The U.S. Department of Justice issued a notice to the University of California, Los Angeles, on Tuesday alleging that it violated civil rights law. The move came just hours after the university announced a $6.45 million settlement to end a lawsuit brought by Jewish students over allegations of antisemitism last year.
“The Department has concluded that UCLA’s response to the protest encampment on its campus in the spring of 2024 was deliberately indifferent to a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and Title VI,” the notice read. It also said an investigation into the University of California system is ongoing.
The message made no mention of the settlement; UCLA divided the funds between the plaintiffs and Jewish advocacy and community organizations. The settlement also said the university cannot exclude Jewish students or staff from educational facilities and opportunities “based on religious beliefs concerning the Jewish state of Israel.” (Jewish student plaintiffs argued they were barred by pro-Palestinian protesters from entering certain areas of campus.)
According to the federal notice, UCLA now has until Aug. 5 to contact the DOJ to seek a voluntary resolution agreement “to ensure that the hostile environment is eliminated and reasonable steps are taken to prevent its recurrence.” DOJ officials said they’re prepared to file a complaint in federal district court by Sept. 2 “unless there is reasonable certainty that we can reach an agreement in this matter.”
“Our investigation into the University of California system has found concerning evidence of systemic anti-Semitism at UCLA that demands severe accountability from the institution,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “This disgusting breach of civil rights against students will not stand: DOJ will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system.”
The lawsuit was brought against the U.S. Department of Education by the state of Tennessee and Students for Fair Admissions, the advocacy group whose lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action in college admissions. The lawsuit claims the federal designation for HSIs, which requires 25 percent Latino enrollment, is discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional.
HACU, an association representing HSIs, argued in its motion that it should become a party to the lawsuit to stand up for the constitutionality of the HSI program. The organization suggested the Education Department is unlikely to vigorously defend the federal designation while it’s in the process of dismantling itself.
Antonio R. Flores, president and CEO of HACU, said the lawsuit “directly undermines years of advocacy by our founding members that led the federal government to formally recognize HSIs in 1992.”
“The HSI program is a vital engine of educational excellence, workforce readiness and opportunity for all students attending these exemplary learning communities,” Flores said in a statement. “HACU joins in defending the policies and resources HSIs need to educate and serve 5.6 million students from all backgrounds nationwide.”
Eveline McPhee, a 39-year-old mother of two, has been a dental assistant in northern Massachusetts for nearly 15 years. And while she’s long aspired to upgrade that title to dental hygienist, for most of her career that goal seemed unattainable.
With a full-time job, managing classes seemed arduous, and without a job she and her husband wouldn’t be able to afford day care and after-school programs.
But that all changed last year when an admissions officer at Mount Wachusett Community College told McPhee about Child Care Access Means Parents in School, or CCAMPIS—a $75 million federal grant program designed to help low-income parents in college pay for childcare both on and off campus. McPhee enrolled last fall and is on track to graduate in 2026.
“I have a 9-year-old son, and they paid for him to go to camp this summer so that I can take an intensive course in the dental hygiene program,” McPhee said. “I definitely would not have been able to go back to school without CCAMPIS.”
Now the future of the program is cloudy.
Applications for this year’s CCAMPIS grants—which typically open in May and close by the end of July—have yet to be announced, leaving thousands of student parents in limbo.
Multiple think tank fellows and student advocacy representatives said they’ve been reaching out to the Trump Department of Education for more information since the spring, but the response is always “We’ll open it soon.” Similar circumstances have been reported for other basic needs programs included under FIPSE, the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education.
Neither the Department of Education nor Republican committee chairs in the House and the Senate responded to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment.
With the new academic year quickly approaching, the lack of funds leaves many colleges and universities with major budget gaps.
Until last month, Mount Wachusett’s childcare finances looked grim; CCAMPIS funding was set to run out on Sept. 30. But Ann Reynolds, the student support adviser who runs the program, had seen all the headlines about the Trump administration’s fundingfreezes and anticipated the delay. (Last year, the Biden administration chose not to open the grant to new applicants, but it sent out a clear notice in advance and allowed existing awardees to reapply.) She reached out to a local philanthropy and secured $94,000 to carry McPhee and about a dozen other student parents through graduation.
