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.”
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Just outside of Washington, D.C., across the Potomac River, Capitol Hill cast a shadow over the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, where concerns over federal funding and policy changes were palpable among attendees.
At panels and in side conversations during the three-day meeting, held at the sprawling Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, attendees swapped strategies, drilled into pressing issues and commiserated over pressures on the sector wrought by both the political environment and a business model that is strained in many places. Representatives of a diverse mix of institutions from across the nation attended, but common challenges emerged: They worry about the impact of looming federal policy changes, which they expect to add pressure to institutions already grappling with financial challenges related to enrollment declines, high tuition discount rates and other issues.
Here’s a recap of themes and moments that emerged from the conference.
‘Fear, Anxiety and Contempt’
At a packed panel covering recent activity out of Washington, NACUBO vice president for policy and research Liz Clark noted the strains business officers are feeling amid a “tumultuous year” marked by a flurry of federal actions, including the passage of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, pushed by President Donald Trump, which included various provisions for higher education.
The legislation, signed earlier this month, caps some student loans while eliminating the Grad PLUS program, limits repayment options and requires programs to pass an earnings test for attendees to access federal student loans, among other provisions, including changes to the endowment tax. Passed on a partisan line with Republicans under pressure to deliver Trump’s signature legislation, Clark noted it is just one action—albeit a significant one—that has reshaped higher education this year.
Clark added that 2025 has “brought a lot of fear, anxiety and contempt” as colleges navigate restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion programs; cancellation of federal grants and contracts; and various state laws that have “created a challenging environment” for the sector.
“I feel like we have, this year, been dealing with everything, everywhere, all at once,” Clark said.
Clark noted that despite the concerns she highlighted, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which she abbreviated “Bubba,” and other policies that were proposed could have hit higher education much harder. One example she offered was the endowment tax, which in the final bill fell far short of what House Republicans initially proposed.
But in another panel on tax reform, Clark suggested that the endowment tax could still be revised in ways that resemble earlier proposals and would have affected more universities and at higher rates.
“Don’t forget that ideas never die in Washington,” Clark warned.
Legal Perspectives
A panel of higher education lawyers also weighed in on current challenges for the sector.
Kate Hudson, deputy vice president and counsel for government relations and public policy at the Association of American Universities, warned at the start that the session would not have “a whole lot of good news.” Given the rapid pace of changes from the federal government, she also offered a caveat: “Anything I say today could be out of date in 72 hours.”
Hudson noted that campus attorneys are dealing with multiple actions from the federal government, such as federal funding freezes and far-reaching executive orders, as the Trump administration seeks to reshape everything from academic research to college admissions.
“I don’t think it is too dramatic to say that this is a wholesale renegotiation by force of the government-academia partnership,” Hudson said. “I don’t think that’s an overstatement.”
Jen Gartner, deputy general counsel at the University of Maryland, argued that the relationship between the federal government and research institutions shifted from “extremely collaborative and collegial” to a suddenly “adversarial approach” that has left universities flummoxed. That strain has particularly been felt around grants, which she said have often been terminated for unclear reasons. She also said the federal government has provided unclear information on such cancellations, sometimes providing contradictory statements in the same termination notice.
And as higher education attorneys have sought answers, she said, they’ve reviewed few.
“It’s not just that universities don’t know what to do—agencies don’t know what to do, either, and [staff are] not picking up the phone or responding to emails if they’re even still there,” Gartner said.
Related to research, Hudson also warned that Trump administration’s scrutiny of international students, which includes now vetting their social media posts for evidence of hostility toward the U.S. government and culture, also has the potential to harm the sector.
“It’s not an overestimation to say that threats … to legal immigration, to your campuses, do present an existential threat to the academic research enterprise itself at a time when [research and development] budgets and graduates from STEM degrees in our competitors, such as China, are off the charts and reaching new heights,” she said. “International students will go elsewhere.”
Hudson added that the AAU has not historically focused on immigration law, but that has suddenly shifted amid the threats to international students and faculty.
A Hard Year Ahead?
