The Education Department will kick off the lengthy rule-making process later this month with a pair of hearings.
The department is planning to consider regulatory changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, income-driven repayment plans and “other topics that would streamline current federal student financial assistance programs,” according to a Federal Register notice.
Hearings are just the first step in negotiated rule making, which also includes convening an advisory committee to weigh in on regulatory changes over a series of meetings, proposing draft regulations and then a public comment period. Historically, the whole process takes at least a year.
The Federal Register notice doesn’t say what specific changes the department is seeking to make aside from “redefining definitions of a qualifying employer.” The department also is planning to revise the regulations for Pay as You Earn and income-contingent repayment plans.
In early March, President Donald Trump directed the Education Department to change which employers or companies are eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Under the executive order, activities that would disqualify a nonprofit could include aiding or abetting violations of federal immigration laws or what the government considers illegal discrimination. Advocates and Democrats decried the order as “un-American” and argued that it would disrupt borrowers’ lives.
The department will hold an in-person hearing April 29 and a virtual hearing May 1. More information is available here.
“This process will focus on how the Department can rightsize Title IV regulations that have driven up the cost of college and hindered innovation,” said Acting Under Secretary James Bergeron in a news release. Bergeron is also leading the Office of Federal Student Aid. (Title IV of the Higher Education Act authorizes federal financial aid programs.)
He added that “not only will this rulemaking serve as an opportunity to identify and cut unnecessary red tape, but it will allow key stakeholders to offer suggestions to streamline and improve federal student aid programs.”
Shantay Bolton, executive vice president of administration and finance and chief business officer at Georgia Tech, has been named president of Columbia College Chicago, effective July 1.
Laura Crawley, vice president of mission, engagement and innovation at Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina, will become president of Bethany College in Kansas, effective May 1.
Farouk Dey, vice provost for integrative learning and life design at Johns Hopkins University, has been appointed president of Palo Alto University, effective July 1.
William Downs, president of Gardner-Webb University in North Carolina, has been named president of Campbell University, also in North Carolina, beginning July 1.
Charles Edmonds, currently executive vice president of Lycoming College, will become president of the Pennsylvania-based institution on July 1.
Louise Fincher, currently the interim president of Emory & Henry University in Virginia, has been named president of the institution.
Thomas Gibson, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, has been named the next chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, beginning on or around July 1.
Michael Hill, president of Chautauqua Institution in New York, has been appointed president of Virginia’s Randolph-Macon College, effective Aug. 1.
Kevin Howell, chief external affairs officer at University of North Carolina Health and the UNC School of Medicine, has been named chancellor of North Carolina State University, effective May 5.
Mark Johnson, director of the doctor of ministry program at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, has been elected president of Louisiana Christian University.
Michael Kotlikoff, interim president of Cornell University since last July, has been named the institution’s president, effective immediately.
Dean Pribbenow, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at Elmhurst University in Illinois, has been appointed president of Millikin University, also in Illinois, effective July 1.
Sean Ryan, senior vice president of administration, strategic initiatives and trustee affairs at Bellarmine University in Kentucky, will become president of Anna Maria College in Massachusetts, effective July 1.
James Schmidt, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, has been named president of James Madison University in Virginia, effective July 1.
Claire Shipman, co-chair of the Columbia University Board of Trustees, has been named acting president of the university, effective immediately.
Marlene Tromp, president of Boise State University in Idaho, will become president of the University of Vermont, effective this summer.
The Trump administration plans to block $510 million in federal contracts and grants for Brown University in retaliation for the university’s alleged failure to address antisemitism on campus, The New York Times reported.
The Daily Callerfirst reported the news, writing that “an administration official” said Brown’s grants “would be paused” while the government conducts a review of the university’s response to claims of antisemitism.
Brown provost Frank Doyle sent an email to campus leaders Thursday, acknowledging “troubling rumors emerging about federal action on Brown research grants,” but noting that they had received “no information to substantiate any of these rumors,” the Times reported.
Brown was among the 60 higher ed institutions to receive a letter last month from the Office for Civil Rights warning of “potential enforcement actions” if they failed to comply with federal antidiscrimination law.
After Columbia became the first institution to have its grants frozen, Brown president Christina Paxson issued a statement reiterating the university’s commitment to upholding both federal law and academic freedom. She noted that if Brown were prevented from performing “essential academic and operational functions, we would be compelled to vigorously exercise our legal rights to defend these freedoms, and true to our values, we would do so with integrity and respect.”
On Thursday night, leaders of the Brown Corporation and of Brown’s Jewish community, released a statement praising Brown’s commitment to Jewish students.
