Tag: Jobs

  • Academic Leaders Under Pressure: What Provosts Are Saying

    Academic Leaders Under Pressure: What Provosts Are Saying

    Provosts remain committed to their institutions’ academic mission but face growing pressures that make the job more reactive than strategic, according to Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers with Hanover Research, out today. While 91 percent of respondents say they’re glad to have pursued administrative work, only 29 percent report consistently having the resources to implement initiatives. 

    Other findings further reveal how leaders are responding to a shifting landscape within and outside higher education: Nearly a third of institutions represented have begun updating curricula to prepare students for artificial intelligence in the workplace, and more than half of provosts report declines in federal funding under the second Trump administration. Some 47 percent cite a “strategic compliance” approach to this new policy environment and 41 percent a “wait and see” approach. Many institutions are also trying out new ways to support research funding.

    On Wednesday, Oct. 22, at 2 p.m. Eastern, Inside Higher Ed will host a free live webcast on the findings with expert panelists who will share their reasons for optimism in higher education in 2025, along with their concerns about the sector and being a campus leader. Register for that here.

    Even amid these challenges, provosts’ confidence in academic quality remains high. Seventy-nine percent rate their institution’s academic health as good or excellent, and 87 percent say their college’s innovative programs are serving students well. Yet, a majority of provosts note uneven support across disciplines and limited resources for certain student populations, namely those with disabilities. Some doubts about scaling online education for quality are also present.

    Download the full survey report, produced with support from Coursedog, Honorlock and Watermark, here.

    Mental health and well-being are other pressing concerns: Most provosts say their campus has responded effectively to the student mental health crisis, but fewer see overall student health improving. Community college leaders, in particular, highlight food and housing insecurity as a top challenge.

    Read more about what provosts have to say about campus speech and other topics—including the federal policy environment and artificial intelligence, here and here.

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  • ED Reallocates MSI Funding to HBCUs, Tribal Colleges

    ED Reallocates MSI Funding to HBCUs, Tribal Colleges

    When the U.S. Department of Education abruptly ended grants for most minority-serving institutions last week, it raised questions about what the department would do with the hundreds of millions of dollars already slated for these programs. The department offered an answer Monday, announcing plans to repurpose funds from programs “not in the best interest of students and families” to historically Black colleges and universities, tribal colleges, charter schools, and civics education.

    “The department has carefully scrutinized our federal grants, ensuring that taxpayers are not funding racially discriminatory programs but those programs which promote merit and excellence in education,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “The Trump Administration will use every available tool to meaningfully advance educational outcomes and ensure every American has the opportunity to succeed in life.”

    The department promised to direct an extra $495 million to HBCUs and tribal colleges, on top of the funds already anticipated for fiscal year 2025—increases of 48.4 percent and 109.3 percent, respectively. In total, HBCUs are slated to receive over $1.34 billion and tribal colleges expect to receive $108 million this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The department is also giving an additional $60 million to charter schools and putting $137 million toward civics education grants. The department didn’t share more specifics on how it would allocate the funds to institutions.

    The move has been met with mixed reactions. Some HBCU advocates are celebrating the one-time influx as a game-changer for cash-starved institutions. Others’ joy is tempered by concern that the Trump administration is uplifting some MSIs at the expense of others, sowing tensions between them.

    The new funds come less than a week after the Education Department quashed grant programs for Hispanic-serving institutions and other MSIs, deeming them “unconstitutional” because they require colleges to serve a certain percentage of students from a particular racial or ethnic background to qualify. (HBCUs and tribal colleges don’t have enrollment thresholds.) This blow to MSI grants, as well as cuts to teacher prep and gifted and talented programs, is paying for the department’s recent largess, The New York Times reported, citing several anonymous sources familiar with the department’s plans.

    Lodriguez Murray, vice president of public policy and government affairs at the United Negro College Fund, which represents private HBCUs, said the funds are “nothing short of a godsend” for institutions operating on lean budgets.

    “Now, all of a sudden, [HBCUs] have much more wherewithal to do the things, not just that take you from year to year, but can make an impact on your campus,” he said. He foresees HBCUs using the funds to buy property, improve their campus infrastructure and invest in student and faculty supports in new ways.

    Murray said he doesn’t have qualms about the money coming from the slashed MSI programs.

    He claimed many of these institutions are predominantly white, tend to have higher endowments than HBCUs and serve lower shares of Pell-eligible students. (Most enrollment-based MSIs are required to serve at least 50 percent low-income students. HBCUs have no such requirement but tend to enroll at least 70 percent Pell-eligible students.)

    As far as he’s concerned, the Trump administration is channeling “resources toward the institutions that seem to need it the most—and the institutions that have a better track record at taking students from underserved backgrounds and … changing the economic outlook of their lives,” Murray said. “That is the reason why we have no pause about receiving the funds this morning.”

    Harry Williams, president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which represents public HBCUs, said he wants to see other types of MSIs thrive, and at the same time, he’s excited about how the new support could help HBCU students.

    He didn’t know the Trump administration planned to drop millions on the institutions, he said. And while TMCF regularly lobbies for HBCU funding, “candidly, we have never made any recommendations about where the money should come from to the administration, because that’s their decision in terms of how they operate.”

    He said he’s “sensitive” to the challenges facing MSIs, noting that TMCF has three predominantly Black institutions among its members. TMCF put out a statement last week in support of them when the department said it was ending MSI grant programs, including PBIs.

    “We do support MSIs and PBIs and all the groups in that category and recognize the importance of them having resources, too,” he said, “but our primary focus has always been working with HBCUs.”

    Pitting MSIs Against Each Other

    Marybeth Gasman, executive director of the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions, said HBCUs and tribal colleges deserve the money.

