Tag: Jobs

  • Four Principles for Hosting More Impactful Gatherings (opinion)

    Four Principles for Hosting More Impactful Gatherings (opinion)

    Have you attended a research seminar that managed to deepen faculty members’ understanding of the topic, while also encouraging trainees new to the field to engage with the speaker? When you hosted your last career panel, were you able to intentionally moderate conversations with professionals from different fields while also allowing serendipitous tangents inspired by audience questions?

    Higher education is filled with gatherings intended to engage various audiences and deepen understanding of diverse topics. Hosting and facilitating these gatherings (be they large-scale conferences, interactive workshop discussions or weekly team meetings with office staff) is no easy feat and rarely comes with a guidebook.

    Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering (Riverhead, 2018) is that guidebook. Reading it has influenced how I think about organizing and facilitating seminars, events and group meetings for graduate students and postdocs.

    Reflecting ahead of time on defining the event’s purpose, inviting with intention, understanding your role as a host and ending well can elevate professional gatherings and make even a simple seminar more meaningful.

    Establish the Purpose

    An alum is coming to visit your department: The first idea you have is, “They should give a department seminar!” I’ve done this, too, but it’s not the starting point. When picking the type of event to have, don’t conflate its classification with its intention.

    Applying the purpose filter to your event planning will help dictate the format to best serve your specific goal. If an occasion requires many goals to be met, consider creating multiple avenues to address these different purposes and audiences. If your intent is too broad, no one will feel like the event is for them.

    Maybe an alum visiting is a great chance for graduate students to learn about alternative career paths. With this purpose in mind, a roundtable discussion could be a more effective format. Maybe the alum is a star in the field and the faculty will want to learn about their research. In this case, a seminar would be best. Maybe the alum has made it big in the business world and the department is looking for a new donor. Perhaps a lab or building tour and one-on-one meetings can serve this goal.

    Make the Invite Clear

    No event can please everyone, and that shouldn’t be the goal. We should not be discriminatory in our invitations, but instead think of protecting those who are attending. In the above example, if the purpose of an alum visiting the department is for career development programming and to expose trainees to unique career paths, the invites and advertising should be consistent with that purpose.

    Intentional invitations can start even earlier when contacting guest speakers or panelists. If you’ve decided a department symposium should be focused on allowing trainees to share their research, inviting an alumnus of the department to talk about their current research could enhance this intention. Carefully considering and reaching out to potential guests requires an understanding of the purpose first.

    Another element of the invite is physical logistics: the number of people attending, where it is, the setup of the venue. Again, these should be influenced by the goals of the gathering. A roundtable discussion limited to 20 people could be more conducive to trainees learning about the career journey of an alum. In contrast, if the speaker is giving a groundbreaking research talk, a large lecture hall with a high capacity would suit better.

    As Parker writes, “Gatherings that please everyone occur, but they rarely thrill. Gatherings that are willing to be alienating—which is different from being alienating—have a better chance to dazzle.” Anyone can see a seminar poster hanging in the hall and decide to come. The content, however, should be clear, and the invite specific enough, so the guests understand whom the seminar is intended for.

    Be an Intentional Host

    I have been organizing events, outside and inside higher ed, for many years. But only recently have I understood the power and influence that the host can have. For years, I strove to have oversight of all logistics and ensure an airtight planning timeline—but once the event started, I took a hands-off approach so as to not interfere with the guest’s experience. I have come to realize that abdicating host power in an attempt to be easygoing is actually counterproductive.

    The host sets the stage, from the first announcement email to when people enter the room. Rules and limitations are necessary and appreciated. Having a generous authority lets people know what to expect early on. This can be achieved by finding the right balance of warmth and order—by developing a method to confidently run a gathering and steer the ship, while selflessly protecting the guest’s connection and experience. The host isn’t controlling the situation but is responsible for creating a container for the experience to expand into.

    With seminars and panel discussions, the host is crucial for orchestrating the flow of conversation. If multiple people are on a panel, being clear whom your question is addressed to and directing the order eases the speakers and creates less tension. It may feel uncomfortable having this power, but this is not the time to relinquish it.

    When moderating a Q&A or panel discussion, listen carefully to the speakers and be perceptive of the audience and energy flow. Summarizing and synthesizing what was said, transitioning to new topics, and keeping the momentum is tricky when all eyes are on you.

    It is vulnerable to be a host, and it’s a responsibility from start to finish.

    Finish Strong

    People often remember the beginning and end of something (a movie, a speech, an event) the most. Finishing strong means making the event memorable. As a host, you’ve constructed this container for others to learn and connect. You’ve thought of all the logistical details and brought the speakers and audience through a journey. Now it’s time to be mindful about how you end by facilitating looking inward and turning outward.

    Looking inward is about asking the guests to reflect on what they’ve learned or experienced. If you’ve been moderating a panel discussion, pose a final question that requires reflection. Ask the speakers to reiterate the one thing they hope everyone takes away from the session. Technology has made it easier to request interaction from the audience. Ask everyone to share one lesson learned, or how they’re feeling now. This can be typed in the chat box for an online event or submitted using programs such as Slido. The goal is to make space for synthesis.

    Turning outward involves encouraging everyone to take the experience back out into the world. Ask the audience, “What is one action you plan to do following this?” Or ask the speakers to suggest the next small step someone can take. Help the audience bring what they learned to others outside of the event. Remind everyone what the purpose of the gathering was, what was achieved and where they can go from here.

    After an event ends, there are ways to continue the inward and outward response. Follow up thank-you notes and feedback forms can be methods to encourage participants to look inward and offer ideas for the future. Providing any resources or content from the event can help the audience turn outward and use their learnings in the real world.

    When you build in time to define a gathering’s purpose, incorporate intentional invitations and pay attention to your influence as a host, you can shape the event from beginning to end and revolutionize how we connect. These are the first steps to take a program or event from routine to meaningful.

