Tag: Jobs

Harvard Sues the Trump Administration

After a weeks-long standoff with the federal government over alleged antisemitism on campus, Harvard University sued the Trump administration on Monday over the $2.2 billion federal funding freeze enacted after the private institution rejected a far-reaching slate of reforms last week.

The Trump administration had demanded Harvard overhaul university governance, hiring, admissions and more, despite the fact that an investigation has yet to reach any conclusions.

President Alan Garber announced the move in a statement to the university community Monday, noting that while some officials in the Trump administration have claimed the demand letter was sent by accident, the federal government has acted in ways that suggest it was purposeful.

“Doubling down on the letter’s sweeping and intrusive demands—which would impose unprecedented and improper control over the University—the government has, in addition to the initial freeze of $2.2 billion in funding, considered taking steps to freeze an additional $1 billion in grants, initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. These actions have stark real-life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff, researchers, and the standing of American higher education in the world,” Garber wrote.

The lawsuit comes as the Trump administration has threatened to cut off Harvard’s ability to host international students and reportedly sought to freeze another $1 billion in research funding.

“It has been clear for weeks that the administration’s actions violated due process and the rule of law,” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education. “We applaud Harvard for taking this step and look forward to a clear and unambiguous statement by the court rebuking efforts to undermine scholarship and science.”

Harvard’s lawsuit names the Departments of Health and Human Services, Justice, Education, Energy and Defense, the General Services Administration, the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and associated agency heads. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.

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April 21, 2025
Debt Collection on Defaulted Student Loans to Restart in May

Borrowers in default could see their tax refunds or other federal benefits withheld once collections resume.

J. David Ake/Getty Images

The Education Department will resume collecting on defaulted student loans early next month, restarting a system that’s been on hold since spring 2020, the agency announced Monday.

Starting May 5, the department will withhold tax refunds or benefits such as Social Security from borrowers who are in default. Later this summer, the department will begin garnishing the wages of defaulted borrowers, a move consumer protection advocates have criticized as out of control.

About 38 percent of the nearly 43 million student loan borrowers are current on their payments, and a record number of borrowers are at risk of or in delinquency and default, the department said Monday. Borrowers default when they miss at least 270 days of payments.

When the Biden administration restarted student loan payments in September 2023, it offered a one-year grace period for borrowers during which those who didn’t make payments were spared the worst financial consequences, including default.

Research into borrowers who default and other data shows they typically fall behind on their payments because other loans take a higher priority or they can’t afford their payments, among other reasons. And borrowers in default usually don’t have the ability to repay their loans. A survey from the Pew Charitable Trusts found that unemployed borrowers were twice as likely to default compared to those who worked full-time. Additionally, borrowers who didn’t complete the education they took out loans to pay for are more likely to default than completers.

“The folks who fall behind on their payments are those who are least well served by the higher education and repayment systems,” said Sarah Sattelmeyer, project director for education, opportunity and mobility in the higher education initiative at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “A lot of those folks did not receive a return on their higher education investment … These aren’t people who overwhelmingly do not want to pay their loans.”

About 5.3 million borrowers have defaulted on their loans, and many have been in default for more than seven years, according to the department. Another four million borrowers are in “late-stage delinquency,” or 91 to 180 days behind on their payments. The department expects about 10 million or nearly one-quarter of borrowers to default by the fall.

“We think that the federal student loan portfolio is headed toward a fiscal cliff if we don’t start repayment and collections,” a senior department official said on a press call Monday. “American taxpayers can no longer serve as collateral for student loans.”

The official didn’t take questions, and a department spokesperson referred reporters to Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. She’s also slated to appear on CNBC and Fox Business to discuss the restart in collections.

In her public statements Monday, McMahon blamed the Biden administration and colleges for the current situation.

“Colleges and universities call themselves nonprofits, but for years they have profited massively off the federal subsidy of loans, hiking tuition and piling up multibillion-dollar endowments while students graduate six figures in the red,” she wrote in the Journal.

Beyond the immediate restart, the senior department official said the department is planning to work with Congress to fix the system so that students can afford their loan payments and to lower the cost of college.

Former Biden administration officials, borrowers and debt-relief advocates have said that efforts to forgive student loans were a way to address systemic failures in the student loan system and to help vulnerable borrowers who were likely to never repay their loans.