Inside Higher Ed also hosted a panel at this year’s conference to discuss the results of the 15th annual Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers, released last week. That survey, conducted in partnership with Hanover Research, found college business officers confident in the long-term outlook but worried about their financial situation in the near future.
Most respondents believe their institutions will be in worse financial shape next year. Only 43 percent expressed the belief that their institution would be in better shape next year. But Rick Mills, president and CEO of United Educators, was skeptical about the sentiment that financial situations will improve by next year given the various challenges discussed at the conference.
“At one level, I take heart in the optimism,” Mills remarked. “I think it’s what keeps all of us going, and what gets you to work in the morning, and perhaps, in the end, helps us solve the problem. On the other hand, it strikes me as slightly fantastical thinking in the current environment.”
This story about AmeriCorps jobs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
Lily Tegner didn’t know what she wanted to do when she graduated from Oregon State University with a chemical engineering degree five years ago. She entered the workforce at a point when unemployment briefly skyrocketed and companies were freezing hiring because of the Covid pandemic. “I didn’t have a very clear direction as far as where I was going in life,” she said.
Like hundreds of thousands of other young adults, Tegner kick-started her career through AmeriCorps, a federal agency that sends its members to communities across the country to tutor students, help after disasters strike and restore wildlife habitats, among other activities. She took a position at the Alaska Afterschool Network, where her job was to help find ways to expand science, technology, engineering and math access in its programs. Four years later, she’s still there — now, as a full-time employee managing the nonprofit’s AmeriCorps program.
“This state became my home,” Tegner said, adding that her year in AmeriCorps “completely changed the trajectory of my career.”
An AmeriCorps member poses with a student in one of the Alaska Afterschool Network’s funded programs. The organization lost its AmeriCorps funding last spring. Credit: Courtesy of Alaska Afterschool Network
This spring, Alaska Afterschool Network was one of hundreds of organizations abruptly notified that its AmeriCorps funding had been terminated. Federal funding cuts forced the nonprofit to eliminate three full-time positions and cancel 19 internships scheduled for this summer. Tegner’s job is also at risk, though the organization is trying to find a way to keep her on.
In late April, the Trump administration slashed 41 percent of AmeriCorps’ funding, cutting about $400 million in grants and letting go of more than 32,000 members serving in hundreds of programs across the United States. In June and also this month, judges ordered the government to restore some funding, but the ruling does not reinstate all the money that was taken away. Shrinking AmeriCorps is among the many steps the Trump administration has taken to curb what he has called “waste, fraud and abuse” of federal funds. More action is expected in the months ahead.
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Over the years, the program former President Bill Clinton created has deployed more than a million people.On top of gutting AmeriCorps, the cuts have diminished the reach of an agency that has been a critical path to a career for recent high school and college graduates at a time when entry-level jobs can be difficult to find.
AmeriCorps was created more than three decades ago to oversee expanded federal volunteer programs, incorporating existing projects including Volunteers in Service to America and the National Civilian Community Corps. Its members take on community service positions across the country that can last for up to two years. They receive a small living stipend, and full-time members are eligible for health insurance. At the end of their terms, members are awarded a grant that can be used to pay college tuition or student loans.
“AmeriCorps dollars have a powerful ripple effect, for both the AmeriCorps members and the students that they serve,” said Leslie Cornfeld, founder and CEO of the National Education Equity Lab, a nonprofit that brings college courses to high-poverty schools. “In many instances, it helps them define their careers.”
About half of the AmeriCorps funding for the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development was cut this spring. Credit: Courtesy of PHENND
Federal surveys of AmeriCorps members from 2019, 2021 and 2023 show that 90 percent of members joined the national program in part to gain skills that would help them in school and work, and well over 80 percent said their experience in AmeriCorps helped further their “professional goals and endeavors.”
The Trump administration cited fraud as part of its reason for nearly halving the AmeriCorps budget. Audits of the agency have raised questions about its financial management.
Peter Fleckenstein, 23, joined Aspire Afterschool in Arlington, Virginia, through AmeriCorps last year after graduating from the University of Delaware with a degree in psychology. He saw AmeriCorps as a way to build out his resume; even the entry-level positions he encountered during his job search required experience in the field.
