Tag: Jobs

  • More Law Schools Embrace AI

    More Law Schools Embrace AI

    As of 2024, 55 percent of law schools offered courses on AI.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Maxxa_Satori and PhonlamaiPhoto/iStock/Getty Images

    As more and more law firms integrate generative artificial intelligence into their practices, a growing number of law schools are preparing future lawyers to adapt.

    Nearly three years after OpenAI’s ChatGPT went mainstream—followed by Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini and a host of other similar platforms—some 30 percent of law offices are using AI-based technology tools, according to data published by the American Bar Association this past spring. While ChatGPT is the most widely used, legal research–specific tools, such as Thomson Reuters’ CoCounsel, Lexis+ AI and Westlaw AI, are also catching on in the sector.

    At the same time, 62 percent of law schools have incorporated formal opportunities to learn about or use AI into their first-year curriculum; 93 percent are considering updating their curriculum to incorporate AI education. In practice, however, many of those offerings may not be adequate, said Daniel W. Linna Jr., director of law and technology initiatives at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law.

    “Law firms are starting to expect more and more that students will be exposed to this in law school,” he said. “But they also understand that the current reality is that not many law schools are doing much more than basic training. And some may not even be doing that.”

    AI-Savvy Will Have ‘Leg Up’

    At its best, experts believe AI has the power to make lawyers more efficient and accurate, as well as the potential to expand public access to legal services. But as fake citations and misquotes appearing in AI-generated legal filings have already shown, lawyers need more than access to these tools to get the most out of using them. They need to know how they work and recognize their limitations.

    “Law schools have to prepare students to be intentional users of this technology, which will require them to have foundational knowledge and understanding in the first place,” said Caitlin Moon, a professor and founding co-director of Vanderbilt Law School’s AI Law Lab. “We have to preserve that core learning process so that they remain the human expert and this technology complements and supports their expertise.”

    It’s not clear yet the extent to which AI will reshape the legal job market over the next several years, especially for new lawyers whose first jobs after law school have historically involved reviewing documents and conducting legal research—two areas where AI tools excel. According to one interpretation of a new report from Goldman Sachs on how AI could affect the workforce, 17 percent of jobs in the legal sector may be at risk.

    “Law firms on the cutting edge of innovation are certainly trying to figure out how leveraging this technology improves their bottom line,” Moon said. “For recent graduates, those who are coming into firms with an understanding and familiarity with AI have a leg up.”

    Pressure on Law Schools

    Regardless of what’s to come, all this uncertainty is putting pressure on law schools across the country to meet the moment, said Gary Marchant, faculty director of the Center for Law, Science and Innovation at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, which began offering an AI specialization last year.

    “It creates a requirement for law schools and law firms to train future lawyers differently, so that they learn some of the third- and fourth-year associate skills while they’re still in law school,” Marchant said. “Even if AI doesn’t advance any further, it’s already come so far that it’s transforming the practice of law, and it could change even more. Right now, the conclusion is that lawyers who know AI will replace lawyers who don’t know AI.”

    Recognition of that reality drove the University of San Francisco School of Law to become the first in the country to integrate generative AI education throughout its curriculum. Those efforts will be aided through partnerships with Accordance and Anthropic, the school announced last week.

    “AI is something every student needs to understand, no matter what kind of law they want to do,” said Johanna Kalb, dean of USF’s law school. “Given how quickly these AI tools are improving and becoming more specialized, each of these innovations is going to change what lawyers are being asked to do and what skills they really need.”

    While USF may be one of the few law schools with an AI curriculum mandate, 55 percent of programs offered specialized courses designed to teach students about AI in 2024, according to the most recent available ABA data.

    That percentage has likely increased over the past year, said Andrew Perlman, dean of Suffolk University Law School and a member of the ABA’s Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence.

    This fall Suffolk’s law school, which launched one of the country’s first legal technology programs nearly a decade ago, is requiring all first-year students to complete a custom generative AI learning track as part of its course on legal practice skills.

    “There was a lot of hesitation early on about how useful AI may be inside law practices, but there is now an increasingly widespread recognition that hiring lawyers who understand both the traditional methods of practicing law and have the ability to embrace AI is a useful combination,” Perlman said. “Training students with that new skill set is going to put our graduates in a better position to succeed in the long run.”

    Jacob Levine, a second-year student at Harvard Law School, got a taste of the demand for that balance during an internship at a law firm this summer.

    “AI was a tool that was present and using it was permitted, but there was a lot of emphasis on gauging the ability of the individual to be able to do the analytical work that’s expected of a young attorney,” he said. “It’s important to know how to use AI but not purely rely on it and use it blindly. A big part of being able to do that is knowing how to do everything yourself.”

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  • Chancellors Playing Footsie With Authoritarianism

    Chancellors Playing Footsie With Authoritarianism

    It is hard not to feel at least occasionally helpless these days trying to operate between the twinned pincers of a Trump administration steamrolling our democracy and an AI industry pursuing its goal of automating all means and matter of human expression.