The department is planning a “robust communication strategy,” the senior official said, to spread the word to borrowers and share information about their options, such as enrolling in an income-driven repayment plan or loan rehabilitation.

Currently, about 1.8 million borrowers have pending applications for an IDR plan, but the department intends to clear that backlog over the next few weeks, the official said. The department also is planning to email borrowers individually about their options. The outreach plan also includes extending the loan servicers’ call center hours on weekends and weeknights.

Sattelmeyer, who worked in the Office of Federal Student Aid during the Biden administration, said it will be important to ensure borrowers have access to information and the tools such as IDR plans to either get out of or avoid default and then stay on track. She questioned whether the department has enough staff to restart collections effectively, given the recent mass layoffs at the agency.

“The issue is that the system is in disarray right now and there have not been a consistent set of options available for borrowers at the same time that we’re turning back on collections,” she said. “At the end of the day, I think the most important thing is that it does not feel like we have the resources and the staffing in place to make this go smoothly and to ensure that borrowers have support and access to resources and tools.”

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April 21, 2025
College grads say they are confident about jobs but cautious about economy

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As the current job market continues to shift, 2025 college graduates express both optimism and concern about their job prospects, according to Monster’s annual State of the Graduate Report.

Most graduates (83%) said they were confident about landing a role soon after graduation, although 37% said the job hunt could take 4-6 months.

“The job market is rapidly shifting, and today’s graduates are entering it with both confidence and conviction,” Scott Blumsack, CMO of CareerBuilder + Monster, said in the report.

“The message is clear: today’s graduates are ambitious, intentional, and values-driven,” Blumsack said. “Employers who adapt to these priorities by offering flexibility, purpose, and pathways to growth will be best positioned to attract and retain the next generation of top talent.”

In a poll of 1,000 new and upcoming college graduates, 75% said they’re worried their job prospects will be affected by the economy, up from 69% in 2024.

In addition, 48% of graduates said they assume they won’t be able to find a job at the workplace they prefer, as compared with 52% in 2024.

Due to current market conditions, 42% of graduates who don’t already have a full-time job said they’re now looking at more companies and industries, an increase from 34% in 2024.

Graduates pointed to several red flags that would prevent them from applying for a job at a company, including a salary freeze, recent layoffs, lower than average earnings during the past year, a mandate for daily in-office work and fully remote work.

At the same time, graduates reported mixed thoughts about the economy and how it may impact their starting salary. About 37% expect their starting salary to be higher as a result of the economy, while 27% expect their starting salary to be lower.

Job security also appears to be a major priority, with 80% reporting concerns about job security in the current market, as compared with 77% in 2024. About 64% said it’ll be more difficult to find a job due to artificial intelligence filling roles previously held by humans, up from 62% in 2024.

In December 2024, hiring, job openings and turnover decreased, with hiring reaching its lowest point in five years, according to a BambooHR report. Hiring declined across all industries, both in the U.S. and worldwide, the report found.

For now, the labor market has cooled off, which could be good news for hiring managers, leading economists told HR Dive. Although top talent may be somewhat easier to find and retain, an aging workforce and changes to immigration will likely challenge recruiters throughout 2025, they said.

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April 21, 2025
USF Reimagines Academic Supports for Student Success

Colleges and universities are home to an array of resources to help students thrive and succeed, but many students don’t know about them. Just over half (56 percent) of college students say they’re aware of tutoring and academic supports on campus, compared to 94 percent of college employees who say their campus offers the resources.

At the University of South Florida, the Academic Success Center is a central office in the library that houses tutoring, the writing lab, peer mentoring and supplemental instruction, among other academic support offerings for undergraduates.

Zoraya Betancourt became director of the center in 2020 during a challenging time, she said—in part because the center had to reintroduce itself to incoming students who had never been on campus and those who had their college experience disrupted by COVID-19.

National data shows that students at large public institutions are spending less time studying outside of class now compared to during the 2018–19 academic year, and they are less likely to participate in a study group with their peers.

“For me, it was like, OK, we are going to have to be very different. We can’t go back to who we were,” Betancourt said.

Spurred by student data and feedback, Betancourt and her team led a remodel of the center to be more responsive to student needs and meet them where they are.

Data-based decisions: To start, Betancourt partnered with Steve Johnson, a data scientist on the university’s Predictive Analytics Research for Student Success team, to build a dashboard of student data.

