Tag: News

  • Harvard Health and Human Rights Director Stepping Down

    Harvard Health and Human Rights Director Stepping Down

    Officials also announced that the center will hone its primary focus to children’s health.

    John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

    The director of Harvard University’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights will step down in January after seven years at the helm, dean of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health Andrea Baccarelli announced Tuesday. News of her departure follows months of criticism of the center’s Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights.

    Mary Bassett’s last day as director will be Jan. 9, 2026, after which she will remain a professor of practice in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department. Kari Nadeau, a professor of climate and population studies at Harvard, will serve as interim director. Bassett did not respond to a request for an interview Thursday. A Harvard spokesperson did not answer Inside Higher Ed’s questions about Bassett’s departure, including whether she was asked to step down, and instead pointed to Baccarelli’s message. 

    Baccarelli also announced that the center will shift its primary focus to children’s health.

    “Over the past years, FXB has worked on a wide range of programs within the context of human rights, extending across varied projects, including those related to oppression, poverty, and stigma around the world,” he wrote. “We believe we can accomplish more, and have greater impact, if we go deeper in a primary area of focus.”

    The center’s Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights drew increased scrutiny after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel, including from former Harvard president Larry Summers and New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik. In previous years, the program partnered with Birzeit University in the West Bank, but Harvard declined to renew that partnership in the spring. In their April report on antisemitism on campus, Harvard officials detailed complaints from students about the program’s webinars, in which speakers allegedly “presented a demonizing view of Israel and Israelis.”

    “One student told us that the FXB programming created the impression that ‘Israel exists solely to oppress Palestinians, and nothing else,’” the report stated.

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  • College Aid Previews Aim to Improve Early Decision

    College Aid Previews Aim to Improve Early Decision

    With the imminent arrival of early-decision results comes a new round of hand-wringing about the admissions practice, which affords students a better chance of getting accepted to their top institution but requires them to commit if admitted.

    Critics argue that the practice disadvantages low- and middle-income students, who fear being locked into attending a college before they know if they can afford it—although many colleges with an early-decision option allow students to back out over financial constraints. It also prevents applicants from comparing financial aid offers across multiple institutions.

    “Because there is so much uncertainty, families with high incomes are more likely to choose early decision and therefore benefit from its more favorable odds. It’s the perfect tool for maximizing revenues at schools positioned as luxury products, with price tags to match,” wrote Daniel Currell, a former deputy under secretary and senior adviser at the Department of Education from 2018 to 2021, in a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday that argued for the end of early decision. Indeed, Common App data about the fall 2021 freshman class showed that students from the wealthiest ZIP codes were twice as likely to apply early decision.

    But despite the criticisms, some institutions are aiming to make the practice more equitable. A handful of small liberal arts colleges have introduced initiatives in recent years to allow students to preview their financial aid offers before they decide whether or not to apply early, which admissions leaders say they hope will make lower-income students feel more comfortable taking the leap.

    Reed College, a selective liberal arts college in Oregon, began offering early-decision aid reviews this year, which allow early-decision applicants to request and view their full financial aid packages before they receive an actual decision from the university. Just like an official aid offer, the preview is calculated by financial aid staff using the College Scholarship Service profile.

    If they aren’t entirely comfortable with the amount of aid they’re set to receive—or they’d rather compare offers from other institutions—they can drop their application down into the early-action pool.

    “I just think that this anxiety that people have over not getting the best financial deal for their family has been a barrier for people saying, ‘This is my first-choice school and I want to do everything I can to increase my chances for admission,’” said Milyon Trulove, vice president and dean of admission and financial aid at Reed.

    Early financial aid offers are among the various steps institutions have taken in recent years to improve cost transparency and, in many cases, show students that their institutions are affordable. Others include improved cost estimators and campaigns offering free tuition for families under a particular income limit. Institutions hope that such innovations will help prevent students from writing off their institutions—particularly selective institutions that offer significant aid—due to their sticker prices.

    So far, Reed’s reviews appear to be doing a good job of enticing applicants who otherwise might not have applied early; the number of early-decision applicants this year increased 60 percent compared to last admissions cycle. Only one student has opted to switch to early action, which is nonbinding, after receiving their estimated offer.

    Similar programs at other institutions have also proven successful. Whitman College in Washington began offering early financial aid guarantees in 2020 to any prospective student who had filled out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The initiative wasn’t created specifically to promote early decision, said Adam Miller, vice president for admission and financial aid. But he said he hoped that making it clear to families that Whitman is affordable would also open doors for students interested in applying early decision but nervous about costs.

