Tag: Jobs

Faith-Based Colleges Swept Up in Higher Ed Policy Changes

Leaders of faith-based colleges and universities have spoken out on a slew of political issues in recent months, sometimes standing alongside secular universities and at other times differentiating themselves and defending their unique standing and missions.

The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities signed on to an October statement from the American Council on Education opposing the administration’s higher education compact, for example. Over the summer, CCCU also came out with a statement on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that echoed those of secular associations and institutions, expressing concern that “it ultimately falls short in supporting student access and success.”

ACE’s Commission on Faith-Based Colleges and Universities was among the higher ed groups that lobbied hard against Pell Grant cuts, later dropped from the bill. At the same time, the University of Notre Dame and other faith-based institutions fought for an exemption for religious institutions from the higher education endowment tax, ultimately left out of the legislation’s final version.

Like their secular peers, faith-based colleges and universities have been buffeted by the rapid-fire policy changes roiling higher ed this year. Some leaders of religious colleges say their institutions are enjoying renewed support that they hope sets a precedent for future policymakers across party lines. At the same time, some advocates fear religious colleges—and their missions—are suffering collateral damage in Trump’s war against highly selective universities, and they’re making careful decisions about when and how to speak out.

“I knew change would be coming,” said David Hoag, president of CCCU, “but I never expected the pace to be this fast.”

Raising Concerns

Under any administration, CCCU’s job is to “make it possible for our institutions to achieve their missions,” Hoag said. But some recent policy changes pose an obstacle to that.

Christian colleges—which tend to be small, enrolling about 2,500 students on average—can’t afford to join Trump’s proposed compact for higher ed, he said. He believes some of the compact’s demands, such as freezing tuition for five years, are a tall order with campus expenses on the rise. He also opposes the compact’s standardized test mandate when so many Christian colleges offer broad access, and he’s concerned by the possibility that government could have some control over curriculum, though he said the compact was unclear on that score.

“On the curriculum side, most of our institutions are conservative. We have a solid Christian mission,” Hoag said. “I’m fine with civics being a part of some of the work that we do, but it, to me, starts to … step over academic freedom.”

Christian colleges are also balking at the new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, which these institutions use to bring in visiting professors from other countries.

“Our institutions can’t afford anything like that,” Hoag said. Such a fee might be more easily affordable for tech or other industries that use H-1B visas to hire foreign employees, he said, “but for nonprofit colleges and Christian colleges, that’s a big financial burden.”

He’s also alarmed by some of the provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including the requirement that programs prove students will earn more than high school graduates in order to access federal loans. Hoag worries that won’t bode well for institutions where a significant portion of students go into ministry, social work or other public service jobs that don’t necessarily pay high wages. He said the end of the Grad PLUS program is also poised to hurt Christian colleges; graduate students borrowed about $460 million annually to attend CCCU institutions, he said. Now he expects many will struggle to pay. Caps on loans for professional school students are also going to affect those earning master’s degrees in divinity.

Donna Carroll, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, said Catholic institutions are hardly “immune” to the challenges rocking the rest of higher ed. She said her nonpartisan organization has decided to speak up on a particular set of policy issues, including financial aid and supports for low-income students, autonomy for faith-based institutions, and immigration policy and access for international students. For example, the association signed on to a statement by U.S. bishops condemning “indiscriminate mass deportation” as an “affront to God-given human dignity.”

“There are some issues and situations where there is consensus and a unity across Catholic institutions,” Carroll said. “There are other situations where different institutions have different perspectives.”

In a similar vein, Clark G. Gilbert, commissioner of the church educational system for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and chair of the Commission on Faith-Based Colleges and Universities, said members of his coalition had mixed views on parts of the bill involving federal loans—he’d like to see colleges drop their prices—but they collectively pushed hard against proposed cuts to Pell Grants, which didn’t make it into the legislation.

“We’re concerned about first-generation and low-income students. That’s not a partisan issue,” Gilbert said.

‘Not Like Some of These Ivies’

A mounting frustration for some faith-based institution leaders is the blowback their campuses face from Trump administration policies targeting expensive, highly selective private universities, even though they view their missions as distinct.

Hoag pointed out that, while some Christian colleges are pricier, the average tuition costs about $30,600 per year, not including room and board, and the average tuition discount rate is about 52 percent.

“Christian schools are very affordable, and we’re not like some of these Ivies that have tuition from $80,000 to $100,000 a year,” Hoag said. Yet “I do feel that they’re … putting everybody in the same category.”

Some faith-based institutions, led by the University of Notre Dame, sought to distinguish themselves from other higher ed institutions when they pushed for a religious exemption from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s endowment tax.