“For many years the only data we had was how many students come and use the services how many times,” as well as some student identification data, Betancourt said. “I always thought we need more than that—we need to know more than that.”

Now, Betancourt has access to student majors, colleges and the types of services they utilize to identify high-demand subjects and create responsive learning support schedules. The dashboard also connects the way services are tied to student retention and outcome goals.

In addition to automating some work, the dashboard allows staff to engage students more directly. Each week, the system generates a report of new visitors to the center, which staff use to reach out and personally welcome students to the center and its services.

A care-centered model: One trend that became clear in student interactions was the prevalence of stress in the student experience, Betancourt said. “Our tutors are coming to us and saying, ‘I have a student … and I don’t know how to help them.’”

In response, the office adopted a care model for referrals that quickly connects support staff with other departments, reducing opportunities for students to fall through the cracks.

“Within this referral system, we can go in and see if a student who is using our services says, ‘I really need to change my major and I don’t know what to do, I’m really stressing out over it,’” Betancourt said. “We’re able to go into the system and refer them directly to an adviser.”

Larry Billue Jr. serves as the Academic Success Center point person for care management, guiding students to counseling support, financial aid, basic needs support and academic advisers or just sitting with the student to discuss how they’re feeling.

Increased peer engagement: Another new feature of the ACS was supplemental instruction. While the academic intervention has been around for decades, it was new to the university and created opportunities for increased collaboration between staff and faculty to promote academic success, as well as create jobs for student employees.

“That became more evident because we were hearing from students, ‘I need more than just tutoring. I like working with my peers,’” Betancourt said.

At USF, supplemental instruction is called PASS, short for peer-assisted study sessions. The ACS is tracking student participation in PASS to gauge use.

Students can also sign up to receive remote tutoring in select courses through the PORTAL (peer online resources for tutoring and learning), to supplement in-person opportunities when the office may be closed.

The impact: Over the past year, the center has seen a 75 percent year-over-year increase in student use.

Having a care team member on board has also been successful; Billue Jr. can physically walk a student across campus to the relevant office and make introductions as needed.

“It’s been well received by students; they take him up on the offer and they’ll walk with him,” Betancourt said.

The center has also expanded training for academic peer mentors to address not only study strategies and effective learning practices, but also how to make referrals to other offices.

The biggest lesson Betancourt has learned: There are a range of opportunities to engage students and connect with them, understanding those opportunities just requires a deeper look at what students need.

“We serve to engage students on campus, to engage students with each other, to engage students with faculty and with staff, and it’s looking at that a little bit closer to improve our services and how we can build on that,” Betancourt said.

Do you have an academic intervention that might help others improve student success? Tell us about it.

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April 21, 2025
Half of Colleges Don’t Grant Students Access to Gen AI Tools

Transformative. Disruptive. Game-changing. That’s how many experts continue to refer, without hyperbole, to generative AI’s impact on higher education. Yet more than two years after generative AI went mainstream, half of chief technology officers report that their college or university isn’t granting students institutional access to generative AI tools, which are often gratis and more sophisticated and secure than what’s otherwise available to students. That’s according to Inside Higher Ed’s forthcoming annual Survey of Campus Chief Technology/Information Officers with Hanover Research.

There remains some significant—and important—skepticism in academe about generative AI’s potential for pedagogical (and societal) good. But with a growing number of institutions launching key AI initiatives underpinned by student access to generative AI tools, and increasing student and employer expectations around AI literacy, student generative AI access has mounting implications for digital equity and workforce readiness. And according to Inside Higher Ed’s survey, cost is the No. 1 barrier to granting access, ahead of lack of need and even ethical concerns.

Ravi Pendse, who reviewed the findings for Inside Higher Ed and serves as vice president for information technology and chief information officer at the University of Michigan, a leader in granting students access to generative AI tools, wasn’t surprised by the results. But he noted that AI prompting costs, typically measured in units called tokens, have fallen sharply over time. Generative AI models, including open-source large language models, have proliferated over the same period, meaning that institutions have increasing—and increasingly less expensive—options for providing students access to tools.

‘Paralyzed’ by Costs

“Sometimes we get paralyzed by, ‘I don’t have resources, or there’s no way I can do this,’ and that’s where people need to just lean in,” Pendse said. “I want to implore all leaders and colleagues to step up and focus on what’s possible, and let human creativity get us there.”