    Early-decision applications haven’t increased at Whitman like they did this year at Reed. But Miller noted that the college’s early-decision applicants are as socioeconomically diverse as the institution’s overall applicant pool, rather than skewing wealthier.

    “As we think about these nationwide conversations and the very valid criticism of early decision, we think that our approach allows us to have kind of a win-win,” he said. “We still get the benefit of students who are applying early, [so] that we can start to build our incoming class with some confidence,” while also eliminating financial uncertainty for families.

    Last year, the university’s four-person financial aid staff handled 546 requests for early aid guarantees. It’s an extra lift for the tiny office, but, Miller said, 410 of those students ended up applying—“so it’s not like we were doing a lot of extra work for students that we weren’t going to be doing it for anyway.”

    Macalester College also launched such a program in 2021. The institution, which typically admits between 35 and 40 percent of its incoming class from early decision, implemented aid previews in conjunction with a number of other steps aimed at improving access, including going test-optional and eliminating its application fee.

    “If we have an opportunity to do something that we think might be helpful to an individual student or family, I guess I feel as responsibility as an enrollment manager to try to initiate a new practice or new policy,” said Jeff Allen, vice president for admissions and financial aid at Macalester.

    Boosting Cost Transparency

    Financial aid experts said they see early financial aid calculations as a good option for institutions hoping to make the early-decision process—and college costs over all—more transparent.

    Students should be able to “apply early decision to a school where they know it’s the place for them and they don’t need to be saying, ‘But I need the financial aid so maybe this isn’t a good choice,’” said Jill Desjean, director of policy analysis at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. “That option should be available to anyone that finds the school where they really feel like they belong via early decision without having to factor in their finances, so any kind of early estimates, accurate early estimates—anything like that is a positive thing.”

    She noted that such programs might be too heavy of a lift for institutions receiving massive numbers of applications every year, but also that larger institutions have more resources and staffing to accommodate such requests.

    James Murphy, a senior fellow at Class Action, an advocacy organization focused on “reimagining elite higher education,” said that while he sees early aid previews as a positive step toward transparency, they don’t address some of his key concerns about early decision. At many expensive private high schools, he said, nearly every student applies early decision, whereas public high school students often aren’t even aware of the option.

    “There’s kind of a culture thing. If you go to Georgetown Prep … everybody’s applying early decision, or most students are applying early decision, unless they’re applying to Harvard or Stanford that don’t have it … When you look at public schools, that’s not nearly as common,” he said. “I think raising awareness of early decision as a viable option for more students is one step that higher education could take to make it a little bit more equitable.”

    He also noted that some institutions admit over half of their incoming classes from early-decision applicants, which dramatically lowers the chances for regular-admission applicants to be admitted.

    “The New York Times had that op-ed about banning it. That’s not going to happen. Colleges will fight so hard to make that not happen,” he said. But, he said, “what I would love to see is caps” on the percentage of students that can be admitted early decision.

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  • Shouldn’t College Be for Learning?

    Shouldn’t College Be for Learning?

    In a long, passionate, well-reasoned, thoroughly evidenced cri de coeur published at Current Affairs, San Francisco State professor Ronald Purser declares, “AI Is Destroying the University and Learning Itself.”

    That attention-grabbing headline is a bit misleading, because as Purser makes clear in the article, it is not “AI” itself that is destroying these things. The source of the problem is human beings, primarily the human beings in charge of universities that have looked at the offerings from tech companies and, failing to recognize the vampire prepared to drain their institutions of their life force, not only invite them across the threshold but declare them their new bosom buddies.

    Dartmouth University recently announced a deal with Anthropic/Amazon Web Services that university president Sian Beilock declared “is more than a collaboration.” The promises are familiar, using AI “to augment—not replace—student learning,” as though this is something we know how to do, and that this is best explored en masse across all aspects of the university simultaneously, rather than through careful experimentation. I think I understand some of the motivation to these kinds of deals—to seize some sense of agency in uncertain times—but the idea that even an institution as august as Dartmouth with such a long history in the development of artificial intelligence will be “collaborators” with these two entities is wishful thinking, IMO.

