Tag: Jobs

Talladega College Sells Off Murals

Talladega College, a historically Black college in Alabama, is selling murals by artist Hale Woodruff to shore up its finances and keep the art publicly accessible.

The Toledo Museum of Art bought one mural, and three others were jointly acquired by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Art Bridges Foundation. Two murals that depict the founding of the college and its library will remain on campus, under the college’s ownership. The murals will be reunited at Talladega, likely every six to eight years, and their connection to the college will be highlighted in future exhibitions, The New York Times reported. Art experts estimate the sales are worth about $20 million, a boon for an institution with a $5 million endowment that’s faced recent financial crises, struggling to make payroll in spring 2024.

The goal of these new arrangements is “to ensure a vibrant future for Talladega by creating a meaningful financial opportunity that better prepares our students for an evolving world,” Rica Lewis-Payton, chair of Talladega’s Board of Trustees, said in a news release from the college. Officials also hope to “expand the profile of Alabama’s first private Historically Black College” and “increase the visibility of Hale A. Woodruff’s extraordinary paintings.”

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November 7, 2025
U.K. University Apologizes to U.S. Scholar Over Publication Ban

Sheffield Hallam University has apologized to a professor whose research into alleged human rights abuses was blocked from publication after political pressure from the Chinese security services.

In late 2024, a study by Laura Murphy, an American professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at Sheffield Hallam, into forced labor practices Uyghur Muslims allegedly face was refused publication by her institution after a campaign of harassment and intimidation from Beijing, T h e G uardian and BBC News reported.

Sheffield Hallam staff working in offices in mainland China faced visits from intelligence officials over the research, while access to the university’s websites was blocked for more than two years, hampering student recruitment, officials say.

In an internal email from July 2024 obtained by Murphy using a subject access request, university officials said “attempting to retain the business in China and publication of the research are now untenable bedfellows.”

After taking a career break to work for the U.S. government, Murphy returned to Sheffield Hallam in early 2025 and says she was told by administrators that the university was no longer permitting any research on forced labor or on China, prompting her to start legal action.

Her solicitor, Claire Powell, of the firm Leigh Day, said that Murphy’s “academic freedom has been repeatedly and unlawfully restricted over the past two years.”

“The documents uncovered paint an extremely concerning picture of a university responding to threats from a foreign state security service by trading the academic freedom of its staff for its own commercial interests,” Powell added.

Murphy, who claimed her university failed to protect her academic freedom, has now received an apology and the institution has told her it “wish[ed] to make clear our commitment to supporting her research and to securing and promoting freedom of speech and academic freedom within the law.”

“The university’s decision to not continue with Professor Laura Murphy’s research was taken based on our understanding of a complex set of circumstances at the time, including being unable to secure the necessary professional indemnity insurance,” a spokesperson for the university added.

These circumstances relate to a defamation case brought by a Hong Kong garment maker which initiated a libel case against Sheffield Hallam after its name was included in a report into forced labor published in December 2023. A preliminary rule at the High Court in London found the report had been “defamatory.”

The apology comes months after new free speech laws came into effect in England in August, with the Office for Students’ free speech champion Arif Ahmed warning the regulator would take action if universities bowed to pressure from foreign governments regarding contentious areas of research.

A U.K. government spokesperson said, “Any attempt by a foreign state to intimidate, harass or harm individuals in the U.K. will not be tolerated, and the government has made this clear to Beijing after learning of this case.

“The government has robust measures in place to prevent this activity, including updated powers and offenses through the National Security Act.”

The Chinese Embassy in London told the BBC that the university had “released multiple fake reports on Xinjiang that are seriously flawed.”

“It has been revealed that some authors of these reports received funding from certain U.S. agencies,” the embassy added.

Murphy told the BBC she has received funding over the course of her career from multiple U.S. research agencies, including the U.S. National Endowment for Humanities for work on slave narratives, the U.S. Department of Justice for work on human trafficking in New Orleans, and more recently from USAID and the U.S. State Department for her work on China.

The Chinese Embassy said the allegations of “forced labor” in her reports “cannot withstand basic fact-check.”

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November 7, 2025
Report: Sticker Prices Inch Up
Full-time students at community colleges have been receiving enough grant aid to cover their tuition and fees since fall 2009.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Rawpixel
College sticker prices rose slightly across all sectors for the 2025–26 academic year, according to the College Board’s Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid report, released Wednesday.

For the 2025–26 academic year, the average published price for tuition and fees at public four-year institutions for in-state students is $11,950, a 2.9 percent increase before inflation over 2024–25 prices. For out-of-state students, public four-year institutions are charging an average of $31,880, up 3.4 percent from 2024–25. Public two-year colleges charge in-district students an average of $4,150, up 2.7 percent from the previous year—though notably, full-time students at community colleges have been receiving enough grant aid to cover their tuition and fees since the 2009–10 academic year. The average published price at private four-year colleges is $45,000, up 4 percent from 2024–25.

Inflation-adjusted prices at public institutions have been on the decline for a while. Between the 2015–16 and 2025–26 academic years, the average inflation-adjusted tuition and fees at public four-year colleges fell 7 percent, and at public two-year institutions, the average fell 10 percent. At private nonprofit four-year colleges, average inflation-adjusted tuition and fees rose by 2 percent during the same ten-year timeframe.

Net prices are also down as average student aid packages rise. The average net tuition and fees paid by first-time, full-time students at private nonprofit four-year institutions declined from $19,810 (in 2025 dollars) in 2006–07 to $16,910 in 2025–26. At public four-year institutions, the average net price fell from a high of $4,450 in the 2012–13 academic year to $2,300 for the 2025–26 academic year.