In his position at the after-school program, Fleckenstein leads daily activities for a group of about two dozen fourth grade students. The experience has helped him crystallize his career aspirations: Before AmeriCorps, he was considering clinical social work or teaching. Now, he wants to become a counselor.
“Working with the kids here is a lot of behavior management: problem solving, helping them regulate themselves,” Fleckenstein said. “Doing one-on-one work with them, building habits and routines with them — that is something that I could focus on more if I was in a counseling job.”
Fleckenstein’s position was cut in April before he could complete his one-year term set to end in August, but Aspire Afterschool was able to raise money through donations to hire him and some of the nonprofit’s other AmeriCorps members part-time to finish out their grant year.
The Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development lost half of its AmeriCorps funding this past spring when the federal agency was slashed. Credit: Courtesy of PHENND
While some members have joined Americorps after graduating, student Deja Johnson, 24, joined as a way to help pay for college. Her term at The Scholarship Academy — a nonprofit in Atlanta helping low-income high school students navigate financial aid applications — was supposed to end with a $7,400 education grant. Because the terms were cut short, members have been told they’ll get only a prorated portion of the money.
“It’s a little bit of a shame,” said Johnson, who is using the education grant to pursue a bachelor’s degree in nonprofit leadership.
“That’s what a lot of us look forward to with this work that we’re doing, because we know how much of a sacrifice it can be at times. It’s that ‘pouring into our community’ — and that’s how our community pours into us,” Johnson said.
The AmeriCorps termination letters told grantees that their programs no longer met agency priorities, but the nonprofits were not told what those priorities are. Programs with different missions, in both Democratic- and Republican-led communities, were cut.
Sira Coulibaly, a member with the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development’s Next Steps AmeriCorps program, packs bags of food for the Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance. Credit: Courtesy of PHENND
The Hindman Settlement School, a nonprofit in rural Kentucky, was one victim of the cuts. The organization receives about $1 million a year from AmeriCorps for its program tutoring students with math and reading learning disabilities in more than two dozen schools. Losing that funding means drastically scaling back services, said Josh Mullins, senior director of operations at the Hindman Settlement School. He said he does not know why Hindman’s grants were terminated: The nonprofit regularly passes its audits, and its last annual report showed an average gain of seven months in reading levels among students in its dyslexia intervention program.
A statement published in January on an AmeriCorps webpage says the agency is in the process of “conducting a full review” to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion in federal programs. But Mullins and other AmeriCorps grantees said diversity, equity and inclusion efforts were not listed anywhere as part of their operations.
“That’s what’s devastating,” Mullins said. “It was completely out of our control. There was nothing you could do.”
The administration also gutted 85 percent of the agency’s federal staff, which has caused problems even for programs that are still receiving AmeriCorps funding.
The federal government terminated about half of the AmeriCorps grants for the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development. The group uses the funding to place members in local nonprofits and to help develop community partnerships in high-poverty schools. Director Hillary Kane said she’s been experiencing delays from the national AmeriCorps office in getting members approved for the programs that are still operating.
“We need the humans in D.C. to do the stuff that they do, so we can do the stuff that we do,” Kane said. “The person we communicate with isn’t there.”
About half of the AmeriCorps funding for the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development was cut this spring. Credit: Courtesy of PHENND
On June 5, a federal judge granted a temporary injunction ordering the Trump administration to restore AmeriCorps funding in states that had sued over the budget cuts. The lawsuit, which was filed by two dozen Democratic-led states in May, challenges the administration’s authority to cancel the funding without Congressional approval. But the judge’s injunction does not require the Trump administration to reinstate AmeriCorps’ federal employees, and funding is not being restored to programs in states that did not sign on to the lawsuit, including Alaska, home of the Alaska Afterschool Network, or Virginia, where Aspire Afterschool is based.
The Hindman Settlement School in Kentucky was one organization whose funding was restored this summer because of the lawsuit. Mullins said he’s hopeful the nonprofit will continue to receive AmeriCorps funding for the upcoming grant cycle in the fall.
For Kane, the injunction does not undo the chaos caused by the abrupt cancellation of half of her Philadelphia organization’s funding. Many terminated members that were with Kane’s organization have already moved on.
