive order specifically says that requiring institutions “to engage in unlawful discrimination in accreditation-related activity under the guise of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives” would be considered a violation of the law.

The order also singles out the American Bar Association, which accredits law schools, and the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which accredits medical schools, and directs cabinet secretaries to investigate them. (The American Bar Association suspended DEI standards for its members in February, as did some other accreditors.)

Beyond that, McMahon is tasked to “realign accreditation with student-focused principles.” That could include recognizing new accreditors, prioritizing intellectual diversity among faculty and requiring “high-quality, high-value academic programs,” though the fact sheet doesn’t say how that would be measured.

White House staff secretary Will Scharf said during the event that accreditors have relied on “woke ideology” instead of merit and performance to accredit universities. He didn’t provide evidence for his claims, but the fact sheet cites the national six-year undergraduate graduation rate, which is at 64 percent, as one example of how accreditors have “failed to ensure quality.”

“The basic idea is to force accreditation to be focused on the merit and the actual results that these universities are providing, as opposed to how woke these universities have gotten,” Scharf said.

The Trump administration also wants to streamline the process to recognize accreditors and for institutions to change agencies. Some states that have required their public colleges to change accreditors have claimed that the Biden administration made the process too cumbersome.

Scharf said the order charges the Education Department “to really look holistically at this accreditation mess and hopefully make it much better.”

Trump didn’t say much about the order or what actions he hopes to see McMahon take next.

Enforcement of Foreign Gifts

The president is not the first government official this year who has sought to limit foreign influence on American colleges and universities.

The House recently passed a bill, known as the DETERRENT ACT, which would amend Section 117 of the Higher Education Act to lower the threshold for what foreign gifts must be reported from $250,000 to $50,000. It also would require the disclosure of all gifts from countries of “concern,” like China and Russia, regardless of amount. The legislation advanced to the Senate in late March following a 241–169 vote.

Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican and chair of the committee that introduced the bill, praised Trump’s action Wednesday, saying it “underscores” a Republican commitment to “promoting transparency.”

“Foreign entities, like the Chinese Communist Party, anonymously funnel billions of dollars into America’s higher education institutions—exploiting these ties to steal research, indoctrinate students, and transform our schools into beachheads in a new age of information warfare,” Walberg wrote in a statement shortly after Trump’s order was signed. “I am glad the Trump administration understands the grave importance of this threat, and I look forward to working with President Trump to protect our students and safeguard the integrity of America’s higher education system.”

Colleges’ compliance with Section 117 has been a key issue for Republicans over the years. House lawmakers repeatedly criticized the Biden administration’s efforts to enforce the law, but former education secretary Miguel Cardona defended his agency’s actions. They also tried to pass the DETERRENT Act last session, but it was blocked by Democrats in the Senate.

The executive order is broader than the DETERRENT Act and does little to distinguish itself aside from directing McMahon to work with the attorney general and heads of other departments where appropriate and to reverse or rescind any of Biden’s actions that “permit higher education institutions to maintain improper secrecy.”

More Support for HBCUs

Another order creates within the White House an initiative focused on historically Black colleges and universities and revokes a Biden executive order titled “White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity Through Historically Black Colleges and Universities.”

During his first term, Trump moved an HBCU initiative at the Education Department to the White House as a largely symbolic gesture to show his support for Black colleges. That initiative continued under Joe Biden, though it was returned to the Education Department. Biden also created initiatives focused on Hispanic-serving institutions and tribal colleges. Trump ended those newly created initiatives during his first week in office.

The executive order also established the President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs at the Education Department, which appears to already exist. The panel last met in January, according to a Federal Register notice.

Scharf said the order would ensure that HBCUs are “able to do their job as effectively and as efficiently as possible.”

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April 23, 2025
Police Raids Targeted Michigan Palestine Activists

The Graduate Employees’ Organization union says pro-Palestine activists were targeted.

Nicholas Klein/iStock/Getty Images

Police raided five homes connected to University of Michigan pro-Palestinian activists on Wednesday, according to the university’s graduate student union. A spokesperson for the state’s attorney general told Inside Higher Ed the investigation is into “multi-jurisdictional acts of vandalism” but didn’t provide many more details.