When the maximum Pell grant award increased from $6,895 in 2022–23 to $7,395 in 2023–24, so too did the number of Pell Grant recipients. Between 2022–23 and 2024–25, the total number of Pell Grant recipients increased by 22 percent to 7.3 million, and total Pell Grant expenditures increased by 32 percent to $38.6 billion after adjusting for inflation.

Other notable findings include:
- Total annual student and parent borrowing is up slightly in 2024–25, to $102.6 billion, following a 38 percent decline between 2010–11 ($163.9 billion) and 2023–24 ($101.4 billion).
- Institutional grant aid for undergraduates increased by 22 percent between the 2014–15 and 2024–25 academic years.
- As of June 2025, 32 percent of borrowers owed less than $10,000 in federal loan debt. Another 21 percent of borrowers owed between $10,000 and $20,000 in federal loan debt. These groups held 4 percent and 8 percent of the total outstanding federal loan debt, respectively.
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November 7, 2025
Florida DOGE Finds Disproportionate Spending at New College

New College spent $83,207 per student in fiscal year 2024, the highest among state universities.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Thomas Simonetti/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Nearly three years into a conservative overhaul of New College of Florida, costs are adding up as the operating expenses per student dramatically outpace other State University System of Florida members.

Data presented at Thursday’s Florida Board of Governors offers the clearest breakdown so far of what New College is spending per student compared to 11 other system members. NCF spent $83,207 per student in fiscal year 2024, the highest among state universities.

The University of Florida, a major research institution, was the next highest at $45,765 per student, while the lowest was the University of Central Florida at $12,172 per student, according to data compiled by the Florida Department of Government Efficiency.

New College and UF also had the highest number of administrators per 100 students. New College had 33.3 administrators per 100 students while UF had 26.9. Others in the system ranged from a low of 4.6 administrators per student at UCF to 12.6 at the University of South Florida.

Silence on Spending

Now, despite support from Republican governor Ron DeSantis—who appointed a slate of conservative trustees in early 2023 and tasked them with reimagining the small liberal arts college—NCF is facing growing scrutiny over soaring operating expenses from alumni and other community members. But the Florida Board of Governors, which is appointed by DeSantis, had little to say when presented with the numbers at Thursday’s meeting.

Eric Silagy, who has been the board member most critical of NCF’s spending and has previously pressed college leadership on the matter, was the only one to offer remarks about the disparity. In limited comments, Silagy thanked Ben Watkins, director of the Florida Division of Bond Finance, for the presentation, which he said made university spending clear.

Now, Silagy said, “there can be no question anymore about what the numbers really are.” He added that Florida’s DOGE data will allow the Board of Governors to “address outliers where it’s not working” and determine how to reach “better outcomes for the students and the taxpayers.”

Silagy had clashed with NCF President Richard Corcoran, a former Republican lawmaker, on how much New College spends per student in past meetings. Silagy had estimated NCF spent $91,000 per student, while Corcoran initially said the number was closer to $68,000 per head. Corcoran later backtracked, agreeing the figure was between $88,000 and $91,000 per student.

That spending has ticked up even as critics in the community and state legislature are growing, and as the college saw its place in U.S. News & World Report rankings fall nearly 60 spots since the takeover. The rankings are highly valued by Florida lawmakers and system officials.

Asked about DOGE’s findings, a New College spokesperson said issues preceded current leadership.

“Thanks to Governor DeSantis and the Florida Legislature making a bold move to appoint new leadership with clear goals, the impact of New College’s revitalization is already visible with enrollment surpassing 900 students for the first time in history,” New College spokesperson James Miller wrote in an emailed statement to Inside Higher Ed. “As enrollment growth continues to skyrocket, cost-per-student and cost-per-graduate metrics will be one of the lowest of all top liberal arts schools in the country.”

Other Meeting Notes

Thursday’s board meeting also included an update from UCF President Alexander Cartwright, who told FLBOG members that the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) had approved the university for initial accreditation, amid an effort to switch accreditors that had been underway since 2023.

UCF, like other state institutions, sought to switch from Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to another accreditor, following a change to state law in 2022 that mandated the switch after state officials clashed with the organization over various issues.

Cartwright said he received the news from HLC just hours earlier during the meeting.

State University System of Florida Chancellor Ray Rodrigues credited Cartwright for his work on the effort and criticized the Biden administration for allegedly slow-walking the process.

Rodrigues argued that the Biden administration “did not want to see reform in the area of accreditation” and “put up barriers and obstacles to states like Florida and universities like UCF” who were seeking to change accreditors while following Department of Education guidelines.

The Florida Board of Governors also approved a policy change that will now require professors at all state universities to publicly post course materials. The policy will require “universities to post current syllabi for all courses and course sections offered for the upcoming term” at least 45 days before the first day of class. Those materials will then remain online for at least five years.

That policy change, which has been the subject of recent media coverage highlighting faculty concerns about being targeted for course content, was passed as part of the consent agenda with no public discussion. No faculty members spoke about the policy change during the public comment portion of the meeting despite concerns expressed by professors in recent coverage.

The board did not take action or discuss a directive from DeSantis late last month to “pull the plug” on hiring workers on H-1B visas at state universities amid concerns that such hires are taking jobs that could otherwise be filled by Floridians. (However, critics have noted such jobs are often highly specialized and hard to fill.) The board plans to consider that directive in January.

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November 7, 2025
Congress Tackles College Cost Transparency

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-LA, advocated for his own legislation, the College Transparency Act, as potential solution to the issue.