    It seems like, combined, they can take away just about anything: our grants, our international students, our jobs, our freedom.

    Things get worse when those of us toiling away as laborers see those in positions of leadership at the institutions that should be bollards blocking the path of antihuman, antifreedom movements instead lying down so as to be more easily run over.

    (Looking at you, Columbia University.)

    Arguments about how we should consider some measure of accommodation (to fascism, to AI) abound, and some are even reasonable-sounding. These are powerful forces with their hands around the throat of our futures. Certainly no one can be blamed for doing what it takes to nudge those hands back a few millimeters so you can get enough air to breathe.

    Those with the power to do so can seemingly take just about anything they want, except for one thing: your dignity.

    Your dignity must be given away by an act of free will. Maybe I was naïve to think that more people would be protective of their dignity in these times, but I see so many instances of the opposite that I’m frequently stunned by the eagerness with which people are willing to hurl their dignity into the abyss for some perceived benefit.

    The worst examples are found in the members of Donald Trump’s cabinet, who are occasionally tasked with a public performance of sycophantic fealty to their dear leader. It is amazing to see accomplished people treat the president of the United States like a toddler in need of a level of affirmation that would make Stuart Smalley blush. I think I understand the motives of these people: They are wielding power at a level that allows them to literally remake society or even the world.

    If it is your life’s goal to shield chemical companies from the financial responsibility of cleaning up the “forever chemicals” that cause cancer and miscarriages—which The New York Times reports is the apparent mission of some monster named Steven Cook—maybe it’s worth it to slather Trump in praise.

    But the decision to jettison one’s dignity made by the New York Times writer who looked at these displays and decided they are an example of leadership via reality television host rather than aspiring authoritarian is tougher for me to figure. While the article correctly identifies some of the lies conveyed during the spectacle, the overall tone is more of a “can you believe he’s getting away with this shit?” approach, rather than a “shouldn’t we be concerned he’s getting away with this shit?” approach, which would be far more accurate to the occasion.

    I can believe he’s getting away with it when the paper of record continually covers Trump like a novel spectacle practicing unusual politics rather than an authoritarian.

    I don’t know how one maintains their dignity when writing a story about Trump deploying the United States military in the nation’s capital that gives any credence to a “crackdown on crime” given that this is transparently BS, and yet the Times reflexively characterizes what is happening as a “crackdown” (see here, here and here), rather than, I don’t know, an “occupation.”

    In other jettisoning of dignity for strategic gain news, I have been, to a degree, sympathetic to the pre–Trump II stance of Vanderbilt chancellor Daniel Diermeier and WashU chancellor Andrew D. Martin’s views of higher ed reform anchored in institutional neutrality.

    I disagreed with that view as a matter of principle and policy approach, but this is a debate over principles.

    Now that we find ourselves in the midst of the overt Trump II attempts to destroy the independence of higher education institutions, I found their answers to a series of questions from The Chronicle’s Megan Zahneis about an apparent dispute between them and Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber about higher ed’s stance in relationship to Trump astounding as a performance of willed ignorance.

    This debate is taking place at a time when, obviously, the Trump administration has taken aim at higher ed. Are either of you concerned about this debate weakening the sector’s sense of autonomy?

    Martin: I would say the fact there is a public debate about the future of American higher education has no relationship whatsoever to what actions that the administration is taking.

    So you don’t see debate between leaders as detracting from that autonomy?

    Diermeier: I’m not 100 percent sure what we do about that. We have a point of view. We’ve had the point of view for a long time. We’re going to continue to argue for a point of view, because we think it’s essential. Now, if people disagree with that, I think that’s their decision. That’s the nature of civil discourse. We think that it’s important to get this right. We don’t think that the alternative, to hide under the desk, is appropriate.

    These answers would make Hogan’s Heroes’ Sergeant Schultz proud: “I know nothing! I see nothing.”

    Earlier in the interview, both chancellors make it clear that they are seeing a benefit to their institutions in the current climate, potentially enrolling more students who have been turned off by the turbulence being visited on their elite university brethren of the Northeast.

    They have apparently decided that they now have an advantage in the competitive market of higher education by their willingness to wink at an authoritarian push.

    Speaking of their fellow institutional leaders, Diermeier says there that there has been “no despising or disrespect or hatred among the sets of colleagues we’ve been engaged with,” and while I’m not a colleague of these gentlemen, let me publicly register my strong disrespect for their performative cluelessness in the interview.

    Let me also suggest I can’t imagine someone who respects themselves following that path, and I’m grateful to the institutional leaders like Christopher Eisgruber who are willing to express reality.

    I don’t know what the future holds. It’s possible that WashU and Vanderbilt are positioning themselves as the favored elite institutions of the authoritarian regime, ready to hoover up that federal cash that Trump is threatening to withhold from the schools that will not bend to his will.

    I’m genuinely curious if that scenario is worth one’s dignity.