    What’s one upcoming gathering that you can apply even one of these four principles to?

    Anne Meyer-Miner is the manager of graduate and postdoctoral affairs in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of British Columbia. She holds a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from the University of Toronto and is an active member of the Graduate Career Consortium—an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders. The views expressed here are Anne’s alone.

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  • Financial Pressures Could Have Cascading Effects (opinion)

    Financial Pressures Could Have Cascading Effects (opinion)

    In April, Harvard University, despite its $53.2 billion endowment, announced plans for a $750 million bond issuance to bolster liquidity amid uncertainties over federal funding. Similarly, Brown University concluded its decade-long BrownTogether fundraising campaign, raising more than $4.4 billion, yet soon after secured a $300 million loan in the face of a structural budget deficit and the cancellation of federal grants. And in May, Columbia University announced layoffs of approximately 180 staff members after the federal government revoked $400 million in federal grants and contracts, citing the university’s handling of antisemitic harassment on campus.

    Together, these actions underscore that even the nation’s most selective and well-resourced universities are vulnerable to financial strain and are recalibrating rapidly in response to shifting economic and political forces. By contrast, less well-resourced, tuition-dependent institutions often confront the same headwinds, or their downstream effects, with fewer financial options and diminished capacity to respond.

    Liquidity and the Endowment Misconception

    A common misconception is that universities can freely tap into their endowments to address financial shortfalls. In reality, a significant portion of endowment assets are legally restricted by external donor agreements, regulatory frameworks and board policies. According to the NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments, an average 71.1 percent of endowment funds are restricted by donor agreements alone. These funds are typically earmarked for specific purposes such as scholarships, endowed faculty positions or capital projects.

    Endowments are vital to institutional operations but are not unbounded. In fiscal year 2024, colleges and universities withdrew a total of $30 billion from their endowments, representing a 6.4 percent increase over the prior year, with nearly half of that spending (48.1 percent) dedicated to student financial aid. On average, endowments funded 15.3 percent of institutional operating budgets, underscoring their importance in day-to-day fiscal planning.

    At the same time, most institutions cap annual withdrawals at approximately 4.5 to 5 percent of a rolling three-year average to preserve long-term value. Exceeding these thresholds can jeopardize an endowment’s sustainability and may violate both donor restrictions and regulatory requirements. Consequently, when immediate cash needs surpass allowable draws, universities often turn to bond markets or bank loans, trading short-term liquidity for future debt obligations. According to a Forbes report, U.S. universities issued a record $11.6 billion in municipal bond debt in the first quarter of 2025 to safeguard operations amid federal funding cuts.

    Fiscal and Legal Acumen: A New Leadership Imperative

    In the current climate, effective university leadership requires not only academic vision but also robust financial and legal expertise. Leaders must navigate complex debt covenants, bond rating pressures and donor restrictions while transparently communicating difficult decisions to trustees, faculty, students and the public. These challenges, at least financially, arguably surpass those faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, when federal relief funds temporarily masked underlying vulnerabilities.

    Rising Insolvency Risk Beyond Public Campuses

    Recent announcements by private Research-1 universities suggest several well-known institutions—among them Duke and Northwestern Universities—could encounter significant fiscal strain if current federal research funding trends persist. While nonselective public research universities are often viewed as the most vulnerable to federal funding cuts, some prominent private institutions also face rising risk. High fixed costs, tuition and/or research dependency, and limited unrestricted endowment income create financial fragility as grants plateau.

    Enrollment Shocks: A Cascade in Waiting

    An often-overlooked but potentially destabilizing factor is the cascading effect on enrollment should elite institutions expand freshman classes and nonresearch focused graduate programs by aggressively tapping wait lists to compensate for financial shortfalls. While larger cohorts can spread overhead costs and generate additional tuition revenue, rapid expansion without strategic planning can strain housing, advising and support services, potentially degrading the student experience and affecting retention.

    For example, if the top 50 universities each increase enrollment by even 5 percent, thousands of well-qualified students may shift upward, siphoning tuition dollars from regional publics, tuition-dependent privates and community colleges. For institutions already operating on thin margins, this loss of yield could prove existential.

    This scenario recalls the 2008 financial crisis: a shock at the top reverberated across sectors. Here, if highly selective colleges “catch a cold,” more vulnerable campuses may suffer a deeper freeze.

    Equity and Access Under Pressure

    The most severe consequences are likely to impact lower-income students. Potential elimination of federal support programs like federal TRIO programs and Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, coupled with the potential cascading effects outlined above, risk widening the affordability gap. To shore up budgets, financially stressed institutions may tighten aid packages and prioritize full-pay applicants. Simultaneously, regional institutions that disproportionately serve these populations face their own budget constraints, compounding threats to access and social mobility. Conversely, other financially stressed colleges may opt to elevate unfunded tuition discount rates to unsustainable levels in order to meet enrollment targets, an action we have witnessed during less stressful periods.

    Summer Melt: An Immediate Barometer

    The impending summer melt period—when students who have submitted deposits ultimately decide not to enroll—may serve as a real-time stress indicator. Historically, national melt rates hover around 10 to 20 percent, but even a two- to three-percentage-point uptick for small, tuition-driven colleges can force emergency cuts. If selective universities reach deeper into their wait lists this summer, downstream institutions could experience sudden enrollment gaps as fall semesters are about to begin.

    Toward Long-Term Resilience: Strategic Levers

    As the financial headwinds intensify, universities must couple urgency with discipline. Ensuring alignment among institutional leaders, preserving trust and activating institutional flexibility will be key. The following strategic levers offer a practical framework for leaders aiming to build resilience without losing sight of mission.

