Tag: News

  • Prabhas Moghe, Rutgers University – The PIE News

    Prabhas Moghe, Rutgers University – The PIE News

    Introduce yourself in three words or phrases.

    I am an educator, an innovator, and a scholar.

    What do you like most about your job?

    Oh gosh, I love my job. I think what I really enjoy is the expanse, the scope, the landscape, it’s huge. I love that we are not just solving problems, we are actually defining them.

    Best work trip/Worst work trip?

    The best work trip? I have had so many good ones. This (APAIE 2025, Delhi, and overall India tour) has been a great work trip.

    But I also had a fantastic trip to London with my foundation president. We went together and ran a workshop on “friend-raising”, instead of just fundraising, the idea is to build genuine relationships. UK universities were trying to learn it, and since US universities are a bit ahead in that area, we worked with them. That was really fun.

    I also went to South Korea on a work trip. I love South Koreans, and I love the country, but they made me work so hard. The person who planned the trip, god bless her, packed the schedule so tight that I did not get even one hour of sightseeing.

    It was a 14–15 hour flight to Seoul, and the trip ended up being the kind of hard work that South Koreans put in every single day.

    If you could learn a language instantly, which would you pick and why?

    Definitely Mandarin and Spanish. I was foolish enough to promise a class at the University of Puerto Rico that, “next time I visit, I promise I will give you the lecture in Spanish”, so it ain’t happening. But I do take pride in speaking multiple languages, I would say I am fluent in at least five. I even started learning Mandarin with Rosetta Stone (language learning software). I didn’t get too far, but I absolutely love how the language sounds.

    What makes you get up in the morning?

    I think what drives me is a genuine passion for the work. There’s just so much to be done.

    As the chief academic officer at Rutgers, my role is about having a deep, self-aware understanding of the institution, in ways that few others might. While everyone else is focused on their specific responsibilities, I am constantly looking at the institution as a whole.

    How do we stay true to our mission? How do we improve? How do we gain recognition? And how do we move the needle on our academic standing?

    These are broad, complex challenges, but that’s what makes the work so meaningful.

    Champion/cheerleader which we should all follow and why?

    There are so many influential people now, and they each teach you something different. I have learned a lot from Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel Peace Prize winner, especially his approach to life.

    For instance, I was really impressed by Jennifer Doudna after reading her biography, The Code Breaker, which is written by Walter Isaacson.

    I am actually very intrigued by Isaacson himself, someone who writes about others so insightfully. He’s also written about Steve Jobs. The way he pieces together these stories is fascinating.

    In The Code Breaker, what struck me was how science and research are portrayed as incredibly competitive fields. And yet, the breakthroughs often come in these magical, nonlinear moments, when the right people come together with the right tools, and suddenly, something clicks.

    That idea of serendipity, of miraculous intersections, it really resonated with me. No one creates miracles alone; you need a village.

    The book also shows how intensely competitive some of these research groups can be.

    But more than anything, what stood out was the brilliance, the hard work, and the value of good observers, people who can see the bigger picture. I think we need more of those champions.

    Best international ed conference and why

    I think this is a very cool conference (APAIE 2025). I was walking around the booths, and was at a roundtable with several presidents and vice-chancellors. It’s really exciting because this is not what higher education looked like 20 or 30 years ago.

    What you see here today is different countries like Canada, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the UK coming together. It’s like the whole world is showing up and saying, “Come be a part of us”.

    Worst conference food/beverage experience

    I was at a meeting at the World Biomaterials Congress, I think it was in Chengdu, China.

    We went out to eat, and let’s just say where we ate you’re pretty much eating reasonably raw food. That was pretty challenging.

    I mean I love Chinese food, I love Sichuan food, but that was challenging.

    Book or podcast recommendation for others in the sector?

    Definitely The Code Breaker by Isaacson, I would recommend that to people. I think it’s a pretty interesting book. If you are looking for something educationally oriented, then there’s Building Research Universities in India by Pankaj Jalote.