“Brown University is home to a vibrant Jewish community that continues to flourish with the steadfast support of the administration,” it read. “Amidst broader concerns about antisemitism on college campuses, Brown stands out as an inclusive environment where Jewish life is deeply integrated into campus culture.”
When he was mayor of Lexington, Ky., Jim Newberry worked closely with the University of Kentucky, Transylvania University and Bluegrass Community Technical College and came to understand how important the institutions were to the city. He built close relationships with the leaders at all three colleges and said he admires the broad mission of higher education institutions: to educate and train the next generation.
“That was the mission to which I wanted to devote the rest of my professional career when I left the mayor’s office,” Newberry said. In 2012, he refocused his law practice on the higher education sector, and he is currently a member of Steptoe and Johnson, where he is co-chair of the firm’s higher education team. He predominantly represents private, nonprofit, independent colleges, but also works with large R-1 institutions.
Inside Higher Ed recently reached out to Newberry over Zoom to hear how he is helping his clients navigate the uncertainty in federal regulations, what advice he’d give to college presidents who might want to speak out and why he took Project 2025 at its word. Excerpts of the conversation follow, edited for space and clarity.
Q: What are the biggest concerns you’re hearing from your clients right now?
A: Confusion, lack of information, uncertainty about what the future may hold, who they will be dealing with. It’s, in short, the fear of the unknown right now.
Project 2025 is this administration’s playbook, Newberry said. “It’s a pretty aggressive agenda.”
Q: Is that mostly fear around new regulations or about how to stay compliant with current regulations amid all the uncertainty?
A: The confusion right now knows no bounds, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that federal offices are being closed. People who were responsible for overseeing projects are no longer there, and so if you’re trying to resolve an issue with the Department of Education, it is very, very challenging.
Q: And so what are you able to tell your clients, if anything?
A: You just kind of throw your hands up. I had one client that wanted me to give them an estimate of the cost for the regulatory compliance component of a project they asked us to assess. I said, “I’ve got no idea what to tell you about that. And I don’t know when I will be in a position to give you an estimate about that.” So we really are looking for answers. Of course, we watch Inside Higher Ed and we watch the evening news reports about what’s going on at the department, and we’re trying to piece together some mosaic that would make some sense when you stand back and look at it. But right now, it’s very sketchy.
Q: Under previous administrations, compliance was incredibly burdensome for institutions. Do you have any sense of there being more, less or similar levels of regulatory obligations under the Trump administration?
A: I do have a sense it’s going to be less. The prior administration took a pretty aggressive approach when complaints were filed with them on some matter over which they had jurisdiction, and, typically, the inquiries that you would get from [the Office for Civil Rights] would go far beyond the one complaint that initiated the whole process.
If I had to bet right now, I would say we’ll see substantially less of those kinds of inquiries, and we may see fewer investigations being initiated with institutions just because the department doesn’t have the personnel to do them. And what investigations are initiated will probably take much longer to complete just because they don’t have the personnel to review the documents necessary to reach a conclusion. I mean, even before the new administration took office, OCR investigations seemingly took forever to resolve. And now, with half as many employees, you gotta think they’re gonna take twice as long in the future as they have in the past, just on the basis of the number of people who are available to do the work.
Q: You were one of the few people I spoke to who were certain the Trump administration was going to follow through on the Project 2025 mission to dismantle the Department of Education. Why were you so confident? And what else do you see in your crystal ball?
A: It just simply appeared to me that Donald Trump had developed a remarkable level of control over the Republicans in Congress, particularly when they went through the confirmation process. And he was able to get virtually everybody he wanted confirmed. It just struck me that if you could get some of those confirmations approved, it was quite likely there would be a fair degree of support within the Republican party to materially diminish the role of the Department of Education, if not abolish it altogether. Now, whether it actually ceases to exist remains to be seen, but it’s certainly going to be in a diminished capacity. I don’t think there’s any question at all about that now, and I suspect many of its functions will be transferred elsewhere.
With respect to the future, I don’t know that I’ve got any clairvoyant ability here, but all you had to do is look at Project 2025. I mean, that’s their playbook. It has been proven repeatedly that’s exactly what they are working from. And therefore, you ought to anticipate that there’s going to be a substantial effort made to materially change the way institutions are accredited. You ought to see a substantially greater role for state regulatory agencies who are involved in higher education. And FERPA is probably going to be on the list of things that get changed. Those are some things that I think one could glean from looking at the section of Project 2025 that deals with education. It’s a pretty aggressive agenda.