“We could see the writing on the wall, so to speak,” Reynolds said. “And it’s lifted a great weight from my student parents’ shoulders.”
Not all colleges were so forward-thinking. Many students, including future enrollees at Mount Wachusett, will have to take out additional loans—or drop out and try to repay the loans they already have without a college degree.
“We’re seeing a lot of students raising children coming to school now, so our need is greater,” Reynolds said. “But we can’t take in new students.”
Without the grants, which have had bipartisan support in Congress for years, historically underfunded institutions, including community colleges and minority-serving institutions, will be cash-strapped. Some may be forced to cut staffing or eliminate services entirely.
“Given all the other funds from the U.S. Department of Education that have been frozen or subject to political games in the last few months, the community is right to worry,” said Bryce McKibben, senior director of policy and advocacy at Temple University’s Hope Center for Student Basic Needs. “This doesn’t serve anyone—certainly not taxpayers. The administration should announce a competition or award continuation grants immediately.”
‘A Vicious Cycle’
Most experts speculate the delay is occurring for one of two reasons: Either the department lacks the capacity to meet this statutory requirement since it laid off half its staff in March, or it is intentionally withholding the dollars as part of a broader effort to claw back education funding through a process known as rescission.
The latter option would require congressional approval. But the president already won enough votes to pass one rescission package earlier this month, and policy analysts say it’s likely he’ll try to do it again. (Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 axes CCAMPIS and FIPSE completely.)
Either way, Theresa Anderson, a senior education and labor fellow at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said the delay symbolizes a larger restriction on college access.
This is a “well-documented agenda pattern and strategy” of the Trump administration, she explained. “It represents further disinvestment and disinterest in helping people access the necessary training, education and credentialing programs that states recognize are necessary to development of the workforce.”
Tanya Ang, executive director of the Today’s Student Coalition, an adult learner advocacy group, described the situation as putting the leaders of critical student support services “up against a brick wall.”
“If students are going to school, we want them to finish, because that’s going to ensure they can get a job and start a long-term career that will provide a strong return on investment,” Ang explained. Cutting off access to childcare “creates a vicious cycle that will hurt not just them and their children as individuals but, honestly, our economy.”
Critics have long argued that CCAMPIS is a duplicate program, suggesting that the Child Care and Development Block Grant, which is run by the Department of Health and Human Services, fulfills a similar purpose. But higher education experts say that’s simply not the case.
CCDBG, they say, supports broad, state-level childcare subsidies, predominantly allocated to parents who work full-time. CCAMPIS, on the other hand, is more targeted and serves student parents, many of whom can’t meet the work requirements attached to the block grant.
“CCAMPIS was really important to not only be able to fill childcare needs in a way that was very flexible for colleges, but also to allow for additional wraparound supports that are incredibly important to support persistence,” Anderson said. It helps student parents “build meaningful community connections, not only with staff of the college, but also with each other.”
At Mount Wachusett, Reynolds said student parents who participate in the CCAMPIS program have one of the highest completion rates among any demographic, at 73 percent. So she hopes that even a sliver of the current operation will survive past its current end date in 2027.
When asked what she would tell the Trump administration if she had the chance, McPhee said she was worried people were losing the opportunity to get ahead.
“I wanted to do better for my family, and this allowed me to do that,” she said. “To not be able to provide that for people moving forward, it’s just not what this country is about. It’s wrong, and I don’t really understand why they would do it.”
Brown agreed to donate $50 million to workforce development programs in Rhode Island.
Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Brown University has struck a deal with the Trump administration to restore about $510 million in frozen federal research funds in exchange for various concessions but no payment, officials announced Wednesday.