    I’m very impressed with how he’s drawn on the research in terms of how things have changed over the last hundred years, how India’s research landscape has changed.

    I am listening to a whole bunch of podcasts. Dementia Matters, a podcast about Alzheimer’s disease and other causes of dementia, is something I am really liking.

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  • Common Sense Media releases AI toolkit for school districts

    Common Sense Media releases AI toolkit for school districts

    Key points:

    Common Sense Media has released its first AI Toolkit for School Districts, which gives districts of all sizes a structured, action-oriented guide for implementing AI safely, responsibly, and effectively.

    Common Sense Media research shows that 7 in 10 teens have used AI. As kids and teens increasingly use the technology for schoolwork, teachers and school district leaders have made it clear that they need practical, easy-to-use tools that support thoughtful AI planning, decision-making, and implementation.

    Common Sense Media developed the AI Toolkit, which is available to educators free of charge, in direct response to district needs.

    “As more and more kids use AI for everything from math homework to essays, they’re often doing so without clear expectations, safeguards, or support from educators,” said Yvette Renteria, Chief Program Officer of Common Sense Media.

    “Our research shows that schools are struggling to keep up with the rise of AI–6 in 10 kids say their schools either lack clear AI rules or are unsure what those rules are. But schools shouldn’t have to navigate the AI paradigm shift on their own. Our AI Toolkit for School Districts will make sure every district has the guidance it needs to implement AI in a way that works best for its schools.”

    The toolkit emphasizes practical tools, including templates, implementation guides, and customizable resources to support districts at various stages of AI exploration and adoption. These resources are designed to be flexible to ensure that each district can develop AI strategies that align with their unique missions, visions, and priorities.

    In addition, the toolkit stresses the importance of a community-driven approach, recognizing that AI exploration and decision-making require input from all of the stakeholders in a school community.

    By encouraging districts to give teachers, students, parents, and more a seat at the table, Common Sense Media’s new resources ensure that schools’ AI plans meet the needs of families and educators alike.

    This press release originally appeared online.

    eSchool News Staff
    Latest posts by eSchool News Staff (see all)

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  • Test yourself on this week’s K-12 news

    Test yourself on this week’s K-12 news

    From the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” to notable achievement gains in young students, what did you learn from our recent stories?

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  • Satirical Essay on Restructuring Humanities (opinion)

    Satirical Essay on Restructuring Humanities (opinion)

    The administration at U of All People has suffered long enough with the underperforming School of Social Sciences and Humanities. Its various departments, programs and whatnot have grown arcane to the point where the students themselves no longer understand the difference between, say, philosophy and psychology, save that both begin with the letter p. And since many students no longer engage in reading or writing without the aid of AI, we should stop supporting distinct majors that encourage both. Consequently, we are restructuring the school to reflect the current dictates of academic administration.

     Here are some issues we have made up to justify the restructuring:

    • There has been a recent decrease in enrollment, or at least there ought to have been.
    • These are perilous times for the humanities, and smushing them together will help.
    • Merging departments will make the infrastructure more economical, particularly if we do away with pesky department offices and office staff.
    • Just saying the word “interdisciplinary” makes us feel connected to the 21st century.

    SSSH currently includes English, history, philosophy, religion, sociology, anthropology, modern languages, linguistics, political science, psychology, classics and several others that may have escaped our notice. However, we have hired a consultancy firm that can list them all. Already, the consultants have put together a PowerPoint presentation advising what they have inferred we want.

    The restructuring will feature programs such as philohistenglish-religiosophy (PHER), anthrosociopsychology (ASP) and perhaps two other smushes with better acronyms. The new, flexible majors may be grouped under the Program for (Somewhat Limited Freedom of) Speech, the Program for Global Awareness of What Trouble We’re In and the Program That Resembles a Grab Bag From a Kids’ Party. Instead of a bunch of quarrelsome department heads and a dean, a triumvirate of armed SSSH administrators will be responsible for keeping the peace.