Danny Wimmer, press secretary for Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said the search warrants were part of an attorney general investigation “against multiple individuals in multiple jurisdictions including Ann Arbor, Canton and Ypsilanti.”

Wimmer said many agencies were involved Wednesday, including local, state and federal authorities, but he didn’t name specific ones and didn’t say whether personal items had been confiscated. He said the searches weren’t related to campus protest activity.

In a post on X, the attorney general’s office said the alleged vandalism was “against multiple homes, organizations, and businesses in multiple counties.”

Lavinia Dunagan, a Ph.D. student who is a co-chair of the union’s communications committee, said at least seven people were detained but none arrested. All are students, save for one employee of Michigan Medicine, she said. She declined to name them, saying she didn’t know all of their identities and citing safety concerns for those who were targeted.

Brian Taylor, a university spokesperson, deferred questions to the attorney general’s office.

Dunagan said those detained were taken into officers’ cars and not allowed to leave until they provided information and allowed cheek swabs. She said the FBI, Michigan State Police and local police were involved.

The union—the Graduate Employees’ Organization, or GEO—said in a news release that “officers detained and questioned two activists, including a member of GEO, and confiscated their electronic devices” in Ann Arbor, home of Michigan’s flagship campus. GEO also said four people were “detained and released” in Ypsilanti, and one home was “raided” in Canton.

“The officers also confiscated personal belongings from multiple residences and at least two cars,” GEO said, adding that “at this time, all activists are safe.”

Wimmer did say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wasn’t involved, and that the attorney general’s office believes all subjects of the search warrants are U.S. citizens. The union also said in its release, “We are not aware of any visa holders being affected by these raids.”

The state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a news release that homes of “students and former students at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor who were involved in pro-Palestinian activism were raided.” The organization said, “Property damage at residences took place, and individuals were handcuffed without charges during the aggressive raids.”

The organization said it had staff “on location at one of the raided residences” and it “continues to offer legal assistance to those impacted and is actively monitoring the situation for potential civil rights violations.”

Dunagan said, “We are just really concerned about potentially future repression of political activity.”

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April 23, 2025
Texas State Helps Students Bounce Back From 2.0 GPA

As more colleges and universities consider initiatives, processes and policies to create a more student-focused campus, they are zeroing in on two areas of concern: academic probation and academic recovery.

A growing body of research highlights the way negative life experiences and competing priorities impact students’ academic achievement, sometimes exerting a stronger influence than prior academic preparation.

Texas State University has established a new initiative, Bobcats Bounce Back, to help students whose grades have fallen below a 2.0 learn self-efficacy, resiliency and strong study skills.

The background: The university has a goal of increasing its first-year retention rate from 77 percent in 2012 to 85 percent by 2025, said Cynthia Hernandez, vice president for student success. Early on, officials recognized that the institution lacked a strong academic recovery program, so Hernandez and her team prioritized devising a proactive solution to reduce the number of students who fell into poor academic standing.

Since 2009, the university’s policy has been that students who fall below a 2.0 cumulative GPA must meet with an academic adviser at least once a semester. The intervention has proven mostly successful, in that some students have moved back into good academic standing—though not everyone has, said Jason O’Brien, assistant director for academic engagement at Texas State.

An analysis of institutional data revealed that students who improved their academic trajectory used support services at least once a month, or four times per term.

“If students are [showing up], I know they’ve got the time and they’ve got a goal, they know what they’re working on,” O’Brien said. The challenge is getting each student to be proactive and engage early, not wait until the end of the semester, before finals.

Using institutional data, Texas State leaders revamped academic probation requirements to encourage students to make at least four connections with support services each semester; those who don’t, receive personalized outreach.

How it works: In the Bobcats Bounce Back program, students with a 2.0 GPA or lower are asked to participate in at least four support services, which could include success coaching, tutoring or a student success webinar. Students must meet with an academic adviser for at least one of their mandatory check-ins and they receive weekly communication from the office of academic engagement to encourage them to meet their goals.