The federal government will restore millions in frozen research funding and settle investigations over allegations of campus antisemitism, according to the agreement. While Brown will not pay out a settlement to resolve the complaints like its Ivy League counterpart Columbia University did, the university pledged $50 million over the next decade to state workforce development efforts in Rhode Island.
Brown is the second university to cut a deal with the Trump administration since Columbia reached a similar agreement last week. Trump officials said the Columbia settlement would be a template for their talks with other colleges, though other higher ed experts argued the deal was unlawful and represented a threat to the sector at large. (Harvard University, which has also been in the administration’s crosshairs over alleged antisemitism, has reportedly considered a settlement of up to $500 million to resolve its ongoing dispute.)
Still, Brown agreed to multiple other changes. They include adopting the Trump administration’s definitions of male and female, not performing gender-affirming surgeries on minors or prescribing them puberty blockers, providing admissions data to the federal government, and conducting a campus climate survey and sharing the results with the federal government. Brown also agreed to codify prior changes officials announced to combat discrimination on campus.
The deal does not include restrictions on campus curriculum or programs.
“At its core, the agreement preserves the integrity of Brown’s academic foundation, and it enables us as a community to move forward after a period of considerable uncertainty in a way that ensures Brown will continue to be the Brown that our students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and friends have known for generations,” President Christina Paxson said in a statement.
Brown announced the agreement shortly after the university took out a $500 million loan, which could have helped plug research funding holes or fund a protracted legal battle. The university also borrowed $300 million in April after the Trump administration froze research funding over allegations of antisemitism connected to pro-Palestinian protests.
The funding freeze, along with other changes in federal policy, has hit the university hard, and officials warned in June of the potential for “deep financial losses.”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon celebrated the deal, asserting in a statement that the agreement would protect Jewish students from antisemitism as well as women’s sports.
“Restoring our nation’s higher education institutions to places dedicated to truth-seeking, academic merit, and civil debate—where all students can learn free from discrimination and harassment—will be a lasting legacy of the Trump administration, one that will benefit students and American society for generations to come,” McMahon wrote in a social media post.
Northwestern University plans to cut about 425 staff jobs— amounting to roughly 5% of the private nonprofit’s staffing budget — senior leaders said Tuesday in a community message.
Nearly half of the jobs are vacant, while others will be cut through layoffs, which administrators are working to complete within 48 hours of the announcement.
The Illinois university is navigating a host of financial challenges, including federal research funding cuts and a potentially higher endowment tax under the Republicans’ new spending law.
Dive Insight:
In their message Tuesday, Northwestern President Michael Schill, Provost Kathleen Hagerty and Chief Financial Officer Amanda Distel described recent months as “among the most difficult in our institution’s 174-year history.”
About a month and a half ago, the same group of officials said the university faced “an increasing strain” on its finances from both looming federal policy changes and increasing expenses.
At the time, they rolled out a series of austerity measures, including a pause on employee raises, a hiring freeze for faculty and staff, health insurance changes, reduced capital spending,and lowered budgets for academic and administrative units.
While the university has cut nonpersonnel budgets by 10%, employee costs make up 56% of Northwestern’s total annual spending. “We still are left with a budgetary gap that cannot be bridged without cutting personnel costs,” the officials said.
The layoffs announced this week represent “a drastic step that causes pain and anxiety both for the individuals whose lives are affected, but also for our entire community, and we do not take it lightly,” they said. They also noted that schools and units were given discretion in making cuts and asked to “think strategically” to minimize the impact to units, workers, students and the university.
Northwestern is among the prominent universities targeted by the Trump administration through probes into their responses to antisemitism on campus by the U.S. departments of Education and Health and Human Services.
The university, however, has reported an 88% year-over-year decline in complaints of antisemitic discrimination or harassment as of November 2024.
Nonetheless, the Trump administration in April reportedly froze $790 million funds to Northwestern.Although the university at the time hadn’t received official notification of a targeted freeze from the government, it saw around 150 stop-work orders and grant terminations from federal agencies by May 1.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported via an anonymous source that the Trump administration was in talks with Northwestern and other universities about possible deals that would involve a hefty fine to resolve the investigations. The news followed Columbia University’s controversial settlement with the government requiring a $221 million payment in return for the government restoring most of its research funding.