According to the survey—which asked 108 CTOs at two- and four-year colleges, public and private nonprofit, much more about AI, digital transformation, online learning and other key topics—institutional approaches to student generative AI access vary. (The full survey findings will be released next month.)

Some 27 percent of CTOs said their college or university offers students generative AI access through an institutionwide license, with CTOs at public nonprofit institutions especially likely to say this. Another 13 percent of all CTOs reported student access to generative AI tools is limited to specific programs or departments, with this subgroup made up entirely of private nonprofit CTOs. And 5 percent of the sample reported that students at their institution have access to a custom-built generative AI tool.

Among community college CTOs specifically (n=22), 36 percent said that students have access to generative AI tools, all through an institutionwide license.

Roughly half of institutions represented do not offer student access to generative AI tools. Some 36 percent of CTOs reported that their college doesn’t offer access but is considering doing so, while 15 percent said that their institution doesn’t offer access and is not considering it.

Of those CTOs who reported some kind of student access to generative AI and answered a corresponding question about how they pay for it (n=45), half said associated costs are covered by their central IT budget; most of these are public institution CTOs. Another quarter said there are no associated costs. Most of the rest of this group indicated that funding comes from individual departments. Almost no one said costs are passed on to students, such as through fees.

Among CTOs from institutions that don’t provide student access who responded to a corresponding question about why not (n=51), the top-cited barrier from a list of possibilities was costs. Ethical concerns, such as those around potential misuse and academic integrity, factored in, as well, followed by concerns about data privacy and/or security. Fewer said there is no need or insufficient technical expertise to manage implementation.

“I very, very strongly feel that every student that graduates from any institution of higher education must have at least one core course in AI, or significant exposure to these tools. And if we’re not doing that, I believe that we are doing a disservice to our students,” Pendse said. “As a nation we need to be prepared, which means we as educators have a responsibility. We need to step up and not get bogged down by cost, because there are always solutions available. Michigan welcomes the opportunity to partner with any institution out there and provide them guidance, all our lessons learned.”

The Case for Institutional Access

But do students really need their institutions to provide access to generative AI tools, given that rapid advances in AI technology also have led to fewer limitations on free, individual-level access to products such as ChatGPT, which many students have and can continue to use on their own?

Experts such as Sidney Fernandes, vice president and CIO of the University of South Florida, which offers all students, faculty and staff access to Microsoft Copilot, say yes. One reason: privacy and security concerns. USF users of Copilot Chat use the tool in a secure, encrypted environment to maintain data privacy. And the data users share within USF’s Copilot enterprise functions—which support workflows and innovation—also remains within the institution and is not used to train AI models.

There’s no guarantee, of course, that students with secure, institutional generative AI accounts will use only them. But at USF and beyond, account rollouts are typically accompanied by basic training efforts—another plus for AI literacy and engagement.

“When we offer guidance on how to use the profiles, we’ve said, ‘If you’re using the commercially available chat bots, those are the equivalent of being on social media. Anything you post there could be used for whatever reason, so be very careful,” Fernandes told Inside Higher Ed.

In Inside Higher Ed’s survey, CTOs who reported student access to generative AI tools by some means were no more likely than the group over all to feel highly confident in their institution’s cybersecurity practices—although CTOs as a group may have reason to worry about students and cybersecurity generally: Just 26 percent reported their institution requires student training in cybersecurity.

Colleges can also grant students access to tools that are much more powerful than freely available and otherwise prompt-limited chat bots, as well as tools that are more integrated into other university platforms and resources. Michigan, for instance, offers students access to an AI assistant and another conversational AI tool, plus a separate tool that can be trained on a custom dataset. Access to a more advanced and flexible tool kit for those who require full control over their AI environments and models is available by request.

Responsive AI and the Role of Big Tech

Another reason for institutions to lead on student access to generative AI tools is cultural responsiveness, as AI tools reflect the data they’re trained on, and human biases often are baked into that data. Muhsinah Morris, director of Metaverse programs at Morehouse College, which has various culturally responsive AI initiatives—such as those involving AI tutors that look like professors—said it “makes a lot of sense to not put your eggs in one basket and say that basket is going to be the one that you carry … But at the end of the day, it’s all about student wellness, 24-7, personalized support, making sure that students feel seen and heard in this landscape and developing skills in real time that are going to make them better.”