Q: I mean, the spectrum of ability and capacity at the state level to take on some of these responsibilities is enormous. Does that fill you with dread as a lawyer, having to get to grips with 50 different ways of doing things in 50 different regulatory environments?
A: Yes, that’s exactly what I anticipate is going to happen. And just as there’s a substantial degree of difference from one state to the next in terms of the existing ability, I suspect, even after we go through some wholesale change that would result in functions moving from the federal level to the state level, you’re still going to see a wide variety of regulatory standards and enforcement of those standards. That’s going to create a challenging new environment for a lot of folks in higher ed. And, you know, higher ed has been very much a national kind of industry, if you will. People could go basically from one state to the next and not notice a huge amount of change in terms of how the institution would operate. That’s going to be different if they follow through with all they’re talking about doing.
Q: We’re seeing this ping-pong effect happening right now where the federal government will say one thing or take an action and then a lawsuit challenging it will follow. It’s incredibly inefficient policymaking to begin with, but how confident are you that we’ll get any sort of resolution to a lot of these extrajudicial actions coming from the administration?
A: That’s a great question, and it is one that is going to require a lot of attention, especially in the next six months, because I would anticipate during that period there will be a few of these cases that will percolate up to the Supreme Court in some fashion or another. And I hope the Supreme Court will be able to provide some clarity that will then drive the decisions that are being made at the district court and in the various courts of appeals, because it’s just going to be all over the place, I’m afraid, with different judges and courts taking different positions. Ultimately, the nine people on the Supreme Court bench are going to have to sort through some of this. They will be very, very influential.
Q: Some legal scholars have declared a constitutional crisis in this country. Would you say that we are in one now?
A: The ultimate constitutional crisis is going to be what happens when the Supreme Court makes a decision in one of these cases. If the administration refuses to abide by a Supreme Court decision, we’ll be in a full-blown constitutional crisis. But we have some limited crises percolating right now. Orders from federal courts have traditionally been honored by whichever administration, whichever party may have been in power, and that does not appear to be the current case, and that’s a real concern.
Q: What’s your take on Columbia’s concession to the department?
A: I have a lot of empathy for the leadership on every campus right now, as they try to discern as best they can what the appropriate course of action is for their institution. There are some incredibly capable people serving these institutions, both on the boards of trustees and in senior administrative levels. There is no way I could understand all of the factors they are considering as they try to chart a course for their individual institutions. And I wouldn’t try to do that, because they’ve got a lot of responsibility. They’ve got a lot of stakeholders, many of whom are taking conflicting positions. And it’s a very challenging time for folks in leadership positions—and for their lawyers, too, I might add.
Q: I appreciate you won’t give an opinion about something you aren’t involved in, but what do you think the decision might mean for institutional autonomy and academic freedom in general?
A: When you have an institution as prominent as Columbia conceding to a lot of the demands that were made, it makes it very, very difficult for lesser institutions to contemplate a fight. That’s not to say they made the wrong decision, but it is to say that their decision will probably lead others to find ways to avoid a fight with the new administration, and that’s understandable. I mean, absent some set of circumstances, this administration is going to be there for almost four years. You gotta live with them, and getting involved in litigation is problematic. It is outrageously expensive for the institutions. And even if you win, you’ve got a regulator sitting there that’s not very happy about the outcome of that litigation who can make your life pretty complicated, if not miserable, for several years to come. So there’s substantial motivation for folks not to fight. And I recognize there are constituencies—students, faculty and others—who vehemently oppose anything less than a battle to the death. But presidents and boards have to consider the overall well-being of their institutions. I don’t envy that task.
Q: We’re hearing lots of calls for leaders to speak out and condemn what’s happening to the sector. What would you tell a client who is thinking about penning an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal defending higher education?
A: I’m generally an advocate of institutional neutrality on matters of public affairs, because I think campuses need to be places where competing ideas can be exchanged without the administration leaning on the scales one way or the other. This is a little different, though, in that these issues are really going to the heart of what our system of higher education is going to be in the future. I happen to think the people that know the most about that are folks that are sitting in administration buildings or in boardrooms these days, and their voices need to be heard in some fashion about what the implications some of the decisions that are being made have.
So there’s certainly an interest in speaking out. I think the art of this, though, is speaking out in such a way that the points are clearly made without there being a lot of vitriol in the op-ed piece. There are a lot of constituencies on campus that want every member of the Board of Trustees and the president to go the White House and spit in the face of everybody coming and going. I understand that. I don’t think that serves their institutional interests well, but I do think a calm and thoughtful, well-reasoned, well-documented argument about some of the policy options that are available and which ones are good and which ones are bad for higher education is an appropriate thing for folks in higher education to be talking about.