    These institutions have “always been underfunded” and “the federal government should always be thinking about ways to enhance them, especially based on our country’s history of racism and inequities,” she said.

    But Gasman believes other types of MSIs are also deserving of these resources. She pointed out that many Hispanic-serving institutions are community colleges, and they serve about a third of the country’s students over all, not just Latino students.

    The Education Department is “trying to pit different types of minority-serving institutions against each other,” even though MSI leaders and advocacy groups have worked together for years toward similar policy goals, she said. “And that is really, really troubling … I hope people don’t fall for that.”

    Gasman noted that department officials made a “purposeful” decision to share that new funds for HBCUs and tribal colleges came from defunded programs. She called the framing of the announcement “spiteful” and said she worries for the future of the MSI community.

    “There is enough pie for all of these institutions,” she said. “It’s not like you need to take from one to feed the others.”

    Dominique Baker, associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware, said the funding for HBCUs and tribal colleges, while necessary, doesn’t lead her to believe the Trump administration has their best interests at heart.

    The funds are “a nice way” for the administration to claim “they hold no racial animus, because look at all the money that they’ve given to HBCUs,” Baker said, at the same time as they crack down on diversity, equity and inclusion at predominantly white institutions.

    “It can both be true that you are providing funding to institutions that deserve funding—and you are working to ensure that the institutions that you hold in high prestige resegregate,” she added.

    Executive Branch Overreach?

    The legality of the department’s move—cutting funding for some programs to be showered on others—is also a little murky. Department officials say they are relying on “existing flexibilities in discretionary grant programs” to move the money around.

    Amanda Fuchs Miller, former deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs under the Biden administration and now president of the higher ed consultancy Seventh Street Strategies, said under statute, the department legally has the right to “reprogram” funds within an account.

    But even if department officials are following the law, she said the “intent” of reprogramming was never to end programs authorized and continually funded by Congress, like the MSI programs. And the executive branch claiming it has the authority to declare anything unconstitutional is “the real problem.” So, as far as she’s concerned, the department went out of bounds by eliminating the MSI programs and regifting their money to other institutions.

    “It’s great that the HBCUs and TCUs will get more money—they need it,” Miller said. “Those students will benefit from it. But to take away funds from one group of students to help another group of students, that’s not beneficial to anybody. We should be pushing back to help all students succeed and have these resources.”

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  • Strategies for Personalized Learning in AI Age (opinion)

    Strategies for Personalized Learning in AI Age (opinion)

    How do we teach effectively—and humanly—in this age of AI?

    New advances in artificial intelligence break news at such a rapid pace that many of us have difficulties keeping up. Dinuka Gunaratne gave a detailed summary of many different AI tools in his “Carpe Careers” article published in July; yet more tools will likely appear in the next months and years in an exponential explosion. How do we, as educators (new and established Ph.D.s) design curriculum and classes with these new AI tools being released every few weeks? How do we design effective assignments that teach critical analysis and logical thought while knowing that our students, too, have access to these tools?

    Many existing AI tools can be used to assist with course design. However, I will provide some insight on methods of pedagogy that emphasize personalized learning regardless of what new technology becomes available.

    Some questions educators are now thinking about include:

    1. How do I design an assignment so the student cannot just prompt an AI tool to complete it?
    2. How do I design the course so that the student can choose whether or not to use AI tools—and how do I assess these two groups of students?

    Below, I outline some wise teaching practices with an eye toward helping students develop core skills including critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, creativity and—the most essential skill of all—curiosity.

    Making the Most Out of Class Time

    An effective course utilizes a combination of teaching strategies. I outline three here.

    1. Make sure that your class is generative so that when you give an assignment, it reaches as far back as day one. A generative learning model is one in which each week is built upon the previous one, and in which a student is assessed on the knowledge they have cumulatively accrued.
    1. Hold interactive in-person activities in each class, building upon the previous assignments and content.
    2. Flip the classroom so that class time is used for discussion and not a monologue presentation from you. If you can assign videos or reading assignments for students to view or read prior to class, then you can use class time to discuss the content or reinforce the learning with group activities.

    Here is an example of combining these tools in the buildup to a presentation from one of my classes.

    • Week 1: Each student writes and brings a one-page summary of their research so that peers can provide feedback. I provide feedback training in class before the peer readings take place.
    • Week 2: Using the peer feedback of the summary, each student creates one slide summarizing their research for a three-minute thesis (3MT) and brings the slide to class to receive peer feedback.
    • Week 3: Students practice presentation skills through an activity called “slide karaoke,” in which a student has one minute to present a simple slide they have never seen before. They are then given feedback by peers and the instructor on general presentation skills. I provide peer feedback training before the presentations.
    • Week 4: Students implement the general feedback from slide karaoke and give practice 3MT presentations to receive specific peer and mentor feedback on the content. These mentors are usually students from the year before who revisit the class.
    • Week 5: Students give the final 3MT in front of judges and peers for evaluation.
    • Week 6: Students write a summary of what was learned from the entire generative experience.

    This sequence of assignments is personalized so that the final report can only be about the student’s individual experience. While students might want to use AI tools to edit or organize their ideas, ChatGPT or other AI tools cannot possibly know what happened in the classroom—only the student can write about it.

    For larger classes in which a presentation from each student may not be possible, here is another example.

    • Week 1: A video or reading assigned to students to view/read before class discusses the basics of DNA and inheritance. An in-class assignment involves a group discussion on Mendelian inheritance problem sets.
    • Week 2: Before class, students read an article on how DNA is packaged; the in-class discussion focuses on the molecules involved in chromatin structure.
    • The next classes all have either prereads or videos, which students discuss in class, and the content builds up to a more complex genetic mechanism, such as elucidating the gene for a disease. The final report could be “summarize how one could find a gene responsible for a certain disease using the discussion points we had in class.” In this scenario as well, the student is taking the personalized class experience and incorporating the ideas into the final report, something that cannot be wholly outsourced to any AI tool.