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

After passing a sweeping higher ed overhaul in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Congress now has its sights set on reforming college cost transparency. In a hearing Thursday, members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions questioned experts on how to make college pricing—and how costs compare to student outcomes—more understandable to families.

“You don’t buy a car without comparing prices, quality and finance options. The same is true for buying a home. Why can we not do this for higher ed?” asked Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the committee and recently issued a request for information about the cost of higher education.

The hearing follows a House hearing in September on the same topic—and including one repeat witness, Justin Draeger, senior vice president of affordability for Strada Education Foundation.

Cost transparency has long been a pain point for both students and institutions, who have attempted to clarify via marketing campaigns, improved price calculator tools and tuition resets that their costs of attendance are often lower than their sticker price would indicate. Students, meanwhile, struggle to find reliable information about the costs of their prospective institutions, leaving them without the financial information they need to decide what institution to attend.

Now, Congressional Republicans are taking notice—and are tying efforts to improve affordability and cost transparency in with their existing focus on the return on investment for students and taxpayers.

At Thursday’s hearing, lawmakers and witnesses alike stressed how little information is available to students about the price of college, with research showing that most students overestimate the price of a public college education. Witnesses also brought up parents’ and families’ confusion about aid offer letters, which the Government Accountability Office has found often understate or fail to include the net price students will actually be paying.

Cassidy stressed the need for transparency as it relates to outcomes and return on investment. Students should be able to compare graduation rates and projected incomes of earning a degree at two different institutions, he said, to give families an accurate picture of what they’re paying for when they pay tuition.

The two Democratic witnesses, meanwhile, argued that college cost transparency is ineffective without also focusing on college affordability—something that is being worsened not only by increasing tuition costs but also by the larger cost-of-living crisis. Nontuition costs, said Mark Huelsman, Director of Policy and Advocacy at The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, make up the bulk of the cost of attendance. He added that if student aren’t able to afford food or housing, that can severely impact their ability to succeed in college.

“I urge this committee not just to find ways to increase clarity, but to do everything in its power to lower the price that students pay,” he said.

Bipartisan Solutions?

Legislators pointed toward several potential legislative solutions that they said had support on both sides of the aisle. That list included Cassidy’s College Transparency Act, a bill that would provide more detailed information on costs, academic outcomes and career outcomes of specific programs and majors. Cassidy has championed the bill for years, alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren, CTA’s other lead author, but Rep. Virginia Foxx opposed the measure when she led the House education committee. Foxx, who ultimately proposed her own effort to track students’ outcomes, resisted CTA due to privacy concerns. Cassidy noted during the hearing that the bill includes strict data security standards.

Meanwhile, Sen. Jon Husted, an Ohio Republican, also touted his bill with fellow Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama—the Debt, Earnings, and Cost Information Disclosure for Education Act—which would make changes to the Department of Education’s College Scorecard. It would require the resource to include information on average loan amounts in a given academic program, as well as default rates, how long it takes graduates to pay off their loans and how that debt compares to their earnings.

That information would help prospective students “know exactly what they’re getting themselves into before they make a decision to make a huge, huge investment,” Husted said.

Witnesses enumerated their own cost transparency wish lists.

Draeger said, among other things, that the federal government should regulate financial aid offers to use straightforward and standardized language. Huelsman, on the other hand, argued that the “simplest way, and the most powerful way” to make college costs transparent is to make college tuition- or debt-free. He also said that the Trump administration appears to be working against, not toward, cost transparency in higher ed.

“Many of the bipartisan reforms being discussed today require staffing capacity at the Department of Education that frankly, at this moment, do not exist, including at the Institute for Education Sciences,” he said. “Meanwhile, the Trump administration has worked to dismantle the CFPB, which provides oversight and essential information to borrowers, and conducts essential research on the student loan market. Sadly, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act takes us in the wrong direction on both affordability and transparency.”

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November 7, 2025
Higher Ed Feels “Cumulative Exhaustion” of Longest Shutdown

As the current government shutdown claims the mantle of longest in American history, uncertainty is ratcheting up for faculty, students and their institutions trying to budget for the weeks, months and years ahead.

Five weeks in, the federal government’s closure has disrupted nearly all aspects of campus life, including research, basic needs support and military-affiliated students’ access to tuition assistance.

On Monday, North Carolina State University joined a growing list of institutions that have limited spending and faced research disruptions as a result of the government’s inaction. The university said the ongoing shutdown has delayed payment for federally funded research activities worth more than $25 million per month, according to an internal memo reviewed by Inside Higher Ed.

“To ensure the long-term continuity of our research, we must take steps to preserve the university’s available resources that support our vital research projects,” administrators wrote in the memo to deans, directors and department heads. “Effective immediately, we are directing all colleges and units to limit all non-payroll expenses on federal contract, grant or other award mechanisms.”

While federal payments remain suspended, federally funded researchers at NC State won’t be able to spend money on new hires, nonessential travel, consulting services, and supplies and materials among other things.

Meanwhile, it’s still not clear when the government might reopen.

Health Care in Question

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans and Democrats failed for the 14th time in 36 days to negotiate an end to the shutdown. Those negotiations have centered on Democrats’ demands—and Republicans’ refusal—to extend enhanced tax credits for health insurance premiums through the Affordable Care Act, which are set to expire at the end of the year.

Without those subsidies, the cost of health insurance is expected to increase for millions of Americans, including thousands of adjunct professors who don’t qualify for health insurance through their institutions and have only a small margin of discretionary income.