Gilbert said Brigham Young University joined that effort because university leaders viewed the situation as a religious freedom issue.

“We feel like there are public goods of faith-based schools that are often ignored,” such as research from faith-based perspectives, he said. “Without the internal funding at these schools, it wouldn’t happen. We feel like there is a religious liberty issue at stake there.”

“I’m sure secular schools would feel their unique missions need that protection, too—that’s not my job to write and defend that,” he added.

Gilbert said he feels a particular need to advocate on behalf of religious colleges, compared to higher ed as a whole, because he believes faith-based institutions are too often maligned. He said such institutions are doing research on topics ignored by their secular counterparts—like how family structures affect intergenerational poverty or how faith and religious community resources affect health outcomes—but these projects struggle to get federal funding or recognition from secular peers. He also stressed that these institutions provide a campus climate religious students can’t find elsewhere.

“Many Jewish students do not feel safe at Columbia and at Harvard and at UCLA. Many LDS students do not feel welcome in certain programs,” he said. “Faith-based schools do feel like they need to preserve their rights.” He emphasized that doesn’t mean he wants to see any university lose out on cancer research funding, for example, but “faith-based scholars are doing things that no one else is doing, and why isn’t that getting the attention, the funding and the support, regardless of who the administration is?”

Despite their policy disagreements, some leaders of faith-based institutions believe the Trump administration is offering them a warmer reception than they’ve perhaps received in the past. The president issued an executive order in February founding a task force on eradicating “anti-Christian bias” within government. In May, Trump’s Education Department also rescinded a $37.7 million fine levied by the Biden administration on Grand Canyon University, a private Christian institution, for allegedly misleading doctoral students about its cost. And the Trump administration recently partnered with Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian campus in Michigan, on a series of videos for the country’s 250th anniversary. The president of Yeshiva University, Rabbi Ari Berman, gave the benediction at Trump’s inauguration.

Amid renewed outreach to faith-based institutions under Trump, Gilbert said he’s trying to walk a fine line, advocating for more attention and resources for faith-based institutions’ research but doing so in a way that remains apolitical.

“We don’t care about party politics. We care about the American family. We care about alleviating poverty,” he said. “We’re going to continue to help shine a light on the contributions these schools make in the current climate, but not so overboard that when things may change, and they will, that we can’t make the same arguments using the same principles with a different administration.”

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November 17, 2025
Belonging Intervention Improves Pass Rates
Sense of belonging is a significant predictor of student retention and completion in higher education; students who believe they belong are more likely to bounce back from obstacles, take advantage of campus resources and remain enrolled.

For community colleges, instilling a sense of belonging among students can be challenging, since students often juggle competing priorities, including working full-time, taking care of family members and commuting to and from campus.

To help improve retention rates, the California Community Colleges replicated a belonging intervention developed at Indiana University’s Equity Accelerator and the College Transition Collaborative.

Data showed the intervention not only increased students’ academic outcomes, but it also helped close some equity gaps for low-income students and those from historically marginalized backgrounds.

What’s the need: Community college students are less involved on campus than their four-year peers; they’re also less likely to say they’re aware of or have used campus resources, according to survey data from Inside Higher Ed.

This isolation isn’t desired; a recent survey by the ed-tech group EAB found that 42 percent of community college students said their social life was a top disappointment. A similar number said they were disappointed they didn’t make friends or meet new people.

Methodology

Six colleges in the California Community Colleges system participated in the study, for a total of 1,160 students—578 in the belonging program and 582 in a control group. Students completed the program during the summer or at the start of the term and then filled out a survey at the end.

Moorpark Community College elected to deliver the belonging intervention during first-semester math and English courses to ensure all students could benefit.

How it works: The Social Belonging for College Students intervention has three components:
1. First, students analyze survey data from peers at their college, which shows that many others also worry about their academic success, experience loneliness or face additional challenges, to help normalize anxieties about college.
2. Then, students read testimonies from other students about their initial concerns starting college and how they overcame the challenges.
3. Finally, students write reflections of their own transition to college and offer advice to future students about how to overcome these concerns or reassure them that these feelings are normal.
The goal of the exercise is to achieve a psychological outcome called “saying is believing,” said Oleg Bespalov, dean of institutional effectiveness and marketing at Moorpark Community College, part of the Ventura Community College District in California.

“If you’ve ever worked in sales, like, say I worked at Toyota. I might not like Toyota; I just really need a job,” Bespalov said. “But the more I sell the Toyota, the more I come to believe that Toyota is a great car.” In the same way, while a student might not think they can succeed in college, expressing that belief to someone else can change their behaviors.