    If you decide to embrace AI tools in the classroom, you can still teach critical thinking and creativity by asking the students to use AI to write a report on a topic discussed in class—and then in part two of the assignment, ask them to assess the AI-generated report, cite the proper references and correct any mistakes, content or grammar-wise.

    I sometimes show an example of this in class to demonstrate to students that AI makes mistakes, rather than giving it as an assignment. But it is something you might want to try making an optional method for an assignment. Students can declare whether they used AI or not on their submission. As an instructor, you will need to design two rubrics for these different groups. Group one will have a rubric based on content, grammar, references, logical thought and organization, and clarity. Group two (those who use AI) will have a rubric consisting of the same components in addition to an evaluation of how well the student found the AI mistakes.

    Applying for Teaching Positions

    If you are applying for a teaching position, you should address AI in your teaching dossier and how you may or may not incorporate it—but at the very least, discuss its effects on higher education. Many articles and books on this topic exist, including Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning, by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson (Johns Hopkins Press, 2024); Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, by Joseph E. Aoun (MIT Press, 2017); and Generative AI in Higher Education, by Cecilia Ka Yuk Chan and Tom Colloton (Routledge, 2024).

    Yet even as we consider how to integrate AI in our teaching, we must not forget the human experience at work in all that we do. We can emphasize things like 1) encouraging students to meet with us in person or even for a walk as opposed to a virtual meeting and 2) assessing what emotions students bring to the meeting or class and how that may affect the dynamics. We as educators should harness the human side of teaching, including the classroom experience and the in-class group work, so that the “final” assessments build directly out of these personalized learnings.

    For those venturing into a career that involves teaching or mentoring, develop teaching strategies and tools that center the human experience and include them in your teaching dossier. Your application will shine.

    Nana Lee is the director of professional development and mentorship, special adviser to the dean of medicine for graduate education, and associate professor, teaching stream, at the University of Toronto. She is also a member and regional director of the Graduate Career Consortium—an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.

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  • A Disenchanted Provost Discusses Why He Ditched the Job

    A Disenchanted Provost Discusses Why He Ditched the Job

    Throughout his 20-year career in higher education, Julian Vasquez Heilig has steadily climbed the career ladder, moving from assistant to associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin; into a full professorship at California State University, Sacramento; and then to a dean position at the University of Kentucky’s College of Education, Human Development and Sport Science. Being dean was rewarding, he said. The wins were visible, the feedback loop was short and he was well supported. Hoping to expand his impact, Heilig stepped onto the next career-ladder rung and became provost at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. But as provost, he didn’t feel emboldened to make change, he said; he felt isolated and exposed.

    After two years, he stepped down, and he now serves as a professor of educational leadership, research and technology at Western Michigan. His frustrations with the provost role had less to do with Western Michigan and more to do with how the job is designed, he explained. “Each person sees the provost a little differently. The faculty see the provost as administration, although, honestly, around the table at the cabinet, the provost is probably the only faculty member,” Heilig said. “The trustees—they see the provost as a middle manager below the president, and the president sees [the provost] as a buffer from issues that are arising.”

    Inside Higher Ed sat down with Heilig to talk about the provost job and all he’s learned about the role through years of education leadership research, conversations with colleagues and his own experience.

    The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    Q: You stepped down from the provost role at Western Michigan in January, two years after taking the position. What tipped you off that the position wasn’t for you?

    A: In general, provosts are judged on student success, retention, faculty hiring and academic quality, and yet the purse strings of those things often truly sit with the president or the chief financial officer. That split means the provost really answers for outcomes without the levers to fund them. The job really asks you, as a leader, to redesign programs and diversify pipelines while working with multiple stakeholders—trustees, donors and faculty. If you push too hard on innovation, you face backlash. If you move too slowly and the role becomes ceremonial, then that might violate your own personal mission and beliefs. I’m not specifically talking about Western Michigan—all institutions have to decide whether they value transformation or whether they want tranquil optics.

    For most provosts, the average tenure is three years, based on the research I’ve seen. But durable change, sustainable change could take five, seven, 10 years. A lot of the things that [provosts] initiate outlive the job—it’s difficult to be around to see your agenda finished.

    Q: You’ve described the provost role as being “structurally exposed.” What does that mean, exactly?

    A: The relationship between presidents and provosts can be—especially at research universities—really fraught. One of the ways that it can be helped is by, from the outset, sitting down with your president to talk about how you’re going to make decisions, what the expectations are for resource commitments and joint accountability for decisions. A lot of times provosts are enforcing decisions and policies they didn’t make, but they’re held accountable to those policies, and having a compact [with the president] would be a better foundation.

    Leaders need to be able to have buffers to take smart risks without constant political whiplash. Those could look like multiyear resource agreements or protocols for handling disputes among vice presidents. That is super important—insulation is not isolation; it’s a structure that enables courage among leaders. Higher education is always the first to call for change and the last to make it because we have to align authority with responsibility. We have to be committed to change. We can’t avoid crises because there are some people that aren’t interested in making change and are completely satisfied with the status quo.

    Q: Did pushback to your equity work factor into your decision to ultimately step down?

    A: When controversy hits, the easiest release valve is the provost … It’s important for institutions to see the provost role not as disposable if they expect the provost to be bold stewards of academic affairs.