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  • Later Wake-Up Call for Inside Higher Ed’s Daily News Update

    Later Wake-Up Call for Inside Higher Ed’s Daily News Update

    Loyal Inside Higher Ed readers who wake up to our daily newsletter will soon have an easier time finding each day’s edition in their crowded inboxes. 

    Starting Tuesday, Sept. 2, the Daily News Update will arrive between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. Eastern, several hours later than the current 3:15 a.m. This may upset the morning routines of the handful of souls on the East Coast who rise before the sun, but for most readers, we hope this change means our newsletter is there at the top of your inbox when you log in, ready to inform your day.  

    Thank you for waking up with Inside Higher Ed. 

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  • On Being a Black Anthropologist (opinion)

    On Being a Black Anthropologist (opinion)

    The one week my Yale graduate Anthropology 101 class spent studying Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men felt like a glass of cool water on a hot summer day. Learning about her scholarship and her refusal to accept the way her white colleagues recentered whiteness through their research on nonwhite people reminded me of the anthropologists who first led me to the discipline.

    But the fact that Hurston was the sole Black woman anthropologist whose work we studied suggested that she was the only Black woman anthropologist whose work was worthy of the ivory tower. As if she was the only Black person committed to using the tools of anthropology to create knowledge about the people relegated to the Global South in ways that are mutually beneficial to the researcher and their interlocutors. Hurston’s singular inclusion in my graduate training paired with the general exclusion of Black and brown scholars aimed to pacify the problematics of anthropology without upending the infrastructure of a discipline that is in crisis.

    As my graduate school years continued, I grew increasingly disillusioned by the idea of a career in academia. Even though I had come to terms with a definition and practice of anthropology that felt useful, identifying as an anthropologist myself felt wrong. How could I proudly claim affinity to a discipline that knowingly promulgated the othering of Black and brown people around the world and within the discipline itself? The answer would come through my research on Black Capitalists, and through my own experience beyond grad school as a Black entrepreneur and Wall Street professional.

    My experience as a Ghanaian American on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs and JPMorganChase exposed me to the ways in which Black people use the tools of capitalism to create new outcomes centered on collective thriving. They led me to my definition of what it means to be a Black Capitalist: a Black person who is a strategic participant in capitalism with the intention to benefit from the political economy in order to create social good. What they were doing was complicated, contradictory and, for many, oxymoronic.

    To many, to be a Black Capitalist is to be in an identity crisis. Black studies scholars I’ve spoken to have gone so far as to say, “Black Capitalists don’t exist!” or “It’s impossible for any good to come from capitalism!” I’m usually taken aback by such rebuttals. Because if the Black people I spent hours talking to who identified themselves as Black Capitalists don’t actually exist in real life, are they fictions of my imagination? And is my own experience invalid? Black Capitalists are as real as the version of capitalism we experience today that aims to entrap us all. Black Capitalists are merely trying to get free and help others do the same while facets of society attempt to place limits on how they can narrate, and ultimately live, their own lives.

    Surely, one’s ability to disavow capitalism depends on what continent they are on, or come from. For the Black Capitalists I’ve spoken to who are from Africa, for example, it’s neither a matter of loving capitalism nor wanting to dismantle it. Living in and through capitalism is the reality of trying to build a life in countries that imperialist capitalist forces have already destroyed and continue to exploit. If they are to live their later years comfortably in their homeland, leaving it in the meantime is a requirement. And hustling in the Western world to achieve this dream is so often the method. So for them, much like it was for my mother, who emigrated to America from Ghana with the haunting knowledge that her family was counting on her and that “failure was not an option,” the question becomes: For our own collective thriving, how do we game a system that was founded on us as its pawns?

    So how are Black Capitalists using the tools of capitalism to create new outcomes that allow them to secure the bag and the people they care for? Their methods are as diverse as Black people themselves. But the common denominator between all of their practices is a focus on communal uplift.

    Some are strategizing throughout key industries within corporate America to develop sustainable initiatives that subversively promote diversity, equity and inclusion—especially in the wake of its demise. Some are leveraging grassroots approaches to build community-forward real estate clubs that make the dream of homeownership and passive income possible through the resources—money, credit, knowledge and social connections—that are shared among members.

    Others are teaching aspiring entrepreneurs in their community the fundamentals of effective entrepreneurship and shepherding them through the process of collectively buying successful small businesses formerly owned by white entrepreneurs. Some are using the skills they developed during their tenures on Wall Street to create investment firms on the African continent to help grow pan-African businesses focused on health care, technology and agriculture that generate value for the African consumer. Some of the companies these Black Capitalists are building are worth millions of dollars—even billions. Irrespective of the spaces Black Capitalists occupy, their impact in Black communities globally is invaluable in the fight to close the racial wealth gap that has Black people lagging behind across key wealth indicators including homeownership, small business ownership and financial health.

    But their existence is unnerving to both Black and white people alike, for very different reasons. For many Black people, the very idea of a Black Capitalist makes their toes curl, because when you’ve been on the wrong side of capitalism for so long—as its most valued commodity but never its greatest beneficiary—it’s hard to believe that another relationship to capitalism, or a more equitable version of it on our journey to collective liberation, is even possible.