Without the intervention, students tend to spiral, seeing a poor grade as a reflection of themselves and their capabilities. They may believe they’re the only ones who are struggling, Bespalov said. Following the intervention, students are more likely to embrace the idea that everyone fails sometimes and that they can rebound from the experience.

At Moorpark, the Social Belonging for College Students intervention is paired with teaching on the growth mindset, explained Tracy Tennenhouse, English instructor and writing center co-coordinator.

“Belonging is a mindset,” Bespalov said. “You have to believe that you belong here, and you have to convince the student to change their mindset about that.”

The results: Students who participated in the belonging program were more likely to re-enroll for the next term, compared to their peers in the control group. This was especially true for students with high financial need or those from racial minorities.

In the control group, there was a 14-percentage-point gap between low- and high-income students’ probability of re-enrolling. After the intervention, the re-enrollment gap dropped to six percentage points.

Similarly, low-income students who participated in the intervention had a GPA that was 0.21 points higher than their peers who did not. Black students who participated in the exercise saw average gains of 0.46 points in their weighted GPA.

To researchers, the results suggest that students from underrepresented backgrounds had more positive experiences at the end of the fall term if they completed the belonging activity. Intervention participants from these groups also reported fewer identity-related concerns and better mental and physical health, compared to their peers who didn’t participate.

What’s next: Based on the positive findings, Moorpark campus leaders plan to continue delivering the intervention in future semesters. Tennenhouse sees an opportunity to utilize the reflection as a handwritten writing sample for English courses, making the assignment both a line of defense against AI plagiarism and an effective measure for promoting student belonging.

Administrators have also considered delivering the intervention during summer bridge programs to support students earlier in their transition, or as a required assignment for online learners who do not meet synchronously.

In addition, Tennenhouse would like to see more faculty share their own failure stories. Research shows students are more likely to feel connected to instructors who open up about their own lives with students.

How does your college campus encourage feelings of belonging in the classroom? Tell us more here.
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November 17, 2025
Fewer International Students Came to the U.S. This Fall

One week after President Donald Trump contradicted his own policies by stressing how important international students are to sustaining university finances, there’s new evidence that his administration’s crackdown on visas and immigration is hurting international student enrollment and the American economy.

While overall international student enrollment has declined only 1 percent since fall 2024, new enrollment has declined 17 percent, according to fall 2025 snapshot data in the annual Open Doors report, published Monday by the Institute for International Education. The 825 U.S.-based higher learning institutions that responded to the fall snapshot survey host more than half of all international students in the country.

“It gives us good insight into what is happening on campuses as of this fall,” Mirka Martel, head of research, evaluation and learning at IIE, said on a press call last week. “Some of the changes we’re seeing in new enrollment may be related to some of the more recent factors related to international students.”

Fewer New Graduate Students

Those factors include cuts to federal research funding, which has historically helped support graduate students. Although graduate students made up roughly 40 percent of the 1.2 million total international students studying in the U.S during the 2024–25 academic year, they’re now driving the enrollment decline—a trend that started before Trump retook the White House.

While the total number of new international students fell by 7 percent last academic year, new graduate enrollment dropped by 15 percent, according to the Open Doors report—a decline that was partially offset by new undergraduate enrollment, which grew by 5 percent.

The fall 2025 snapshot data shows that pattern continuing.

Colleges and universities reported a 2 percent increase in undergraduate students, a 14 percent increase in Optional Practical Training students and a 12 percent decrease in graduate students.

The 2024–25 Open Doors report also includes more details about international students during the last academic year—broken down by country of origin, field of study and primary funding sources—though that data reflects trends from last fall, before Trump took office and initiated restrictions that experts believe have deterred some international students.

It shows that international enrollment in the United States jumped 5 percent between fall 2023 and fall 2024, continuing to rebound from a 15 percent pandemic-induced drop during the 2020–21 academic year. That’s in line with the fall 2024 snapshot data, which indicated 3 percent growth in international student totals.

However, the majority (57 percent) of colleges and universities that responded to IIE’s fall 2025 snapshot survey reported a decline in new international enrollment. And 96 percent of them cited visa concerns, while 68 percent named travel restrictions as the reason for the drop.

Meanwhile, 29 percent of institutions reported an increase in new international enrollment and 14 percent reported stable enrollment. For those institutions that saw an uptick this fall, 71 percent attributed the growth to active recruitment initiatives, and 54 percent cited outreach to admitted students.