    1. Ensure board and leadership alignment: Any misalignment between governing boards and executive teams can slow decision-making and erode credibility. Clear alignment around scenario planning, liquidity thresholds and contingency triggers is paramount.
    2. Embrace shared governance: Genuine engagement with faculty, staff and students in fiscal deliberations can enhance adaptability and morale. Institutions that bypass shared governance risk midcareer talent attrition, as well as diminishing instructional quality and grant productivity.
    3. Rethink spending policies: Regular reassessment of endowment draw methodologies, debt covenants and liquidity lines is essential. Short-term borrowing can bridge operational gaps but should be paired with disciplined multiyear plans that include potential program realignment and other austerity measures.
    4. Diversify revenue streams: Institutions must increase nontraditional tuition income, such as from online certificates, executive education and micro-credentials. Commercializing research can generate revenue, however, safeguards are necessary to prevent a slide into “University Inc.” cynicism—the sense that institutions are prioritizing profit over scholarship.
    5. Strengthen financial transparency: Open dashboards tracking liquidity ratios, debt service coverage ratios and aid spending cultivate trust and temper rumor-driven resistance. Responsible transparency should extend to explaining why certain programs may face review in the name of institutional sustainability.

    The Faculty and Staff Dimension

    Financial pressures inevitably affect human capital. Institutions that announce austerity plans without clear road maps invite uncertainty and, ultimately, attrition among faculty and staff. Retention of human capital is crucial not only for educational quality but also for grant productivity and student success. Engaging employees in strategic trade-offs—such as phased retirement options, the cross-training of staff to handle multiple roles as part of new revenue initiatives or shared services efficiencies—can transform potential resistance into collaborative resilience. But these strategic trade-offs also impact human capital.

    What About Academic Mission?

    Some argue that larger entering classes could enhance diversity or increase institutional reach. Others worry that an aggressive growth mindset dilutes faculty engagement and student mentorship. Both perspectives merit consideration. Growth for growth’s sake, particularly when propelled by crisis rather than strategy, risks eroding the very qualities that make a campus distinctive.

    A Crucible Moment

    Higher education has weathered wars, recessions and a global pandemic, but today’s convergence of shrinking research support, demographic shifts and rising debt costs presents a challenge not witnessed in recent history. Liquidity stress is reaching even elite campuses.

    The lessons from recent bond issuances, emergency loans and layoffs are clear: Action must come before distress spreads further. Institutions that act now by aligning leadership, engaging stakeholders, adjusting spending, diversifying revenue and communicating clearly will emerge stronger and more mission‑focused.

    Those that delay risk letting early warning signs become full‑blown alarms.

    As summer melt data arrives and fiscal year budgets close, we will soon learn whether these echoes from the Ivies were just noise—or the first tremors of something more.

    Joseph E. Nyre served as president of Seton Hall University from 2019 to 2023 and of Iona University from 2011 to 2019. He is the founder and managing director of Veritas Solutions Advisors, a higher education and nonprofit consulting company.

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  • Assignments for Politically Disaffected Students (opinion)

    Assignments for Politically Disaffected Students (opinion)

    Joe Rogan is no fan of my work, obviously. The chart-topping conservative influencer famously insists that universities are “cult camps” where professors like me indoctrinate students with leftist ideas. Typically, I do not worry about my haters, but increasingly it seems that if I want to create a meaningful learning experience, I need to.

    I teach first-year undergraduate humanities electives. Like most universities, ours offers large-format 200-student lectures for training in academic writing and critical theory. This would be the “indoctrination” in question, as I introduce students to canonical thinkers from Karl Marx to Sylvia Wynter. These electives are degree requirements, snaring students who might intentionally avoid liberal arts in an otherwise professional degree.

    In the current political climate, many of my students come to the classroom with their minds made up based on authorities who directly undermine my scholarship and profession. Rogan is just one of many conservative anti-intellectuals who regularly attack liberal, feminist, social justice–oriented biases in university education. The result is a polarized atmosphere antithetical to learning: a tangibly mistrustful, sometimes even resentful classroom.

    Although only a small handful of students typically adhere to anti-intellectual doctrine, their small group undermines my authority with risky jokes in the classroom and intense criticism in student back channels (as reported by concerned classmates). This causes undecided students to falter in their trust of my authority, while students who do not share their views nervously censor their contributions.

    Ironically, my dissenting students often do not recognize that I am interested in their views. I am convinced that the way out of this explosive historic moment is through rigorous discussion in educational forums. Like any academic, this is why I teach: I love sincere inquiry, debate and critical engagement, and I was a rabble-rouser myself as a student. But the current classroom mood is less debate and more deadlock.

    So, I spent this year brainstorming with my students to build creative assignments to spin resentment into passion, no matter how opposite my own, welcoming self-directed research and encouraging deeply engaged reading. I offer any one of these assignments, with the goal to bring disaffected, anxious students back to a love of learning and democratized engagement. This is a work in progress, and I welcome suggestions.

    Turn Tensions Into Data: This introductory exercise eases students into an atmosphere of open collegial discussion. Surveys or anonymous polls quantify disagreements, and then we analyze the results as a class.

    Example: Class Belief Inventory—anonymously poll students on hot-button questions (e.g., “Is systemic racism a major problem?”). The objective here would be to compare the class’s responses to national survey data. Potential discussion topics: Why might differences exist? What shapes our perceptions?

    Hostile Influencers as Primary Sources: This in-class activity treats figures like Rogan or Jordan Peterson not as adversaries but as authors of texts to analyze, to disarm defensiveness and position students as critical investigators.

    Example: “Compare/contrast an episode of [X podcast] with a peer-reviewed article on the same topic. How do their arguments differ in structure, evidence and rhetoric? Whom do you find more persuasive, and why?”

    Gamifying Ideological Tensions: This class activity turns assigned readings into structured, rule-bound games where students must defend positions they don’t personally hold.