    Purser’s piece details much of what I’ve heard in my travels from institution to institution to speak and consult on these issues. There is a lot of well-earned angst out there, particularly in places where administrations have made bets that look like a Texas Hold’em player pushing all in on a pair of eights. No consultation, no collaboration, no vision beyond vague promises of future abundance. A recent AAUP report stemming from a survey of 500 of its members shows that one of the chief fears of faculty is being sidelined entirely as administrations strike these deals.

    This uninvited guest has thrown much of what we would consider the core purpose of the university in doubt. As Purser says, “Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.”

    While Purser’s account is accurate to a degree, I also want to say that it is not complete. As I wrote a couple of months ago, there are also great signs of progress in terms of addressing the challenges of the moment. The kind of administration and institutional carelessness that Purser documents is not universal, and even under those conditions, faculty and students are finding ways to do meaningful work. Many people are successfully addressing what I’ve long believed is the core problem, the “transactional model” of schooling that actively dissuades students from taking the required risks for learning and personal development.

    One of the most frequent observations I’ve made in doing this work is that many, perhaps even most, students have no real enthusiasm for an AI-mediated future where their thoughts and experiences are secondary to the outputs of an LLM model. The fact that they find the model outputs useful in school contexts is the problem.

    I was greatly cheered by this account from Matt Dinan, who details how he built the experiences of his course from root pedagogical values in a way that clearly signals to students the importance of doing the work for themselves, the importance of their thoughts and the sincere belief that taking a risk to learn is worth doing and well supported.

    What we see is that success comes from giving instructors the freedom to work the problem under conditions that allow the problem to be solved. Note that this does not de facto require a rejection of AI. There’s plenty of room for those more interested in AI to explore its integration, but it does mean doing more than signaling to faculty and students, “You’re going to use AI and you’re going to like it.”

    Much of what Purser describes is not only the imposition of AI, but the imposition of AI in a system that has been worn down through austerity measures over many decades, leaving it vulnerable to what is nothing more than an ideology promising increased efficiency and lower cost while still allowing the institutions to collect tuition revenue. This thinking reduces the “value proposition” of higher ed to its credentialing purpose.

    I know that the popular image of colleges and universities is that they are slow to change, but I have actually been surprised at the speed at which many institutions are making this AI future bet, particularly when we don’t know what future we’re betting on.

    Applying the tech ethos of “move fast and break things” to education has gained some traction because there is evidence to point toward and say, “This thing is already broken, so what do we have to lose?”

    We could lose a lot—and lose it forever.

    I remain open to the idea that generative AI and whatever comes after it can have positive effects on higher education, but I am increasingly convinced that when it comes to the experiences of learning, we know very little as to how this should be done. As Justin Reich wrote recently at The Chronicle, “stop pretending you know how to teach AI.”

    We shouldn’t abandon the things we do know how to teach (like writing) while we experiment with this new technology. We shouldn’t dodge the structural barriers that Ronald Purser outlines in his piece, hoping for an AI savior around the corner. This isn’t what students want, it’s not what students need and it is not a way to secure an ongoing value proposition for higher education.

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  • At UNC, Professors Must Soon Post Syllabi Publicly

    At UNC, Professors Must Soon Post Syllabi Publicly

    The new policy would also classify syllabi as “work made for hire,” which makes the institution—not the syllabus’s creator—the owner of the copyright.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | DNY59 and golibo/iStock/Getty Images

    Two months after legal teams at University of North Carolina system campuses split over whether syllabi are considered public documents, system president Peter Hans announced plans to adopt a new policy that will answer an unequivocal yes.

    Starting as early as next fall, faculty members at UNC institutions will be required to upload their syllabi to a searchable public database, according to a draft of the policy provided to Inside Higher Ed by student journalists at The Daily Tar Heel. These public syllabi must include the course name, prefix, description, course objectives and student learning outcomes, as well as “a breakdown of how student performance will be assessed, including the grading scale, percentage breakdown of major assignments, and how attendance or participation will affect a student’s final grade.” Faculty must also include any course materials that students are required to purchase.

    “Public university syllabi should be public records, and that will be the official policy of the UNC System,” Hans wrote in a Thursday op-ed in the News & Observer. “We are living through an age of dangerously low trust in some of society’s most important institutions. While support for North Carolina’s public universities remains strong and bipartisan, confidence in higher education generally has dropped in recent years, driven by concerns about value and a perception that some colleges and universities have drifted from their core mission.”