In an op-ed published in The Daily Northwestern on Tuesday, a group of Northwestern faculty described such fines as a “ransom” and called on university leadership to “resist the administration’s attack on fundamental democratic principles by refusing to ‘make a deal’ with the administration.”
Attorney General Pamela Bondi authored the memo declaring all race-conscious practices unlawful.
Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu via Getty Images
More than three months after a federal court struck down an Education Department directive that barred any practices that consider race at colleges across the country, the Department of Justice declared Wednesday that diversity, equity and inclusion practices are unlawful and “discriminatory.”
But the agency’s memo goes even further than ED’s guidance, suggesting that programs that rely on what they describe as stand-ins for race, like recruitment efforts that focus on majority-minority geographic areas, could violate federal civil rights laws. The directive applies to any organization that receives federal funds, and DOJ officials warned that engaging in potentially unlawful practices could lead to a loss in grant funding.
Other examples of “potentially unlawful proxies” include requirements that job applicants “demonstrate ‘cultural competence,’ ‘lived experience,’ or ‘cross-cultural skills’” or narratives about how the applicant has overcome obstacles, Attorney General Pamela Bondi wrote.
This interpretation of federal law could present new challenges for colleges that have relied on tactics like place-based recruitment to create diverse student bodies since the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in 2023. For instance, some colleges have guaranteed admission to students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high schools.
“This highlights that every practice of colleges is under scrutiny, even ones that have been viewed as politically safe for years (such as top ten percent plans or even TRIO programs). The only truly safe ways to admit students right now are to admit everyone or only use standardized test scores,” Robert Kelchen, a professor in the University of Tennessee at Knoxville’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “Being an enrollment management leader has always been tough, but now it’s even more challenging to meet revenue targets and satisfy stakeholders who have politically incompatible goals.”
The document offers clearer guidance about what the Justice Department considers off-limits as it investigates DEI at colleges and universities. The DOJ is playing a greater role in investigating colleges as it enforces its position that DEI programs as well as efforts to boost diversity among faculty and staff violate federal antidiscrimination laws.
Since President Trump took office in January, he’s targeted DEI programs, practices and personnel via executive orders and other efforts. However, higher ed experts haverepeatedly said that the orders don’t change the underlying laws, so colleges that complied with the law before Jan. 20 remain in compliance. In response to the federal edicts, colleges have rolled back a number of their programs and closed centers that catered to specific student groups.
Many of the practices declared unlawful in the nine-page memo echo those referenced in the Education Department’s February Dear Colleague letter, such as race-based scholarships. But it also explicitly states that “BIPOC-only study lounges” and similar facilities are unlawful. The Education Department’s guidance mentioned race-based facilities generally but not specifically study lounges.
DEI advocates have long argued that these centers or lounges are open to all students. Some have persisted even after state DEI bans, but multiple colleges have in recent months closed centers that catered to specific student groups. Bondi argued that such spaces violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on race and national origin.
“Even if access is technically open to all, the identity-based focus creates a perception of segregation and may foster a hostile environment. This extends to any resource allocation—such as study spaces, computer labs, or event venues—that segregates access based on protected characteristics, even if intended to create ‘safe spaces,’” the order reads.
Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, said that the memo is “another example of governmental overreach into academic freedom, institutional autonomy and shared governance that conditions federal funding on ideological alignment with the administration’s viewpoints.”
She added that the guidelines in the document violate existing constitutional protections and erode federal civil rights law.
“What is missing from the DOJ narrative on DEI is that treating people differently is not always unjust, especially when doing so corrects a broader pattern of systemic injustice. Considering race and gender in the context of historic unjust discrimination to inform policies and practices at colleges and universities doesn’t in and of itself constitute illegal discrimination, though the letter suggests otherwise.”