“In this stalemate, there are no options I have to meaningfully plan for what the next month-and-a-half looks like going into the new year. There’s just no way to get ahead,” said Thomas Moomjy, a lecturer in American Studies at Rutgers University at New Brunswick who buys health insurance through New Jersey’s health care exchange. “I also have to account for the fact that the cost of everything else—electricity, car insurance—is going up, too.”

But the results of Tuesday’s elections, which saw wins for Democrats in numerous state and local races, may further complicate the path toward reopening the government.

President Donald Trump blamed Republican losses on the shutdown, emboldening Democrats to double down on their fight to extend the health insurance subsidies. “Donald Trump clearly is feeling pressure to bring this shutdown to an end,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Well, I have good news for the president: Meet with Democrats, reopen the government.” So far, Trump has refused such a meeting, insisting that the government reopen prior to any negotiations.

None of this week’s developments offer hope to college students, or some faculty and staff, who aren’t sure if they’ll be able to afford basic necessities as the shutdown continues.

“At this point, I just want the government to reopen,” Moomjy said. “I’m not sure that will fix the ACA stuff, but we’re reaching a point of cumulative exhaustion. If this pushes on much further without [Congress] offering something to the American people to say, ‘We at least hear you and can help to lower it in some way,’ then it feels like they’re fighting each other with slogans. The people that are getting hurt are us down on the ground.”

Basic Needs Insecurity

Vulnerable Americans also include more than 1 million college students who rely on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to buy food, and who didn’t receive those subsidies as planned on the first of the month.

On Monday, in response to court orders, Trump agreed to fund half of the program during the shutdown. After Tuesday’s election, he increased it to 65 percent of full funding, though experts say most SNAP recipients will get far less than that once they receive their already-late benefits. Despite those partial concessions, many colleges—which are already grappling with tight budgets as a result of Trump’s ongoing assault on higher education this year—are still scrambling to help their students cope with the partial loss to benefits this month.

On Thursday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP.

Concerns about paying for food, health care and housing during the shutdown are top of mind for students and families, according to an informal survey conducted by the American Council on Education (ACE). And those worries extend beyond students and parents who work in the public sector or receive government assistance directly; 30 percent said their private sector jobs are suffering because of the shutdown.

“One [parent of a college student] said they work for a private contractor whose budgets partially depend on federal funding. The shutdown has reduced and delayed funding which affects their ability to provide services, earn their regular income and meet their basic needs,” Emmanual A. Guillory, senior director of government relations for ACE, told Inside Higher Ed. “Other [students and parents] said their inability to pay bills is causing strain on their mental health.”

Disruptions for Military Students

The shutdown is also directly threatening some students’ ability to stay enrolled at all.

While civilian students can at least access federal financial aid to cover their tuition during the shutdown, student-veterans and their dependents who rely on military benefits—including Military Tuition Assistance (TA) and the My Career Advancement Account (MyCAA) tuition assistance program for military spouses—to pay for their education are dealing with disruptions and delays to those payments.

Some institutions, including Austin Peay State University in Tennessee and the online learning behemoth Southern New Hampshire University, are helping military-affiliated students stay on track during the shutdown by allowing them to register without payments or tuition assistance in place.

According to an SNHU spokesperson, 2,840 undergraduates who receive military tuition assistance were impacted by the shutdown when they started a new term last week. If the government is still closed by the time the next graduate term starts next week, an additional 440 military-affiliated students who have already registered for classes will need waivers from SNHU.

Disruptions to GI Bill payments—caused by a system failure at the Department of Veterans Affairs and compounded by the shutdown—may also put up to 75,000 survivors and dependents of deceased military veterans at “serious” risk of losing access to post-secondary education subsidies, according to the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats and Republicans remain at an impasse on resuming government operations.

Guillory of ACE, who was at the Capitol this week for discussions about implementing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, said that from what he’s observed “it’s highly unlikely” that a deal to reopen the government will be reached by Friday.

But whenever it does finally happen, higher education institutions and their students and faculty who have been affected by the shutdown won’t just be able to pick up where they left off.

“There’s going to be a backlog of things that needs to get done,” Guillory said. “This is pushing everything back and leaving institutions in a place of uncertainty.”

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November 7, 2025
Agentic AI Invading the LMS and Other Things We Should Know

Over the past 18 months, I’ve been spending the majority of my time writing and speaking about how I think we can and should continue to teach writing even as we have this technology that is capable of generating synthetic text. While my values regarding this issue are unshakable, the world undeniably changes around me, which requires an ongoing vigilance regarding the capabilities of this technology.

But like most people, I don’t have unlimited time to stay on top of these things. One of my recommendations in More Than Words for navigating these challenges is to “find your guides,” the people who are keeping an eye on aspects of the issue that you can trust.

One of my guides for the entirety of this period is Marc Watkins, someone who is engaged with staying on top of the latest implications of how the technology and the way students are using it is evolving.

I thought it might be helpful to others to share the questions I wanted to ask Marc for my own edification.

Marc Watkins directs the AI Institute for Teachers and is an assistant director of academic innovation at the University of Mississippi, where he is a lecturer in writing and rhetoric. When training faculty in applied artificial intelligence, he believes educators should be equally supported if they choose to work with AI or include friction to curb AI’s influence on student learning. He regularly writes about AI and education on his Substack, Rhetorica.

Q: One of the things I most appreciate about the work you’re doing in thinking about the intersection of education and generative AI is that you actively engage with the technology using a lens to ask what a particular tool may mean for students and classes. I appreciate it because my personal interest in using these things beyond keeping sufficiently, generally familiar is limited, and I know that we share similar values at the core of the work of reading and writing. So, my first question is for those of us who aren’t putting these things through their paces: What’s the state of things? What do you think instructors should, specifically, know about the capacities of gen AI tools?