Programs whose grants were cut can apply again in the next grant cycle, but the president’s 2026 budget calls for shutting down AmeriCorps entirely.
While the debate in Washington rages, current and former volunteers mourn the potential loss of a program they said gave their lives meaning and led to employment. The avenue AmeriCorps provided for Tegner to start a career at the Alaska Afterschool Network gave her purpose in life, she said. She’s worried if the program ends, there won’t be another pathway on the same scale for young idealists who aren’t sure what they want to do with their lives.
“It helps young people of all ages grow and try new things,” Tegner said. “That’s very much what it was for me.”
Contact staff writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at [email protected].
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Academics are cynics. We have to be. We critique our students, our peers and ourselves. It’s how we were trained. It’s how we write and publish and secure grants. But sometimes you have to know when to declare victory.
If instead of looking at President Trump’s first 100-plus days, we look at higher education as an institution over the past 100-plus years, it becomes clear we should be celebrating higher education’s triumph and not bemoaning its demise. A century ago, U.S. universities lagged their European counterparts. In fact, many universities that are household names today were still teachers’ colleges (San Diego State University was San Diego State Teachers College) or had yet to be founded (the University of California, San Diego). Ivy League campuses like Harvard, Princeton and Yale Universities actively excluded Jewish and Black applicants. The concepts of academic freedom and tenure were nascent. The National Science Foundation did not exist.
Universities did great things during the 20th century. Presidents and faculty found strength and legitimacy through relevance. They helped in the all-out effort to win the Second World War. Universities anticipated the needs of the Cold War. Research labs produced products that improved people’s daily lives. The University of Minnesota patented Honeycrisp apples. The University of Wisconsin patented fortifying milk with vitamin D.
Universities not only solved practical problems, but they also helped us understand ourselves. Faculty explored and legitimized new areas of study: women’s studies, ethnic studies, area studies. They fused disciplines to create fields to understand our bodies and our minds, such as neuroscience and biotechnology.
As universities expanded graduate education, they trained cadres of researchers and professionals who populated state, federal and international agencies. For instance, the rise of the global environmental movement has been traced to the emergence of communities of actors with similar scientific understanding and motivations to identify and address hazards. The almost exponential increase in university training and science production was not limited to our shores; it was global. Over the 20th century, the rapid expansion of mass schooling, up to and through higher education, sparked the education revolution and created a “schooled society.”
The Challenge
Many faculty talk about higher education as though it is weak, when arguably it has been the most successful and influential social institution over the past 100 years. If we take a longer-term view, higher education has not lost. Higher education won. But the game is being reset.
Higher education’s victories were hard fought. They were political. They were negotiated. They required collective action. Through decades of fighting, universities moved past excluding applicants based on race and sex. Then for decades they used affirmative action, followed by holistic review, to more equitably admit students. They established norms for academic freedom and tenure. They became sites for open debate and social and political protest.
These types of wins are not easy to come by. They require common principles and interests and a shared sense of what counts as knowledge and how the world works. It is hard to mobilize if everything is socially constructed and morally relative and if we look for ways to critique rather than concur.
Our challenge in this new era is primarily one of legitimacy. Too many politicians and voters see us as illegitimate because too much of what we do is irrelevant. I have had my work on voter turnout criticized for not correctly guessing which of the following was the reviewer’s preferred term: Chicano, Chicana/o, Chicano/a, Chicanx, Hispanic, Latina and Latino, Latina/o, Latino/a, Latin@, Latinx, Latine. Though there is a place for thinking about names and their usage, the point of the paper was: How do we get more Hispanic students to vote?
The Good News
Some of the most direct efforts to limit the influence of higher education are occurring on our own turf. Moneyed interests and Trump acolytes have sought to create conservative centers at Ohio State University, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Florida. When centers like these are founded, we should recognize that we have the home court advantage. We should engage with their leaders and faculty—we are not outnumbered. We should send our students to enroll in their courses and invite their students to dialogue with us. We have immense forms of cultural and social capital and vast networks. Our disciplines have rich traditions for ways of understanding the world and addressing its problems. We have insightful perspectives for understanding the human condition, thinking about natural law and questioning what the social contract should look like in the 21st century.