    Example: Role-Play a Summit—Students are assigned roles (e.g., Jordan Peterson, bell hooks, climate scientist, TikTok influencer) and must collaborate to solve a fictional problem (e.g., redesigning a curriculum). They must cite course readings to justify their choices.

    Therapy for Arguments: This fun early activity teaches students to diagnose weak arguments—whether from Rogan, a feminist theorist or you—using principles of logic.

    Example: Argument Autopsy—Students dissect a viral social media post, podcast clip or course reading. Identify logical fallacies, cherry-picked evidence or unstated assumptions. Reward students for critiquing all sides.

    Intellectual Sleuthing: This is a scaffolded midterm writing assignment building up to a final essay. Ask students to trace the origins of their favorite influencers’ ideas. Many anti-establishment figures borrow from (or distort) academic theories—show students how to connect the dots.

    Example: Genealogy of an Idea—Pick a claim from a podcast (e.g., “universities indoctrinate students”). Research its history: When was this idea popular in mainstream news or on social media? Are there any institutes, think tanks, influencers or politicians associated with this idea? What are the stated missions and goals of those sources? Where do they get their funding? Which academics agree or disagree, and why?

    Leverage “Forbidden Topics” as Case Studies: If students resent “liberal bias,” lean into it: make bias itself the subject of analysis. This might work as a discussion prompt for tutorials or think-pair-share group work.

    Example: “Is This Reading Biased?”—Assign a short text students might call “woke” (e.g., feminist theory) and a countertext (e.g., Peterson’s critique of postmodernism). Have students evaluate both using a rubric: What counts as bias? Is objectivity possible? How do they define “truth”?

    Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Assignments: The final essay assignment gives students agency to explore topics they care about, even if they critique my field. Clear guardrails are important here to ensure rigor.

    Example: Passion Project: Students design a research question related to the course—even if it challenges the course’s assumptions. They must engage with three or more course texts and two or more outside sources, as in favorite influencers or authorities, even those who oppose course themes.

    Red Team vs. Blue Team: For essays, students submit two versions: one arguing their personal view and one arguing the counterpoint. Grading is based on how well they engage evidence, not their stance.

    Elisha Lim is an assistant professor of the technological humanities at York University in Toronto. They used generative AI tools to assist with the editing of this piece.

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  • Judge Says Harvard Can Enroll International Students for Now

    Judge Says Harvard Can Enroll International Students for Now

    A federal judge granted Harvard an injunction on Friday that temporarily blocks the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke its ability to enroll international students.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | greenleaf123/iStock/Getty Images | APCortizasJr/iStock/Getty Images

    District Judge Allison Burroughs granted a preliminary injunction to Harvard University on Friday in its case challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to prevent the university from enrolling international students. It’s the latest development in a tit-for-tat legal battle over the ability of more than a quarter of Harvard’s students to remain enrolled. 

    The injunction prevents the Department of Homeland Security from stripping Harvard of its Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification until Burroughs issues a final ruling in the lawsuit. It does not address President Donald Trump’s executive proclamation from earlier this month banning the State Department from issuing visas to international students and researchers attending Harvard; a temporary restriction on that ban expired June 20. 

    Burroughs has not issued an injunction on the Trump administration’s second attempt to revoke Harvard’s SEVP certification, which could take effect Wednesday if she declines to take further action, as Harvard has requested. 

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  • Judge Orders Mahmoud Khalil to Be Released

    Judge Orders Mahmoud Khalil to Be Released

    A federal judge ordered that Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and student protest leader who was detained by ICE agents in March, be released from a detention center in Louisiana. News outlets reported that he walked out of the detention center around 6:40 Central time Friday evening. 

    U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled on Friday that Khalil, a legal permanent resident who has not been accused of any crime, should be released on bail and that continuing to hold him was highly unusual and could constitute “unconstitutional” punishment for his political beliefs. The Trump administration had sought to keep Khalil imprisoned based on a minor alleged immigration infraction after another judge ruled earlier this month that it could not continue to hold him purely based on the State Department’s claim that his continued presence in the U.S. posed a foreign policy threat. 

    Khalil’s arrest made national headlines and kicked off the Trump administration’s months-long campaign of detentions, visa revocations and threats of deportation against international students.

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  • Data Shows Uptake of Statewide Digital Mental Health Support

    Data Shows Uptake of Statewide Digital Mental Health Support

    In 2023, New Jersey’s Office of the Secretary of Higher Education signed a first-of-its-kind agreement with a digital mental health provider, Uwill, to provide free access to virtual mental health services to college students across the state.

    Over the past two years, 18,000-plus students across 45 participating colleges and universities have registered with the service, representing about 6 percent of the eligible postsecondary population. The state considers the partnership a success and hopes to codify the offering to ensure its sustainability beyond the current governor’s term.

    The details: New Jersey’s partnership with Uwill was spurred by a 2021 survey of 15,500 undergraduate and graduate students from 60 institutions in the state, which found that 70 percent of respondents rated their stress and anxiety as higher in fall 2021 than in fall 2020. Forty percent indicated they were concerned about their mental health in light of the pandemic.

    Under the agreement, students can use Uwill’s teletherapy, crisis connection and wellness programming at any time. Like others in the teletherapy space, Uwill offers an array of diverse licensed mental health providers, giving students access to therapists who share their backgrounds or language, or who reside in their state. Over half (55 percent) of the counselors Uwill hires in New Jersey are Black, Indigenous or people of color; among them, they speak 11 languages.

    What makes Uwill distinct from its competitors is that therapy services are on-demand, meaning students are matched with a counselor within minutes of logging on to the platform. Students can request to see the same counselor in the future, but the nearly immediate access ensures they are not caught in long wait or intake times, especially compared to in-person counseling services.

    Under New Jersey’s agreement, colleges and students do not pay for Uwill services, but colleges must receive state aid to be eligible.