Beyond race-based practices, the letter also addresses transgender student athletes, building on the Trump administration’s previous actions that advocates say deny the existence of trans individuals and roll back their rights. The memo states that it would “typically be unlawful” for someone assigned male at birth to compete on women’s sports teams or for an institution to “compel” individuals to share an intimate space, like a locker room, with someone of another sex.
Pasquerella noted that the letter offers guidance, not legal mandates.
“Nevertheless,” she said, “what are described as ‘best practices and nonbinding suggestions’ will likely cause another wave of anticipatory compliance and overcorrection given the climate of fear and intimidation created by the weaponization of research funds.”
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In early June, the governing board of Florida’s university system surprised the higher education sector when it rejected Santa Ono as the sole finalist for the presidency of the University of Florida.Ono had faced backlash — led by conservative activist Christopher Rufo — over his past embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts while head of the University of Michigan.
Later that month, University of Virginia President Jim Ryan abruptly stepped down after the U.S. Department of Justice pressured him to resign over the institution’s diversity efforts.Ryan said he wouldn’t fight to keep his job when staying would have cost the institution research funding and student aid and hurt international students.
The duties of the modern college president extend far beyond keeping their institutions viable. For decades, how the head of a college is selected and who fills the position has been steadily shifting. Now, whoever assumes the role will likely take vitriol from both the public and policymakers.
James Finkelstein, professor emeritus at George Mason University’s public policy school, researches leadership in higher education. We spoke with him about the changing role of the college president, the increased influence a presidency faces from both the political and private sectors and what that means for higher ed in the long run.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
HIGHER ED DIVE: How does one become a college president? And has that changed in recent decades?
James Finkelstein, professor emeritus at George Mason University
Permission granted by Judith Wilde
JAMES FINKELSTEIN:The traditional route would start with becoming an assistant professor. You get tenure next, and then you may start to move up the administrative ranks. The most common path was to go from provost to president. For now, that’s still the most common path, but it’s on the decline.
The problem is, provosts don’t fundraise. Deans do. And the No. 1 qualification that a board now looks for in a university president is their ability to raise money.
Given that shift in priorities, how do college boards pick their institution’s next presidents?
My colleague, Judith Wilde, and I have studied this process extensively, and boards are increasingly relying on executive search firms.
We found that only 2% or 3% of presidential classified ads mentioned a search firm in 1975. Today, it’s almost 100%. And based on the data, that change has also correlated with the beginning of the decline in the length of university presidents’ tenure.
Search firms do the initial screening and determine for the board which candidates are really viable. But very few of the search firm senior executives have any real experience in higher education and their No. 1 responsibility as fiduciaries is to return profit to investors.
From there, the board picks from the candidates highlighted by the search firm? What do they look for?
Yes. People tend to look for candidates who look like them. And boards are not primarily made up of academics — the only thing most board members know about a university is that they got a degree from one. You’re seeing a lot more political types on the boards, as is the case in Virginia, or corporate types.
It’s interesting, corporations don’t turn to universities for their leadership. They don’t select a college president to run them. The former president of TIAA [Clifton Wharton Jr.] was the only university president to become a CEO of a Fortune 500 company — and he led a company designed to serve universities.
But many universities, at least 10% or so, will select a corporate executive to lead them.
If boards expect university presidents to behave more like corporate executives than leaders of an educational, social and cultural institution — someone who serves the public — then the next generation of university leadership is going to look very different. You’re going to see a different kind of person be not only sought after but interested in these jobs because they think they can take their private sector skill set directly into higher ed.
In recent years, the presidential compensation packages at some colleges have mirrored those of Fortune 500 CEOs. In 2022, Ben Sasse received a notably lucrative package when he was hired to lead the University of Florida, as you and Judith have discussed. What effect does that shift have on colleges?
When I was an undergraduate, the university president probably wore a tweed sport coat with leather patches on the elbows. And the patches weren’t there to make a style statement; it’s because the elbows were worn out. If he had a car — and it was far and away “he” when I was in school — it was a car from the university’s car pool that was several years old.