We should look back to how faculty made such strong advances in the last century. For instance, in 1915, the American Association of University Professors adopted a Declaration of Principles. That document served as the foundation for the future 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which was jointly developed with the Association of American Colleges (now the American Association of Colleges and Universities). The 1940 document was so promising because it represented agreement between faculty and university leaders.
Those documents are worth revisiting for both their substance and process. For example, we should remind our detractors that academic freedom comes with concomitant responsibilities. We are criticized for attempting to brainwash America’s youth, but the AAUP’s 1915 Declaration of Principles states,
“The university teacher, in giving instruction upon controversial matters, while he is under no obligation to hide his own opinion under a mountain of equivocal verbiage, should … set forth justly, without suppression or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other investigators; he should cause his students to become familiar with the best published expressions of the great historic types of doctrine upon the questions at issue; and he should, above all, remember that his business is not to provide his students with ready-made conclusions, but to train them to think for themselves.”
In the world of social media and generative artificial intelligence, training students to think for themselves may be more important than ever. As faculty, we should practice thinking like the early leaders of the AAUP and seek to build national solidarity and articulate a shared purpose for higher education.
We should accept that conservative politicians are attacking higher education not because it is weak but because it is so strong. In this time, we must rededicate ourselves to a cause that will outlast our careers, a cause worthy of the collective efforts of generations of scholars. We must advance the public good. By improving the public good, we will be relevant, and by being relevant, we will reclaim legitimacy. We must show that we can do what Google and ChatGPT cannot: We can train students to think and to be good citizens.
Frank Fernandez is an associate professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He writes about the role of higher education in society.
Japan needs to admit that long-running efforts to address gender inequality in higher education aren’t working, experts say, with antidiversity sentiment spreading from the U.S. and threatening to gain traction.
Despite government policies spanning nearly two decades, women remain severely underrepresented across Japanese universities, particularly in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.
As of 2022, women made up just 26.7 percent of faculty nationwide and fewer than half of all students, with even starker disparities in senior academic roles and male-dominated disciplines.
Sayaka Oki, a professor at the University of Tokyo, described the situation as “terrible.”
“Gender equality doesn’t really exist here,” she added.
As of 2022, only 11 percent of professors at Oki’s university were female, with particularly low representation in engineering. In undergraduate programs in physics and engineering, women typically make up only about 15 percent of the student population.
“The gender imbalance starts at the student level and gets worse in higher positions,” she said. The university has launched repeated initiatives that have attempted to address the problem and has reported that it has “steadily increased the number of women in faculty positions.”
Since 2006, Japan’s government has implemented a “goal and timetable” policy aimed at increasing women researchers in natural sciences, setting numerical hiring targets every five years.
However, these targets have remained largely unchanged because the proportion of women earning doctoral degrees—the main feeder for research roles—has not significantly increased.
Ginko Kawano, professor of gender equality at Kyushu University, said that, “after nearly two decades, the policy has not produced significant results, and it appears we are now at a turning point in terms of policy design.”
Yet “while this sends a positive message that women are welcome in these disciplines, it is unlikely to serve as a fundamental solution to the underlying issues,” she said.
She also acknowledged strong opposition from students and faculty: “Institutions that choose to introduce this system should clearly explain the reasoning behind it.
“At the same time, it is crucial for university faculty to have access to the information and knowledge necessary to evaluate the merits and drawbacks of such quotas.
“For example, they should be aware of the historical exclusion of women from science, and recognize the persistent bias that suggest[s] women are not suited for STEM fields—biases that continue to shape the choices women feel able to make,” Kawano said.
Adding to the complexity is a political environment increasingly wary of diversity initiatives.
Kawano warned that antidiversity sentiment similar to that in the U.S. could gain traction in Japan, although opposition to gender equality policies has existed independently for years.
Akiyoshi Yonezawa, professor of higher education in the Global Strategy Office at Tohoku University, highlighted demographic pressures pushing universities toward diversity.
“Since around 1990, the number of 18-year-olds has continuously declined and is expected to continue until at least 2040,” he said.