    Someone told me on LinkedIn that the provost role is not actually the chief officer of academic affairs; they’re actually the associate dean of academic affairs. Because pressure comes at the provost from the side from other vice presidents, from above you from the president and from below you from the deans, without the opportunity to respond to all those stakeholders in all the ways you would like. If you reallocate resources and challenge the institution’s sacred cows, then you’re going to take immediate fire. A lot of provosts will last many, many years in the job because caretaking is much safer than transforming under the current norms of higher education. So we need to think about how you reward measured disruption in the provost role and protect those who are doing the hard work of solving problems.

    There’s a high burnout cost to this job because you have nonstop negotiation between all these different stakeholder groups and competing demands. Each of these stakeholder groups want something different. Emotional labor mounts for you as a provost because the wins are very diffused … and if something goes wrong with accreditation or something else, the blame is very concentrated. So without structural support from each of those stakeholder groups, even the best leaders get drained.

    A lot of people go right from dean to president nowadays; they don’t want to get sidelined by the provost role. They just decide that this type of leadership is not worth it. That means that institutions are losing people who would build in this role, who would innovate in this role, and are rewarding people who just simply want to manage and caretake. Instead of hiring leaders, they’re just going to hire a manager.

    Q: You’ve written that provosts are almost always destined for a falling-out with their president. How do you think those roles are pitted against each other?

    A: If you’re thinking about becoming a provost, you have to take the measure of the person you’re working for. You’ve got to figure out: How is this hard decision going to be made? How are resources going to be committed? How is there going to be joint accountability for decisions that the president wants you to make? Will there be shared goals and shared power, rather than performative communications and performative statements? A real relationship and a real compact is the foundation for success for a partnership like this.

    Deans operate in a bounded area of things with very visible outcomes and very tight feedback loops, but the provost has a very diffuse set of responsibilities and is responsible for not just one but [many] colleges. The clarity that deans have really fuels that work. Vice president of academic affairs is a title that suggests influence, but its insulation and authority are very thin. Visibility is high, but when things go wrong, they go very wrong. We’ve got to pair the prestige of that position with clear powers and clear protections, because, again, each of the stakeholder groups has different interests, and so they see you either as their friend or their enemy.

    Q: Is there anything in particular that you would like to see from presidents in general to better support their provosts?

    A: [Provosts] can’t be seen as expendable by design. So when a controversy hits—and you have controversies day after day after day—the main job of the provost is to fix things, hard problems that weren’t fixed before they got to your desk. And so when things go really wrong, from what I hear from my colleagues, the easiest release valve is the provost.

    As you look across campuses, people are saying provost is the hardest job. And there’s a reason why they say that.

    Q: Inside Higher Ed with Hanover Research is releasing its annual survey of provosts tomorrow, and one of the things we found is that 86 percent of respondents said they enjoyed being provost, but only 29 percent of them felt that they consistently have the resources they need to implement initiatives. Do you feel like your experience aligned with that?

    A: Yeah, I think it’s particularly difficult when you come in as a vice president rather than as an executive vice president. When you’re on the same level with other VPs, it creates a Game of Thrones in terms of resources. The finance people want money for building, and the VP of research wants money for research, and so one of the challenges when you come into the provost role is you need to have more flexibility, especially around equity. When equity moves from emails and speeches to actual budget shifts, you get resistance. Leaders who are expected to redirect resources to close gaps, they become targets.

    Q: Also in our survey, more than half of provosts said their job was more about fixing problems than planning ahead. Would you agree that the role is like playing crisis manager?

    A: Part of the challenge is that provosts are having to deal with decisions that other people made. And so you have to deal with decisions that faculty made that may be problematic. You’ve got to implement decisions that the president made. You have a cabinet wanting to implement their decisions for academic affairs, and some of those things go wrong. So you’ve got to work with your team to fix all the different things, and sometimes you can’t fix it fast enough.

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  • Trump Administration Withholds Millions for TRIO Programs

    Trump Administration Withholds Millions for TRIO Programs

    Normally, back-to-school season means that the staff who lead federally funded programs for low-income and first-generation college students are kicking into high gear. But this month, the Trump administration has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in TRIO grants, creating uncertainty for thousands of programs. Some have been forced to grind to a halt, advocates say.

    Colleges and nonprofits that had already been approved for the award expected to hear by the end of August that their federal funding was on its way. But rather than an award notice, program leaders received what’s known as a “no cost extension,” explaining that while programs could continue to operate until the end of the month, they would not be receiving the award money. 

    Over all, the Council for Opportunity in Education, a nonprofit advocacy group that focuses on supporting TRIO programs, estimates that the Trump administration has withheld about $660 million worth of aid for more than 2,000 TRIO programs. (Congress allocated $1.19 billion to TRIO for the current fiscal year.) 

    As a result of the freeze, COE explained, many colleges and nonprofit organizations had to temporarily pivot to online services or shutter their programs and furlough staff. Roughly 650,000 college students and high school seniors will lack vital access to academic advising, financial guidance and assistance with college applications if the freeze persists, they say.

    “For many students, these first few weeks of the year are going to set the trajectory for their whole semester, especially if you’re an incoming freshman,” said COE president Kimberly Jones. “This is when you’re making critical choices about your coursework, trying to navigate the campus and just trying to acclimate to this new world. If you’re first-gen, you need the guidance of a program to help you navigate that.”

    Jones said that Education Department officials said this week that the pause is temporary. However, the Department of Education did not immediately respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment Friday.

    TRIO Under Threat

    Originally established in the 1960s, TRIO now consists of seven different programs, each designed to support various individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds and help them overcome barriers of access to higher education.  

    Not all the TRIO programs have had funding withheld. Roughly 1,300 awards for certain programs—such as Upward Bound Math-Science, Student Support Services and any general Upward Bound projects with a June 1 start date—were disbursed on time, Jones said. But that’s only 40 percent of the more than 3,000 TRIO programs.  