    The research: The need for additional counseling capacity on college campuses has grown over the past decade, as an increasing number of students enter higher education with pre-existing mental health conditions. The most recent survey of counseling center staff by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD) found that while demand for services is on the decline compared to recent years, a larger number of students have more serious conditions.

    Over half of four-year institutions and about one-third of community colleges nationwide provide teletherapy to students via third-party vendors, according to AUCCCD data. The average number of students who engaged with services in 2024 was 453, across institution size.

    Online therapy providers tout the benefits of having a service that supplements on-campus, in-person therapists’ services to provide more comprehensive care, including racially and ethnically diverse staff, after-hours support and on-demand resources for students.

    Eric Wood, director of counseling and mental health at Texas Christian University, told Inside Higher Ed that an ideal teletherapy vendor is one that increases capacity for on-campus services, expanding availability for on-campus staff and ensuring that students do not fall through the cracks.

    A 2024 analysis of digital mental health tools from the Hope Center at Temple University—which did not include Uwill—found they can improve student mental health, but there is little direct evidence regarding marginalized student populations’ use of or benefits from them. Instead, the greatest benefit appears to be for students who would not otherwise engage in traditional counseling or who simply seek preventative resources.

    One study featured in the Hope Center’s report noted the average student only used their campus’s wellness app or teletherapy service once; the report calls for more transparency around usage data prior to institutional investment.

    The data: Uwill reported that from April 2023 to May 2025, 18,207 New Jersey students engaged in their services at the 45 participating institutions, which include Princeton, Rutgers, Montclair State and Seton Hall Universities, as well as the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Stevens Institute of Technology. Engaged students were defined as any students who logged in to the app and created an account.

    New Jersey’s total college enrollment in 2022 was 378,819, according to state data. An Inside Higher Ed analysis of publicly available data found total enrollment (including undergraduate and graduate students) among the 45 participating colleges to be 327,353. Uwill participants in New Jersey, therefore, totaled around 4 percent of the state’s postsecondary students or 6 percent of eligible students.

    The state paid $4 million for the first year of the Uwill contract, as reported by Higher Ed Dive, pulling dollars from a $10 million federal grant to support pandemic relief and a $16 million budget allocation for higher education partnerships. That totals about $89,000 per institution for the first year alone, or $12 per eligible student, according to an Inside Higher Ed estimate.

    In a 2020 interview with Inside Higher Ed, Uwill CEO Michael London said the minimum cost to a college for one year of services is about $25,000, or $10 to $20 per student per year.

    New Jersey students met with counselors in more than 78,000 therapy sessions, or about six sessions per student between 2023 and 2025, according to Uwill data. Students also engaged in 548 chat sessions with therapists, sent 6,593 messages and requested 1,216 crisis connections during the first two years of service.

    User engagement has slowly ticked up since the partnership launched. In January 2024, the state said more than 7,600 students registered on the platform, scheduling nearly 20,000 sessions. By September 2024, Uwill reported more than 13,000 registered students on the platform, scheduling more than 49,000 sessions. The most recent data, published June 6, identified 18,000 students engaging in 78,000 sessions.

    Over 1,200 of Montclair State’s 22,000 students have registered with Uwill since June 2023, Jaclyn Friedman-Lombardo, Montclair State’s director of counseling and psychological services, said at a press conference, or approximately 6 percent of the total campus population.

    The state does not require institutions to track student usage data to compare usage to campus counseling center services, but some institutions choose to, according to a spokesperson for both the office of the secretary and Uwill. The secretary’s office can view de-identified campus-level data and institutions can engage with more detailed data, as well.

    Creating access: One of the goals of implementing digital mental health interventions is to expand access beyond traditional counseling centers, such as after hours, on weekends or over academic breaks.

    Roughly 30 percent of participants in the Uwill partnership completed a session between 5 p.m. and 9 a.m. on a weeknight or on the weekends. Over the 2024–25 winter break, students engaged in 3,073 therapy sessions. More than 90 of those took place outside New Jersey. Students also used Uwill services over summer vacation this past year (9,235 sessions from May 20 to Aug. 26, of which 10 percent took place outside New Jersey).

    A majority of users were traditional-aged college students (17 to 24 years old), and 32 percent were white, 25 percent Hispanic and 17 percent Black. The report did not compare participating students’ race to those using on-campus services or general campus populations.

    About 85 percent of New Jersey users were looking for a BIPOC therapist, and 9 percent requested therapists who speak languages other than English, including Hindi and Mandarin.

    Postsession assessment completed by students who do schedule an appointment has returned positive responses, with a feedback score of 9.5 out of 10 in New Jersey, compared to Uwill’s 9.2 rating nationally.

    Unanswered questions: Wood indicated the data leaves some questions left unanswered, such as whether students were also clients at the on-campus counseling center, or if the service had improved students’ mental health over time from a clinical perspective.

    “Just because a student had four sessions with a telehealth provider, if they came right back to the counseling center, did it really make an impact on the center’s capacity to see students?” Wood said.

    The high cost of the service should also give counseling center directors pause, Wood said, because those dollars could be used for a variety of other interventions to create capacity.

    The data indicated some benefits to counseling center capacity, including diverse staff and after-hours support. But to create a true return on investment, counseling centers should calculate how much capacity the tele–mental health service created and its direct impact on student wellness, not just participation in services.

    “It would be ideal to compare the number of students receiving services (not just creating an account) through the platform to the number of students who would likely benefit from receiving treatment, as identified by clinically validated mental health screens on population surveys,” said Sara Abelson, assistant professor at the Hope Center and the report’s lead author.

    What’s next: New Jersey renewed its contract with Uwill first in January 2024 and then again in May, extending through spring 2026. State leaders said the ongoing services are still supported by pandemic relief funds.