A few weeks into the term, O’Brien’s team runs a report that identifies students on academic probation who have yet to engage with a support office. Students who live off-campus receive communication from the academic engagement team and those in the residence halls receive outreach from their residence life director.

“We’re not asking, ‘How are your classes going?’” O’Brien said. “We’re saying, ‘How are you doing? What’s going on in [your] life right now? Do you feel safe? Are you able to eat? Do you have any needs that aren’t met? Is your family OK?’ We’re trying to make sure that all of those basic needs, all that it takes to be a successful human is on track, and then from there we move on to, ‘OK, talk to me about classes.’”

The aim is to be human-centered and conversational in order to learn from the student and bridge any gaps in services and resources the university can provide to promote student success.

Sometimes this means helping students understand ways to correct their academic transcript, such as repeating a course or asking for an administrative withdrawal when relevant.

“We make a lot of asset-based assumptions,” O’Brien said. “My assumption is that no student is choosing to fail a course; they are choosing to be successful in something else out of necessity,’” which could include prioritizing their health, caring for a family member or working extra hours to make ends meet. “What we want to do is find out about those early enough to prevent it from impacting a transcript.”

The impact: During the inaugural program term in fall 2024, Bobcats Bounce Back supported 1,706 undergraduates; this term it is assisting 2,579 students. (Most academic recovery programs see higher rates of participation in the spring term because first-year students are most likely to face academic challenges in their first term, which can dramatically impact their GPA, O’Brien said).

During fall 2024, Bobcats Bounce Back participants engaged, on average, with support resources 3.11 times, up 270 percent compared to students on academic probation in 2023 (who averaged .84 engagements). The university also saw a 3 percent increase in the number of students who regained good academic standing from fall 2023 to fall 2024, and a 7 percent decrease in academic suspensions.

At the 12-week mark in spring 2025, average engagements among students on academic probation were up 74.8 percent, from 1.31 to 2.29.

The data illustrates the program’s success so far, and O’Brien believes it’s due in part to their responsiveness to student needs. As the program has grown, more students are willing to seek out the office and engage. “They’re starting to have faith in us and ask for the support they need,” O’Brien said.

Program participants also have an opportunity to submit a guided reflection, called a B3 Field Note, every four weeks to build their socioemotional skills. Each prompt is rooted in research-backed strategies to improve academic self-efficacy and engagement. O’Brien has been amazed at the thoughtful responses he’s seen thus far and plans to conduct a critical discourse analysis project to identify students who may need additional support based on their field note submissions.

In the future, college leaders hope to target additional students who may be at-risk, but haven’t quite fallen below the 2.0 cumulative GPA threshold, a group Hernandez called the “murky middle.”

If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.

This article has been updated to clarify average engagement rates for program participants in fall 2024 and how that growth compared to the previous fall.

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April 23, 2025
McMahon Defends Harvard Cuts, Faces Grilling During CNBC Interview

Education Secretary Linda McMahon defended the Trump administration’s crackdown on Harvard University and other colleges during a contentious appearance Tuesday on CNBC’s Squawk Box as she faced questions about the government’s decision to freeze universities’ federal funding.

Andrew Ross Sorkin and Joe Kernen, the morning talk show’s hosts, grilled McMahon during the 12-minute segment about whether freezing billions in grants and contracts was due to valid civil rights concerns or unjustified political and ideological standards; they suggested it was the latter. (Harvard sued Monday over the funding freeze, which followed the university’s decision to reject the Trump administration’s sweeping demands.)

But McMahon reiterated that, for her, it was a matter of holding colleges accountable for antisemitism on campus—not an alleged liberal bias.

“I made it very clear these are not First Amendment infractions; this is civil rights,” she said. “This is making sure that students on all campuses can come and learn and be safe.”

Harvard argued in the lawsuit that some of the demands—like auditing faculty for viewpoint diversity—do not directly address antisemitism and infringe on the private institution’s First Amendment rights.

Sorkin echoed Harvard’s argument during the interview and questioned McMahon about the lawsuit’s claims.