    Other programs, including Upward Bound projects with a Sept. 1 start date, Veterans Upward Bound, Educational Opportunity Centers and Talent Search, are still waiting for checks to land in their accounts.

    Policy experts added that funding for the McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement program, a TRIO service focused on graduate students, also has yet to be distributed. But unlike most of the programs, funding for McNair is not due until Sept. 30. Still, Jones and others said they are highly concerned those funds will also be frozen.

    Given the unpredictability of everything this year around education, we can’t make any assumptions. Until we get those grants in the hands of our constituents, we have to assume the worst.”

    —COE president Kimberly Jones

    President Donald Trump proposed cutting all funding for TRIO in May, saying that the executive branch lacks the ability to audit the program and make sure it isn’t wasting taxpayer dollars. But so far, House and Senate appropriators have pushed back, keeping the funding intact. 

    When confronted by Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican and longtime TRIO advocate, at a budget hearing in June, McMahon acknowledged that “Congress does control the purse strings,” but went on to say that she would “sincerely hope” to work with lawmakers and “renegotiate” the program’s terms. 

    And while advocates hope that funds will eventually be reinstated, most experts interviewed remain skeptical. With 18 days left until the end of the fiscal year, any unallocated TRIO funds will likely be sent back to the Department of Treasury, never to reach the organizations they were intended for. 

    The Trump administration has tried to freeze or end other education-related grant programs—including a few TRIO programs that were cut off in June—which officials said “conflict with the Department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help; or constitute an inappropriate use of federal funds.”

    And while some of the funding freezes have been successfully challenged in court, the judicial process needed to win back federal aid is slow. Most colleges don’t have that kind of time, the advocates say.

    “Given the unpredictability of everything this year around education, we can’t make any assumptions,” Jones said. “Until we get those grants in the hands of our constituents, we have to assume the worst.”

    ‘Crippling’ Effects 

    For Summer Bryant, director of the Talent Search program at Morehead State University in Kentucky, the funding freeze has been “crippling.”

    Talent Search is a TRIO program focused on supporting middle and high school students with college preparation. And while the loss of about $1 million hasn’t forced Bryant to shut down her program quite yet, it has significantly limited her capacity to serve students.

    After paying the program’s 10 staff members for the month of September, Bryant has just over $1,000 left—and that’s between both of the grants she received last year.

    “It may sound like a lot, but when you take into account that we’re providing services to eight counties and 27 target schools, coupled with the fact that driving costs about 50 cents a mile and some of our schools one-way are almost 120 miles away, that’s not a lot of money,” she said. “So instead, I had to make a Facebook post notifying our students and their guardians that we would be pausing all in-person services until we receive our grant awards.”

    Even then, Morehead TRIO programs are based in a rural part of Appalachia, so broadband access and choppy connections are also a concern. 

    “Doing things over the phone or over a Zoom is just not as effective as doing it face-to-face—information is lost,” Bryant said. And because this freeze is happening during the most intensive season for college applications, “even a one month delay could lead to a make-or-break moment for a lot of our seniors,” she added.

    It’s not just Bryant facing these challenges. Of Morehead’s nine preapproved TRIO grants, only four have been awarded. The same scenario is playing out at campuses across the country.

    Democratic senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, along with 32 other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, demanded in a letter sent Wednesday that the administration release the funds. Collectively, they warned that failure to do so “will result in irreversible damage to our students, families, and communities, as many rely on the vital programs and services provided by TRIO programs.”

    They wrote that TRIO has produced over six million college graduates since its inception in 1964, promoting a greater level of civic engagement and spurring local economies. 

    “The data proves that TRIO works,“ the senators stressed. “Students’ futures will be less successful if they do not receive their appropriated funds immediately.” 

    Rep. Gwen Moore, a Wisconsin Democrat and TRIO alumna, and 53 fellow House members sent a similar letter the same day.

    The freeze is hitting community colleges particularly hard; they receive half of all TRIO grants, said David Baime, senior vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges.

    Baime said he has “no idea” why the department is withholding funds and added that while he is hopeful the federal dollars will be restored, there is an “unusual degree of uncertainty.”

    Between a handful of TRIO grants that were terminated with little to no explanation earlier in the year and the recent decision to cancel all grant funding for minority-serving institutions, worries among TRIO programs are high, Jones from COE and others said.

    Still, Baime is holding out hope.

    “The department has gone on record saying that fiscal year 2025 TRIO funds would be allocated,” he said. “So despite the very concerning delays, we remain optimistic.”

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  • 3 More Faculty, Staff Removed for Kirk Comments

    3 More Faculty, Staff Removed for Kirk Comments

    Right-wing X accounts are pushing for universities to dismiss any employees that have disparaged Kirk in the days following his death.

    Photo illustration by Inside Higher Ed | LeoPatrizi/E+/Getty Images

    At least five faculty and staff members have been fired so far for comments they made in response to the death of Turning Point USA founder and conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed Wednesday during an event at Utah Valley University. 

    Investigators announced Friday they arrested a suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who is now being held in a Utah jail without bail. Utah governor Spencer Cox said during a press conference Friday that a family friend turned Robinson in to authorities after the suspect suggested to a relative that he’d killed Kirk. Robinson was not a student at Utah Valley.

    The Utah Board of Higher Education said in a statement that Robinson is a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College and that he attended Utah State University for one semester in 2021.

    Among the latest college employees terminated for their responses to Kirk’s killing, Lisa Greenlee was removed as a part-time instructor from Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, N.C., on Thursday after she made comments criticizing Kirk to students during an online class, saying, “I’ll praise the shooter; he had good aim.” A video of her remarks made the rounds on X, where right-wing accounts encouraged the college to fire her.