And in the past, presidents maintained some academic interests. They taught. They were visible on campus.
Now, university presidents drive expensive cars and are more likely to associate with people outside the university than faculty inside the university.
Our sector does not enjoy the reputation with the public that it used to. There are all sorts of questions now about the value of a college degree. People generally think faculty get paid a lot of money and don’t do very much.
More than anything, presidents today are facing the question of if there is a way to win back that trust.
While college presidents are grappling with that question, though, they are also watching their positions become increasingly precarious. One recent example is Santa Ono, who had been set up as Sasse’s replacement. Traditionally, the vote from the Florida universities’ governing board would have been pro forma. What shifted the tides and left Ono out of a job?
Ono was targeted by the Chris Rufo machine. You can go back and read Rufo’s interview with Politico and listen to his interview with The New York Times — he’s very public about his strategy to delegitimize leaders in higher ed. His team made a decision early on that they wanted one of their own in Florida. And Ono wasn’t it.
Having watched the entire governing board meeting in Florida, my professional assessment is that I’ve never seen a president or someone of Ono’s stature so ill-prepared and give so poor a performance on every level.
Whoever prepared him, didn’t. And if they did, they weren’t preparing him for the right thing. It was much like what happened to the college presidents who testified at congressional committee hearings. Ono wasn’t completely prepared that he was going to be essentially cross-examined by a former state legislator.
By that point, Ono had already announced his departure from the University of Michigan, leaving a highly debated track record on diversity efforts and the handling of student protests in his wake. Does he stand a chance of getting another job heading a university?
About 75% of presidents are what we call one-and-done — they report they’ll hold one presidency, and that’s more than enough. The Gordon Gees of the world are the exception, not the rule.
Ono was, in my view, the modern-day equivalent of [former West Virginia University President] Gordon Gee. He’s the professional president who developed a public persona. He developed it at the University of Cincinnati, refined it at the University of British Columbia, and then brought it to Michigan.
But I’ve talked to people at Cincinnati and Michigan. The truth of the matter is, he wasn’t well-thought of by the faculty. And he burned out very quickly in Michigan.
Ono shouldn’t be the model for the modern university president. Personally, I don’t think that he’s going to get another presidency after the Florida situation, at least not for a while.
Is the role of president still a consequential one? Do the heads of colleges wield influence in the same way they have in the past?
Who the president is makes a difference. They set the tone of the institution in many ways. But presidents today can exercise less independent leadership than they did in the past — they’re being put on a shorter and shorter leash.
There are so many different constituencies that they’re having to serve, and a lot of those constituencies are in conflict with each other.
Some presidents are engaging in what people call anticipatory compliance.
“In order to avoid these conflicts,” the thinking goes, “I’m going to get one step ahead.” Sadly, what that means is that when the board intervenes, they want even more.
Is there a world where that kind of interference becomes so unpleasant that it renders the job unpalatable?
I think for many serious potential candidates, the answer is yes. It doesn’t matter whether you’re being paid $1 million. Or if you have two country club memberships, a big car, a big house and staff, and all of that. These jobs have always been 24/7, 365. And the scrutiny is exponentially worse now.
The real question is: Who’s going to want these jobs? That’s part of the plan of critics of higher education. They want to drive people out so they can replicate what they’re doing in Florida and appoint political loyalists who have no experience in higher education.
Even though conservatives are critical of what they see as judicial activism, they have been extraordinarily active on college boards, working to influence curriculum and promotions and tenure.
The current climate changes things for all trustees, even those who don’t align with this thinking. Regardless of their backgrounds, no board will want to appoint a president who is going to put at risk all of their research funding. And the Trump administration has shown that it is willing to use any lever it has to bring these institutions under its thumb. Look how quickly Jim Ryan was gone from UVA.
As you mentioned, presidents are serving increasingly shorter tenures, instead of holding the position for life, or at least until retirement. Beyond a loss of leadership consistency, does this turnover hurt colleges?
Take Jim Ryan as an example. He’s 58 years old.