“The question is whether viewpoint diversity is really about free speech,” he said.

In defense, McMahon said that “this letter [of demands] that was sent to Harvard was a point of negotiation … and it was really not a final offer.” She added that she hoped Harvard would come back to the table. (Trump officials told The New York Times that the April 11 letter was sent by mistake.)

“We would like to be able to move forward with them and other universities,” she said.

McMahon later reiterated her argument that this was a civil rights matter and said, “I think we’re on very solid grounds” regarding the lawsuit.

But Kernen countered that requiring universities to hire conservative faculty members is just as bad as historically maintaining liberal ones, calling the act “thought control.”

“It’s the other side of the same coin, isn’t it?” he said.

McMahon said it’s fair to take a look at some faculty members.

Near the end of the interview, Sorkin asked McMahon about her end goal if universities lose their federal funding and tax-exempt status. (The IRS is reportedly reviewing Harvard’s tax-exemption.)

“We have not said that the tax exemption should be taken away, but I think it’s worth having a look at,” McMahon said. “I think the president has put all the tools on the table and we should have the ability to utilize all of those particular tools.”

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April 23, 2025
How to Ensure You’ll Never Be a Chair Again (opinion/humor)

“First rule of leadership: Everything is your fault.”

–from A Bug’s Life

Congratulations! You have been elected or appointed or duped into serving as department chair, the role that everyone says is the hardest job on campus. Maybe that’s what attracted you to the position—you enjoy working days, nights and weekends on thorny issues that rarely have anything to do with creativity, inspiration or intellectualism. Perhaps you dreamed of having a positive impact on mentoring young faculty or garnering more respect and resources for your department from the upper administration.

If you’ve spent more than a month on the job, your grandiose vision of being admired and maybe even beloved by the faculty, staff and students will have crashed on the jagged shores of “What have you done for me today?” reality. It’s time for Plan B. We provide a list of proven techniques to ensure you will never be asked to serve as chair again.

Tip #1: Spend the bulk of your time on strategic planning.

Strategic plans are the most important work you will do as chair; we all know these documents are constantly referred to. I have mine on laminated cards that I hand out to prospective donors and students and frequently read during coffee breaks.

When writing these documents, create “word salads”— the more pseudo-intellectual the better. Consistent sprinkling of terms like “revolutionary,” “intellectual” and “equity” will strengthen the document. Violate George Orwell’s writing rules by always using a long word where a short one will do and using jargon in place of everyday English equivalents (e.g., “With courageous attention to principles of equity and fairness, we will innovatively co-create a multi-trans-disciplinary minor that relentlessly centers student success while concurrently providing a revenue stream to be utilized for upgrading the office furniture.”)

Form subcommittees to do this work and make sure they meet over the summer—particularly if your faculty are on nine-month appointments. Task subcommittee members with creating these documents from scratch. Don’t spend time locating prior versions or drafting a potential plan as a starting point.

Tell the subcommittees you are happy to meet with them when they need your input. Then decline every invitation to do so. Having them guess what you want as a final product will create lively conversation and allow them to bond over your obtuse directions.

Tip #2: Run faculty meetings from hell.

Use faculty meetings as an opportunity to read out newsy updates that could easily have been emailed. Or, even better, email each of these items individually AND read them out loud in faculty meetings. Remember that your faculty are not busy with their own research, teaching and service.

When sensitive issues are on the agenda, make your position crystal clear and stress its superiority to any other strategy before calling for a vote. Then respond to questions from faculty according to how hard they’ve worked to curry favor with you. The faculty will soon learn that the meetings go much more smoothly without the distraction of other viewpoints or lively debate.

Lastly, have faculty vote publicly on these decisions by simply raising their hands. Pre-tenure faculty will feel just as comfortable as full professors in sharing their votes. Similar comfort levels will be felt by those of differing races/ethnicities, cultural backgrounds and genders. If you as chair feel that a decision is straightforward, so will they.

Tip #3: Avoid meeting with faculty to review their research trajectory.