    We have already polled the faculty and students in a metric calculated to prove our point: On a scale of one to 10, please rate how dissatisfied you are with the current setup, with one being “very” and 10 being “extremely.” The 12 respondents answered that they were very dissatisfied. Note that we are perfectly willing to listen to suggestions from the faculty and in fact have invited them all to attend a feedback session to take place yesterday at 3 a.m. in the Student Center Ballroom (bring your own flashlight!). However, we urge the faculty not to think outside the box we have placed them in while also being nimble when it comes to downsizing.

    During this process, the SSSH building itself, shabby compared to the shiny new STEM complex, will be restructured, possibly to a multilevel parking garage with spots reserved for U of All People administrators. It has also been suggested that the faculty themselves could use some restructuring, starting with their mouths, which can be sealed through a painless surgical procedure.

    Don’t think of it as a loss of autonomy and shared governance. Consider it a gain for this administration!

    David Galef is a professor of English and the creative writing program director at Montclair State University. His latest book is the novel Where I Went Wrong (Regal House, 2025).

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  • Student-Led Teaching Doesn’t Help Underprepared Students

    Student-Led Teaching Doesn’t Help Underprepared Students

    New research finds peer instruction models may be less impactful for students with lower standardized test scores than their higher-achieving peers.

    miodrag ignjatovic/E+/Getty Images

     

     

     

     

    Introductory STEM courses serve as a gatekeeper for students interested in majors or careers in STEM fields, and students from less privileged backgrounds are often less likely to succeed in those courses.

    As a result, researchers have explored what practices can make a difference in student outcomes in such courses, including creating sections with diverse student populations and offering grade forgiveness for students who performed poorly.

    A recent research article from the University of Texas at Austin examined the role peer instructors play in helping students from a variety of backgrounds. Researchers discovered that students who were enrolled in an interactive peer-led physics course section had worse learning outcomes and grades than their peers in a lecture section taught by an instructor. Students with lower SAT scores were also less likely to achieve a high grade in the student-taught class.

    The research: Historically, instructors teaching STEM courses have delivered content through lectures, with students taking a largely passive role, according to the paper. However, more active learning environments have been tied to higher student engagement and are largely preferred by learners. A May 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed found that 44 percent of respondents said an interactive lecture format helps them learn and retain information best, compared to 25 percent who selected traditional lectures.

    Interactive lectures can include instructors asking students questions throughout the class period or creating opportunities for them to reflect on course material, according to the paper. Peer instruction is touted as an effective means of flipped classroom teaching, requiring students to finish readings prior to class and reserving class time for interactive activities.

    While previous studies show the value of peer-led courses, much of that research focused on selective, private institutions, where students may have more similar backgrounds or levels of academic preparation, according to the authors of the new study.

    So researchers designed a study that would compare apples to apples: They looked at the outcomes for students learning physics in one course section taught by a professor versus one taught by fellow students to see which had a greater impact.

    The results: The paper analyzed the learning outcomes of two sections of students in an introductory mechanics course at a large public institution over three years. One section of the course was taught by a peer instructor, mostly in a small-group discussion format. The other section was taught by the professor using interactive lectures.

    Students completed identical homework and midterm exams on the same days and had the opportunity to attend identical tutoring sessions supported by teaching assistants.

    Though the course is designed for physics and astronomy majors, students from other majors participated as well. Each section had between 41 and 82 students, for a total of 367 students taking the course over three years.

    Not only did students in the peer-instruction section have lower grades, but students who had lower SAT scores from high school were less likely to demonstrate learning in fundamental concepts, as well as less likely to earn an A, compared to their peers with similar test scores taught by a professor. However, students with higher SAT scores made smaller gains (less dramatic grade increases or learning demonstrated) in the lecture section compared to students taught by peers, which researchers believe could mean that students with less academic preparation may benefit more from an instructor-led course, while their peers who had a high achievement history in high school could thrive more in a peer-led section.

    The analysis does not provide an explanation for why these differences exist, but researchers theorized that group work or peer dependency could result in some students being less knowledgeable about content matter because they trust others in the class to answer correctly. Creating postdiscussion follow-up questions can lessen this learning gap.