    The system is currently seeking feedback on the draft policy, a system spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed, and “after receiving input from elected faculty representatives and other stakeholders, the system office will revise the draft as needed.” Only Hans, and not the Board of Governors, will need to approve the policy.

    In October, system campuses disagreed over whether to give up syllabi in response to a broad public records request by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. Alongside other conservative groups, the Heritage Foundation has used open records laws to gather information on and expose public university faculty members who teach about race, gender, sexuality and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Syllabi that include classroom policies, required readings and instructor’s names are particularly valuable to conservative critics. The UNC system flagship in Chapel Hill determined that syllabi are not automatically subject to such requests. But officials at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro declared the opposite.

    “Having a consistent rule on syllabi transparency, instead of 16 campuses coming up with different rules, helps ensure that everyone is on the same page and similarly committed heading into each new semester,” Hans wrote in his op-ed.

    The Florida Board of Governors recently enacted a policy that makes syllabi, required or recommended textbooks, and instructional materials available online and searchable for students and the general public for five years. Indiana, Texas and the University System of Georgia also maintain similar rules.

    Belle Boggs, an English professor at North Carolina State University and president of the North Carolina American Association of University Professors chapter, is worried that many professors, busy with end-of-semester grading, are unaware of the forthcoming policy; administrators have yet to send out any formal announcement of the rule, Boggs said. But many of those that do know of it are pushing back. A petition started by the North Carolina AAUP chapter has garnered more than 2,100 signatures as of Thursday afternoon. The group plans to deliver it in person to Hans on Friday.

    The draft policy does not explicitly require instructors to list their names on their syllabi and states that “nothing within this regulation shall be construed to require a publicly available syllabus to include the location or time of day at which a course is being held.” This stipulation provides little comfort to faculty members, Boggs said.

    “As many of us have noted, there are many of us who are the only faculty who teach a particular class, and it is very easy to find out when our class is and where our classes are,” she said. “That does not make me feel safer.”

    Hans acknowledged critics’ weaponization of syllabi in his op-ed.

    “There is no question that making course syllabi publicly available will mean hearing feedback and criticism from people who may disagree with what’s being taught or how it’s being presented. That’s a normal fact of life at a public institution, and we should expect a vibrant and open society to have debates that extend beyond the walls of campus,” Hans wrote. “It’s awful that we live in a time when healthy discussion too often descends into outright harassment. We will do everything we can to safeguard faculty and staff who may be subject to threats or intimidation simply for doing their jobs.”

    The new policy would also classify syllabi as “work made for hire,” which makes the institution—not the syllabus’s creator—the copyright owner of the syllabus, according to U.S. copyright law.

    “As such, instructors do not retain personal copyright in these materials, and syllabi owned by a public agency generated in the course of public business, are not copyrightable in a manner that would exempt syllabi from public access to these records, consistent with state and federal public records laws,” the draft policy stated.

    The N.C. AAUP has focused its efforts on publicizing faculty safety concerns, but the work-made-for-hire provision is also worrisome, Boggs said.

    “That causes severe damage to academic freedom and how much control we have over our classes,” she said. “It may also make many faculty not want to work here, because the syllabi that they teach from or the syllabi that they’ve honed over decades in other places … [will belong to the university].”

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  • Emporia State Gets $1.4M From Retiring President

    Emporia State Gets $1.4M From Retiring President

    ESU’s outgoing president, Ken Hush, faced backlash in 2022 after laying off tenured faculty.

    Ethan James Scherrer/Wikimedia Commons

    Ken Hush, outgoing president of Emporia State University in Kansas, is donating roughly $1.4 million—equivalent to the last four years of his salary—to the university.

    Since taking the helm in 2021, Hush oversaw a controversial workforce-management policy that included firing 23 tenured faculty members. The American Association of University Professors publicly censured ESU for that decision, and some of the laid-off faculty sued. Emporia officials, including Hush, defended the job cuts, saying they were needed to address a budget deficit and falling enrollment.

    Enrollment plunged in the fallout from the cuts, but according to ESU’s statement this week, the university has now eliminated a $19 million budget deficit and grown enrollment 6 percent since fall 2024.

    Hush’s donation is one of the largest one-time individual gifts in ESU’s history, according to an announcement the university posted on its website Wednesday. The nonendowed gift from Hush, who is set to retire next week, will be paid out over the next three years. The money will support scholarships, new student recruitment and university operations.