An annual report from each faculty member will provide more than enough information, saving you time from meeting with each of your faculty members in person. Pre-tenure faculty who are heading off in multiple, diverse directions to obtain funding, or who are giving up on grants after a first rejection, should face the consequences they deserve. We’ve all suffered through that time period, and so should they.

In that spirit, avoid arranging for and supporting mentoring teams for new faculty. Or, if you have already assigned a new faculty member their mentor, assume that the pair is meeting regularly. New faculty will always feel comfortable reaching out to their busy, senior mentors whenever they have questions.

Tip #4: Be an expert in everything.

Departments are complex organizations and chairing them involves overseeing a swarm of areas including finances/budget, human resources, curriculum, teaching assignments, graduate student issues, computing support, etc. Wear as many hats as possible and be the expert on all of these topics. Do not delegate to staff, graduate program directors or associate chairs who may have expertise in these areas.

Tip #5: Assign faculty as much service as possible.

Faculty members are always trying to get away with less work—therefore, make a one-size-fits-all rule for assigning service and stick with it. In this spirit, confuse “equity” with “equality” and cut off any reference to diversity, equity and inclusion as social justice with the phrase, “you know, DEIJ, yadda yadda yadda.”

Don’t count mentoring other faculty as service. In fact, don’t count any useful, impactful or innovative service if it happened outside one of your official committees. If it really was a clever idea, you would have already thought of it.

When faculty ask for a break from a busy committee to focus on a major grant proposal or to develop a new course, remind them that when you were a faculty member, you were able to do both tasks while also serving as the business officer, graduate program director and teaching daily yoga classes for emeritus faculty.

Tip #6: Be the dean’s messenger.

You, as chair, are essentially the mouthpiece of the dean and the upper administration. Therefore, focus the bulk of your time on top-down initiatives. Do not canvass your faculty to see what they need for their own growth and success. And, if you instead take the rash step of creating a department-driven plan, be sure to enlist the dean’s advice on every step you take. Take care to assign the bulk of planning work to unproductive faculty who have taught the same course in the same way for 15 years and last received a major research grant before the year 2000.

Lastly, encourage faculty to get to know the dean and other members of the upper administration. Then savagely punish them for any communication that does not go directly through you.

Tip #7: Be an intrepid decision maker.

When a decision from the chair is called for, don’t solicit thoughts from your faculty first. It looks stronger if you make your decision in isolation. Similarly, when faculty members ask you for things, say “no” to every request to show that you are strong and decisive. Or, say “yes” to the random “hallway ask” instead of considering that, if one faculty member has a need, so may another.

Frequently remind your faculty that you are “data-driven” and demand that any request, no matter how minuscule, come with several pages of rationale that delineates costs to the penny, identifies exact sources of each dollar, and includes a comprehensive, multi-method analysis of return on investment. Then make a decision based on whether you are in a good or bad mood and whether the faculty request comes from one of your “favorites.”

Tip #8: Respond immediately to student complaints about faculty.

When you receive a complaint about a faculty member from a student, take action against that faculty member immediately. Remember that students are totally objective; there cannot be another side to the story. Let the associate dean handle things with the faculty member directly—or even better, the dean. Disregard the department bylaws that the faculty worked so hard to develop. Decisive action is better than adhering to agreed-upon guidelines. Don’t fulfill your role as the faculty member’s primary supervisor, certainly not one who has their best interests at heart.

Tip #9: Let everyone know how busy and important you are.

Say things like, “I remember when I was just a faculty member; it was so much easier than being chair.” Or, even better, “The previous chair did it wrong; back at my old school, we did it better.”

Always refer to the dean, provost and the president by their first names. Then, if the faculty do the same, tell them they are being disrespectful.

Tip #10: Have no life and put your research on hold.

It’s crazy to think that you can keep your own lab going. Instead, spend the bulk of your time responding to emails. You’ll feel proud of your alacrity in immediately responding to the latest requests from the upper administration. Don’t carve out dedicated “meet with the chair coffee hours,” nor dedicated time to progress in your own work. You’ll easily pick up where you left off with your own research after your chair-hood!