The stakes of generative AI in education, for digital equity and beyond, also implicate big tech companies whose generative AI models and bottom lines benefit from the knowledge flowing from colleges and universities. Big tech could therefore be doing much more to partner on free generative AI access with colleges and universities, and not just on the “2.0” and “3.0” models, Morris said.

“They have a responsibility to also pour back into the world,” she added. “They are not off the hook. As a matter of fact, I’m calling them to the carpet.”

Jenay Robert, senior researcher at Educause, noted that the organization’s 2025 AI Landscape Study: Into the Digital AI Divide found that more institutions are licensing AI tools than creating their own, across a variety of capabilities. She said digital equity is “certainly one of the biggest concerns when it comes to students’ access to generative AI tools.” Some 83 percent of respondents in that study said they were concerned about widening the digital divide as an AI-related risk. Yet most respondents were also optimistic about AI improving access to and accessibility of educational materials.

Of course, Robert added, “AI tools won’t contribute to any of these improvements if students can’t access the tools.” Respondents to the Educause landscape study from larger institutions were more likely those from smaller ones to report that their AI-related strategic planning includes increasing access to AI tools.

Inside Higher Ed’s survey also reveals a link between institution size and access, with student access to generative AI tools through an institutionwide license, especially, increasing with student population. But just 11 percent of CTOs reported that their institution has a comprehensive AI strategy.

Still, Robert cautioned that “access is only part of the equation here. If we want to avoid widening the digital equity divide, we also have to help students learn how to use the tools they have access to.”

In a telling data point from Educause’s 2025 Students and Technology Report, more than half of students reported that most or all of their instructors prohibit the use of generative AI.

Arizona State University, like Michigan, collaborated early on with OpenAI, but it has multiple vendor partners and grants student access to generative AI tools through an institutionwide license, through certain programs and custom-built tools. ASU closely follows generative AI consumption in a way that allows it to meet varied needs across the university in a cost-effective manner, as “the cost of one [generative AI] model versus another can vary dramatically,” said Kyle Bowen, deputy CIO.

“A large percentage of students make use of a moderate level of capability, but some students and faculty make use of more advanced capability,” he said. “So everybody having everything may not make sense. It may not be very cost-sustainable. Part of what we have to look at is what we would describe as consumption-based modeling—meaning we are putting in place the things that people need and will consume, not trying to speculate what the future will look like.”

That’s what even institutions with established student access are “wrestling with,” Bowen continued. “How do we provide that universal level of AI capability today while recognizing that that will evolve and change, and we have to be ready to have technology for the future, as well, right?”

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April 21, 2025
Northwestern to Fund Research After Federal Freeze

Northwestern University is stepping in to fund ongoing research projects after the private institution received stop-work orders on nearly 100 federal grants, CBS News Chicago reported.

The move comes after the Trump administration froze $790 million in federal research funding at Northwestern, which is one of multiple institutions across the U.S. hit by similar setbacks. Others include Harvard University, which had $2.2 billion frozen after it rejected changes demanded by the Trump administration in response to alleged antisemitism and harassment; Cornell University (more than $1 billion); Columbia University ($650 million); Brown University ($510 million); Princeton University ($210 million); and the University of Pennsylvania ($175 million).

Northwestern, like others on the list, had a pro-Palestinian encampment protest on campus last spring, which prompted Congress to bring its president in for a hearing on antisemitism in May.

Northwestern president Michael Schill and Board of Trustees chair Peter Barris told the university community in an email obtained by CBS News Chicago that the university still had not received formal notice that federal research funding had been pulled, but the university has received stop-work orders. They noted the university will continue funding on projects that received stop-work orders as well as other research threatened by the Trump administration.

“The work we do is essential to our community, to the nation and to the world. Enabling this vital research to continue is among our most important priorities, and supporting our researchers in this moment is a responsibility we take seriously,” Schill and Barris wrote in the Thursday email.

Northwestern is among the nation’s wealthiest universities, with an endowment recently valued at $14.2 billion. However, financial experts have cautioned against leveraging endowments to plug budget holes, prompting some wealthy institutions targeted by the administration to issue bonds or take out private loans.