    We bet your colleague would like this article, too. Send them this link to subscribe to our newsletter on Student Success.

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  • Federal Policy Uncertainty Impacting College Budgeting

    Federal Policy Uncertainty Impacting College Budgeting

    Economic uncertainty—the kind that dominated headlines for the first half of 2025—makes long-term financial planning difficult. But nearly two in three college and university chief business officers say that uncertainty surrounding federal policy for higher education is hindering their ability to conduct even basic financial planning. That’s according to Inside Higher Ed’s forthcoming annual survey of CBOs with Hanover Research.

    “Higher education has not faced this level of financial uncertainty in generations,” said Robert Kelchen, chair of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, who reviewed preliminary survey data.

    While recent history offers one comparison—the early days of the pandemic, when uncertainty was similarly “off the charts”—the federal government at that time “quickly stepped in to provide support,” Kelchen continued. Today, by contrast, the federal government “is causing the uncertainty.”

    According to the survey, federal policy uncertainty under the second Trump administration is moderately impacting basic financial planning at 49 percent of institutions represented, meaning that challenges have arisen but CBOs and their colleagues have managed to adapt. Another 14 percent of institutions are severely impacted, meaning basic financial planning has been extremely difficult, leading to major disruptions. This is consistent across sectors.

    The survey was fielded in April and May, with CBOs from 169 institutions, public and private nonprofit, associate to doctoral degree–granting, responding. The full 2025 Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers will be released later this month. It includes additional findings on the second Trump administration’s impact on institutional finances so far, mergers and acquisitions, value and affordability, and more.

    CBOs see federal student aid policy changes as a major risk, with 68 percent citing this as a top federal policy concern from a longer list of options. A distant second: research funding levels, cited by 24 percent of all CBOs. Public institution CBOs are relatively more concerned about research funding, at 36 percent versus 9 percent of private nonprofit peers.

    Questions about the future of federal student aid come on top of last year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid fiasco. And nearly four in 10 surveyed CBOs (38 percent) report having already experienced significant to severe disruptions related to that FAFSA rollout.

    In Kelchen’s assessment, there’s no guarantee that the federal financial aid system will work as intended this fall—especially for colleges that require additional oversight before receiving funds, given recent mass layoffs at the U.S. Education Department. Congress also last week passed what he described as the largest set of changes to federal higher education policy in decades, via the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, with potential “downstream effects for state budgets due to cuts to federal benefits.”

    Throw in cuts to federal research funding and big changes for international students, and colleges’ budgets “are highly uncertain,” Kelchen said.

    Case in point: Michigan State University president Kevin Guskiewicz recently announced a plan to cut spending, including faculty and staff positions. He blamed expectations that the university will receive “less money from the federal government due to research cuts and restrictions on international enrollments, although the magnitude of those impacts is uncertain.” Also at play: increasing operating costs and state budget concerns.

    In another example of uncertainty in action, Val Smith, president of Swarthmore College, announced in late May that the institution’s Board of Managers had been unable to carry out “one of its primary fiduciary responsibilities: approving the college’s operating budget,” at least as usual. Given the “confluence of uncertainties we currently face,” she said at the time, the board moved forward with an interim operating budget for the first three months of the new fiscal year. It plans to revisit and adopt a full operating budget in the fall, “when we expect to have more clarity.”

    To Kelchen, interim budgets such as Swarthmore’s can make sense if revenues are “highly volatile.” So he said he wouldn’t be surprised if other institutions were quietly making similar moves.

    In an additional expression of uncertainty, most surveyed CBOs describe the impact of the second Trump administration’s policies on their institution’s financial outlook—both current and over the next 12 months—as somewhat or very negative.

    Most CBOs report minimal federal funding cuts under Trump so far. A handful do indicate that their funding has been reduced significantly, by more than 10 percent. An additional 11 percent report that funding has been reduced by 5 to 10 percent. And about as many aren’t sure. But the rest say funding has decreased by less than 5 percent or stayed consistent.