I assume the terms of his contract were renegotiated when he left, but based on my analysis of his 2022 contract, the university has a future liability of almost $17 million to him. He would actuarially retire from teaching in 15 years, and in 2038, his base salary would be over $1 million a year for teaching at most two courses a semester.
The people who are actually doing most of the teaching at UVA in 2038 won’t be tenured or tenure track. They will be contingent faculty who are barely able to scrape together a living.
If you put $10 million in a scholarship fund at UVA, would that be a better investment than keeping Ryan on the faculty? The answer is a no-brainer.
Many of today’s college students have experienced disruptions to their education due to the COVID-19 pandemic, negatively affecting their personal well-being as well as their academic preparation. Encouraging students to embrace effective and meaningful study habits can be one way to improve their college readiness and confidence in learning.
One professor at Western Iowa Tech Community College designed a mandatory post-test reflection and correction for students and saw dramatic improvement in their performance on the second exam. The assignment encourages students to strengthen their study habits and hold themselves accountable for making meaningful changes.
What’s the research: Students say their biggest challenges when studying are time management (47 percent) and distractions from technology or other people (both 38 percent), as well as a lack of sufficient time (34 percent), according to a 2024 survey from Kahoot. Forty-one percent of respondents indicated they experience anxiety while studying, compared to 34 percent who said they feel confident.
Test corrections, also called exam wrappers by teaching and learning centers, are activities delivered before or after an assessment to help students consider how they study and ways they could improve their practices before the next exam.
Past research on exam wrappers has found that implementing the strategy can improve course and exam grades, as well as students’ level of metacognition and changes to study habits.
For years, Frank O’Neill, a sports medicine instructor at Western Iowa Tech, has offered students the opportunity to complete an optional correction worksheet after each exam. Typically, the students who take him up on the opportunity are the ones already excelling in the course, he said—not those who could benefit from additional support.
“My primary goal is to turn a D student into a C student,” O’Neill said.
This summer, O’Neill decided to run an experiment and see if making the test analysis and correction worksheet mandatory would have any impact on students’ grades.
The assignment: After students take an exam, O’Neill’s assignment asks them a series of reflection questions on their study habits as well as a post-test commitment to improving their test-taking abilities.
Some of the questions are designed to help O’Neill understand which study strategies students employ and how they correlate to their grades.
For example, he’s learned that a student who’s less confident entering into the assessment more often receives a higher score than their confident peers, which O’Neill believes is because students who have studied longer have spent more time wrestling with the material and consider it to be difficult, compared to their peers who skim notes and think they’ve learned content.
Other questions prompt students to consider their test-taking abilities and the errors they make frequently. Sometimes students indicate that they got a question wrong because they changed their answer from the correct response to an incorrect one, O’Neill said, which allows him to encourage more confident responses.
“Your brain is smart; your gut is smarter than your brain,” O’Neill said. “You gotta go with that gut.”
Students can also provide feedback to the professor on how to improve the course. Sometimes O’Neill gains insights from test performance and frequently missed questions to understand how to make content clearer in the future.
The assignment requires students to correct every incorrect response on the test, which O’Neill says serves as a study technique as well, because exams are cumulative, so students will need to know the right answer later. It also fosters a growth mindset among learners, helping them reframe their learning and consider how to fail forward and see assessment as progress toward their goals, O’Neill said.
The impact: O’Neill is teaching two sections of microbiology this summer with 20 students enrolled in each section.
After the first exam, O’Neill assigned all students in one section to complete the exam wrapper, which would add five points to their grade. The other section could complete the optional wrapper but without points attached.
By the second test, the difference between classes was clear; the optional correction section showed little to no difference in grades between exams one and two. In the mandatory correction section, the average exam grade rose nine percentage points.
Since he first offered the assignment, O’Neill hasn’t received any negative feedback from students about having to complete the exam wrapper, which he attributes in part to his commitment to avoid giving students “busywork,” instead explaining the purpose behind each assignment. He’s also seen self-reported levels of test anxiety decrease over the course of the semester among students who use the wrapper and fewer students failing or dropping the class, signaling the personal benefits of the worksheet.