    “We deeply regret that students, employees, and the community were impacted by her comments. Greenlee’s behavior is not consistent with the college’s values and mission to serve Guilford County. Her statement regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk does not support the open and respectful learning and working environment that GTCC provides every day,” GTCC president Anthony Clarke said in a statement. “We want to reiterate that supporting violence is reprehensible and will not be tolerated at the college.” Greenlee did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment. 

    Two employees at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tenn., were dismissed Thursday for making “inappropriate comments on the internet related to the tragic shooting of Charlie Kirk,” university president Paul Stumb wrote in a statement posted on X. He identified the employees as Michael Rex, an English and creative writing professor, and Max Woods, an assistant esports coach, but he did not share what they said. Like Greenlee, both had been the subject of online campaigns advocating for their firing. 

    “This decision was not made lightly,” Stumb wrote. “We understand the importance and the impact of this action, and we want to emphasize that we conducted a comprehensive investigation prior to making our decision.” 

    Before Stumb’s statement was publicized, Rex posted an apology on his Facebook page. “No one deserves to be murdered,” he wrote. “I did not think about the pain and anger that my words would create. My comments were not meant to celebrate nor to foster political violence and for any traums [sic] my words caused, I am truly sorry.” Rex and Wood did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment.

    The recent firings follow the dismissals of Laura Sosh-Lightsy, a student affairs administrator at Middle Tennessee State University, and an unnamed staff member at the University of Mississippi.

    A Clemson university professor is also subject to an ongoing push by X users to have him fired for statements on Kirk’s death. On Friday afternoon, the university posted a statement that alluded to the situation. “We stand firmly on the principles of the U.S. Constitution, including the protection of free speech. However, that right does not extend to speech that incites harm or undermines the dignity of others. We will take appropriate action for speech that constitutes a genuine threat which is not protected by the Constitution.”

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  • GAO Raises Concern About Future FAFSAs

    GAO Raises Concern About Future FAFSAs

    The government watchdog explored what went wrong with the 2024–25 FAFSA in a new report.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | sdominick/Getty Images | Ake/rawpixel

    The Education Department is on track to release the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid by Oct. 1, but a government watchdog warned this week that future forms are at risk of technical issues.

    The Government Accountability Office, in its second report on the botched launch of the 2024–25 FAFSA, found that the department has yet to implement a number of its recommendations from the first report released in September 2024. Additionally, the agency needs to improve its oversight of contractors. The GAO also noted that the department doesn’t have a plan for testing future FAFSAs and that staff overseeing the application lack key experience and training.

    “Until [the Office of Federal Student Aid] makes progress in these important areas, [the FAFSA Processing System] is at risk of not functioning as intended in future releases, leading to students having trouble in obtaining timely aid,” the report states. “Further, the FPS contract is at risk of overexpenditure and potentially wasting taxpayer dollars. These risks are compounded by reductions in staff that likely impact the agency’s ability to carry out its mission to manage and oversee student financial assistance programs.”

    FSA officials took issue with parts of the report and recommendations in a response to the agency.

    “We believe that GAO’s analysis teaches the wrong lessons and, as an unintended consequence, reinforces the exact practices that led to the FAFSA’s initial challenges,” wrote Aaron Lemon-Strauss, executive director of the FAFSA program.

    Lemon-Strauss said GAO is applying a “more traditional, and somewhat outdated, project-based model that does not support modern technology development for scaled systems like the FAFSA.” He went on to outline a number of changes that the department made to improve the system, as well as the key challenges they faced.

    Among other things, he noted that FSA had no internal engineering expertise until last year and that contractors working on different pieces of the process used different tools that didn’t integrate with each other.

    “The team is still working to unwind these parallel environments and the technical debt created by these decisions today,” he wrote.

    GAO officials disagreed with some of the department’s statements and proposed changes to their recommendations, countering that the review was based on both federal and department guidelines and that ED needs a way to hold its contractors accountable.

    “As our report notes, FSA was not appropriately overseeing the work of its contractor and did not adequately ensure rigorous testing of the system,” officials wrote. “By not doing so, FSA put the FAFSA modernization effort at risk of failure, which their letter points out.”

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  • Mass. College Launches Student-Led Basic Needs Center

    Mass. College Launches Student-Led Basic Needs Center

    An estimated 59 percent of all college students have experienced some form of housing or food insecurity in the past year, according to 2024 data from the Hope Center at Temple University. Closer to three in four students have lacked access to other basic needs, such as mental health care, childcare, transportation or technology.

    At Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, it was students who first noticed their peers needed additional resources.

    Spencer Moser, MCLA’s assistant dean for student growth and well-being, teaches a leadership capstone course in which students complete a community-based service project. “One group of students was aware that some of their peers were attending classes hungry,” he recalled.

    As part of their assignment, students researched available resources to address basic needs insecurity and identified the need for a campus pantry.

    “The program started as a drawer at my desk,” Moser said. “Then it grew to fill a shelving unit, a closet and eventually its own space on campus.”

    Now, MCLA hosts an Essential Needs Center (ENC) on campus for any student who may face financial barriers to acquiring food, housing or other necessary items.

    How it works: Located in the campus center, the Essential Needs Center is open 24 hours a day from Monday to Thursday, with more limited hours on Fridays. The center provides students with food, housing and transportation assistance, seasonal clothes, and more.

    Students can utilize a variety of resources to address food insecurity, including grab-and-go or instant meals and free meal swipes for the dining hall, as well as help with their SNAP applications. The center’s website also provides links to recipes using MCLA food pantry staples to help students with minimal cooking experience prepare nutritious meals.

    One of the unique offerings of MCLA’s center is a build-a-bundle initiative that allows students to request a variety of personal health, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom or cleaning items, as well as school supplies. Students can submit a form online requesting supplies ranging from a first-aid kit to baking supplies and a bath mat.