    On May 2, New Jersey assemblywoman Andrea Katz from the Eighth District introduced a bill, the Mental Health Early Access on Campus Act, which would require colleges to implement mental health first aid training among campus stakeholders, peer support programs, mental health orientation education and teletherapy services to ensure counseling ratios are one to every 1,250 students per campus. The International Accreditation of Counseling Services recommends universities maintain a ratio of at least one full-time equivalency for every 1,000 to 1,500 students.

    “We know that mental health services that our kids need are not going to end when we change governors,” Katz said at a press conference. “We need to make sure that all of this is codified into law.”

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  • For Learning, Focus on the Essence and the Experiences

    For Learning, Focus on the Essence and the Experiences

    When I was teaching, I always thought of this time on the calendar as the “postexhale” period.

    The end of the semester is a headlong sprint to the finish, which, unlike a race where you get to break the tape and coast to a stop, is more like hitting a wall and collapsing on the spot. At least that’s how it always felt to me, at least until I started ending the semester at week 13 (of 15) and using the last two weeks for wind-down and reflection on what we’d all learned.

    In the immediate aftermath of the semester, particularly spring semester, I couldn’t be bothered with any thinking or planning for the next semester. The next scheduled activity, usually something I started around the first week of August, would be the specific planning for the forthcoming semester, but there is also this postexhale period where no work needs to be done, conditions that are fertile for thinking and dreaming before the planning.

    The postexhale period is the spot where you’re likely to gestate your best ideas, because at least for the next month or so, you don’t have to do anything with them.

    I want to plant a seed of thought for anyone who is confronting having to or wanting to make changes to their course in order to accommodate the reality of generative AI technology being in the world.

    Here it is: Next semester, do less that means more.

    As I’ve been traveling around talking to people about how we can (and should) adjust how we think about teaching writing, one of the persistent worries is that introducing some AI-related content or experiences around ethics or safe use or whatever requires layering something new on what’s already happening. For many instructors, it’s an uninvited and therefore unwelcome burden.

    I get it. We can never cover everything to begin with. Here’s one more thing to cover.

    But what if we can use this as an opportunity to rethink what learning looks like? As we move through this period where we can reflect and reconsider, we can think about how to boil the experiences in the classroom down to an essence that can be reflected in learning experiences.

    Consider the learning that has proved most enduring from the full trajectory of your education and I think you’ll find that it clusters around essential, deep lessons. What has mattered are the moments where we have learned how to learn and think and act inside a particular domain. It is this learning that allows us to go forth and continue to learn eagerly, ceaselessly.

    Even as a decidedly and well-documented overall mediocre student, there are numerous learning experiences (in and out of class) that I can point to as inflection points that made a significant difference in the overall trajectory of my life because they provided something essential to my journey forward.

    One moment I invoke frequently is when my third-grade teacher asked us to write instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then had us try to make the sandwiches following the instructions to the letter. Because I forgot to say that you should use a knife to spread the peanut butter on the bread, I ended up sticking my hand in the jar of peanut butter to fulfill my own directive. I have a picture memorializing the occasion.

    That moment introduced me to the rhetorical situation and the fact that writing has a purpose and an audience—and careless writing has consequences. I’m sure I learned all kinds of other things in third grade and maybe some of them were important, but only one moment was indelible, and that’s all I needed.

    In high school, excited about the subject matter for my junior-year English term paper (the New Journalism of Tom Wolfe), while being not enthused about the parameters of what I was supposed to do with that subject matter, I decided to write my term paper in the style of Tom Wolfe, earning a not-so-great grade from my teacher, but a meaningful lesson in how to keep myself interested with a task. (I wrote in more detail about this previously.)

    Some reflection unearths other moments. A college nonfiction writing class had us pretending we were writing for specific publications and producing columns that could fit under the editorial banner. I chose Esquire, imagining myself a sophisticated male, I guess. We were required to understand how to write for very specific audiences with very specific aims, excellent practice for all kinds of different futures. At the end of the semester, we had a competition where we voted for the “best” columns across a number of different categories. I was a finalist in several but won zero, losing out to one specific classmate’s work every time.

    In a conference with the instructor, I must’ve expressed some kind of disappointment, and he said something that stuck with me: “X’s stuff sounds like themselves writing for a publication. You sound like someone doing an imitation of someone writing for a publication.” I walked away believing that authenticity was ultimately the differentiator in connecting with readers.

    I could name more moments. My first semester of grad school, my professor, Robert Olen Butler, had us do an in-class writing exercise based in sense memory (which can be found in his book From Where You Dream), and I experienced what it was like to tap into my artistic subconscious for an extended, focused period. Bob was not the most engaged of mentors, but I’m not sure I’d still be writing if I hadn’t had that experience.

    When I started teaching, the indelible lessons delivered by my students came even more often, possibly because I recognized my responsibility over the work in ways I hadn’t achieved as a student.

    All these moments are rooted in very specific and specifically designed experiences. These kinds of experiences are not threatened by the existence of large language models, because it was clear to me that the point of the exercise is to have the experience.

    Of course, generative AI tools could be present as part of an important learning experience, but when generative AI is used by students as a substitute for the experience, the learning is obviously deformed. Injecting LLMs into our courses simply because it seems like something we have to be doing is not a great recipe for learning.

    There are some, perhaps many, places where it is not and should not be welcome because it is not conducive to the experience of learning we’re trying to instantiate.

    As I think about these experiences, what I learned was really contained in a crystallizing moment made possible by the earlier experience of that class, or even before that class. This is not necessarily predicated on the amount of material covered or the volume of what students are exposed to.

    As you enjoy this exhale period, maybe spend some time thinking how little you could do in your course and still have students walk away with something that will be meaningful years down the road. That may be the core of your course when you come back and start thinking about it for real in a month.

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  • Gaza Encampments “Made University Leaders Lose Their Minds”

    Gaza Encampments “Made University Leaders Lose Their Minds”

    The war in Gaza and the adverse reaction of U.S. colleges to the pro-Palestinian movement have completely changed students’ relationship to higher education, according to the maker of a new film about last year’s protests.