    While the ultimate impact of federal policy changes remains to be seen—and will look different at different institutions—strategist Rebeka Mazzone advised frequent collaboration and communication between CBOs and other cabinet-level leaders, “so that you always know what’s happening on a more real-time basis.”

    Also critical: forecasting, or “having a tool that allows you to constantly update the dollars you have so that you understand the impact.” Mazzone, founder of FuturED Finance, said that this real-time process is underused and very different from typical budgeting, in a which a yearlong spending plan is developed based on a particular moment in time. But the “smaller and the more cash-strapped the institution is, the more important the forecast becomes.”

    Fancy software isn’t necessary, she said, as forecasting can happen on a spreadsheet. What matters is “capturing changes and overlaying them on the budget so that you understand where you’re going to end the year, and that helps you to more proactively manage the outcomes.”

    Another important tool? Five-year projections. “If you have lower enrollment this year, that is going to affect you also for the next three years. If you have a higher discount rate this year, that is going to affect you also for the next three years.” So when institutions “suddenly” close, Mazzone said, “it’s not so sudden. They just weren’t using these tools to really understand how bad things were—and how quickly things were heading in the wrong direction.”

    To Mazzone’s point, while federal policy uncertainty is challenging short-term planning, many institutions now making budget cuts have significant underlying issues.

    What’s Kelchen’s advice for colleges and universities struggling with present uncertainty—including those navigating longer-term financial woes? Prepare multiple budget scenarios “ranging from something close to business as usual to the possibility of losing most federal funding.”

    Institutions will get “some answers on what actual revenues look like as the start of a new academic year draws nearer, but this will take time,” he said. Those in stronger positions can “operate more at business as usual and absorb losses if needed. But if there is underlying weakness, colleges need to budget for the worst right now and hope for something better.”

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  • Avoiding Work Has Always Been Part of College. This Is New.

    Avoiding Work Has Always Been Part of College. This Is New.

    In a recent piece in The New Yorker, “What Happens After AI Destroys College Writing?,” Hua Hsu tells a story that will be familiar to anyone working in higher education: students wrestling—to varying degrees—about when and how to use generative AI tools like ChatGPT in the completion of their schoolwork.

    There is a range of approaches and opinions among students—as there must be, as students are not a monolith—but Hsu centers the piece around “Alex,” an NYU student with a future goal to become a CPA who makes extensive and, to his mind, strategic use of these tools in various aspects of his life, including in writing the emails he exchanged with Hsu to arrange the interview for the piece.

    Alex walks Hsu through his use of Claude to first crunch an article on Robert Wedderburn (a 19th-century Jamaican abolitionist) into a summary, and then, when the summary was longer than he had time to absorb before class, to reduce it to bullet points that he then transcribed into a notebook since his professor didn’t allow computers in class.

    In a more elaborate example, Alex also used it to complete an art history assignment rooted in a visit to a museum exhibition, where he took pictures of the works and wall text and then fed it all into Claude.

    His rationale, as told to Hsu, was “I’m trying to do the least work possible, because this is a class I’m not hella fucking with.”

    At the end of the article, we check in with Alex on his finals. Alex “estimated he’d spent between thirty minutes and an hour composing two papers for his humanities classes,” something that would’ve taken “eight or nine hours” without Claude. Alex told Hsu, “I didn’t retain anything. I couldn’t tell you the thesis for either paper hahhahaha.”

    Hsu then delivers the kicker: “He received an A-minus and a B-plus.”

    I mean this without offense to Hsu, an accomplished writer (New Yorker staff writer and author of the best-selling memoir Stay True) and professor at Bard College, but the piece, for all its specifics and color, felt like very old news—to me, at least.

    The transactional mindset toward education, something I’ve been writing about for years, is on perfect display in Alex’s actions. Generative AI has merely made this more plain, more common and more troubling, since there aren’t even any hoops to jump through in order to fake engagement. Alex is doing nothing (or nearly so) and earning credits from New York University.