    And for white people invested in upholding the racial hierarchy that shapes social, political and economic life, they worry and wonder what they are set to lose when Black people are organized and move as one unified body in an economic system that nurtures individualism. Both perspectives reveal the underlying truth that money and our obsession with it is a culture of its own. And this revelation presents a growing problem society has created but has yet to solve: What do we do when money becomes the dominant culture in a society wherein most people don’t have enough of it to live?

    In the face of paralyzing social anxiety about the expansiveness of Black life, anthropology’s superpower lies in its ability to use evidence from the human experience to upend our social scripts and create space for us to dream up new ways of being that are both scalable and sustainable. I realized that being a Black Capitalist and being a Black anthropologist were both seen as oxymorons. I now gravitate toward the spirit of Zora Neale Hurston and other exceptional Black anthropologists. I learned that I can be a different kind of anthropologist who uses the tools of anthropology, like ethnography, oral histories and participant observation, to tell new stories about Black life that are restorative, hopeful and reflective of the power Black people carry.

    But even so, my existence as a Black anthropologist is unnerving to “scholars” who benefit from and are invested in perpetuating the harms of traditional anthropology. To raise the standard of knowledge production to ensure it is created in community with those who play a role in developing it threatens the validity of how scholars have traditionally conducted research and the scholarship that is held in high esteem. It’s damning enough that anthropology is like a snake eating its tail. My presence is the proverbial pain in the discipline’s side—a reminder of the work that is needed to transform the discipline, and realize what anthropology can be, but has yet to become.

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  • How Technology Can Smooth Pain Points in Credit Evaluation

    How Technology Can Smooth Pain Points in Credit Evaluation

    Earlier this month, higher education policy leaders from all 50 states gathered in Minneapolis for the 2025 State Higher Education Executive Officers Higher Education Policy Conference. During a plenary session on the future of learning and work and its implications for higher education, Aneesh Raman, chief economic opportunity officer at LinkedIn, reflected on the growing need for people to be able to easily build and showcase their skills.

    In response to this need, the avenues for learning have expanded, with high numbers of Americans now completing career-relevant training and skill-building through MOOCs, microcredentials and short-term certificates, as well as a growing number of students completing postsecondary coursework while in high school through dual enrollment.

    The time for pontificating about the implications for higher education is past; what’s needed now is a pragmatic examination of our long-standing practices to ask, how do we evolve to keep up? We find it prudent and compelling to begin at the beginning—that is, with the learning-evaluation process (aka credit-evaluation process), as it stands to either help integrate more Americans into higher education or serve to push them out.

    A 2024 survey of adult Americans conducted by Public Agenda for Sova and the Beyond Transfer Policy Advisory Board found, for example, that nearly four in 10 respondents attempted to transfer some type of credit toward a college credential. This included credit earned through traditional college enrollment and from nontraditional avenues, such as from trade/vocational school, from industry certification and from work or military experience. Of those who tried to transfer credit, 65 percent reported one or more negative experiences, including having to repeat prior courses, feeling limited in where they could enroll based on how their prior learning was counted and running out of financial aid when their prior learning was not counted. Worse, 16 percent gave up on earning a college credential altogether because the process of transferring credit was too difficult.

    What if that process were drastically improved? The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning’s research on adult learners finds that 84 percent of likely enrollees and 55 percent of those less likely to enroll agree that the ability to receive credit for their work and life experience would have a strong influence on their college enrollment plans. Recognizing the untapped potential for both learners and institutions, we are working with a distinguished group of college and university leaders, accreditors, policy researchers and advocates who form the Learning Evaluation and Recognition for the Next Generation (LEARN) Commission to identify ways to improve learning mobility and promote credential completion.

    With support from the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers and Sova, the LEARN Commission has been analyzing the available research to better understand the limitations of and challenges within current learning evaluation approaches, finding that:

    • Learning-evaluation decision-making is a highly manual and time-intensive process that involves many campus professionals, including back-office staff such as registrars and transcript evaluators and academic personnel such as deans and faculty.
    • Across institutions, there is high variability in who performs reviews; what information and criteria are used in decision-making; how decisions are communicated, recorded and analyzed; and how long the process takes.
    • Along with this variability, most evaluation decisions are opaque, with little data used, criteria established or transparency baked in to help campus stakeholders understand how these decisions are working for learners.
    • While there have been substantial efforts to identify course equivalencies, develop articulation agreements and create frameworks for credit for prior learning to make learning evaluation more transparent and consistent, the data and technology infrastructure to support the work remain woefully underdeveloped. Without adequate data documenting date of assessment and aligned learning outcomes, credit for prior learning is often dismissed in the transfer process; for example, a 2024 survey by AACRAO found that 54 percent of its member institutions do not accept credit for prior learning awarded at a prior institution.