Q: Interesting that you bring up institutional neutrality, because that’s part of the reasoning some leaders have given for not speaking publicly about the situation. You’re saying this issue doesn’t fall under institutional neutrality for you.
A: I don’t think this does. If I were in Minnesota, let’s say, and a client had a strongly held point of view about whether or not we need to have Canada as our 51st state, I’d discourage an institution in Minnesota from expressing that. On the other hand, that same institution may well be serving the higher ed industry if it makes some points about why having accreditation done by regional accreditors, as opposed to 50 different state agencies, is better. Then I think that kind of thing would be an appropriate subject for their comments.
From the day he retook office, President Donald Trump’s campaign to disrupt higher education has been unrelenting. He’s targeted diversity, equity and inclusion. His administration slashed more than a billion dollars in federal grants and contracts for universities, and it plans to cut more. It’s also attempted to deport pro-Palestinian international scholars, accusing them of sympathizing with terrorism.
Prominent—or infamous—among the administration’s escalating actions was its decision last month to cut $400 million from Columbia University for allegedly failing to address on-campus antisemitism. Trump officials followed this by demanding that the university, among other things, place its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department in academic receivership.
As the disruption has mounted, many college and university presidents have kept silent. But unions representing higher ed employees have stepped up to the plate. They’ve protested in Washington, D.C., and on their campuses, organized open letters and filed a flurry of lawsuits against the Trump administration. Union leaders say they are filling a void in an existential fight for higher ed’s future. They wish others would join their resistance, but their unified strength in numbers may protect their members from federal retaliation in ways that higher ed officials aren’t.
Concerns about higher ed’s future under Trump and calls for a forceful response to his actions pervaded a recent gathering on collective bargaining in higher ed. The conference—held in Manhattan just two days after Columbia announced it would capitulate to multiple demands the administration made—offered a snapshot into a large pocket of resistance.
We couldn’t actually be better positioned to fight back against the kind of authoritarian attacks that we’re seeing.”
—Ian Gavigan, national director of Higher Ed Labor United
William A. Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, kicked off the event addressing what he has called the Trump administration’s “assault on higher education.”
“We gather today during a very perilous time. To paraphrase Tom Paine, these are the times that try our souls,” Herbert said, adding that “in this crisis, we must care for ourselves and others—particularly our students, our immigrants and others most vulnerable in this time of danger.”
He spoke to roughly 150 people gathered in the historic home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Invoking the wartime president’s Four Freedoms speech, Herbert said FDR’s listed freedoms—of speech and worship, and from want and fear—“are threatened more today than ever before. So it is our obligation to those who came before us to fight for freedom and to fight against tyranny.”
Rejecting nonintervention, Herbert said, “Neutrality in defense of higher education’s mission and the principles of collective bargaining is not an option. We must reject appeasement. We must reject capitulation to the enemies of higher education and collective negotiations.”
As the conference progressed last week, unions showed they weren’t capitulating. The American Association of University Professors, an organization of scholars that also represents many of them as a union, alongside the American Federation of Teachers, with which the AAUP is affiliated, filed together or individually three lawsuits against the Trump administration’s moves. These suits seek to stop the dismantling of the Education Department, end deportations of noncitizen students and faculty who demonstrated for Palestinians, and restore Columbia’s lost $400 million.
Even before last week, the AFT had sued the Education Department to stop it from enforcing a sweeping Dear Colleague letter targeting DEI, and together with the AAUP sued the department and Trump to overturn his anti-DEI executive orders. The AAUP and its partners did secure a temporary injunction blocking parts of the anti-DEI orders—an early victory—but an appeals court overturned that court order. (Other higher ed groups and unions have sued, but the AAUP and AFT are involved in multiple lawsuits that Inside Higher Ed is tracking.)
Atop the litigation, presidents and members of those unions and others—such as the United Autoworkers, a major organizer of graduate student workers—have rallied in Washington, D.C., against cuts to universities and federal research agencies. This week, the UAW joined other, nonunion organizations in suing to overturn the administration’s cancellations of National Institutes of Health grants.
Attempts at more national shows of force are coming. Across dozens of campuses, multiple unions are sponsoring a “Kill the Cuts” day of action on April 8, focused on reversing the NIH cuts and other federal funding reductions, followed by a more general protest April 17. It all adds up to campus unions taking a public stand where administrators largely haven’t.