    On reflection, though, the story of Alex is even older than I thought, since it was also my story, particularly the line “I’m trying to do the least work possible,” which was very much my experience for significant chunks of my own college experience from 1988 to 1992.

    I earned quite a few credits in my time for, if not doing nothing, certainly learning nothing. Or not learning the subject for which I’d earned the credits, anyway.

    How could I blame a student of today for adopting the attitude that I lived by? With my own students, when I was teaching college, I often made hay from my lackluster undergraduate performance, talking about how I skipped more than 70 percent of my class meetings second semester of freshman year but still received no grade lower than a B.

    In the article, Hsu remarks that “None of the students I spoke with seemed lazy or passive.” The students “worked hard—but part of their effort went to editing out anything in their college experiences that felt extraneous. They were radically resourceful.”

    I, on the other hand, at least when it came to the school part of college, was resolutely lazy and largely passive, except when it came to making sure to avoid courses I was not interested in—essentially anything outside of reading and writing—or that had a mode of assessment not suited to my skills.

    My preferred structure was a lecture or lecture/discussion with in-class essay exams and/or short response papers geared to specific texts. Exams and research papers were to be avoided, because exams required studying and research papers required … research.

    If you let me loose on a reading or a few chapters from a textbook, I had no trouble giving something that resembled a student doing college, even though the end result was very much akin to Alex’s. I didn’t retain anything.

    But hindsight says I learned a lot—or learned enough, anyway, through the classes I was interested in and, perhaps more importantly, the noncurricular experiences of college.

    While there are some similarities between my and Alex’s mindset vis-à-vis college, there is a significant difference. Alex appears to be acting out of an “optimization” mindset, where he focuses his efforts on what is most “relevant,” presumably to his future interests, like employment and monetary earnings.

    I, on the other hand, majored in the “extraneous experiences.” I was pretty dedicated to the lacrosse club, showing up for practice five days a week with games on the weekend, but I also recall a game day following my 21st birthday when I was so hungover (and perhaps still drunk) that you could smell the alcohol oozing from my pores. My shifts in the midfield were half the length of my line mates’.

    (That was the last time I got that drunk.)

    I recall a contest at my fraternity where the challenge was to gain the most weight within an 18-hour period, during which we stuffed ourselves with spaghetti, Italian bread, chocolate pudding and gallons of water until we were sick and bloated. Another time we ground through an entire season of Nintendo Super Tecmo Bowl football over the span of a few days, skipping class if you had a matchup that needed playing. We had a group of regulars who gathered in my room to watch All My Children and General Hospital most weekdays. I am the least successful of that crew by a fair stretch.

    I know that I took courses in economics, geography, Asian studies and Russian history where, like Alex, I retained virtually nothing about the course material even days after the courses, when I crammed for a test or bs’ed my way through a paper to get my B and move on to what I wanted to spend my time on.

    From my perspective as a middle-aged person whose life has been significantly enhanced by all the ways I dodged schoolwork while I was in college, including spending inordinate amounts of time with the woman to whom I have been married for 25 years this August, I would say that missing out on those classes to make room for experiences was the right thing to do.

    (Even though I had no understanding of this at the time.)

    Will Alex look back and feel the same?

    So many questions that need exploring:

    Would Alex be as appalled by my indigence, my failure at optimization, as I am by his ignorance?

    Have we lost our belief that we as humans have agency over this world of technology?

    Is Alex actively deskilling himself, or am I failing to develop the skills necessary for surviving in the world we’ve made for students like Alex?

    I wonder if Alex and I have different definitions of what it is to survive.

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  • George Mason Faces 2 Title VI Investigations

    George Mason Faces 2 Title VI Investigations

    George Mason University in Virginia is under investigation for alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the Department of Education announced Thursday.

    Multiple university professors reportedly filed complaints that the institution “illegally uses race and other immutable characteristics in university policies, including hiring and promotion,” according to the news release. 