A: Thanks, John! I think we’re of the same mind when it comes to values and AI. By that, I mean we both see human agency and will as key moving forward in education and in society. Part of my life right now is talking to lots of different groups about AI updates. I visit with faculty, administration, researchers, even quite a few folks outside of academia. It’s exhausting just to keep up and nearly impossible to take stock.

We now have agentic AI that completes tasks using your computer for you; multimodal AI that can see and interact with you using a computer voice; machine reasoning models that take simple prompts and run them in loops repeatedly to guess what a sophisticated response might look like; browser-based AI that can scan any webpage and perform tasks for you. I’m not sure students are aware of any of what AI can do beyond interfaces like ChatGPT. The best thing any instructor can do is have a conversation with students to ask them if they are using AI and gauge how it is impacting their learning.

Q: I want to dig into the AI “agents” a bit more. You had a recent post on this, as did Anna Mills, and I think it’s important for folks to know that these companies are purposefully developing and selling technology that can go into a Canvas course and start doing “work.” What are we to make of this in terms of how we think about designing courses?

A: I think online assessment is generally broken at this point and won’t be saved. But online learning still has a chance and is something we should fight for. For all of its many flaws, online education has given people a valid pathway to a version of college education that they might not have been able to afford otherwise. There’s too many issues with equity and access to completely remove online from higher education, but that doesn’t mean we cannot radically think what it means to learn in online spaces. For instance, you can assign your students a process notebook in an online course that involves them writing by hand with pen and paper, then take a photograph or scan it and upload it. The [optical character recognition] function within many of the foundation models will be able to transcribe most handwriting into legible text. We can and should look for ways to give our students embodied experiences within disembodied spaces.

Q: In her newsletter, Anna Mills calls on AI companies to collaborate on keeping students from deploying these agents in service of doing all their work for them. I’m skeptical that there’s any chance of this happening. I see an industry that seems happy to steamroll instructors, institutions and even students. Am I too cynical? Is there space for collaboration?

A: There’s space for collaboration for sure, and limiting some of the more egregious use cases, but we also have to be realistic about what’s happening here. AI developers are moving fast and breaking things with each deployment or update, and we should be deeply skeptical when they come around to offer to sweep up the pieces, lest we forget how they became broken in the first place.

Q: I’m curious if the development of the technology tracks what you would have figured a year or even longer, 18 months ago. How fast do you think this stuff is moving in terms of its capacities as they relate to school and learning? What do you see on the horizon?

A: The problem we’re seeing is one of uncritical adoption, hype and acceleration. AI labs create a new feature or use case and deploy it within a few days for free or low cost, and industry has suddenly adopted this technique to bring the latest up-to-date AI features to enterprise products. What this means is the none-AI applications we’ve used for years suddenly get AI integrated into it, or if it has an AI feature, sees it rapidly updated.

Most of these AI updates aren’t tested enough to be trusted outside of human in the loop assistance. Doing otherwise makes us all beta testers. It’s creating “work slop,” where companies are seeing employees using AI uncritically to often save time and produce error-laden work that then takes time and resources to address. Compounding things even more, it increasingly looks like the venture capital feeding AI development is one of the prime reasons our economy isn’t slipping into recession. Students and faculty find themselves at ground zero for most of this, as education looks like one of the major industries being impacted by AI.

Q: One of the questions I often get when I’m working with faculty on campuses is what I think AI “literacy” looks like, and while I have my share of thoughts, I tend to pivot back to my core message, which is that I’m more worried about helping students develop their human capacities than teaching them how to work with AI. But let me ask you, what does AI literacy look like?

A: I think AI literacy really isn’t about using AI. For me, I define AI literacy as learning how the technology works and understanding its impact on society. Using that definition, I think we can and should integrate aspects of AI literacy throughout our teaching. The working-with-AI-responsibly part, what I’d call AI fluency, has its place in certain classes and disciplines but needs to go hand in hand with AI literacy; otherwise, you risk uncritically adopting a technology with little understanding or demystifying AI and helping students understand its impact on our world.

Q: Whenever I make a campus visit, I try to have a chance to talk to students about their AI use, and for the most part I see a lot of critical thinking about it, where students recognize many of the risks of outsourcing all of their work, but also share that within the system they’re operating in, it sometimes makes sense to use it. This has made me think that ultimately, our only response can be to treat the demand side of the equation. We’re not going to be able to police this stuff. The tech companies aren’t going to help. It’s on the students to make the choices that are most beneficial to their own lives. Of course, this has always been the case with our growth and development. What do you think we should be focused on in managing these challenges?

A: My current thinking is we should teach students discernment when it comes to AI tools and likely ourselves, too. There’s no rule book or priors for us to call upon when we deal with a machine that mimics human intelligence. My approach is radical honesty with students and faculty. By that I mean the following: I cannot police your behavior here and no one else is going to do that, either. It is up to all of us to form a social contract and find common agreement about where this technology belongs in our lives and create clear boundaries where it does not.

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November 7, 2025
ED Reaches Consensus On Loan Caps

Negotiations were held in-person for one week at the beginning of October and a second week in November.

Pete Kiehart/The Washington Post/Getty Images

A very limited number of degree programs would have access to the highest level of loans under a new set of regulations that the Department of Education and its negotiating committee signed off on Thursday.

The regulations, written in response to the loan caps of Congress’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, allow students in programs that qualify as professional to take out up to $200,000. Meanwhile, graduate students will only be able to take out up to $100,000.

What was up for debate throughout the two-week negotiation process was which degree programs qualify for which level of loans.