In response, women and international students have been framed as essential for sustaining Japan’s knowledge economy.
Yonezawa criticized how diversity initiatives in Japan are often framed: “DEI initiatives in Japanese universities and society tend to be promoted as a ‘catch-up’ Western mindset rather than intrinsic value formation through daily experience. This makes DEI activities in Japan’s higher education fragile in the long term when faced with controversy.”
Institutional barriers also persist. Oki described how her university’s collegial governance system complicates efforts to implement top-down diversity policies and secure funding, which often comes with centralized control conditions.
“To access the fund, we’re required to adopt a more top-down management style,” she said. “That’s difficult because our university traditionally follows a collegial governance model.”
Oki agreed that there was a risk that international developments had made the situation potentially more difficult—particularly in the U.S., where things like the ban on affirmative action had made colleagues “more cautious about what might happen here.”
Brown University is taking out a $500 million loan as it faces a prolonged federal funding freeze and braces for other changes to federal policy, Bloomberg reported.
The university previously borrowed $300 million in April after the Trump administration said it was freezing about $510 million in federal grants and contracts at the Ivy League institution.
“Given recent volatility in capital markets and uncertainty related to evolving federal policy related to higher education, research and other important priorities of Brown, the university is fortunate to have a number of sources of liquidity,” a Brown spokesperson told Bloomberg.
Other universities have turned to loans or bonds to get immediate cash amid federal funding freezes.
In a June message that warned of the potential for “significant cost-cutting” measures, Brown administrators pointed to numerous challenges such as federal research grant cuts, the increasing tax on university endowments and threats to international students. Administrators were considering, among other measures, service reductions as well as changes to staffing levels and graduate student admissions. Brown was already grappling with a $46 million deficit before President Trump took office in January, and the university implemented a hiring freeze in March.
“All these losses represent an ongoing threat to Brown’s financial sustainability and, consequently, our ability to fulfill our mission,” university officials wrote of the federal policy changes. “We are doing everything possible to minimize the impact, and we are proud of the response of this community in making important changes to operations to reduce expenses over the past year. Unfortunately, the level of savings to date is not enough to counter the deep financial losses Brown is experiencing and must prepare for in the coming year.”
College leaders are breathing a tentative sigh of relief after the Trump administration promised Friday to release roughly $5 billion in withheld education funding, slated for a range of K–12 programs but also $716 million for adult education programs. Not included in Friday’s announcement, however, was $52 million allocated for migrant higher education programs.
On June 30, the Department of Education paused nearly $7 billion in education funding expected on July 1, as part of a review by the Office of Management and Budget. Over the weeks of uncertainty that followed, community college leaders feared that, without the funds, they’d need to strip back adult education programming, like GED programs, and lay off personnel. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle called for the funds’ release. A group of 10 Republican senators demanded an end to the freeze in a July 16 letter to OMB. Democratic governors from 18 states also wrote to Education Secretary Linda McMahon with the same plea.
Rachel Gasseling, adult education director at Western Nebraska Community College, said that she was heartbroken when the Education Department paused the adult education funds. Her program serves the rural Nebraska panhandle and had a record 27 graduates this past academic year, an almost 69 percent increase over the year before. Adult ed programs served more than 9,300 students statewide last year, she said.
“By all measures, we were going above and beyond to help our communities and help people build better lives,” Gasseling wrote to Inside Higher Ed. “Every day we waited to know whether we had to start looking for a new job or hold out one more day in hopes we can keep doing what we love.”
Now she knows her work can continue. Her college was able to float the program until the funds returned. But for some programs across the country, the damage is already done, she said. They closed or reduced staff or services when the funds didn’t come through.
“A great deal of people have been affected by this decision, and I hope that programs are able to rebuild or stay afloat for the sake of neighbors and communities,” she said.
David Baime, senior vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges, said nationwide, state and campus leaders are “extremely relieved” by the news of the restored adult education funds. Now community college leaders hope these programs receive continued support in the 2026 fiscal year appropriations process.
“The loss of these funds would have been devastating to hundreds of community colleges, and some programs were already scaled back given the hiatus in support,” he wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “Community colleges are deeply thankful that key legislators stood up for this essential function.”