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April 21, 2025
How Harvard Is Standing Up to Trump Means Everything

When it comes to fighting the current authoritarian threats coming out of the Trump administration, it’s important to remember that the symbol is the substance.

Frankly, this is always true of politics generally, but it’s more true and more important than ever in this moment.

We have an object example of this principle at work presently in the different responses from Harvard and Columbia when it comes to the threats to funding and demand for control by the Trump administration.

Columbia appeared to capitulate, forging an “agreement” to take steps sought by Trump, ostensibly to address antisemitism on campus, but this fig leaf was unconvincing, and Trump himself quickly dropped the pretense, as we all understand he has no interest in combating antisemitism and every interest in sending signals of domination and stoking fear that turns into pre-emptive compliance from other institutions.

Columbia looked unprincipled and weak in the face of the authoritarian threat, and the internal and external backlash against Columbia has been significant.

In contrast, once Harvard received the Trump administration demands, it crafted a careful public response, producing multiple public-facing communications meant to speak to different audiences (press, public, students, faculty, alumni) with different needs, including a letter from Harvard president Alan Garber to the university community that invoked a shared responsibility to defend the core values of the institution specifically and higher education in general.

To be fair, the call was much easier for Harvard than Columbia for several reasons. For one, Harvard had seen what happened to Columbia, where what looked like capitulation to outsiders still proved insufficient, because, again, Trump is interested in subservience, not reaching a mutual agreement. When Trump-world figures like JD Vance and Chris Rufo say they intend to destroy higher education, we should take them seriously.

The Trump administration demands of Harvard were also so extreme—amounting essentially to a takeover of the university—that it had no choice but to resist and take every possible step to rally others to the fight. The public thirst for an institutional response to Trump’s lawless power grabs has been so great that even the New York Times editorial board has weighed in with its approval of Harvard’s actions and the university’s explicit pledge to stand against violations of the rule of law.

An interesting bit of information in the form of an op-ed by Columbia history professor Matthew Connelly has come out that perhaps sheds additional light on Columbia’s actions. Writing at The New York Times, Connelly laments the hapless situation his institution finds itself in, first receiving blows from Trump and then being subjected to the “circular firing squad” of those who oppose Trump signing on to a collective boycott of Columbia.

Connelly argues that we should not view Columbia as “capitulating” to Trump because, “In fact, many of the actions the Columbia administration announced on March 21 are similar to those originally proposed last August by more than 200 faculty members.”

In other words, in agreeing with Trump, Columbia is only doing what it was possibly going to do anyway. Connelly goes on to argue that Columbia would never give in on key principles of institutional operations, and acting Columbia University president Claire Shipman has subsequently declared that Columbia would not sign any agreement that would “require us to relinquish our independence and autonomy as an educational institution.”

Columbia’s actions look similar to those taken by some of the big law firms that have reached vaguely worded “agreements” with Trump that have them pledging not to do “illegal DEI hiring” and to donate tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to pro bono causes favored by Trump. At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall has gone digging into some of these agreements and found that there’s not much of specific substance to be found, the wording often so generalized and vague that it would be easy for firms to fulfill the agreements without doing anything beyond their usual patterns and practices.

I’m not entirely unsympathetic to Connelly’s irritation or the decisions by the big law firms; they thought they could make Trump go away with a little performative minor supplication and get back to their substantive work.

They’ve obviously misread the moment badly. I don’t know what more evidence we need to conclude that Trump intends to govern as an authoritarian. In both the cases of these law firms and Columbia University, the entire battle was over Trump being allowed to claim a symbolic victory over these institutions, to get them to be seen capitulating.

It is strange to say that the symbolic fight is the genuine battle over principles, but this is obviously the case. Trump wants to make others fearful of standing up to his authoritarian aims, so he will simply defy the rule of law until someone forces the victims to fight. There is no choice but to test the administration’s resolve. Trump’s response on Truth Social following Harvard’s action shows a lot of bluster aimed at tearing down Harvard’s reputation with a lot of right-wing tropes, but the rhetoric shows how nonexistent his substantive case is.

Any capitulation, real or even perceived, is a loss. Either choice will come with costs. Trump is going after Harvard’s funding and nonprofit status, and there will be significant turbulence for the university in the foreseeable future. But turbulence is not the same thing as a plane heading for the ground.