Finally, and most importantly, although you will never again be asked to serve as chair, you will be eminently qualified to be a dean. Prepare yourself now to be aggressively headhunted for open positions!

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to specific chairs, present or past, is purely coincidental. No chairs were harmed in the making of this product.

Lisa Chasan-Taber, Sc.D., is a professor and former chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Barry Braun, Ph.D., is a professor and head of the Department of Health and Exercise Science at Colorado State University.

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April 23, 2025
U Rochester Ph.D. Students Strike for a Non-NLRB Election

University of Rochester Ph.D. student workers began striking this week to pressure the institution to agree to what they call a “fair union election.” And for the process to be fair, they say, it can’t be handled by the Trump-era National Labor Relations Board.

“We don’t see any kind of path through the NLRB at present,” said George Elkind, a Ph.D. student on the proposed UR Graduate Labor Union’s organizing committee.

The strike began Monday and continued Tuesday. Elkind said it’s unclear how many of the more than 1,400 students who would likely be represented by the union are withholding their labor. The walkout is another example of labor agitation continuing into the Trump era.

Roughly a year ago, university officials and the union organizers began discussing plans for a private election, which both parties were amenable to. If they had reached an agreement, the NLRB—which usually handles unionization votes at private nonprofit institutions such as UR—wouldn’t have been involved.

However, in February, after Donald Trump retook the presidency and fired a Democratic NLRB member and the agency’s general counsel, a university lawyer told student organizers that UR no longer wanted a private election, according to a document union members provided Inside Higher Ed. Instead, the lawyer wrote that they could pursue an election with the Trump-era NLRB.

Scott Phillipson, president of SEIU 200United, a multi-university union that’s helping to organize the students, said UR officials “simply do not want these employees to have a union. That is what is going on here.”

Phillipson said university officials were being disingenuous in suggesting the students use the NLRB.

“They know it’s not an option,” he said. “But it’s a better public messaging, frankly, than ‘Just go away.’”

An NLRB spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed Tuesday that the agency’s “regional offices are functioning as normal” and can run elections. But any appeals of election results would go to the actual board for which the agency is named. And since Trump ousted the Democratic board member, Gwynne Wilcox, and has left previous vacancies unfilled, the panel now doesn’t have the minimum required number of members to make decisions.

If Trump eventually does appoint his own members to the board, allowing it to operate again, some union supporters worry the NLRB might use a grad student unionization case such as Rochester’s to overturn the 2016 Columbia University case precedent establishing that private nonprofit university grad workers can unionize through the NLRB.

Student workers could continue to unionize at public universities in the states that allow such action, but those at private institutions would be left with no other path than to seek voluntary recognition from their universities.

Elkind said UR officials know that the NLRB “is defunct—and would be hostile if it weren’t.” He said they want grad workers to go to the NLRB and risk a ruling decertifying grad unions at private universities nationwide. He called this “an extreme anti-labor position.”

‘Unprecedented Times’

In an email, William A. Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, said the strike “to compel the university to agree to a non-NLRB election is a sign of these unprecedented times.

“There is a growing distrust and frustration among unions and their members with NLRB procedures and remedies, both of which are also under constitutional attacks by employers like SpaceX, Amazon, and the University of Southern California,” said Herbert, whose center is at Hunter College. “The firing of NLRB Board member Gwynne Wilcox and the reported removal of sensitive labor data from the NLRB by Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] staff has further undermined confidence in the agency.”

The university, which didn’t provide an interview Tuesday, hasn’t said it abandoned the move toward a private election because it thinks grad workers would lose in front of the Trump-era NLRB. UR has cited other reasons, including a December court decision involving Vanderbilt University grad workers’ attempt to unionize.

NLRB policy required Vanderbilt to reveal names, job classifications and other information about student workers whom the union might represent. But more than 100 students objected to sharing that, and Vanderbilt sued the NLRB and one of its regional directors, arguing that requiring students to turn over the information would violate their privacy under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

A judge in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee ruled that Vanderbilt was likely right and granted a preliminary injunction blocking the NLRB requirements. A UR lawyer wrote that this made the university concerned about being “seen as facilitating the dissemination of potentially protected student data to a third party” if it went forward with the private election.