Heather Morgan, executive director of the Kansas Association of Community Colleges, said she’s glad to see the funds released but remains wary about the future of adult education programs under the Trump administration. Trump proposed axing these programs in his budget proposal for fiscal year 2026.
“While this funding helps the programs continue, we will continue to watch the upcoming appropriations process as adult basic education is one of the areas proposed in the president’s budget for elimination,” Morgan wrote to Inside Higher Ed. “The uncertainty of funding makes keeping positions filled difficult as we work to serve adult learners.” The budget proposal would also eliminate funding for migrant education.
The Education Department and the Office of Management and Budget did not respond to requests for comment.
Migrant Programs In Flux
Funds for other postsecondary programs still hang in the balance. Even as the Education Department released funding to states for migrant education at the K–12 level, money for two postsecondary migrant programs remains frozen: the High School Equivalency Program, a program that supports migrant farmworkers and their families in earning their GEDs, and the College Assistance for Migrants Program, which helps recruit and support those students through their first year of college.
Greg Contreras, the director of the National HEP/CAMP Association, told Inside Higher Ed that the release of funds for the K–12 Migrant Education Program was “definitely encouraging.” But he said he has still received no word on if and when the review of HEP and CAMP may come to an end.
Without the money to support HEP and CAMP, colleges and universities have been forced to shutter their programs and lay off employees who work with migrant students.
“As each week rolls by, more programs are starting to drop off,” Contreras said. He received a layoff notice for his own position leading the CAMP initiative at Portland Community College in Oregon; originally, he was told his last day would be in August, but he is working with administrators to see if he might be able to stay through the start of PCC’s fall semester in September.
Along with funding resources for migrant students, money for CAMP also goes toward scholarships and stipends. Michael Heim, the director of HEP and CAMP at Washington State University, said that his program’s incoming students are grappling with whether they will be able to enroll if the money doesn’t come through. Potentially losing out on scholarships they were promised will be a major factor in their decision-making, he said. But they’re also concerned about their academic success without access to the specialized resources CAMP typically offers, such as tutoring and mentorship.
“The question they ask themselves is, ‘How do I find community, how do I know people will be in my corner to support me?’” he said. “I think it speaks to a mentality within our students, over all, that they know they want to go to college, but they want to be successful, because the values their families are instilling them are: They know education is important, and they don’t want to miss this opportunity to make their parents proud, make their siblings proud.”
The National HEP/CAMP Association and its members aren’t backing down yet. The board recently traveled to Washington, D.C., where Contreras said they met with over 30 congressional staff members who they hope will pass along their messages about the importance and effectiveness of the programs.
Even HEP and CAMP staff who have lost their jobs are staying involved in the effort to get their funding restored, he said, contacting their own congresspeople to ask them to push for the funds to be released.
A Vanderbilt spokesperson confirmed to the Chronicle that the university—which is based in Nashville, Tenn., but also has satellite campuses in New York City and West Palm Beach, Fla.—has been working with the San Francisco mayor’s office on a plan to gain a foothold in the Bay Area.
“Vanderbilt is always exploring new opportunities to expand our impact and further our mission,” the spokesperson told the newspaper. “We recognize the long-term global leadership of San Francisco and its ever-growing potential, defined by a vibrant culture, dynamic innovation ecosystem and the talent drawn to its leading technology companies and top-caliber arts and cultural institutions.”
The spokesperson added that the institution’s aim is “to create unique student experiences, fuel pathbreaking research and foster close connections to the ideas and companies that will lead the next generation of the nation’s economy.”
San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie has expressed interest in partnering with a university to revitalize the city.
“Our administration is working every day to create a clean, safe and thriving downtown—one that draws people, businesses and investments back to our city,” Lurie told the Chronicle. “As I said during my campaign, welcoming a world-class university like Vanderbilt to our city would bring new energy and foot traffic downtown, and we will continue working to make that happen.”
A source told the Chronicle that the mayor has approached a handful of other universities, but the arrangement with Vanderbilt appears to be the “most promising”; city officials have met with university leaders multiple times.