Harvard had its legal strategy prepared before the fight even went public. Law and precedent appear to be on its side, though this is not a guarantee of success. Trump seems determined to hold back whatever money he can in his ongoing attempts at coercion.

What we are learning is that there is no such thing as accommodating or reaching an agreement with an authoritarian project. Harvard’s stand is an important symbolic illustration of this, and because of the symbolism, it is proving to be hugely substantive.

Let’s hope it’s only the first example of how to fight back.

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April 20, 2025
Judge Blocks Energy Dept. Plan to Cap Indirect Cost Rates

A federal judge temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Energy’s plan to cap universities’ indirect research cost reimbursement rates, pending a hearing in the ongoing lawsuit filed by several higher education associations and universities.

Judge Allison D. Burroughs of the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts wrote in the brief Wednesday order that the plaintiffs had shown that, without a temporary restraining order, “they will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”

Plaintiffs include the Association of American Universities, the American Council on Education, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and nine individual universities, including Brown, Cornell and Princeton Universities and the Universities of Michigan, Illinois and Rochester. They sued the DOE and department secretary Chris Wright on Monday, three days after the DOE announced its plan.

Department spokespeople didn’t return Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Thursday afternoon.

DOE’s plan is to cap the reimbursement rates at 15 percent. Energy grant recipients at colleges and universities currently have an average 30 percent indirect cost rate. The Trump administration has alleged that indirect costs are wasteful spending, although they are extensively audited.

The DOE sends more than $2.5 billion a year to over 300 colleges and universities. Part of that money covers costs indirectly related to research that may support multiple grant-funded projects, including specialized nuclear-rated facilities, computer systems and administrative support costs.

The department’s plan is nearly identical to a plan the National Institutes of Health announced in February, which a judge also blocked.

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April 18, 2025
Southwest Wisconsin Tech Wins Aspen Prize

The Aspen Institute announced Thursday that Southwest Wisconsin Technical College has won this year’s Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, an honor bestowed on high-achieving community colleges that have made strides in their academic outcomes.

The Aspen Institute commended the college for its high completion rates and wage outcomes. Southwest Wisconsin Tech’s 54 percent graduation rate exceeds the national average for community colleges by nearly 20 percentage points. The college also set a goal to reach 70 percent through various strategies, including creating career-aligned success plans for every student. Additionally, five years after graduation, alumni of Southwest Wisconsin Tech earn almost $14,000 more than new hires in the region on average.

“Southwest Wisconsin Technical College inspires the field with how they connect every program to a good-paying job that regional employers need to fill,” Aspen Prize co-chair Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO of Graham Holdings Company, said in a news release. “Their emphasis on work-based learning and hands-on training in every program shows how an engaging, high-quality education can change lives while strengthening a regional economy.”

The college won $700,000 as a part of the prize. Two other institutions were recognized as finalists with distinction—San Jacinto College in Texas and South Puget Sound Community College in Washington State—for their transfer and workforce practices. Wallace State Community College–Hanceville in Alabama also earned Aspen’s Rising Star award for meaningful improvements in its student outcomes. These institutions will each receive $100,000.

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April 18, 2025
How AI Challenges Notions of Authorship (opinion)

Have you seen the Apple Intelligence writing tools commercial featuring a dim-witted office drone named Warren? Tapping away on his iPhone, he writes a goofy, slangy email to his boss and then has the app transform his prose by selecting “Professional.” The manager reads the resulting concise memo and, stunned at the source, asks himself, “Warren?”

Warren has a ghostwriter. In fact, we all do.

I’m hardly alone in thinking AI chat bots such as ChatGPT are a lot like ghostwriting. In an Inside Higher Ed blog post, “ChatGPT: A Different Kind of Ghostwriting,” Ali Lincoln, herself a ghost, finds nothing wrong with using AI to write an outline or even a first draft. After all, she argues, “in both writing and editing, we’ve used some element of AI for many years, such as software that evaluates the readability of a written piece, programs to check writing like Grammarly, and even spell-check and autocorrect.”

An especially intriguing piece appeared in, of all places, Annals of Surgical Oncology: “A Ghostwriter for the Masses: ChatGPT and the Future of Writing.” The author, a physician, writes mostly positively of the potential uses of ChatGPT to assist in medical and scientific writing.