    A new documentary, The Encampments, follows the movement from Columbia University, where the first tents were erected in April 2024, as protests spread to hundreds of campuses worldwide, including the University of Tokyo and Copenhagen University.

    Not just isolated to Ivy League institutions in the U.S., the movement spread to many traditionally Republican-dominated states as well, Michael Workman, co-director of the film, told Times Higher Education.

    “These are not just places where the coastal elite are,” he said. “This movement touched and reached into the middle of America. In places like [Idaho], there were protests every day in solidarity and support.”

    He hopes that the film, which he sees as a “counternarrative” to the media’s negative portrayal of the encampments, will “haunt” higher education leaders for being on the wrong side of history.

    Although the conflict in Gaza continues, the student movement has had a much smaller impact this year, with many students facing severe repercussions from both their universities and the White House.

    “For some reason camping out on the lawn demanding an end to a genocide made all these administrators around the world, and especially in the U.S., lose their minds,” said Workman.

    He said the encampments arrived at a time of “heightened” organization and engagement among the student body. These movements are not sustainable but always “ebb and flow,” he added.

    Along with demanding that universities lend their voices to Gaza, students have called on institutions to divest from companies that they believe are funding a genocide.

    Workman said the “twin demands” of many of the students were to support Palestinians and to take universities, which they were paying lots of money, back to being educational institutions.

    “Students have seen their educations get turned into moneymaking machines, [instead of institutions] that are primarily there to teach students,” he said.

    “This has completely changed this generation’s relationship to higher education, and I think their relationship to the U.S. and U.S. foreign policy.”

    He said the war in Gaza has “woken up this generation,” which is why colleges reacted with such force.

    “It’s why they responded in the way that they did, because they felt they couldn’t do anything else. The cat was out of the bag,” he said.

    “These students are not going to go back to thinking what Israel is doing in Gaza was justified … and they’re going to continue to grow their movement to raise awareness around what’s happening and to fight against it.”

    Workman, who also teaches documentary film production at the University of San Francisco, said the response by faculty in the U.S. is “not a monolith” but that it is becoming increasingly supportive of the students.

    This has been particularly evident since the detention of activist and green card–holder Mahmoud Khalil, who features in the documentary, he said. Khalil, an international student who moved to the U.S. in 2022, was arrested in March following a crackdown on student protesters by President Donald Trump’s administration.

    “The more they repress the movement, in a lot of ways, the stronger it gets, because people aren’t backing down,” Workman said.

    “That doesn’t mean that we have this huge moment like the encampment moment, but we’re building a sustained foundation that is continuing to grow with really committed organizers.”

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  • Universities Sue, Judge Blocks DOD’s Indirect Costs Cap

    Universities Sue, Judge Blocks DOD’s Indirect Costs Cap

    Johns Hopkins, Arizona State and Cornell Universities are among a coalition of 12 higher education institutions and three trade groups that filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense on Monday over the agency’s plan to cap universities’ indirect research cost rates at 15 percent. 

    While DOD secretary Pete Hegseth said in a memo last month that the policy is aimed at “accountability” and rooting out “waste,” the lawsuit argues that slashing indirect costs rates “will stop critical research in its tracks, lead to layoffs and cutbacks at universities across the country, badly undermine scientific research at United States universities, and erode our nation’s enviable status as a global leader in scientific research and innovation.”

    On Tuesday, a federal judge in Boston issued a temporary restraining order, prohibiting the DOD from enacting the cap. A hearing in the case is set for July 2. 

    The litigation filed this week is the latest legal challenge universities and their advocates have mounted against the federal government’s attempts to cap the amount of money it gives universities for the indirect costs of conducting federally funded research. The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy have all attempted to unilaterally enact similar caps, and federal judges have blocked those efforts for now. 

    For decades, universities have periodically negotiated with the federal government to calculate bespoke indirect cost reimbursement rates to pay for research costs that support multiple grant-funded projects, such as facilities maintenance, specialized equipment and administrative personnel. Universities factor those rates into their institutional budgets.

    For example, Johns Hopkins and the DOD currently have in place a negotiated indirect cost rate of 55 percent. In 2024 JHU received $32 million from the DOD to cover indirect costs, according to the lawsuit. If the DOD’s plan moves forward, however, the university would lose $22 million. 

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  • After Texas, DOJ Targets Kentucky’s In-State Tuition Policy

    After Texas, DOJ Targets Kentucky’s In-State Tuition Policy

    Undocumented students and immigrant advocacy organizations are still reeling after Texas, earlier this month, swiftly sided with a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against its policy of permitting in-state tuition for undocumented students. The two-decade-old law, which Republican state lawmakers had recently tried and failed to quash, was dismantled within a matter of hours in a move some critics called collusive.

    Now the DOJ is employing the same strategy all over again—this time in Kentucky. The department filed a complaint in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky on Tuesday challenging the in-state tuition policy for undocumented students. The lawsuit, which names Democratic governor Andy Beshear, Commissioner of Education Robbie Fletcher and the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, takes issue with a policy that allows graduates of Kentucky high schools who live in the state, regardless of citizenship, to access in-state tuition benefits.

    “No state can be allowed to treat Americans like second-class citizens in their own country by offering financial benefits to illegal aliens,” U.S. attorney general Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “The Department of Justice just won on this exact issue in Texas, and we look forward to fighting in Kentucky to protect the rights of American citizens.”

    Beshear is trying to distance himself from the legal battle. Crystal Staley, communications director for the governor’s office, said in a statement that the office hasn’t been served with a lawsuit, nor did it receive advance notice or hold prior conversations with the department about the regulation. She emphasized that the in-state tuition policy was established by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education more than a decade ago.