    “This gift is in appreciation for the meaningful impact ESU has had on our community and on me, both as a student and in my role as president. It has been a great honor to serve my home state of Kansas, in my hometown of Emporia for the institution that has changed so many lives for the better,” Hush said in the announcement. “Emporia State is focused on [students] like never before. We cannot afford to go back to the old ways of higher education that focused more on the institution than those the institution is here to serve.”

    Hush—an ESU alumnus and longtime former executive for Koch Inc.’s carbon and minerals division—became interim president in 2021 and permanent president in 2022. Hush in July announced plans to retire at the end of this year.

    On Thursday, The Emporia Gazette reported that the Kansas Board of Regents selected Matthew Baker, who has served as vice president of student affairs at Northwest Missouri State University for the past 14 years, as ESU’s next president. Baker is slated to begin serving in early March.

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  • House Ed Panel Advances Financial Aid Transparency Bills

    House Ed Panel Advances Financial Aid Transparency Bills

    Rep. Tim Walberg, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House committee, said the legislation was an answer to waning public trust in postsecondary education.

    Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

    A House education panel voted Thursday to advance two bills aimed at ensuring that students know more about the price of college and their options to pay for it.

    One of the bills, the Student Financial Clarity Act, would require the Education Department to create a universal net price calculator that would give students an estimate of what they might have to pay for a particular program or institution. That legislation, which passed with bipartisan support, would also expand the College Scorecard to include more program-level statistics so students could compare outcomes and costs.

    Under the other bill, the College Financial Aid Clarity Act, the Education Department would develop a standardized format for college financial aid offers. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have sought for years to improve institutional offer letters—efforts that picked up steam in 2023 after the Government Accountability Office found that most colleges failed to clearly and accurately tell students how much their education would cost.

    After the department creates the standard format, colleges that receive federal funding will have to adopt it by July 1, 2029, according to the legislation, which also received bipartisan backing.

    The House and Senate education committees have explored the issue of college price transparency in hearings this fall, showing that it’s a priority for key lawmakers. Rep. Tim Walberg, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House committee, framed the legislation as an answer to waning public trust in postsecondary education.

    “Too many students face bureaucracy, hidden costs and student debt for programs that don’t deliver a return on investment,” Walberg said. “These bills take important steps to fix that.”

    American Council on Education president Ted Mitchell wrote to the committee that a federally mandated financial aid award letter would be difficult to adjust in response to consumer feedback and changes to federal student aid. ACE and others have spearheaded a voluntary effort to improve the letters known as the College Cost Transparency Initiative, which includes about 760 colleges and universities.

    “It is also important to note that new requirements regarding financial aid award letters will impose significant administrative, financial, and technical challenges that will divert institutional resources away from student support,” Mitchell wrote.

    Democrats generally supported the legislation, though they indicated that they wanted to see more changes that would actually lower the cost of college and hold the Education Department accountable.

    Democrats expressed worry that a diminished Education Department wouldn’t be able to implement the changes called for in the legislation. They also pushed for language in the bills that would require the Education Department itself to perform the work. Education Secretary Linda McMahon recently outsourced several grant programs to other federal agencies, raising concerns among Democrats on the committee.

    “Based on the secretary’s track record, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s already devising a way to pass these requirements on to someone else or some other agency,” said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat.

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  • Friday Fragments

    Friday Fragments

    Friday Fragments

    Sara Brady

    Fri, 12/12/2025 – 03:00 AM

    Sans-serif fonts, passing along great literature, Middle States.

    Byline(s)
    Matt Reed

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  • Policy Impact Undervalued by Universities

    Policy Impact Undervalued by Universities

    Barely a third of social scientists believe their university would promote them based on the strength of their research impact, a global poll of researchers has found.

    Asked whether their institution would promote or give tenure to a scholar for their efforts to apply research outside academia, only 37 percent of 1,805 social scientists surveyed by Sage agreed.

    Only 28 percent of respondents said their efforts to make a difference outside academia would lead to additional research funding from their institution, while just 35 percent said their university offered awards or prizes to recognize impact.

    Thirty percent of the survey’s respondents, who came from 92 countries, say they receive no recognition at all for this work.

    Instead, the survey by the U.S.-based social sciences publisher suggested institutions tend to value and reward publication in highly cited journals more than academics. Asked whether the ultimate goal of research is to make a positive impact on society, 92 percent agreed this is the case for themselves, but only 68 percent believe it’s true for institutions.