And while Thursday’s definition of professional programs was slightly more inclusive than the department’s original suggestion—a list of 10 degrees, including medicine, law, dentistry and a masters of divinity—they are not as expansive as a third proposal put forward by Alex Holt, the committee member representing taxpayers and public interest.

The final definition limits professional programs to the original 10 programs, a doctorate in clinical psychology, and a handful of other doctorate programs that fall within the same four-digit CIP codes. By comparison, Holt’s plan would have included any program that is 80 credit hours long, regardless of whether it was a master’s or doctorate degree, so long as it fell within the same two-digit CIP code. (A CIP code, otherwise known as the Classification of Instructional Programs, is part of an organizational system used by ED to group similar academic programs.)

On Thursday, before the committee’s final consensus vote, department officials explained to committee members that if they did not agree to their definition of a professional degree, they could lose out on other “concessions” they had won from the department. Without consensus, the department would legally be free to rewrite any aspect of the proposal prior to releasing it for public comment. (The proposal that reached consensus will still be subject to public comment.)

“I also would like to remind everyone of numerous things that we have chosen to do in these negotiations that you requested for us to do,” said Tamy Abernathy, the department’s negotiator, before listing a slew of other changes the department made concerning the transition to new loan repayment plans and how to grandfather in existing borrowers to new loan policies.

Under Secretary Nicolas Kent noted before the vote that the proposal was “not a perfect definition, but … a perfect definition for the purposes of consensus.”

“We recognize that not every stakeholder group will be thrilled about our proposal,” Kent said. “But I want to remind everybody what consensus means, and that means that if you all agree, or can live with it—because we don’t have to love it—that we will take that regulatory language and put it into the notice of proposal.”

Multiple committee members told Inside Higher Ed they agreed with Kent’s evaluation of what it took to reach a compromise.

Kent closed the meeting by noting that “because we’ve reached consensus, negotiators and their employers will refrain from commenting negatively … as they agreed to do.”

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November 7, 2025
Higher Ed Must Take Action on Immigration Policy (opinion)
Under the current administration, we have witnessed a dangerous cascade of immigration policies and actions. These developments are impacting our students, employees, campuses and communities in real time, imperiling the future of our colleges and universities.

It’s time for us in higher education to pull the fire alarm. Pulling the fire alarm does not mean panic. This is a call to respond, mobilize and act.

Why Collective Action Is Urgent Now

In recent months, the short- and long-term damage of the administration’s immigration actions has come into sharper focus, requiring significant action.
- Prospective international student confidence in pursuing their studies in the U.S. has declined dramatically as a result of the administration’s actions. New international student enrollments are already down more than 10 percent this fall for many institutions—and considerably more for some—with analysts projecting more intense declines in future years.
- The administration is actively taking away in-state tuition and financial aid access for undocumented students in a growing number of states and threatening specific institutions because of their support for undocumented students.
- Reports of immigration enforcement on and around campuses are increasing, with more institutions grappling with how to respond to fear and anxiety in their communities and how to support students, family members and employees who are caught up in mass enforcement actions.
- Humanitarian parolees and temporary protected status holders are losing their protections and work authorization, making them vulnerable targets for deportation.
Campuses are already feeling the impact of these developments—but the economic consequences and implications for U.S. productivity and innovation are far broader. A new National Foundation for American Policy study estimates that the current administration’s immigration policies targeting undocumented, lawfully immigrant and international populations would reduce the number of workers in the U.S. by 6.8 million by 2028, and 15.7 million by 2035, lowering the annual rate of economic growth by nearly one-third.

A recent paper on “brain freeze” projects that the U.S. will experience significant adverse economic and innovation impacts due to the declines in international students and researchers. The loss of any portion of the immigrant-origin and international students on our campuses, who together now make up close to 40 percent of all students in higher education, would be devastating for many institutions, local economies and states across the country.

What Can We Do Together?

Since January, colleges and universities have been responding to policies that adversely impact immigrant, international, refugee and other noncitizen campus members. At the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, we have collaborated with campuses to analyze emerging policies and develop effective responses, producing resources on immigration enforcement on campus, registration requirements for noncitizens and issues related to international students, as well as guidance on funding and tuition equity policies to support Dreamers and on ways to support students and other campus members who may be detained or deported.

We now need to take it to the next level. Colleges, universities and the associations that represent them need to coordinate consistently to mobilize in response to the immigration-related threats impacting our campuses.

Support Litigation

Higher education groups, associations and institutions are engaging in litigation on many fronts. While it might seem overwhelming to challenge this administration’s dubious—and, as many legal experts and courts have concluded, unlawful—immigration policy actions, we need to connect the dots and explain the harm to judges who have the power to halt implementation and call out the administration for its constitutional violations.