    “Under Kentucky law, CPE is independent, has sole authority to determine student residency requirements for the purposes of in-state tuition, and controls its own regulations,” Staley wrote. “The Governor has no authority to alter CPE’s regulations and should not be a party to the lawsuit.”

    The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education also only became aware of the lawsuit Wednesday morning and reported that afternoon that it had not yet been served legal documents.

    “Our staff General Counsel is reviewing pertinent federal laws and state regulations at this time to determine next steps,” Melissa Young, the council’s communications senior fellow, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed.

    As of Wednesday evening, no new developments in the case had taken place, but Kentucky attorney general Russell Coleman, a Republican, indicated in a statement to Inside Higher Ed that his office planned to support the lawsuit.

    “Preserving in-state tuition for our citizens at the commonwealth’s premier public universities is important to fostering Kentuckians’ potential and encouraging a vibrant state economy,” Coleman said in the statement. “Our Office will support the Trump Administration’s efforts to uphold federal law in Kentucky.”

    As in Texas, a group of Republican lawmakers proposed legislation earlier this year to prevent noncitizens in Kentucky from qualifying as residents and accessing in-state tuition benefits. But the bill didn’t proceed further.

    The new lawsuit heightens fears among undocumented students’ advocates that the Trump administration could target in-state tuition policies across the country, which help undocumented students in 23 states and D.C. pay for college when they can’t access federal financial aid. Advocates also worry the Trump administration could continue to sue red states to secure policy wins desired by both Republican state lawmakers and the federal government. (In Kentucky, Republicans control the attorney general’s office and the State Legislature.)

    Monica Andrade, director of state policy and legal strategy at the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education, predicted after the Texas lawsuit, “This might only be the beginning, and there might be future actions that extend beyond Texas.”

    Now she worries she’s been proven right.

    Pushback in Texas

    The move in Kentucky comes as undocumented students and civil rights organizations are fighting back in Texas.

    The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a Latino civil rights organization, filed a motion on behalf of undocumented students in Texas to intervene in the DOJ lawsuit. The motion argues that the speed at which Texas and the DOJ came to an agreement and the judge closed the case provided no opportunity for a hearing or for the public to weigh in.

    “Our federal courts are public agencies,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel at MALDEF. “They’re supposed to undertake their work in the public eye. The two parties and the court did all of this behind closed doors in one afternoon, without setting a public hearing … That is a complete abuse of the judicial system.”

    “To come up with a consent judgment like that, they had to have been planning this for weeks,” he said. “Every Texan should be offended if something their legislators passed and then never repealed was so easily killed by the attorney general acting in collusion with the Department of Justice.”

    MALDEF is representing unnamed affected students, including three DACA recipients: a third-year biomedical science student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley who is planning to pursue medical school, a student earning a master’s in higher education at University of Houston who was planning to apply to Ph.D. programs and a master’s student in clinical mental health counseling at the University of North Texas.

    “She cannot afford to pay out-of-state tuition and will likely be forced to drop out of her program,” the motion says of one student.

    The goal is for the student group to become a party in the lawsuit so that it can appeal the decision. Texas and the federal government have until early July to oppose MALDEF’s motion to intervene, but if the judge denies an intervention, MALDEF could appeal that decision as well.

    Andrade said that what MALDEF is doing could possibly be replicated in other states if the DOJ challenges more in-state tuition laws, though some states might face different challenges that require different approaches. For example, Republican lawmakers in Arizona included a provision in their House budget, approved June 12 by the House Appropriations Committee, that colleges can’t use public money to reduce tuition for noncitizens, The Arizona Capitol Times reported. Some cited the Texas lawsuit.

    The Presidents’ Alliance is in “close coordination with legal, with advocacy and institutional partners to explore—whether it’s immediate or longer-term—actions that we can take” to prepare for different kinds of attacks, Andrade said. “Folks in the states where we’re having conversations, their laws comport with federal law. But given everything that’s been going on, that doesn’t mean that folks should not be preparing for any type of challenge.”

    The organization is also trying to advise Texas undocumented students who are “scrambling,” in the absence of any state guidance to higher ed institutions as to when the tuition rate change goes into effect and to whom the shift applies. It’s unclear, for example, whether students with DACA or Temporary Protected Status are included.

    “We’re telling students to continue to take their classes and do not make any drastic changes based on this,” Andrade said.

    TheDream.US, a scholarship provider for undocumented students, is also gearing up to help Texas students find more affordable programs if they can’t pay their colleges’ out-of-state tuition prices. MALDEF predicted some students’ costs would increase up to 800 percent—in some cases, from $50 to $450 per credit hour.

    Gaby Pacheco, president and CEO of TheDream.US, said the organization is prioritizing helping students connect with online programs, because many live in Texas border towns, where commuting to a more distant college could require having to cross immigration control checkpoints.

    In the meantime, Texas institutions and students are embroiled in “confusion and uncertainty and chaos” as they await more information, she said.

    Daniel I. Morales, an associate professor of law and Dwight Olds Chair at University of Houston Law Center, said what happened in Texas is the latest example of a national trend: the “absolute erasure” of state and local issues in favor of the administration’s priorities.

    Morales said two decades ago, Texas’s in-state tuition policy was born out of Republican governor Rick Perry’s recognition of “the reality locally in Texas, that we have an enormous undocumented population that is enormously productive if given the opportunity to go to college,” which benefits the state economy. But now, state lawmakers fear risking their career trajectories if they don’t prioritize partisan national interests, he said.

    He doesn’t know what’s going to happen in Kentucky. But if it goes the way of Texas and the attorney general files a joint motion with the DOJ, civil rights organizations such as MALDEF would have to be the ones to fight it, with students as the plaintiffs, he said.

    “Students, if they don’t have the resources to pay out-of-state tuition, they don’t have the resources to litigate, either,” at least not on their own, he said. “There’s very little recourse.”

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