    Qualitative research examining credit-evaluation processes across public two- and four-year institutions in California found that these factors create many pain points for learners. For one, students can experience unacceptable wait times—in some cases as long as 24 weeks—before receiving evaluation decisions. When decisions are not finalized prior to registration deadlines, students can end up in the wrong classes, take classes out of sequence or end up extending their time to graduation.

    In addition to adverse impacts on students, MDRC research illuminates challenges that faculty and staff experience due to the highly manual nature of current processes. As colleges face dwindling dollars and real personnel capacity constraints, the status quo becomes unsustainable and untenable. Yet, we are hopeful that the thoughtful application of technology—including AI—can help slingshot institutions forward.

    For example, institutions like Arizona State University and the City University of New York are leading the way in integrating technology to improve the student experience. The ASU Transfer Guide and CUNY’s Transfer Explorer democratize course equivalency information, “making it easy to see how course credits and prior learning experiences will transfer and count.” Further, researchers at UC Berkeley are studying how to leverage the plethora of data available—including course catalog descriptions, course articulation agreements and student enrollment data—to analyze existing course equivalencies and provide recommendations for additional courses that could be deemed equivalent. Such advances stand to reduce the staff burden for institutions while preserving academic quality.

    While such solutions are not yet widely implemented, there is strong interest due to their high value proposition. A recent AACRAO survey on AI in credit mobility found that while just 15 percent of respondents report currently using AI for credit mobility, 94 percent of respondents acknowledge the technology’s potential to positively transform credit-evaluation processes. And just this year, a cohort of institutions across the country came together to pioneer new AI-enabled credit mobility technology under the AI Transfer and Articulation Infrastructure Network.

    As the LEARN Commission continues to assess how institutions, systems of higher education and policymakers can improve learning evaluation, we believe that increased attention to improving course data and technology infrastructure is warranted and that a set of principles can guide a new approach to credit evaluation. Based on our emerging sense of the needs and opportunities in the field, we offer some guiding principles below:

    1. Shift away from interrogating course minutiae to center learning outcomes in learning evaluation. Rather than fixating on factors like mode of instruction or grading basis, we must focus on the learning outcomes. To do so, we must improve course data in a number of ways, including adding learning outcomes to course syllabi and catalog descriptions and capturing existing equivalencies in databases where they can be easily referenced and applied.
    2. Provide students with reliable, timely information on the degree applicability of their courses and prior learning, including a rationale when prior learning is not accepted or applied. Institutions can leverage available technology to automate existing articulation rules, recommend new equivalencies and generate timely evaluation reports for students. This can create more efficient advising workflows, empower learners with reliable information and refocus faculty time to other essential work (see No.3).
    1. Use student outcomes data to improve the learning evaluation process. Right now, the default is that all prior learning is manually vetted against existing courses. But what if we shifted that focus to analyzing student outcomes data to understand whether students can be successful in subsequent learning if their credits are transferred and applied? In addition, institutions should regularly review course transfer, applicability and student success data at the department and institution level to identify areas for improvement—including in the design of curricular pathways, student supports and classroom pedagogy.
    2. Overhaul how learning is transcripted and how transcripts are shared. We can shorten the time involved on the front end of credit-evaluation processes by shifting away from manual transcript review to machine-readable transcripts and electronic transcript transmittal. When accepting and applying prior learning—be it high school dual-enrollment credit, credit for prior learning or a course transferred from another institution—document that learning in the transcript as a course (or, as a competency for competency-based programs) to promote its future transferability.
    3. Leverage available technology to help learners and workers make informed decisions to reach their end goals. In the realm of learning evaluation, this can be facilitated by integrating course data and equivalency systems with degree-modeling software to enable learners and advisers to identify the best path to a credential that minimizes the amount of learning that’s left on the table.

    In these ways, we can redesign learning evaluation processes to accelerate students’ pathways and generate meaningful value in the changing landscape of learning and work. Through the LEARN Commission, we will continue to refine this vision and identify clear actionable steps. Stay tuned for the release of our full set of recommendations this fall and join the conversation at #BeyondTransfer.

    Beth Doyle is chief of strategy at the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning and is a member of the LEARN Commission.

    Carolyn Gentle-Genitty is the inaugural dean of Founder’s College at Butler University and is a member of the LEARN Commission.

    Jamienne S. Studley is the immediate past president of the WASC Senior College and University Commission and is a member of the LEARN Commission.

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  • SUNY Expands Local News Collaborations for Student Learning

    SUNY Expands Local News Collaborations for Student Learning

    Over the past decade, local newsrooms have been disappearing from the U.S., leaving communities without a trusted information source for happenings in their region. But a recently established initiative from the State University of New York aims to deploy student reporters to bolster the state’s independent and public news organizations.

    Last year SUNY launched the Institute for Local News, engaging a dozen student reporting programs at colleges across the state—including Stony Brook University, the University at Buffalo and the University at Albany—to produce local news content. Faculty direct and edit content produced by student journalists for local media partners.