The Open Doors data also confirms earlier projections from NAFSA: Association of International Educators and recent analyses from The New York Times and Inside Higher Ed about the Trump administration’s immigration policies leading to falling international student enrollment, as well as hardship for university budgets and the broader national economy.

According to the report, international students accounted for 6 percent of the total population enrolled in a higher education institution last academic year and contributed nearly $55 billion to the U.S. economy in 2024.

“International students come to the United States to advance their education and contribute to U.S. colleges and communities,” Jason Czyz, president and CEO of IIE, said in a news release. “This data highlights the impact international students have in driving innovation, advancing scholarship, and strengthening cross-cultural understanding.”

Trump’s Changing Stance

But since Trump took office in January, his administration has cast international students—the majority (57 percent) of whom come to the U.S. to study in high-demand STEM fields—as threats to national security and opportunity for American-born students rather than economic stimulants.

International university students attending wealthy, selective universities are “not just bad for national security,” Vice President JD Vance said in March. “[They’re] bad for the American dream for a lot of kids who want to go to a nice university and can’t because their spot was taken by a foreign student.”

But as the Open Doors data shows, it’s not just wealthy, private institutions that host international students. During the 2024–25 academic year, 59 percent attended public institutions. Meanwhile, among all institution types, community colleges experienced the fastest rate of international student growth, at 8 percent.

And that’s despite the Trump administration’s concerted effort to deter them. So far this year, the federal government has detained foreign student activists, stripped students’ SEVIS statuses and visas, implemented social media vetting processes, paused new visa issuances, and moved to limit how long students can stay in the country.

In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened to “aggressively revoke” Chinese students’ visas, including those “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

Although the Open Doors report shows that enrollment among Chinese students declined 4 percent between the 2023–24 and 2024–25 academic years, China is still the second-most-popular country of origin for international students, making up 23 percent of all international students; India—which surpassed China as the No. 1 source in 2023—produced 31 percent of all international students living in the U.S. during the 2024–25 academic year.

But as of late, Trump has walked back some of his hostility toward international students. Over the summer, he proposed allowing 600,000 Chinese students into the country. And last week, he defended the economic benefit of international students during an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham.

“We take in trillions of dollars from students,” he said. “You know, the students pay more than double when they come in from most foreign countries. I want to see our school system thrive. And it’s not that I want them, but I view it as a business.”

Economic Consequences

According to the Open Doors Report, roughly half (52 percent) of international students funded their education primarily with their own money during the 2024–25 academic year. And the 17 percent drop in new international enrollment this fall translates into more than $1.1 billion in lost revenue and nearly 23,000 fewer jobs, according to a new analysis from NAFSA, also published Monday.

The report explained that the reasons for that vary but may be tied in part to the disproportionate decline in international graduate student enrollment and uptick in OPT students.

The decline in graduate students on college campuses is “cutting into higher-spending populations that typically contribute more through tuition, living costs, and accompanying dependents,” the report said. Meanwhile, “the increased share of students pursuing OPT (up 14 percent) reduced the amount of campus-based spending [on] tuition, housing and dining.”

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November 17, 2025
Budget WARs
This is hypothetical, but the concept it’s illustrating is real.

Let’s say you’re in charge of a college budget, and there’s money for a new staff position. You have multiple requests for positions, so you need to pick the winner.

For the sake of the example, let’s stipulate that the salaries are close enough that they don’t tip the balance and that the relative staffing levels in each area are about equally suboptimal.

The contenders are:
- A math tutor
- A librarian
- An adviser
- A financial aid staffer
Which do you choose? And, more to the point, why?

I hear a lot about “data-based” or “evidence-based” decision-making. But it’s not clear to me what data or evidence would settle the question. How would you know which one is the best choice?

I assume that any of the four would make a positive difference in student outcomes. Students who fail math are much likelier to drop out than students who don’t, and tutors help students pass. Librarians are crucial for students to learn to do research, especially in the age of AI. Academic advisers help students avoid wasting time on courses that won’t help them. Financial aid staffers enable students to get the money they need to go to college. They’re all helpful, and they’re all important. But how do you weigh one against the others?

In baseball, people with too much time on their hands came up with a single statistic to rule them all: wins above replacement. A player’s WAR score—seriously, that’s what they call it—indicates how many more (or fewer) games a team would expect to win in a given season if they used this player, as opposed to an average player at the same position. That way, a team could measure the value of a particular pitcher against the value of a particular outfielder.

We don’t have a number like that. How much more, or less, would a new tutor affect our graduation rate than a new adviser? And how would we know?