    The pantry has a small budget from the college, which is supplemented by grants, a partnership with the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and donor support. Interested donors can give nonperishable food items, toiletries or monetary contributions.

    Student supported: The ENC first started with students looking to support their classmates, and student leadership continues to be at the heart of the center’s work.

    “Students manage the inventory, make sure their peers know about this resource, staff the center,” Moser said. “The center is student-run and -managed, designed to be student-centric due to the belief that students know best what students’ needs are.”

    The pantry sees 400 to 500 students use the pantry regularly, for a total of 1,313 visits between November 2023 and January 2025, Moser said.

    In fall 2024 alone, ENC logged 729 visits—including from 96 first-time visitors—and distributed over 2,600 items.

    Other Models of Success

    Basic needs insecurity impacts college students across the country, hindering their academic progress and forcing them to choose between educational pursuits and personal needs. Here are some examples of how other colleges and universities are promoting student well-being.

    • Anne Arundel Community College students in Maryland created a cookbook featuring items exclusively from the campus pantry, many reflecting their traditions and cultures.
    • Some colleges allow students to pay off their parking tickets by donating food pantry items.
    • Pace University offers a monthly mobile market for students, faculty and staff to receive free food items that cannot be stored for longer in the permanent campus pantry.
    • The University of California, Davis, piloted a discounted food truck on campus at lunchtime, allowing students to receive a hot meal at a pay-what-you-can price.
    • Virginia Commonwealth University established mini pantries across campus with grab-and-go food items, modeled off the concept of a little free library.

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  • Thoughts on Education and Freedom as Fall Begins (opinion)

    Thoughts on Education and Freedom as Fall Begins (opinion)

    As our fall semester begins, college students are filled with excitement and nervous anticipation. By my lights, they are getting ready to practice freedom in the service of learning. Back in the 18th century, the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that enlightenment was freedom from self-imposed immaturity, describing how the process of education was the practice of freedom. When people learn—embarking on the journey of thinking for themselves in the company of others—they are experimenting with choice, autonomy, relationship and discipline.

    I (usually) find it thrilling to watch students experiment in these ways, and I occasionally get to join in. They are relinquishing—not completely, and certainly not all at once—their childish ways and trying on what it means to be an adult. They begin to experience that freedom from immaturity and figure out, provisionally, the kinds of lives they want to live. This normally includes, but is not limited to, the kind of work they are prepared to do. Facing this very practical issue is part of growing up, and colleges provide various opportunities for doing just that.

    Still, many in America have doubts about whether today’s college student is, in fact, learning to be a free adult. Some have been persuaded that college campuses no longer value the open exchange of ideas but instead demand allegiance only to ideas deemed progressive. Others see colleges as failing to practice what they preach. Children of alumni or wealthy donors have a much better chance of getting admitted to highly selective colleges than ordinary Americans; the paths to colleges believed to offer the best educations are paved with gold.

    The charge of unfair admissions—like the criticism of political groupthink or mindless grinding away to get grades and internships—attacks the integrity of learning as a path to freely thinking for oneself. If colleges are unfair or corrupt in choosing their students, then the value of the education offered is undermined. If one only learns to imitate the views of one’s professors in order to win their favor, then one is wallowing in immaturity and not practicing freedom.

    Unquestionably, there has been a loss of trust in higher education, and— while less dramatic, perhaps, than the loss of trust in the judiciary, the media or Congress—it undermines the ability of colleges to teach their students. No matter how much teachers emphasize critical thinking, learning requires trust. It requires that we open ourselves to ideas and people that might have an impact on how we live. This can, of course, sometimes be disturbing, even offensive, but the deepest learning often involves reconsidering our assumptions and deeply held beliefs.

    I see this regularly in the class I teach, Virtue and Vice. I see undergraduates willing to stress test their moral intuitions against thinkers as varied as Aristotle and Machiavelli, Friedrich Nietzsche and Danielle Allen. I see students considering how they want to live by thinking with some of the central texts of our traditions. Each week they practice one of the traditional virtues and discuss this with their fellow students. They read, think, practice, discuss. Reconsider and repeat.

    Critics prone to exaggeration have claimed that this kind of traditional humanistic work is no longer possible because today’s colleges have been captured ideologically by the woke left. Of course, there have been pernicious examples of close-mindedness from progressive purists, but the current attempt at ideological capture by the Trump administration is far more dangerous, as well as dishonest. Since President Trump’s inauguration, scores of colleges are being investigated for deliberately ignoring the harassment and intimidation of their Jewish students. These investigations, I have argued, are just vehicles for the White House to put pressure on higher education.

    As a Jewish teacher and university president, it pains me to see the fight against antisemitism used as a cudgel with which to attack centers of teaching and research. I’ve been very aware of antisemitism since I was a little boy, when a fellow fourth grader told me the only thing wrong with Hitler was that “he didn’t finish the job.” I reported this to my dad, and he told me to punch the kid at the next opportunity, which I did. I got in trouble at school, but my father was not displeased. I’ve never expected antisemitism to go away, and so its recent resurgence is concerning but not surprising.

    I am genuinely startled, though, by the ways Christian nationalists in the American government use Jew hatred as a vehicle to advance their authoritarian agenda. That’s what we are witnessing today: the exploitation of anti-antisemitism by a White House determined to extort money and expressions of loyalty from higher education. Sensing opportunity, some universities see a marketing advantage in portraying themselves as “good for the Jews,” offering protest-free environments (all the while singing the praises of free speech).