But the lawyer went beyond the Vanderbilt case, saying that not requiring a prospective union to go through the NLRB would be a “significant deviation from the university’s typical practice.” He also noted the recent “sweeping and still unclear changes in the federal government’s support for the university’s missions,” adding that the Trump administration’s upheaval “includes a likely reduction in federal funding.”

In an emailed statement Tuesday, a university spokesperson said “contingency plans are in place to ensure minimal disruption to our academic mission— including teaching and research activities—during a strike. In the event of prolonged strike activity, University officials are confident that the academic enterprise will continue as normal without interruption.”

The spokesperson said “we are steadfast in the belief that entering into a private election agreement at this time is not in the best interests of the University community.”

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April 23, 2025
The Higher Ed CMO’s Commercial Case for Creativity
Legendary ad person Bill Bernbach once said, “If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.” It’s not an understatement to say that managing higher ed brands has become increasingly complex. Marketers are forced to compete in a category that’s in flux—within a culture that questions its value—and improve effectiveness across marketing channels that have not only changed the way we consume content but also caused exponential growth in choice.

Creativity continues to drive commercial value, however, investing in the intangible up front—with both time and resourcing—can prove to be difficult when budgets remain static. And yet, we know that:
- We are exposed to upwards of 4,000 marketing messages a day.
- Our audience reports that our marketing efforts look the same and that most entertainment and consumer brands produce content that lacks imagination.
Without an investment in creativity—the vehicle for our big brand ideas—we risk our message getting lost, splintered and, worst case, ignored.

For those managing higher education brands in our current media environment, the words of Paul Feldwick have never been more true: “If there is a choice to be made between efficiency and thinking big, you cannot afford to be efficient if you want to be famous.” And there’s quite a case building across a decade or so of data that shows just how an investment in creativity is an investment in the bottom line. Here are four that are applicable to higher education.

Outside of brand size, creativity is the most important lever in profitability.

Just as in the case of network theory, the rich get big. That also tends to play out among brands. However, creative quality can be an equalizer of sorts. According to Data2Decisions, the creative execution of your messages is the second most impactful driver of profitability after market/brand size. And while brand size has the greatest overall impact, creative quality remains the most powerful lever marketers can actively control.

Ads that are perceived to be different are more likely to drive business outcomes.

Research from Kantar’s Link database, as well as research from academia, indicates that ads that are perceived as different or unique are more likely to drive positive business outcomes. Per the database, the top one-third of ads that “make the brand seem really different” achieved a 90 percent lift in likelihood to drive short-term sales versus the bottom third.

Emotion unlocks the key output that drives business outcomes.

Starting with the IPA’s “The Link Between Creativity and Effectiveness” and subsequent industry research, there’s not only a through line between creative award-winning campaigns driving market share growth (11x) and top-box profit but intermediate metrics, such as word-of-mouth/social shares, and outputs, such as ad recall.

The largest contributor to lift from advertising is the creative.

Nielsen’s exploration of more than 500 Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) brands showed that the most important component of a campaign (targeting, reach, brand, context, frequency and creative) was strong or quality creative. Similar patterns were found in the work done by the World Advertising Research Center and Kantar.

If brand is the most valuable business tool and if we argue that brand exists in the minds of the consumer, or our favorite saying in higher education, “a brand is what your audience says when you aren’t in the room,” then it’s time to treat it as a commercial asset and invest accordingly. Whether it’s through internal resourcing or giving partners the time and space to commit to breakthrough ideas, a commitment to creativity isn’t just brave anymore—it’s related to the bottom line.

Christopher Huebner is a director of strategy at SimpsonScarborough.
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April 23, 2025
800 combined jobs to be cut at WSU, UTS – Campus Review

Western Sydney University (WSU) is expected to cut up to 400 jobs to help cope with an almost 80 million deficit in 2026 amid a “large deterioration” in student numbers.

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April 23, 2025