    The accusations come less than two weeks after the University of Virginia’s president was pressured to resign by the Department of Justice for similar DEI-related complaints. Thursday’s announcement sparked concerns among some higher education professionals that George Mason president Gregory Washington, who is Black, could face similar pressure. This is the second civil rights investigation that the Education Department has opened at George Mason this month. The other one is focused on allegations that university didn’t sufficiently respond to antisemitic incidents.

    “It looks like the Trump administration is trying to force out George Mason’s president,” Robert Kelchen, an education policy professor at the University of Tennessee, wrote on BlueSky.

    “When people ask why Higher Ed presidents aren’t being publicly vocal—here’s why,” responded Dan Collier, a higher education professor at the University of Memphis.

    Department officials said in the news release that the investigation is justified by the university’s “unlawful DEI policies.” The release cited policies aimed at ensuring a diverse applicant pool and that departments at George Mason embrace antiracism and inclusiveness. The department declared race-based programming and activities illegal in guidance earlier this year, but a federal judge blocked that directive.

    “This kind of pernicious and wide-spread discrimination—packaged as ‘anti-racism’—was allowed to flourish under the Biden Administration, but it will not be tolerated by this one,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor in the release.

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  • Fla. Board of Governors to Vote on Creating New Accreditor

    Fla. Board of Governors to Vote on Creating New Accreditor

    Gov. DeSantis has called the current system an “accreditation cartel.”

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Joe Raedle/Getty Images | ricul/iStock/Getty Images 

    The governing board of the State University System of Florida is set to vote Friday on whether to form a new accrediting agency focused on public universities, known as the Commission for Public Higher Education. While some accreditation experts say the move could be a positive development, they also worry it may lead to undue political influence in the accreditation process.

    If the vote goes as planned, the Florida governing board will create the proposed agency along with five other public university systems: the University System of Georgia, University of North Carolina system, University of South Carolina, University of Tennessee system and the Texas A&M University system.

    “The launching of a new institutional accreditor is a major undertaking, and CPHE’s Founding University Systems have not undertaken it lightly,” reads the business plan for the Commission for Public Higher Education. “Growing dissatisfaction with current practices among the existing institutional accreditors and the desire for a true system of peer review among public institutions have led to this endeavor.” The plan accuses some existing accreditors of “bureaucratic bloat, delays, and increased costs.”

    University of North Carolina system president Peter Hans dropped the news in May that UNC was in talks with other public university systems to launch a new accrediting agency—an idea Inside Higher Ed discovered they’d been discussing for at least a year. The project has taken on distinct political undertones; last month Florida governor Ron DeSantis announced the effort in a speech largely focused on what he calls “woke ideology.”

    “What we’ve seen develop is an accreditation cartel,” he said in his address. “And the accreditors by and large are all singing from the same sheet of music, and it’s not what the state of Florida wants to see reflected in its universities in many different respects.”

    According to the business plan, the new agency “will laser-focus on student outcomes, streamline accreditation standards, focus on emerging educational models, modernize the accreditation process, maximize efficiency without sacrificing quality, and ensure no imposition of divisive ideological content on institutions.”

    How It Would Work

    The Commission for Public Higher Education would be incorporated as a nonprofit organization in Florida, initially funded by a $4 million appropriation from the Florida State Legislature, according to the business plan. Other involved higher ed systems are expected to cough up similar funds. A board of directors representing each of the founding systems would oversee the new accreditor.

    The goal is to accredit six institutions by next summer and secure Department of Education recognition by June 2028, according to the business plan. (A new accreditor typically has two years to prove it is operating in accordance with federal regulations to receive federal approval.)

    In the meantime, higher ed institutions pursuing accreditation from CPHE can retain their current accreditors, the plan notes. Later, when CPHE gains department recognition, they can adopt CPHE as their primary accreditor.

    Accreditation experts say that the time frame is doable but optimistic if the Department of Education maintains the rigor of its current recognition process for new accreditors.

    “The timeline proposed by Florida seems aggressive since in the past, it usually took the [Education Department] more time to approve new accreditors,” Cynthia Jackson Hammond, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, wrote in a statement to Inside Higher Ed.