    As academic leaders, of course we must support students of faith generally, and we have a particular obligation to acknowledge religious minorities who have traditionally been targets of abuse. This, of course, includes but is not limited to Jews. Not a few of my students are interested in the topic “virtue and vice” because of their religious beliefs, and I find they are at least as capable of thinking critically about their faith as secular students are when asked to reconsider their own values. They join in the process of reading, thinking, practicing, discussing. Reconsider and repeat. As we practice a virtue each week, all my students learn how moral ideas might play a role in their daily lives. How much of a role, of course, is up to them.

    When I write it’s “up to them,” I imagine their choices as part of the process of leaving behind self-imposed immaturity. Sometimes, unfortunately, parents contribute to a student remaining a child, especially when they try to run interference for cherished offspring whenever an obstacle arises. But most of the time I see undergraduates practicing freedom in a safe enough environment—not too safe that they aren’t pushed to reconsider their choices, but accommodating enough that they can explore possibilities without feeling in danger. 

    This environment is threatened by the enormous pressure the federal government is putting on higher education to “align its priorities” with those of the president. I am worried about the normalization of this authoritarian effort to reshape the ecosystem of higher education. Too many opportunists and collaborators have been responding by noisily preaching neutrality or just keeping their heads down.

    Some faculty, student and alumni groups, however, have begun to stand up and make their voices heard. Whether refusing to apologize for diversity efforts or simply standing up for the freedom of scientific inquiry, there is growing resistance to the administration’s attempt to control civil society in general and higher education in particular.

    The groups defending their campuses from governmental intrusion are not just shielding the status quo. They are resisting attempts to undermine education as the practice of freedom, safeguarding the various ways that learning can allow students and teachers to open their minds and their hearts to new ideas and ways of living.

    We don’t want the government thinking for us, telling us what the president’s priorities are so that we can imitate them. We want to learn to think for ourselves in the company of others, leaving behind a dependence on authority. Authoritarians would see us impose immaturity upon ourselves. As the new school year begins, we in higher education must redouble our efforts to model and defend the enlightenment ideals of education and freedom—while we still can.

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  • Teaching and Learning Can’t Happen Under These Circumstances

    Teaching and Learning Can’t Happen Under These Circumstances

    I’m hoping everyone working in higher education is aware of the recent events at Texas A&M, where a student recording of an exchange with an instructor ultimately led to the dismissal of the instructor and the demotion of both the department chair and college dean that had backed the instructor’s classroom autonomy.

    I looked at the big-picture academic freedom implications in a newsletter for the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, where I note that one of the people who initially defended the instructor’s autonomy was Texas A&M president Mark Welsh, who told the student complainant that firing the instructor was “not happening,” only to reverse course after a storm of right-wing outrage and political pressure rained down.

    The instructor was a model of professionalism—watch the video yourself if you don’t believe me—and yet this student set out with a plan deliberately engineered to get the instructor fired, and it worked.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about this student, about what has to happen for a young person to enter college seeing something like this—personally targeting and destroying another human being who is just doing their job—as what they want to spend their college years doing.

    It is an act of great cruelty, and yet I must imagine this person does not see themselves as cruel. I’m sure they somehow have justified this cruelty, but there is simply no justification for it. If they are not cruel, what is left? It becomes an act of madness.

    One of my favorite things about teaching college-age students is that they are ready for the whole deal, adults who have volunteered themselves for a potentially transformative experience. Look, I’m not naïve about the more transactional mindsets that students bring to college, but it always seemed to me that at least the potential for something more meaningful, more lasting, was always present.

    I loved teaching because I knew that this was the goal, even as I only had vague notions of how it could be achieved. And when it was achieved for a particular student, it was clear that this was not necessarily replicable on a mass scale using the same approach. That difficulty is fascinating. The tension in not knowing if it can be pulled off, but trying anyway, was energizing, sometimes even intoxicating. This is very hard, but it is also very worth doing.

    At least I think so.

    Sometimes, when things were going well during a class, I would step outside myself for a moment and think, Look at all these people! Each one of them was a person, and together we were collectively being human, at least for a moment. What could be better?

    Here we are. I honestly don’t know how anyone can teach and learn under the present circumstances. For the bulk of my career, I worked in places where my political and religious views were out of sync with those of most my students, but I could not imagine being afraid of them exacting punishment or revenge on me for the mere fact of these views. My students were fundamentally open and curious, not without convictions by any means, but also essentially trusting that everyone involved in the educational enterprise had their best interests at heart unless proven otherwise.

    Now, it seems prudent to assume someone is out to get you, because it only takes one person of bad faith armed with a smart phone and ill intent to destroy your career. There is an essential fragility, a brittleness to this student who took down their instructor that makes them impossible to work alongside. There is no potential for community. Even if they are only one in a thousand, the whole deal is spoiled.

    In my course policies, I would often share a quote from Cornel West regarding the project I hoped the students and I were embarking on together.

    “I want to be able to engage in the grand calling of a Socratic teacher, which is not to persuade and convince students, but to unsettle and unnerve and maybe even unhouse a few students, so that they experience that wonderful vertigo and dizziness in recognizing at least for a moment that their world view rests on pudding, but then see that they have something to fall back on. It’s the shaping and forming of critical sensibility. That, for me, is what the high calling of pedagogy really is.”

    There are places today where it seems like even articulating such a philosophy, let alone attempting to put it into practice, would disqualify me from the classroom.

    As I was first working on drafting this column, I saw the news of the violent death of another young person who got his start as an antagonist to college professors and became quite wealthy and powerful primarily by calling down harassment on others—harassment that caused them to fear for their jobs and even sometimes their lives.

    He had a wife and two children under 4 years old. More madness.

    I honestly don’t know what to make of any of this. I am in a moment of Dr. West’s “pudding.”

    Maybe tomorrow more helpful thoughts will come.

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