Throwing this discussion into sharper relief, there is even Ghostwriter OpenAI ChatGPT, an add-in that embeds ChatGPT directly into Microsoft Office. With Ghostwriter, you simply open Word and have the chat bot on the same screen as your document—a ghost in the machine.

These arguments and recent AI developments have caught my attention, because throughout most of my academic career I moonlighted as a corporate ghostwriter. I wrote magazine articles on scientific topics for a large technical company, articles that were published under someone else’s name, typically a scientist or engineer whom I interviewed for the piece.

My favorite moment in that role came when I sat down with a manager who was new to the company to discuss a writing project. She handed me an offprint of an op-ed by the division vice president, accompanied by his photo.

“Study this,” she said, a bit officiously. “Everything you need to know is in his article.”

Maybe you see where this is going. Notwithstanding the VP’s smiling face, I’d written every word.

Ghostwriting can lead to this sort of haziness about authorial authenticity. But is it unethical?

Certainly, I didn’t think so. I produced what was essentially the voice of the corporation placed in the mouths of its subject matter experts (SMEs) and executives, who were either too busy or incapable of writing the articles. The company hoped readers would contact the SMEs to learn more; they weren’t interested in anyone talking to me. And I was happy to remain in the shadows (yes, with my check).

I explained as much to students in my professional writing classes, where I focused on the business of writing, pointing out that CEOs are no more likely to write their own op-ed pieces than are U.S. presidents to write their own speeches. But they were nevertheless uneasy with the practice. They couldn’t imagine writing anything without getting a byline, even when I explained the concept of work for hire.

Ghostwriting is a kind of imposture, presenting to the world writing that is not one’s own. Nevertheless, like the spirits for which it is named, ghostwriting exists in a shadowy realm where things are not what they seem. It inhabits an ethical twilight zone.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson stated as much in her groundbreaking work, Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of Political Speechmaking:

“When students fail to acknowledge the sources from which their essays are drawn or, worse, when they expropriate the language of another, we righteously cry plagiarism and penalize them; once the student attains the status of senator, congressperson, or president, the rules change. Feigning authorship of another’s thoughts and words is then not only expected but publicly funded.”

When Jamieson wrote those words, in 1988, she could not have foreseen how ChatGPT would make ghostwriting available to everyone, not just politicians and celebrities, making questions about its ethicality even more pressing.

I plugged into Ghostwriter OpenAI ChatGPT and asked it to expound briefly on the ethicality of ghosting:

“Ghostwriting is a contentious practice within the realm of ethics. On one hand, proponents argue that it is a legitimate form of collaboration, where the writer’s expertise brings another individual’s ideas to life. It allows busy or less skilled individuals to share their knowledge and experiences through the written word. However, critics argue that ghostwriting undermines authenticity and intellectual integrity.”

This isn’t exactly an incisive analysis of the topic, but it’s not a bad start. Yes, ghostwriting is ethically contentious. However, and this is a crucial point, it allows “less skilled individuals to share their knowledge and experiences through the written word.”

Of course, the person who turns to AI for these answers may not do any deep thinking about the topic—or any thinking, at all. And this is what we ask of writing, especially in the academic setting, that it serve as a way to wrestle with ideas and arguments, to write our way toward conclusions. Further, this is why the answer to the question “May students use ChatGPT to write essays?” must be a hard no.

Still, we have to face the question of ghostwriting’s ethicality in other instances. When is it allowable? I think for practical, workaday writing chores, AI technology has already won out.

When I began teaching professional writing some 40 years ago, I included instruction on putting together an effective memo. I did something similar in numerous training sessions I conducted for corporations. Today, with AI ghosts haunting every classroom and office, this sort of coaching would be like teaching a driver how to read a road map.

Universities have long privileged writing, introducing students to the academic enterprise in freshman composition classes and making writing central to innumerable courses. Now, the primacy of writing skills is being challenged by the ghosts of AI. And not just for students: I cannot point to any data; however, my experience with colleagues suggests that faculty are using ChatGPT and other AI applications to assist in their writing. A draft journal article I reviewed recently included text stating the authors used ChatGPT to edit their manuscript.

Kathleen Jamieson argued that the rules for authorial authenticity change when people become elected officials. Now they change when we have access to the internet.

Ghosts are everywhere.

Patrick M. Scanlon is a professor emeritus in the School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology.

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April 18, 2025