Any ambitious and quantitatively minded students in higher education administration graduate programs, you can have this research question pro bono. I’d love to see empirical evidence.

Until the dissertations come rolling in, though, I’d love to hear from my wise and worldly readers. Is there a good way to weigh these positions against each other? If anyone comes up with something good, I’ll be happy to share it in a subsequent column. As always, send your thoughtful responses to deandad (at) gmail (dot) com. Thanks!
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November 17, 2025
HBCUs Gifted Nearly $300M in Scott’s Latest Donation Flurry

Five historically Black colleges and universities have recently announced gifts of $50 million or more in unrestricted funds from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Sott.

Prairie View A&M University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Bowie State University, Norfolk State University and Winston-Salem State University are the latest HBCUs to benefit from Scott’s philanthropy—she has already donated to at least eight other institutions this year.

On Friday, Prairie View and North Carolina A&T said they received $63 million each, the largest single gifts ever received in their histories, which follow previous gifts from Scott in 2020—$50 million to Prairie View and $45 million to N.C. A&T. Her support for each institution totals $113 million and $108 million, respectively.

Also last week, Bowie State, Winston-Salem State and Norfolk State each announced record-breaking gifts of $50 million following donations from Scott in 2020—$25 million, $30 million and $40 million, respectively.

“This gift is more than generous—it is defining and affirming,” said Prairie View A&M president Tomikia LeGrande in a statement. “MacKenzie Scott’s investment amplifies the power and promise of a Prairie View A&M University education as we advance our vision of becoming a premier public, research-intensive HBCU that serves as a national model for student success.”

Voorhees University also received a $19 million donation from Scott earlier this month, following a $4 million gift in 2020.

The five universities said they would use the donations to progress their strategic plans through funding scholarships, growing endowments, improving teaching and research, and supporting student success.

In 2019, Scott pledged to give away half her wealth in her lifetime. By 2023, her donations to educational institutions exceeded $1 billion. This year, Scott has donated $80 million to Howard University in Washington, D.C.; $38 million to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore; and $38 million each to Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University in Georgia.

“No investor in higher education history has had such a broad and transformational impact across so many universities,” said N.C. A&T chancellor James R. Martin II in a statement.

“North Carolina A&T is deeply grateful for Ms. Scott’s reaffirmed belief in our mission and for the example she sets in placing trust in institutions like ours to drive generational change through education, discovery and innovation.”

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November 17, 2025
Trump Can’t “Blanket” Deny UC Grants or Demand Payout

A judge ordered federal agencies Friday to end their “blanket policy of denying any future grants” to the University of California, Los Angeles, and further ruled that the Trump administration can’t seek payouts from any UC campus “in connection with any civil rights investigation” under Titles VI or IX of federal law.

The ruling also prohibits the Department of Justice and federal funding agencies from withholding funds, “or threatening to do so, to coerce the UC in violation of the First Amendment or Tenth Amendment.” In all, the order, if not overturned on appeal, stops the administration’s attempt to pressure UCLA to pay $1.2 billion and make multiple other concessions, including to stop enrolling “foreign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment” and stop “performing hormonal interventions and ‘transgender’ surgeries” on anyone under 18 at its medical school and affiliated hospitals.

The administration’s targeting of the UC system came to the fore on July 29. That’s when the DOJ said its months-long investigations across the system had so far concluded that UCLA violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in its response to alleged antisemitism at a spring 2024 pro-Palestinian protest encampment.

Federal agencies—including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Department of Energy—quickly began freezing funding; UC estimated it lost $584 million. But UC researchers sued and, even before Friday’s ruling, U.S. District Court judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California ordered the restoration of almost all of the frozen funding.

Friday’s ruling came in a case filed this fall by the American Association of University Professors, the affiliated American Federation of Teachers and other unions. Lin again was the judge.

“Defendants did not engage in the required notice and hearing processes under Title VI for cutting off funds for alleged discrimination,” she wrote.

“With every day that passes, UCLA continues to be denied the chance to win new grants, ratchetting [sic] up Defendants’ pressure campaign,” she wrote. “And numerous UC faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how Defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the UC system. They describe how they have stopped teaching or researching topics they are afraid are too ‘left’ or ‘woke,’ in order to avoid triggering further funding cancellations by Defendants. They also give examples of projects the UC has stopped due to fear of the same reprisals. These are classic, predictable First Amendment harms, and exactly what Defendants publicly said that they intended.”