Public institutions in states with Democratic attorneys general can help to make the case to their AGs about the importance of joining these efforts. Some ways higher education institutions can support litigation include:
- Serving as a named plaintiff. While associations representing colleges and universities, including the Presidents’ Alliance, the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts, and the Association of American Universities, have shown that they are ready to stand as named plaintiffs in legal challenges related to immigration, we will need more associations and institutions ready to support such litigation. Litigation is one way to interrupt intersecting policy actions that amplify the myriad threats facing immigrant and international communities and establish a record of opposition to potentially unlawful action.
- Submitting a declaration. Institutions can play a vital role when they submit declarations to support legal challenges. These fact-based documents describe the concrete harms an institution is experiencing and provide crucial evidence that strengthens the overall case.
- Joining an amicus brief. When campuses join amicus briefs, they demonstrate coordination and solidarity within the higher education sector. For example, last spring, when the American Association of University Professors challenged the administration’s unlawful visa revocations alleging an ideological deportation policy, 86 institutions and organizations joined the Presidents’ Alliance on an amicus brief that highlighted the importance of protecting international and noncitizen students’ and scholars’ freedom of speech. And, this week, 37 institutions and organizations joined us in an amicus brief that demonstrated the importance of tuition-equity policies for Dreamers.
Speak Out

Institutions and associations need to work more closely together to support one another and to communicate the damage of harmful immigration policies. During this administration, public and private institutions are more measured and constrained—by boards, state policies and structures and campus politics—in what they say and do publicly. We know that fear of retribution and the potential collateral damage to other campus constituencies informs decision-making. Many institutional leaders with whom I speak are seeking to do what is strategically effective and are weighing multiple priorities and competing commitments.

What we know now is that not speaking out does not preclude an institution from becoming a target, and many campus constituencies are already being harmed. So, the strategic calculus is changing, and there may be more to be gained in speaking out. Here are some effective ways to speak out:
- Affirming one for all, all for one. University of Nevada, Reno, president Brian Sandoval, a former Republican governor of Nevada, swiftly responded to the Department of Justice’s attacks on UNR’s support for undocumented students, stating clearly that UNR’s services were lawful and that supporting all students’ success is core to the higher education mission. The Presidents’ Alliance and TheDream.US issued public statements of support, reaffirming the importance of higher education supporting Dreamers and the success of all students. When individual institutions speak out, they often affirm our common mission, and we, in turn, can reaffirm theirs.
- Supporting associational statements. Associations are playing an important role in convening institutional leaders and leading on statements. We must continue to lean on each other and on associations. Statements organized by the American Association of Colleges and Universities and the American Council on Education on the proposed compact for higher education make our sector’s stances clear. Institutions and associations that can join such statements should continue to do so.
- Educating and engaging. Institutional leaders and board members can spread accurate, positive messages about immigrant and international students, shifting the narrative through commentaries such as Arizona State University president Michael Crow’s op-ed on the importance of international students.
Join in Coalition Building

For collective action to work, we need to build out dedicated spaces for higher education institutions to come together and coordinate. This call to action does not mitigate the need and usefulness for the private conversations that institutional leaders have on their campuses, in their states, on the Hill and with the current administration. While a good number of us may need to stay in more quiet spaces, now is also the time when each of us needs to consider what more we can do together.
- Join us in coalition-building. Building and hosting immigration-specific coordinating groups and strategy sessions has been a focus for us at the Presidents’ Alliance. It has proven productive for developing relationships with other sectors and building buy-in across regional contexts. We invite you to join us in our work to build common ground across the political spectrum and to advocate for forward-looking, common sense immigration reform.
- Strengthen your coordination. Institutions must prepare to navigate evolving policies. Strengthening coordination will help campuses understand new developments quickly while avoiding pre-emptive or overcompliance. It will help institutions know what they can do when they need to move swiftly to respond to immigration enforcement or policy actions that may have immediate consequences.
When we sound the alarm, we call others to take action alongside us. The time for urgent response is here. Together, higher education can take coordinated steps to defend our institutions and community members.

Miriam Feldblum is the co-founder, president and CEO of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration.
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November 6, 2025
Student Success Leaders Worry About Affordability, AI, DEI

After yet another rocky year for higher education, student success administrators retain high confidence in their institution’s core mission: Some 95 percent rate the quality of undergraduate education delivered as good or excellent, according to Inside Higher Ed’s second annual Survey of College and University Student Success Administrators with Hanover Research.

About the Survey

On Wednesday, Dec. 10, at 2 p.m. Eastern, Inside Higher Ed will present a free webcast to discuss the results of the 2025 Survey of College and University Student Success Administrators. Please register here—and plan on bringing your questions about student success going into 2026.

This survey was conducted Aug. 20–Oct. 6 with Hanover Research. Respondents number 204 student success leaders, most of whom work in student affairs at the executive level at public and private nonprofit institutions. The survey’s margin of error is plus or minus seven percentage points. A copy of the free report can be downloaded here.

This independent editorial survey was made possible by support from the Gates Foundation and Studiosity.

Most student success administrators (85 percent) also report strong feelings of connection to students served, and nearly as many say they’re satisfied in their roles. Yet leaders continue to worry about the forces holding students back. Selecting up to three options from a longer list, administrators cite mental health challenges (51 percent describe this as a top challenge), financial constraints (49 percent) and lack of adequate preparation before college (48 percent) as the top barriers to student success at their institution. Community college leaders are disproportionately concerned about students needing to work while enrolled (67 percent).

Just about half of all administrators believe their institution is highly responsive to student needs for flexibility, such as in times of personal or academic crises.

A larger share of respondents, 61 percent, believe their institution is highly effective in prioritizing student success. Just 35 percent say it’s highly effective in using student success data to drive decisions, however. Both of these figures are similar to last year’s survey, meaning the gap between aspiration and data-driven change remains.

Student affairs leaders who responded to NASPA’s own annual Top Issues in Student Affairs survey this year flagged “using dashboards and other data communication tools to help senior administrators translate data into actionable insights for decision-making” as a top issue for institutions, behind only “protecting the institution against cyberattacks” and “navigating political and legislative pressures affecting institutional policies and practices.”

Colleges can certainly do more to harness the extraordinary number of student data points available to them every day. But Amelia Parnell, NASPA’s president, told Inside Higher Ed that she’d give student success leaders “a little more credit” for their use of data—especially the qualitative kind.