    This summer, the Institute sent its first cohort of journalism interns out into the field, offering 20 undergraduates paid roles in established newsrooms. After a successful first year, SUNY leaders plan to scale offerings to include even more student interns in 2026.

    The background: The Institute for Local News has a few goals, SUNY chancellor John B. King told Inside Higher Ed: to mobilize students to engage in local news reporting in places that otherwise may not be covered, to instill students with a sense of civic service and to provide meaningful experiential learning opportunities.

    News deserts, or areas that lack news sources, can impact community members’ ability to stay informed about their region. New York saw a 40 percent decrease in newspaper publications from 2004 to 2019, according to data from the University of North Carolina.

    Research from the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News found that over 1,300 colleges and universities are located in or near counties defined as news deserts, but last year nearly 3,000 student journalists in university-led programs helped those communities by publishing tens of thousands of stories in local news outlets.

    A 2024 study from the Business–Higher Education Forum found a lack of high-quality internships available for all college students, compared to the number of students who want to partake in these experiences. Research also shows students believe internships are a must-have to launch their careers, but not everyone can participate, often due to competing priorities or financial constraints.

    To combat these challenges, SUNY, aided by $14.5 million in support from the New York State budget, is working to expand internship offerings—including in journalism—by providing pay and funds for transportation and housing as needed.

    “We think having those hands-on learning opportunities enriches students’ academic experience and better prepares them for postgraduation success,” King said.

    The Institute for Local News is backed by funding from the Lumina Foundation and is part of the Press Forward movement.

    On the ground: Grace Tran, a rising senior at SUNY Oneonta majoring in media studies, was one of the first 20 students selected to participate in an internship with a local news organization this summer.

    Tran and her cohort spent three days at Governor’s Island learning about journalism, climate issues and water quality in New York City before starting their assignments for the summer. Tran worked at Capital Region Independent Media in Clifton Park as a video editor and producer, cutting interviews, filming on-site and interviewing news sources.

    “I wasn’t a journalism buff but more [focused on] video production,” Tran said. “But having this internship got me into that outlet, and it taught me so much and now I feel like a journalism buff.”

    In addition to exploring new parts of the region and digging deeper into news principles, Tran built a professional network and learned how to work alongside career professionals.

    “It’s my first-ever media job and there were no other interns there; it was just me with everyone else who’s been in this industry for such a long time,” Tran said. “It built a lot of [my] communication skills—how you should act, professionalism, you know, you can’t go to a site in jeans or with a bad attitude.”

    Meeting the other SUNY journalism interns before starting full-time was important, Tran said, because it gave her peers for feedback and support.

    What’s next: SUNY hopes to replicate this year’s numbers of 160 students publishing work and 20 summer interns through the Institute for Local News and expand internships in the near future, King said.

    The Institute for Local News is just one avenue for students to get hands-on work experience, King said. SUNY is building out partnerships with the Brooklyn and New York Public Library systems for internships, as well as opportunities to place interns with the Department of Environmental Conservation to focus on climate action.

    “We have a ways to go to get to our goal for every SUNY undergraduate to have that meaningful internship experience,” King said. “But we really want to make sure every student has that opportunity.”

    Do you have a career-focused intervention that might help others promote student success? Tell us about it.

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  • When Majors Matter

    When Majors Matter

    I’ll admit a pet peeve when writers set out two extreme views, attributed vaguely to others, and then position themselves in the squishy middle as the embodiment of the golden mean. It seems too easy and feeds the cultural myth that the center is always correct.

    So, at the risk of annoying myself, I’ve been frustrated with the discourse recently around whether students’ choice of majors matters. It both does and doesn’t, though that may be more obvious from a community college perspective than from other places.

    “Comprehensive” community colleges, such as my own, are called that because they embrace both a transfer mission (“junior college”) and a vocational mission (“trade school”). The meaning of a major can be very different across that divide.

    For example, students who major in nursing have the inside track at becoming nurses in a way that students who major in, say, English don’t. Welding is a specific skill. HVAC repair is a skill set aimed squarely at certain kinds of jobs. In each case, the goal is a program—sometimes a degree, sometimes a diploma or certificate—that can lead a student directly into employment that pays a living wage. In some cases, such as nursing, it’s fairly normal to go on to higher degrees; in others, such as welding, it’s less common. Either way, though, the content of what’s taught is necessary to get into the field.

    In many transfer-focused programs, the opposite is true. A student with the eventual goal of, say, law school can take all sorts of liberal arts classes here, then transfer and take even more. Even if they want to stop at the bachelor’s level, the first two years of many bachelor’s programs in liberal arts fields are as much about breadth as about depth. Distribution requirements are called what they’re called because the courses are distributed across the curriculum.

    At the level of a community college, you might not be able to distinguish the future English major from the future poli sci major by looking at their transcripts. They’ll take basic writing, some humanities, some social science, some math, some science and a few electives. And many receiving institutions prefer that students don’t take too many classes in their intended major in the first two years. Whether that’s because of a concern for student well-roundedness or an economic concern among departments about giving away too many credits is another question.