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November 15, 2025
Jim Ryan Breaks Silence on UVA Resignation

Former University of Virginia president Jim Ryan has broken his silence concerning his abrupt resignation, accusing the Board of Visitors of dishonesty and complicity in his ouster, which came amid federal government scrutiny over the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

In a 12-page letter to the UVA Faculty Senate on Friday, Ryan wrote that he was “stunned and angry” over the board’s lack of honesty as it faced pressure from the federal government to force him out due to an alleged failure to dismantle DEI initiatives. Ryan also wrote that recent letters by UVA rector Rachel Sheridan and Governor Glenn Youngkin do not “present an accurate accounting of my resignation,” which prompted him to release his own statement.

Inside Higher Ed has uploaded Ryan’s full letter below.

Ryan’s letter follows a message Sheridan sent to the UVA Faculty Senate on Thursday. In that letter, Sheridan downplayed the pressure from the federal government to force Ryan out. While she acknowledged that the Department of Justice “lacked confidence in President Ryan to make the changes that the Trump Administration believed were necessary to ensure compliance,” she disputed the notion that his resignation was part of the agreement that the university recently reached with the federal government to pause investigations into DEI practices.

The full text of that letter is available below.

Also on Thursday, Youngkin sent a letter related to Ryan’s departure to Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, who has called for UVA to halt its ongoing presidential search until her board picks are in place. The Republican governor pushed back on his Democratic successor’s claims that Ryan was ousted as a result of federal overreach and accused her of interfering in the search. Youngkin also accused Ryan of “not being committed to following federal law.”

That letter has been uploaded in full below.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

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November 14, 2025
Thoughts on 20-Plus Years of Teaching Islam (opinion)

When I first began teaching Islam, there was no road map. In 2001, I was a visiting assistant professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Iowa—the first full-time professor of Islam in the history of the state. I was in my 20s, still finishing my dissertation, when the attacks of Sept. 11 unfolded. Suddenly, I found myself trying to explain a 1,400-year-old religion to students who had watched the Twin Towers fall on live television.

Teaching Islam in American universities has never been more widespread, more diverse or more embattled. That is the story of the past two decades: a field that has grown dramatically, transformed in terms of who teaches it, and now finds itself under intensifying political scrutiny.

That experience in Iowa shaped everything that came after. I discovered that my task was not only to introduce students to the theological, historical and cultural breadth of Islam but also to help them unlearn the simplistic caricatures they had absorbed from media and politics. Islam was not a monolith. It was not synonymous with terror. It was, like Christianity or Judaism, a faith defined by argument, diversity and adaptation.

Those class lectures eventually became the foundation for No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam, first published in 2005. I hoped the book would serve both general readers and university classrooms. To my surprise, it quickly became a popular text for teaching Islam in the United States and far beyond. It has been translated into dozens of languages, adopted in seminaries and world religion courses, and read in mosques, churches and synagogues.

Two decades later, the landscape of Islamic studies in American universities looks profoundly different. In 2001, very few institutions offered dedicated courses on Islam outside of theology departments. Today, there are hundreds of such courses, spanning history, political science, gender studies and literature. The proliferation has been remarkable—though uneven. Some courses are rigorous, rooted in language and text, while others are more ad hoc, responding to student demand and global events.

Another profound shift has been in who is teaching Islam. For most of the modern history of religious studies in America, Christian professors taught Christianity, Jewish professors taught Judaism—but it was rare to find Muslim professors teaching Islam. In nearly two decades of studying the subject, I had only one Muslim professor. That has changed dramatically. Today, Muslim scholars occupy faculty positions across the country, and new professional associations—such as the International Quranic Studies Association, of which I am a member—are fostering networks of Muslim academics who bring both scholarly expertise and lived experience into the classroom. This diversification has expanded the kinds of questions and perspectives that shape the field, though it has also forced universities to confront new debates over authority, representation and bias.

Meanwhile, the teaching of Islam—like so many fields in the humanities—is now buffeted by unprecedented political pressure. Across the country, state governments have moved to limit what can and cannot be taught in universities and ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs. More recently, elite universities such as Columbia and Harvard have faced political scrutiny from the Trump administration and Congress into their Middle East studies programs, accused by some lawmakers of being biased. In today’s climate, teaching Islam can feel like an act of defiance. Professors often self-censor, conscious that a stray lecture note could trigger outside campaigns or even threats. The irony is that in a moment when greater understanding of Islam is needed more than ever, the very institutions best equipped to provide that education are being undermined.

Yet this is precisely why teaching Islam in universities matters more than ever. At a time when Islam has faded from the headlines but remains entangled in the debates that define our era—from authoritarianism to surveillance to religious pluralism—the classroom is one of the few places where the faith can be encountered on its own terms. The role of professors is not to sanitize or defend Islam, but to present it in all its richness, contradictions and ongoing transformations.