“We need both quantitative data to see scale and impact and qualitative data to understand the nuances,” including around learning and engagement, she said. “I think professionals have quite a bit of qualitative context about students’ experiences because they spend a lot of time connecting directly with them.”

Other top areas of concern for student success administrators include affordability, artificial intelligence and policy impacts on campus life, finds Inside Higher Ed’s survey.

Affordability and Value

A third of student success administrators say that their trust in higher education has waned in recent years, and many point to concerns about affordability (64 percent) and long-term value of a degree (62 percent) as top drivers of declining public confidence. Leaders also highlight tighter alignment between academic programs and career pathways as a key lever for rebuilding trust.

About six in 10 respondents are highly confident that their institution is actively working to keep costs affordable, with public institution leaders especially likely to say so (69 percent versus 49 percent of private nonprofit peers).

But just 11 percent of leaders think students at their institution clearly understand the total cost of attendance, beyond tuition. They raise similar concerns about students’ awareness and understanding of emergency funding resources at their institution.

In Inside Higher Ed’s main Student Voice survey this year, just 27 percent of students said they understand the total cost of attendance fully and can budget appropriately. More than three in five didn’t know if their college offers emergency aid. Yet 61 percent of student success administrators say this kind of help is available at their institution.

Some additional context—and evidence of misalignment between student experience and administrator perception: In Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers, most CBOs (88 percent) said that their institution is transparent about the full, net cost of attendance, including tuition discounts and counting fees and other expenses—though just 42 percent said this of colleges and universities as a whole. Most CBOs also said that their institution’s net price is sufficiently affordable.

Parnell of NASPA noted that financial aid “is but one part of the cost of attendance discussion for some students.” But she added that financial aid offers represent an opportunity for colleges to improve clarity and transparency around total cost—something the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and others have urged.

Preparing Students for an AI Future

Just 2 percent of student success leaders say their institution is very effective in helping students understand how, when and whether to use generative artificial intelligence in academic settings. On promoting academic integrity, specifically, 77 percent endorse educating students about ethical AI use rather than emphasizing punitive measures. Faculty and staff development and efforts to standardize use policies also rank high.

In the Student Voice survey, just 13 percent of students said they didn’t know when, how and whether to use generative AI for coursework—but most of the remainder attributed their knowledge to individual faculty efforts rather than broader institutional ones.

Student success administrators also describe a gap between the extent to which high-impact teaching practices, such as those endorsed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, are highly encouraged at their institution and widely adopted (65 percent versus 36 percent, respectively). And while 87 percent agree that students graduate from their college ready to succeed in today’s job market, half (51 percent) believe their institution should focus more on helping students find paid internships and other experiential learning opportunities.

Tawnya Means, an innovation consultant who recently joined Bowling Green State University and its Schmidthorst College of Business as a strategic innovation and AI adviser, said that all three of these concerns—lack of institutional guidance on AI, high-impact teaching practices and other opportunities for experiential learning and internships—are connected.

“Schools treating AI as a catalyst for pedagogical redesign are simultaneously increasing high-impact practices and preparing students for AI-augmented careers,” she said. And institutions doing this well are using some common strategies: making faculty development about pedagogy, not just “AI compliance,” and designing assignments where AI supports real learning. Unpacking the latter point, Means praised approaches that are experiential, teach discipline-specific or contextual AI use versus abstract rules, and mirror actual workplaces.

While business schools have long understood the power of “messy real-world case studies,” Means said they’re ripe for use across undergraduate education in the generative AI era and “resist simple AI shortcuts.”

Parnell suggested on-campus employment as yet another way to provide “work experience and support students in their learning journey.”

On AI specifically, Asim Ali, executive director of the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning at Auburn University, who’s worked with many institutions on faculty development, said the “biggest gap I see is not engaging students in the process.”

At Auburn, he said, student government leaders have taken a “focused interest directly in shaping how we support GenAI learning.” And in discussions between student leaders and faculty, “both groups emphasized that students must also take responsibility for learning the ethics and appropriate use of GenAI.”

The biggest gap I see is not engaging students in the process.”

—Asim Ali, executive director of the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning at Auburn University

Financial worries and uncertainty about the future top the list of students’ postcollege stressors, as ranked by student success administrators. And just a quarter of these leaders say their institution makes postgraduate outcomes are easily accessible.

Policy Impacts and Campus Climate

Almost all leaders say students feel welcomed, valued and supported on their campuses, and 87 percent say their institution is doing a good or excellent job promoting a positive campus climate. Yet regional differences emerge: Leaders in the South are somewhat less likely than peers elsewhere to say their institution is highly effective in encouraging diverse perspectives among students.

Nearly two in three leaders (62 percent) say recent federal restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have negatively impacted students, and the rate is higher among public institution leaders than their private nonprofit peers.

In the Student Voice survey, 48 percent of students said such changes had negatively impacted their college experience or that of peers; most of the remainder saw no change, rather than a positive one.

Most administrators also believe new student aid policies, such as those included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will limit access to college rather than expand it. And many already report moderate (39 percent) or significant (29 percent) declines in international student enrollments tied to recent federal actions, such as visa appointment restrictions and targeted actions at specific institutions.

Leaders estimate that 40 percent of students participate in no extracurricular activities, a figure that rises to 67 percent among community college administrators. Respondents are mostly like to say involvement would increase if students saw a clear connection between activities and their career goals.

For institutions struggling to get students in involved, Parnell highlighted the importance of effectively communicating and delivering available activities to students: Are any activities at community colleges, which serve many working students, available after 5 p.m., for example, she asked?

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November 6, 2025