    Of course, sometimes the boundary gets murky. Fields like social work straddle the divide between vocational and transfer, since the field often requires a bachelor’s degree. Similarly, a field like criminal justice can be understood as police training, but it also branches into criminology and sociology. And business, a perennially popular major, often leads to transfer despite defining itself as being all about the market.

    The high-minded defense of the view that majors don’t matter is that student interest is actually much more important than choice of major. I agree strongly with that. I’d much rather see a student who loves literature study that than force herself to slog through an HVAC program, hating every moment of it. The recent travails of computer science graduates in the job market should remind us that there are no guaranteed occupations. Students who love what they study, or who just can’t stop thinking about it, get the most out of it. And after a few years, most adults with degrees are working in fields unrelated to their degrees anyway. To me, that’s a strong argument for the more evergreen skills of communication, analysis, synthesis, research and teamwork: No matter what the next hot technology is, people who have those skills are much more likely to thrive than people who don’t. A candidate’s tech skill may get them the first job, but their soft skills—not a fan of the term—get them promoted.

    I want our students to be able to support themselves in the world that actually exists. I also want them to be able to support themselves in the world that will exist 20 years from now. Technological trends can be hard to get right. Remember when MOOCs were going to change everything? Or the Segway? In my more optimistic moments, I like to think that bridging the divide between the liberal arts and the vocational fields is one of the best things community colleges can do. Even if that feels squishy and centrist.

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  • Embracing Transparency After a Rankings Scandal

    Embracing Transparency After a Rankings Scandal

    It’s college rankings season again, a time of congratulations, criticism and, occasionally, corrections for institutions and the organizations that rate them.

    Typically U.S. News & World Report, the giant of the college rankings world, unranks some institutions months after its results are published over data discrepancies that are usually the result of honest mistakes. But in rare instances, erroneous data issues aren’t mistakes but outright fraud. And when that happens, it can result in soul-searching and, ideally, redemption for those involved.

    That’s what happened at Temple University, which was rocked by a rankings scandal in 2018, when it became clear that Moshe Porat, the dean of Temple’s Richard J. Fox School of Business and Management, had knowingly provided false data to U.S. News for years in a successful effort to climb the rankings. Temple’s online master of business administration soared to No. 1—until the scheme was exposed. U.S. News temporarily unranked the program, the U.S. Department of Education hit Temple with a $700,000 fine and Porat was convicted of fraud.

    Since then, Temple has worked hard to restore its reputation. In the aftermath of the scandal, officials imposed universitywide changes to how it handles facts and figures, establishing a Data Verification Unit within the Ethics and Compliance Office. Now any data produced by the university goes through a phalanx of dedicated fact-checkers, whether it’s for a rankings evaluation or an admissions brochure.

    A Culture Shift

    Temple’s Data Verification Unit was introduced in 2019 amid the fallout of the rankings scandal.

    At first, it gave rise to “friction points,” as university officials were required to go through new processes to verify data before it was disseminated, said Susan Smith, Temple’s chief compliance officer. But now she believes the unit has won the trust of colleagues on campus who have bought in to more rigorous fact-checking measures.

    “It’s been an incredibly positive thing for Temple and I think for data integrity over all,” Smith said.

    Initially, Temple partnered with an outside law firm to verify data and lay the groundwork for the unit. Now that is all handled in-house by a small team that works across the university.

    While Smith said “the vast majority of mistakes” she sees “are innocent,” her team is there “to act as a sort of backstop” and to “verify that the data is accurate, that there’s integrity in the data.”

    The Data Verification Unit also provides training on best practices for data use and dissemination.

    University officials believe placing the Data Verification Unit under the centralized Office of Compliance and Ethics—which reports directly to Temple’s Board of Trustees—is unique. And some say the process has created a bit of a culture shift as they run numbers by the unit.

    Temple spokesperson Stephen Orbanek, who joined the university after the rankings scandal, said running news releases by the Data Verification Unit represented a “total change” from the way he was accustomed to operating. And while it can sometimes slow down the release of certain data points or responses to media requests, he said he’s been able to give reporters more robust data.

    He also noted times when Temple has had to pull back on marketing claims and use “less impressive” statistics after the Data Verification Unit flagged issues with materials. As an example, he cited a fact sheet put out by the university in which officials wanted to refer to Temple as a top producer of Fulbright scholars. But the Data Verification Unit insisted that a caveat was needed: The statistic pertained only to the 2022–23 academic year.

    Ultimately, Orbanek sees the Data Verification Unit as a boon for a more transparent campus culture.

    “The culture has just kind of shifted, and you get on board,” Orbanek said.

    Other Rankings Scandals

    Other universities have been less forthcoming about fixing their own data issues.

    In 2022, a professor called out his employer, Columbia University, for submitting inaccurate data to U.S. News, which responded by unranking the institution for a short time. Following the scandal and accusations of fraud by some critics, Columbia announced the university would no longer submit data to U.S. News. Officials argued that the rankings have outsize influence on prospective students but don’t adequately measure institutional quality.