The fully updated 20th-anniversary edition of No god but God is my attempt to support that task for another generation of teachers and students. The new preface reflects on what has changed since 2005—the Arab Spring, the rise of digital Islam, the ebb of the “war on terror”—and what has not: Islam’s enduring struggle to reconcile tradition and modernity, authority and pluralism.

More than two decades of teaching have convinced me that education about Islam cannot be episodic, tied only to moments of crisis or headlines of violence. It must be sustained, interdisciplinary and grounded in serious scholarship. It must expand beyond political science courses on terrorism and foreign policy, and beyond theology seminars comparing sacred texts, into the wider humanities and social sciences. And it must center the lived experiences of Muslims themselves.

The classroom is not a mosque. But it is one of the few spaces where young people can confront their assumptions, wrestle with complexity, and imagine new ways of understanding the role of religion in the world. That was my conviction in 2001, when I walked into a lecture hall in Iowa just days after Sept. 11. It remains my conviction today.

The classroom may not be a mosque, but it remains one of the few places where Islam can be encountered in all its richness, contradictions and humanity.

Reza Aslan is a writer and scholar of religion. His books include Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth and No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, now available in an updated 20th-anniversary edition from Random House. He is a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.

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November 14, 2025
California State University Embraces Direct Admissions

There was a 9 percent increase in enrollments from the pilot county as compared to the previous CSU freshman class.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | gemenacom, ghoststone, Jose Gonzalez Buenaposada and vi73777/iStock/Getty Images

The California State University system launched a direct admissions pilot last year, offering qualifying high school seniors at school districts in Riverside County admission to 10 of its institutions. The program turned out to be an unqualified success: The number of graduates from the district who enrolled at a CSU campus this fall jumped 9 percent.

Now the system is expanding the program, thanks to legislation signed last month that will allow CSU to extend offers to students in every school district in the state starting in the 2026–27 admission cycle. The offers will grant admission to 16 of the 22 CSU campuses; the six most selective institutions will not participate.

The program ties in with the system’s goal of creating access to higher education for all Californians, said April Grommo, CSU’s assistant vice chancellor of strategic enrollment management.

“Being able to proactively inform students that they are eligible for the CSU has provided a lot of positive results,” she said. “We had a lot of students and families that did not realize they were eligible to go to a four-year university.”

With this program, California joins a cohort of about 15 states that offer students some form of direct, guaranteed or simplified admissions. The intent is to streamline the admissions process and make students aware of institutions they may not have otherwise considered, as well as to bolster institutions’ enrollment. Such programs have proven broadly successful, according to Taylor Odle, a professor of education policy studies at the University of Wisconsin.

“My work, in partnership with states and national nonprofit organizations, shows that direct admissions programs can not only increase students’ early-college going behaviors but also subsequently raise their college enrollment outcomes,” Odle wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “These benefits are particularly large for students of color, those who will be the first in their family to attend college, and those from lower-income communities. States who have implemented direct admissions also consistently report higher enrollment levels following implementation.”

While different states use the term “direct admissions” slightly differently, Odle defined a true direct admissions program as “guaranteed (students are admitted to college; not an invitation to apply), universal (all students can participate), proactive (students don’t need to do anything to receive a direct admissions offer), simplified (students don’t need to apply; simply ‘claim their spot’ via a streamlined process), and free (no cost).”

In CSU’s case, qualified students—those who meet the system’s requirements regarding the courses they took in high school and who have a minimum 2.5 grade point average—receive mailers informing them that they have been admitted to all 16 participating campuses.

In the Riverside County pilot program, about 17,400 graduating seniors received admission offers. The system saw a 15 percent year-over-year increase in students from the county who completed an application for a CSU institution—direct admits don’t complete the full application, just a truncated version of it in order to accept the offer of admission—and led to the subsequent bump in enrollees. The majority ended up at Cal State San Bernardino, the closest campus to Riverside County—across the state, most CSU students attend an institution within 50 miles of their home—but others traveled farther, in some cases to study in specialized programs.

Along with the direct admissions offers, the system also launched a series of events to expose Riverside County students to CSU’s different campuses and programs. Called Discover CSU Days, the events featured panels of current students from Riverside County.

“A lot of Riverside County students are first-generation and low-income, so we talked to them about why the CSU is a good option for them,” said Grommo.

Students could enroll that same day, with some campuses waiving housing and tuition deposits for those who did.

Odle said that with so many institutions reporting positive outcomes from their direct admissions programs, such initiatives may soon become the “new norm.”