“I think that labor needs to fill the vacuum of leadership we’re seeing in the sector,” said Todd Wolfson, national president of the AAUP. “I don’t see another way forward.”
A Large Presence
Expecting powerful resistance from labor organizations might seem irrational in the U.S., where union membership among workers over all dropped to 10 percent in 2024—a record low since data collection began in 1983. But the picture is starkly different when you look at faculty and grad student workers alone.
Bucking the national trend, grad workers’ unionized ranks increased 133 percent from 2012 to the start of 2024. Roughly 38 percent of them are now unionized. That’s according to a report released last year by Herbert’s collective bargaining study center at Hunter College; Herbert said the share of unionized grad workers is even greater today, but he didn’t have an updated figure.
The number of unionized faculty also increased over that 12-year period, from roughly 374,000 in 2012 to 402,000 in January 2024. Roughly 27 percent of faculty are now unionized. And the Biden years saw a growing phenomenon of postdoctoral and undergraduate student workers unionizing. Trump has shaken up the National Labor Relations Board and experts predict a rollback in rights for union workers, but higher ed strikes are continuing into his administration in Massachusetts and California.
“We have more power now on our campuses than we’ve had in recent memory,” said Ian Gavigan, national director of Higher Ed Labor United, or HELU, and formerly a unionized grad worker himself. “And we couldn’t actually be better positioned to fight back against the kind of authoritarian attacks that we’re seeing.”
“I’m scared,” Gavigan said, but “that power gives me hope.”
The White House didn’t return Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment.
HELU seeks to unify all types of higher ed workers—including nonacademic workers, and regardless of whether they’re unionized or not—into a single, national coalition. Gavigan spoke during a late-addition panel to the conference. (The whole conference was renamed, after Trump’s election, “Unity in Defense of Higher Education and Collective Bargaining.”)
Panelists and the audience discussed the Trump administration’s ongoing targeting of higher ed and how to respond.
“We are under absolutely relentless assault,” said Rebecca Givan, general vice president of the Rutgers University AAUP-AFT and a HELU steering committee member. “It’s constant, it’s everywhere, it’s in every direction, but it would be so much worse if we didn’t have our unions. And so we have these structures and we need to use them to fight back.”
Givan said that “none of us have been sleeping,” but “if we can’t organize within our unions to fight back, we have nothing.” She said unions have to work within state and federal politics and agencies, fighting for changes such as higher taxes on the rich to fund higher ed.
“We also have to give our university administrators a strong invitation to do the right thing,” Givan said. “And if they do not, we have to fill that leadership vacuum. We cannot let them back down. We cannot let them do a Columbia and capitulate.”
Some other higher ed groups beyond unions are resisting as well. The American Council on Education, which represents colleges and universities, has sued to stop the NIH from capping reimbursements for costs indirectly related to research. As for why many presidents aren’t publicly speaking up, Jon Fansmith, ACE’s senior vice president for government relations, told Inside Higher Ed that they have an “incredible tightrope to walk.”
“They are responsible for the jobs and livelihood of thousands—tens of thousands—of people in some cases,” Fansmith said.
They’re also responsible for the continuation of university work that includes treating patients and other important concerns. Speaking up could come at a price. Fansmith noted that the Trump administration froze about half of Princeton University’s federal grants after President Christopher Eisgruber wrote in The Atlantic that the “Trump administration’s recent attack on Columbia” represented “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.”
Wolfson, the AAUP president, told Inside Higher Ed that individual university presidents might not speak out because that puts targets on their backs. But there’s “no reason why we haven’t seen a letter signed by 1,000 presidents” speaking out against what the administration did to Columbia, Wolfson said.
“It’s a real disappointment,” he said, adding that “labor has to step in and be the main focal point of a strong, powerful and vigorous response to the federal government.”
Indeed, I have recently been struck repeatedly by the immediate juxtaposition of the banal, logistical work of being a freelance writer and speaker and the fact that the stuff I write and speak about—teaching, academia, et al.—are under concerted attack as part of a larger assault on democratic institutions, to the point where one wonders if they’re going to collapse entirely.
I’ve accepted speaking invites for six months from now wondering if we will still have operating higher education institutions six months from now. I mean, I think we will, but at this moment I wouldn’t 100 percent guarantee it, which is a strange thing to even consider given that some of these places are literally hundreds of years old.
I even just accepted an invitation to speak at a teachers’ conference in Alberta, Canada, in April 2026, and even as I signed the contract I wondered if we will still be able to travel freely between the U.S. and Canada by then.