    Yet Columbia still publishes large swaths of data, such as its Common Data Set. Asked how the university has acted to verify data in the aftermath of the rankings scandal, a spokesperson wrote by email that data is “reviewed by a well-established, independent advisory firm to ensure reporting accuracy” but did not respond to a request for more details on the verification processes.

    The University of Southern California also navigated a rankings scandal in 2022. USC provided faulty data to U.S. News for its Rossier School of Education, omitting certain metrics, which helped it rise in the rankings, according to a third-party report that largely blamed a former dean.

    U.S. News temporarily unranked Rossier; graduate students sued the university, accusing officials of falsely advertising rankings based on fraudulent data. That legal battle is ongoing, and earlier this year a judge ruled that the case can proceed as a class action suit.

    Officials did not respond to a request from Inside Higher Ed for comment on whether or how USC has changed the way it verifies data for use in rankings or for other purposes.

    U.S. News also did not respond to specific questions about if or how it verifies that information submitted by institutions to be used for ranking purposes is accurate. A spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed, “U.S. News believes that data transparency and internal accountability practices by educational institutions are good for those institutions and good for consumers.”

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  • Mary Baldwin President Suddenly Resigns

    Mary Baldwin President Suddenly Resigns

    Jeff Stein was the first male president of Mary Baldwin University since 1976.

    Liz Albro Photography/iStock/Getty Images

    Mary Baldwin University president Jeff Stein resigned Tuesday after two years in the role, The News Leader reported. Fall classes at the formerly all-women private university in Staunton, Va., started Monday. 

    A university spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that Stein resigned for personal reasons, and the university has not shared any other information about his departure.

    Stein was the first male president at Mary Baldwin since 1976 and assumed the role in 2023 after former president Pamela Fox retired. The university’s Board of Trustees appointed Todd Telemeco, who was the vice president and dean of Mary Baldwin’s Murphy Deming College of Health Sciences, as Stein’s permanent replacement. 

    “We thank Dr. Stein and his wife, Chrissy, for their two years of service to the University, and we wish them the best in their future endeavors. We are especially grateful for Dr. Stein’s ability to reinvigorate the connection between the University and our alumni,” board co-chairs Eloise Chandler and Constance Dierickx wrote in a statement. “This renewed energy in alumni relations has also contributed to significantly higher alumni giving rates.”

    Prior to becoming president at Mary Baldwin, Stein served as vice president for strategic initiatives and partnerships and an associate professor of English at Elon University in North Carolina.

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  • “Happiness Effect” of Higher Ed “Fades in Richer Places”

    “Happiness Effect” of Higher Ed “Fades in Richer Places”

    In recent decades, the extra money that graduates earn has been touted as a good reason to attend university. But that has recently come under scrutiny with evidence suggesting the graduate premium has fallen.

    And now two separate papers have found that another supposed benefit of higher education—increased lifetime happiness—is also not quite as straightforward as thought.

    A new study, which analyzed data from 36 countries, reveals that both higher education graduates and the rest of the population experience a steady increase in well-being as a country’s social and economic prosperity gradually improves.

    However, the well-being gains associated with higher education were found to “level off” when a country becomes more economically developed.

    Therefore, the paper argues that graduates in countries with lower GDP per capita experience greater relative gains in terms of economic security, social mobility, higher social status and life satisfaction—leading to a higher sense of well-being.

    In contrast, the “happiness advantage” of a university degree in countries with a higher GDP per capita is less pronounced.

    The paper suggests that stress and dissatisfaction can be caused by rising expectations, increased competition and a “relentless emphasis on achievement,” particularly among highly educated individuals.

    “Highly educated individuals in more prosperous countries are generally much happier than their counterparts in less prosperous countries, although they may be less happy than less educated individuals within their own country,” writes author Samitha Udayanga, a doctoral candidate at the University of Bremen.

    This suggests that the happiness derived from higher education tends to weaken in wealthier countries, he adds.

    A separate study published in June found that the level of happiness associated with completing college has quadrupled since the mid-1970s.

    The study of over 35,000 people in the U.S. showed that higher education has shifted over this time from contributing to happiness through occupations to improving wages.

    The “happiness return” of higher education increased over the 45 years of the study and remains higher than the happiness linked to not studying for a degree.

    But the researchers discovered it “nosedived” in 2021–22 during the COVID-19 pandemic. And satisfaction linked to postgraduate degrees has stalled since the 2000s.

    “University graduates in contemporary America have a certain chance of gaining monetary rewards [by] bypassing occupations, resulting in a relatively higher probability of feeling happy,” they said. “Meanwhile, the same mechanism rarely operates for advanced degree holders, whose happiness largely depends on their occupational attainment.”

    The paper concludes that the overall happiness premium for higher education at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level may “vanish once their economic rewards become less pronounced.”

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