“More states and systems of higher education should be in the business of identifying challenges, designing and implementing pilot programs to address them, rigorously studying them, and then making expansion decisions (like this) based on evidence,” he wrote. “Given CSU’s access and service mission to the state, it makes sense that it joins a variety of other systems nationally at implementing this evidence-based practice to raise enrollments and reduce gaps in access.”

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November 14, 2025
Why Public Universities Need Their Own Accreditor (opinion)
Public universities need their own accreditor.

These institutions are the backbone of American higher education. They serve the largest share of students by far, and state-supported colleges and universities play an outsize role in providing economic mobility for Americans of all backgrounds. I’ve spent my entire career working on behalf of public universities, most recently as president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. I know the enormous good they do for their students and for society at large. We have the best publicly supported system of higher education in the world. We can and must continue to improve it.

I also understand why our public institutions will benefit from an accreditor that aligns with their mission and their public obligations. They need an accreditor that offers true peer review and a disciplined focus on improving student outcomes. They need an accreditor familiar with the mechanics of state oversight, able to promote academic quality while also being more efficient by eliminating redundant bureaucracy in the accreditation process.

The Commission for Public Higher Education was formed earlier this year to answer those needs. Established by a consortium of six public university systems—the State University System of Florida, the University System of Georgia, the University of North Carolina System, the University of South Carolina System, the University of Tennessee System and the Texas A&M University System—the aim of CPHE is to offer public universities across the country an alternative to the regional accreditors that have long dominated higher education, each claiming a geographical monopoly that lumped together for-profit schools, bespoke private colleges and open-access public institutions under the same set of rules and regulations.

I agreed to serve as chair of the Board of Directors for CPHE because I believe there’s a need for innovation in accreditation. We are seizing the opportunity to improve institutional accreditation by focusing on outcomes, as well as streamlining the process by taking advantage of the considerable oversight that public institutions are subject to at the state level. An accreditor purpose-built by public institutions, for public institutions, can promote academic quality while driving innovation in student success and eliminating unnecessary costs in the legacy model of accreditation.

There is clearly enthusiasm for the vision behind CPHE. Ten diverse institutions have already signed on to join CPHE’s initial cohort (full list below), and the commission is fielding additional inquiries from across the country. We’ve just issued a call for public university faculty and administrators to join our first group of peer-review teams, and we look forward to pioneering a new model of more straightforward and more transparent accreditation review.
CPHE Initial Cohort

Appalachian State University

Chipola College

Columbus State University

Florida Atlantic University

Florida Polytechnic University

North Carolina Central University

Texas A&M–Kingsville

Texas A&M–Texarkana

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

University of South Georgia
University leaders and state policymakers nationwide see the value in a streamlined approach to accreditation that shifts the focus from inputs and operational minutiae to meaningful outcomes for students and taxpayers.

The legacy approach to accreditation is plagued by the need for each accreditor to serve the huge diversity of institutional missions and governing structures that underlie the American system of higher education. Trying to impose the same set of criteria and procedures on every institution, from small private colleges to huge public flagships, has led to decades of ineffective oversight and wasted effort. There is little or no evidence that institutional accreditation has driven quality improvements across the sector, while it is abundantly clear that it has imposed arbitrary and opaque regulatory demands on institutions that already are subjected to multiple layers of oversight as public agencies.

Institutions like Georgia State University, where I served more than a decade as president, are closely scrutinized by their governing boards, by state regulators and legislative bodies, by auditors and bond ratings agencies. They have public disclosure and consumer protection requirements above and beyond what is demanded of private and for-profit colleges. I have firsthand experience with how costly and cumbersome accreditation reviews divert institutional resources that would be better spent supporting student success, and I am confident a public-focused accreditor can streamline reporting and compliance costs without compromising oversight.

An accreditor attuned to the nuances of public oversight can add value by focusing on academic quality and student success, using a process of peer review to promote continuous improvement through the dissemination of best practices and innovations. That’s why CPHE’s accreditation standards are tailored toward public purpose and academic excellence, with provisions for measuring student learning, promoting academic freedom and intellectual diversity, and driving continuous improvement of student outcomes.

At core, the purpose of accreditation is to reassure students and taxpayers that universities are delivering on their promise to provide a quality education that leaves students better off. An accreditor tightly focused on that public mission can go a long way in shoring up the trust that higher education needs to thrive.

Mark Becker is the chair of the Board of Directors of the Commission for Public Higher Education. He formerly served as president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities from 2022 to 2025, and before that he was president of Georgia State University from 2009 to 2021.
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November 14, 2025