It strikes me that part of the strategy of those currently committing these assaults on democracy is to create this kind of cognitive dissonance. Every day brings a new example of something we didn’t think could happen: disappearing people to foreign countries without even a semblance of due process, dismantling the federal infrastructure around cancer research, a president speculating about a third term and it being taken seriously as a question of legality.
That’s just this week, by the way.
The discordancy is probably greater for those working in or adjacent to higher ed, as the sector finds itself so directly in the Trump administration crosshairs. There is more not-normal in education than elsewhere right now, though the recently announced tariffs suggest that not normal is now going to be extended worldwide.
It strikes me that we are on one of two possible trajectories. One is essentially a slide into what scholars call competitive authoritarianism, where there are some external trappings of democratic society like courts and elections still existing, but where the fix is largely in as to who and what maintains power. Hungary and Turkey are the two most obvious examples that experts cite, but we’re seeing plenty of evidence for joining them right here at home.
The so-called Big Law firms that have capitulated to Trump and pledged to do hundreds of millions of dollars of legal work in exchange for being removed from the target list seem like examples of organizations that are making their bet that they can survive in a nondemocracy provided they’re willing to curry favor with power. Republican office holders seeking to carve out exceptions from Trump tariffs for their state’s industries are another example.
So too are the higher ed institutions, such as Columbia, bending the knee to Trump. They apparently view their continued existence—be that in a democratic society or something else—as more important than protecting values like academic freedom or the First Amendment. Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law professor who apparently is an expert on First Amendment law, sees these responses (as characterized by The New York Times) as “rational,” saying, “Sometimes people who are eager for the university to get up and make big statements have a slightly unrealistic conception of what the real-world effect of those statements would be.”
One of the upsides of the present turmoil—and it is a very small upside, I admit—is that folks are showing their true stances when it comes to the occasional fraught intersection of their purported values and material reality. Here is an esteemed First Amendment lawyer who is willing to countenance an unprecedented assault on academic freedom because the “real-world” consequences are apparently too great.
I have often lamented in this space how there has appeared to be a significant disconnect between the lofty ideals attached to higher education and how many higher education institutions act when they have a choice between living their mission or funding their operations. Feldman makes it clear which side of the divide he sits on, and he is not alone.
The other possible trajectory is that the sheer incompetence and erratic nature of Trump and those who surround him will lead to an unraveling of the assault as it implodes under the weight of public disapproval. The recent election results in Wisconsin and Florida, which showed a significant swing toward Democrats, suggest that if the public is activated and motivated, there is sufficient sentiment to defeat Trump and Republicans at the ballot box—provided we still have elections, that is.
Personally, I keep returning to the question I asked back in February: “What’s next for higher ed?” My argument that one era was over and another is to come has only been made stronger over the last month and a half. There is no going back for Columbia University. They have chosen to be something other than what they previously claimed to be. I’m certain Columbia will survive in some form, but we should not be asked to pretend that they are an example of the values we’d like to claim for higher education institutions.
Most days, I am both freaked out and hopeful, which is maybe my answer to Cottom’s musing about how we’re able to act like we’re living in a normal country. Part of the time I’m freaked out, certain that we are decidedly not a normal country and we are hurtling toward disaster.
But other times I am doing work that I think advances the values of free inquiry and personal freedom and development. I imagine going to some college or university six months from now, where we will talk about the importance of human expression through the act of writing, and then after that maybe I sit down to write a blog post, forcing myself to grapple with the world in front of me and make sense of it, even when, or especially when, it appears senseless.
Next thing you know, some thoughts have been gathered and you share them with the world.
When I first read the BlueSky post, I imagined that Cottom was thinking that we’re experiencing a disconnect or disassociation that allows us to deny the weirdness and even terror happening around us, but I think it’s the opposite.
I think it’s a sign that the work matters and that we must throw our continued support behind the leaders and institutions who are pledging to make the work that remains consistent with educational values possible. I don’t know how Feldman’s soft capitulation gets us there.
Florida Atlantic University reportedly has a pending agreement with the federal government to allow its campus police department to question and detain individuals who are suspected of being in the U.S. without legal authorization, The Florida Phoenix reported.
If FAU police acquire immigration enforcement authority, the university would seemingly be the first in the nation to deputize campus cops as federal enforcement agents, the Phoenix noted.
However, it appears that all other Florida institutions with sworn police departments will follow FAU’s lead to comply with a February directive from Gov. Ron DeSantis requiring state law enforcement agencies to enter into an agreement “to execute functions of immigration enforcement within the state” so “deportations can be carried out more efficiently.”