O’Neill now plans to assign the post-test reflection to all the courses he’s teaching this fall, for about 200 students in total. He’s also exploring opportunities to digitize at least portions of the assignment in the college’s learning management system, Canvas.
Do you have an academic intervention that might help others improve student success? Tell us about it.
Federal officials are accusing Duke University’s law journal and medical school of racial discrimination.
Duke University file photo
The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services are investigating Duke University and the Duke Law Journal for allegedly violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on race and national origin, the agencies announced Monday.
The New York Timesreported Tuesday night that the Trump administration froze $108 million in federal grants and contracts at Duke’s medical school and health system.
On Monday, ED and HHS sent a letter detailing their concerns about potentially discriminatory practices at Duke Health and threatening the medical school’s federal funding.
“These practices allegedly include illegal and wrongful racial preferences and discriminatory activity in recruitment, student admissions, scholarships and financial aid, mentoring and enrichment programs, hiring, promotion, and more,” the letter states, though officials didn’t offer specifics.
The departments want Duke to “review all policies and practices at Duke Health for the illegal use of race preferences, take immediate action to reform all of those that unlawfully take account of race or ethnicity to bestow benefits or advantages, and provide clear and verifiable assurances to the government that Duke’s new policies will be implemented faithfully going forward—including by making all necessary organizational, leadership, and personnel changes to ensure the necessary reforms will be durable.”
Additionally, the agencies want Duke to convene a “Merit and Civil Rights Committee” that can negotiate with the federal government on behalf of university leaders and “avoid invasive federal engagement,” according to the letter. This request appears to be a new ask for the Trump administration as officials work to expand their scrutiny of higher education, based on what’s publicly known about investigations at other colleges.
“We hope this arrangement will enable the parties to move quickly toward a mutually agreeable resolution of outstanding concerns and complaints,” officials wrote in the letter. “If the alleged offending policies, practices, and programs are found to exist and remain unrectified after six months, or if at any time the Merit and Civil Rights Committee and federal government reach an impasse, the federal government will commence enforcement proceedings as appropriate.”
Duke has 10 days to respond to the request to form the committee.
Meanwhile, the Duke Law Journal investigation, led by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, centers on allegations that the journal uses factors such as race or national origin to select editors. The department opened a similar investigation into the Harvard Law Review.
The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, reported last month that the Duke Law Journal prepared a special application packet for affinity groups that noted applicants could get a three- to five-point bump if they have “meaningfully advanced the interests of communities with diverse perspectives and experiences either at school or in their community.”
The University of California, Los Angeles, agreed to pay $6.45 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Jewish students, the Los Angeles Timesreported. The agreement, which would be in effect for 15 years, now awaits approval from the judge overseeing the case.
The lawsuit, brought by three Jewish students and a medical school professor in June 2024, alleged UCLA enabled pro-Palestinian activists to cut off Jewish students’ access to parts of campus, violating their civil rights.
Violence broke out in and around an encampment established at UCLA in spring 2024 when pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked it with fireworks and other projectiles. Hours of chaos ensued between protesters and counterprotesters before campus police intervened. UCLA’s former chancellor Gene D. Block, named in the lawsuit alongside other UCLA officials, was among the higher ed leaders called before Congress for campus antisemitism hearings.
As part of the settlement agreement, each plaintiff will receive $50,000. Another $320,000 will go toward a campus initiative to combat antisemitism. About $2.3 million will be donated to eight different Jewish community and advocacy groups, including Hillel at UCLA, the Academic Engagement Network, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federation Los Angeles Campus Impact Network and the Film Collaborative Inc., to produce a film related to the Holocaust.
UCLA also agreed that it is “prohibited from knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students, faculty, and/or staff from ordinarily available portions of UCLA’s programs, activities, and/or campus areas,” which includes “exclusion … based on religious beliefs concerning the Jewish state of Israel.”