    “I don’t care about impacting my colleagues and being cited—I want to impact practice in the field,” explained one U.S.-based respondent, who added there is “no good way to know if this happens.”

    “All the other metrics (like rejection rates, Google scores) are internal to the discipline and don’t really measure anything useful,” the researcher continued, according to the Sage report, titled “Do Social Scientists Care If They Make Societal Impact?” and published Tuesday.

    Similarly, 91 percent of researchers agree the ultimate goal of research is to build on the literature and enable future research, but only 71 percent think the leaders at their institution agree with this.

    That perceived misalignment between the motivation of social scientists and institutions should prompt a rethink on whether prestige metrics used in academia are misaligned with values, argues the Sage report.

    It notes that researchers value peer regard more than citation metrics, yet they perceive that administrators prioritize impact factors, creating tension in tenure and promotion decisions.

    “At times, this means we have to challenge the status quo of what matters in higher education—for example, by moving beyond an overemphasis on scholarly impact measures [and] toward recognizing research that benefits people through policy, practice and public life,” said Ziyad Marar, president of global publishing at Sage.

    “It’s important that we listen closely to researchers themselves as we do this work—understanding what motivates them, where they focus their efforts and what barriers stand in their way. This report does exactly that,” he added.

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  • Willamette and Pacific Universities Plan Merger

    Willamette and Pacific Universities Plan Merger

    If approved, the merger between Willamette (above) and Pacific would create the largest private university in Oregon.

    Pacific University and Willamette University have signed a letter of intent to merge, pending approval, which would create the largest private institution in Oregon if the deal is finalized.

    Together the two institutions have a collective study body of about 6,000 students.

    “If finalized and approved, this merger would be a defining moment for private higher education in the region. Pacific and Willamette are both deeply rooted in Oregon’s history and have educated thousands of leaders who have helped make the Pacific Northwest synonymous with innovation and excellence,” Willamette president Steve Thorsett said in a news release. 

    Pacific president Jenny Coyle emphasized a shared “commitment to addressing the region’s most pressing workforce needs while preserving the personalized, mission-driven education that defines both of our institutions” and the opportunity to leverage “our collective strengths.”

    The combined entity would be known as the University of the Northwest.

    The two institutions plan to operate under a shared administrative structure but maintain their respective campuses, admissions requirements, academic programs and athletic teams. Their main campuses are located roughly an hour apart; Willamette is in Salem and Pacific in Forest Grove. Willamette also has a campus in Portland that houses an art college.

    The merger will require approval from regulatory bodies, including the Department of Education.

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  • ED Seeks Public Comment on Accreditation Reform

    ED Seeks Public Comment on Accreditation Reform

    President Trump signed an executive order in April to reform accreditation.

    Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

    Reforming the accreditation process has been a key focus for the Trump administration. Officials from the Education Department reinforced that Wednesday when they announced a request for information to solicit public feedback on updating the accreditation handbook.

    The aim, the department said in a news release, is to reduce “unduly burdensome and bureaucratic requirements” and increase “transparency and efficiency.”

    “Instead of driving high-quality programs that better serve students, the antiquated accreditation system has led to inflated tuition costs and fees, administrative bloat, and ideology-driven initiatives at colleges across the country,” Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education David Barker said. “We are excited to receive feedback on how best to update the Handbook, streamline guidance, and eliminate bureaucratic headaches for accrediting agencies and associations.”

    The request falls in line with an April executive order to “reform and strengthen” the accreditation system. It also comes less than a week before the next meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, the group that weighs in on accreditation issues and reviews accrediting agencies.

    The department is planning to draft new rules and regulations for accreditors sometime next year.

    Commenters will have 45 days to provide feedback on the following questions:

    • What policies or standards are encouraging innovation or reducing college costs within the postsecondary education sector and should be retained in or added to the new version of the handbook? 
    • How can the handbook be designed to be less burdensome?
    • Is the handbook serving its intended purpose? 
    • How can it better assist accrediting agencies and associations in evaluating the quality of educational institutions and programs or in applying for federal recognition?
    • How could accreditation standards be updated to incentivize intellectual diversity on campus? 
    • What guidance or standards, if any, can the handbook provide to institutions and programs to help achieve this goal?
    • What methods should be incorporated into the handbook to determine appropriate assessment benchmarks, and what data sources or validation methods could be used to ensure those benchmarks reflect student competency?

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