“All state law enforcement agencies are expected to follow the governor’s Feb. 19 directive on working U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” FAU spokesperson Joshua Glanzer wrote to Inside Higher Ed. “This includes FAUPD and other state university police departments.”
The move comes after Florida Atlantic hired former GOP lawmaker Adam Hasner to be president in February. Hasner, who once boasted of being “the most partisan Republican in Tallahassee,” served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2002 to 2010. Prior to taking the top job at FAU, Hasner was an executive at the GEO Group, a for-profit prison company.
The GEO Group currently runs more than a dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in California, Florida, Texas and various other states, according to its website.
Hasner’s history with the GEO Group was a matter of contention for students and others during the hiring process; some raised objections during public forums about his for-profit prison past. Other critics expressed concerns about his lack of administrative experience in higher education.
The American Association of University Professors is warning college and university lawyers not to provide the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights the names and nationalities of students or faculty involved in alleged Title VI violations.
The AAUP’s letter comes after The Washington Postreported last week that Education Department higher-ups directed OCR attorneys investigating universities’ responses to reports of antisemitism to “collect the names and nationalities of students who might have harassed Jewish students or faculty.” The department didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Thursday.
In a 13-page Wednesday letter to college and university general counsels’ offices, four law professors serving as AAUP counsel wrote that higher education institutions “are under no legal compulsion to comply.” The AAUP counsel further urged them “not to comply, given the serious risks and harms of doing so”—noting that the Trump administration is revoking visas and detaining noncitizens over “students’ and faculty members’ speech and expressive activities.” The administration has targeted international students and other scholars suspected of participating in pro-Palestinian advocacy.
Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on, among other things, shared ancestry, which includes antisemitism. But the AAUP counsel wrote that “Title VI does not require higher education institutions to provide the personally identifiable information of individual students or faculty members so that the administration can carry out further deportations.”
And Title VI investigations, they wrote, “are not intended to determine whether the students and faculty who attend these schools have violated any civil rights laws, let alone discipline or punish students or faculty.” They wrote that investigations are instead “intended to determine whether the institution itself has discriminated.”
Providing this information to the federal government may violate the First Amendment rights of those targeted, plus the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and state laws, they wrote, adding that this information shouldn’t be turned over without “clear justification for the release of specific information related to a legitimate purpose in the context of a particular active investigation.”
After tussling over proposed legislation to allow community colleges to offer a bachelor’s of nursing degree, Los Angeles County’s 19 community colleges and the California State University system are working together to tackle local nursing shortages. The partnership, spearheaded by Compton College, may signal a new phase of cooperation between the two systems.
The Nursing 2035 Initiative aims to foster collaboration between community colleges, the CSU system and other stakeholders; conduct research; and devise strategies to graduate more registered nurses in the region over the next decade. The project also includes the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, the Department of Economic Opportunity with the County of Los Angeles and California Competes, an organization focused on higher ed and workforce development in the state.
Keith Curry, president of Compton College, said the need for more nurses in the region is dire. Lightcast, a labor market analytics firm, projected 6,454 job openings for registered nurses in Los Angeles County annually through 2035, but degree-completion data from 2023 shows local colleges only produced 5,363 graduates with relevant degrees that year.
Curry described a nearby medical clinic’s emergency room as “flooded” with patients at the same time aspiring nurses face barriers to entering the profession, such as vying for limited spots in nursing programs. Programs, meanwhile, struggle to grow because of challenges with retaining nursing faculty, who can find better wages working in hospitals, and competition for scarce clinical placements.
The goal is “really trying to address health disparities in the community I’m from, and nursing is just another one of those issues that we have to address,” Curry said.
Teamwork After Tensions
The move comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom encouraged more CSU–community college partnerships on nursing last year after he vetoed two bills that would have allowed some community colleges to offer B.S.N. programs as part of a pilot program.
At the time, community college leaders argued that expanding their nursing offerings beyond associate degrees would make nursing education more affordable and combat nurse shortages in the state. But CSU leaders opposed the legislation, countering that the new programs would be duplicative and force the CSU’s existing programs to compete for resources, like clinical placements. (The two systems have also cyclically battled over community college baccalaureate degrees since the state allowed them a decade ago.)
Newsom came down on the CSUs’ side.
“All segments of higher education should continue to focus on building these programs together,” he wrote in one of his veto messages, “and I am concerned this bill could inadvertently undermine that collaboration.”
The initiative is an attempt to do just that, Curry said.
“It’s not us versus them,” he said. “It’s about how can we partner together to solve a problem. So, I felt that CSU has to be the table.”
Jose Fierro, president of Cerritos College and co-chair of the Los Angeles Regional Consortium, a coalition of L.A. County’s 19 colleges, said he and other community college leaders were “disappointed” by Newsom’s rejection of community college B.S.N. degrees because he felt like they would help his place-bound students. He said his campus is nine miles on average from local universities.
Students “may not be within driving distance because they would have to uproot their families, or because of the high cost of housing, they wouldn’t be able to move to a different city to be able to access these programs,” he said.
At the same time, he believes the collaborative approach will benefit students.
“We are bringing county representatives, hospital representatives, state officials, California State and community colleges to look at our programs and our shortage of nurses in a comprehensive manner,” to think about “how can we work together to meet the needs of the community?”
An Example for Others
Some nursing partnerships between community colleges and CSUs already exist. For example, California State University, Northridge, has an A.D.N.-B.S.N. Community College Collaborative Program, which allows students earning nursing associate degrees at partnering community colleges to earn a B.S.N. on an accelerated timeline. A program at Cal State Long Beach also allows nursing associate degree students to take B.S.N. classes while in community college.
Nathan Evans, deputy vice chancellor for academic and student affairs and chief academic officer at the CSU Office of the Chancellor, believes the Nursing 2035 Initiative can serve as an example of how community college and CSU leaders can strategically confront local nursing shortages together.
“The boundaries of our institutions don’t have to be what they were in the past,” he said. “Our hope is that this is a model of what collaboration looks like between our segments and there’s a lot less friction in terms of the student experience, that there are clear road maps for students, particularly in the nursing field.”
As a first step, the group plans to research the region’s nursing education and workforce and release a report in the fall with policy and budget recommendations on how to expand nursing programs in the area. The goal is to work on the recommendations through 2035.
Evans said the initiative is “using data to really drive a needs assessment and then allow that to lead us to, what are the ways we collectively can respond?”
The hope is that process leads to new, innovative partnerships, said Fierro. For example, he can imagine CSUs offering B.S.N. programs on community college campuses, or partnering with community colleges on collaborative programs, so that students who struggle to commute to universities because of work or family obligations have more options.
“To me, the main objective is to ensure that we bring that value to the local communities,” he said, “regardless of whose name is issuing the diploma.”
Mark Carney’s whirlwind start as Canadian prime minister has seen his party surge in the polls against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s threats but has provided little time to flesh out the newcomer’s policies on higher education and science.
When Justin Trudeau announced his resignation in January, the Liberal Party was trailing the Conservatives by more than 20 percentage points and was only narrowly ahead of the New Democratic Party.
But since Trump started a trade war with what he has belittled as his “51st state,” the Liberals have rebounded remarkably in the polls and are now favorites to retain power in the snap election on April 28.
Although the federal government is the primary player when it comes to investments in research and innovation in Canada, higher education has seldom been a major issue in national elections, said Glen Jones, professor of higher education at the University of Toronto.
“Not surprisingly, the entire election is focusing on the trade war that has been initiated by President Trump,” he said.
“The Carney platform, at least to date, has largely been about providing support and stability to individuals and industries that will be directly impacted by tariffs.”
Carney has been focusing primarily on positioning himself as the leader best able to respond to the new, evolving relationship with the U.S.—a strategy that seems to be working, added Jones.
Sarah Laframboise, executive director of Evidence for Democracy, a science policy nonprofit organization, said Carney’s background—as a former United Nations special envoy for climate action—suggests that he will remain committed to his views on climate policy, and that his pro-economic growth platform could translate into targeting investments in research, innovation and artificial intelligence.
“We will also likely see an increased focus on defense-related research, particularly around Arctic security and collaborative defense technologies. However, it remains unclear if this will extend to basic research,” said Laframboise.
“Additionally, his restrictive stance on international student admissions could have significant consequences for Canada’s higher education sector.”
Carney, who has never previously held elected office, earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in the U.K. before later going on to become governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020.
“The investment fell short of reinvigorating funding for science, tech and the innovation sector,” he said.
“If the Carney Liberals are elected to power, I think we can expect the previous government’s investment to stay … but will they double down on that investment?”
Having examined Carney’s website—which mentions artificial intelligence 11 times, innovation once and science not at all—Johnson said the prime minister’s priorities in future funding seemed fairly clear.
With either Carney or Poilievre in charge, he said the next government will have an “amazing opportunity” to invest in science, technology and innovation.
“Given the USA’s deep cuts to science funding, Canada has the opportunity to leap forward as a global leader in strategic areas, but only if we increase our investment in science, training, technology and mobilization of the innovations that come from these activities.”