    But the Trump administration has shown interest in making it easier for new accreditors to form. President Trump signed an executive order in April that spoke of “recognizing new accreditors” among other reforms.

    Mixed Views

    Jackson Hammond said CHEA isn’t against new accreditors, as long as they go through the standard recognition process and show they’re following federal regulations for ensuring institutions’ quality. But she and her colleagues have qualms about the idea of state-sponsored accrediting bodies like the Commission for Public Higher Education.

    “CHEA does not believe that states are likely to be effective accreditors,” she wrote. “Historically, states have not had the staff, experience, or knowledge necessary to create a higher education accreditor. It is critically important that higher education reflects an impartial and unbiased accrediting review process that is focused on student learning outcomes. To date, there has not been a state that has accomplished this.”

    Robert Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, worries the structure of the new accrediting agency may make unbiased evaluations more challenging, given the involvement of state policymakers.

    State university systems are “essentially run by the governors and their appointees,” said Shireman, who was a deputy under secretary at ED during the Obama administration. So “it really detracts from the independence of public institutions from political meddling. This feels like it’s part of an effort for closer political control over colleges and that would just embroil them in culture war issues and sort of the political issue of the day.”

    But he doesn’t rule out the potential positives of having an accreditor focused on public universities. He said such an agency could emphasize college access and affordability in ways that accreditors that oversee private colleges don’t.

    As state higher ed systems, “they’re all government actors,” he said. In an ideal scenario, “they can work together [to say], ‘Let’s be affordable. Let’s make sure students get served.’”

    Jamienne Studley, former president of the WASC Senior College and University Commission, also emphasized that agencies that accredit “like-type” institutions can benefit from their similarities—“as long as the federal oversight of agencies is consistent, the standards are solid and their application is rigorous.”

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  • Senate Rejects Trump’s Cuts to NSF, Other Science Agencies

    Senate Rejects Trump’s Cuts to NSF, Other Science Agencies

    Sen. Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, proposed sending $9 billion to the National Science Foundation.

    Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

    Signs that Congress intends to push back on the Trump administration’s wholesale slashing of federal budgets emerged during a Senate meeting Thursday that kicked off the annual appropriations process.

    Since January, the Trump administration has sought to significantly downsize the federal government via mass layoffs and spending cuts. Additionally, the administration has canceled grants and withheld funding despite laws that require agencies to spend money as directed by Congress.

    However, on Thursday a subcommittee that oversees the budgets for the Justice and Commerce Departments as well as related science agencies proposed only a small cut to the National Science Foundation budget next fiscal year—a far cry from the $5 billion reduction that President Donald Trump wants to see.

    Instead, NSF will get just over $9 billion, a $16 million cut, said Sen. Jerry Moran, the Kansas Republican who chairs the subcommittee. The bill also sends about $10 million more to the National Weather Service and boosts funding for National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

    Although the science funding received bipartisan support, a fight over funding for the new Federal Bureau of Investigations headquarters could tank the legislation. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat and vice chair of the subcommittee, objected to the Trump administration’s decision to move the headquarters to another building in Washington, D.C., rather than moving forward with a plan approved during the Biden administration to build a facility in Maryland. (Congress previously appropriated money for a new headquarters and set the criteria for the site selection.)

    After the Senate appropriations committee approved an amendment on Thursday from Van Hollen related to the headquarters, some Republicans on the committee changed their vote on the legislation and the panel recessed instead of making a final decision on whether to advance it.

    “I think it’s sad that one issue is sinking a bill that was bipartisan,” said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican and chair of the full appropriations committee.

    Still, Van Hollen said earlier in the meeting that there was “a lot of good news” in the legislation.

    “We were able to make smart and targeted investments to help keep our community safe, keep our country safe, to advance U.S. leadership in science and innovation and to support growth and prosperity of the American economy. We were able to protect agencies and programs like NASA science and STEM, [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and] NSF.”

    Higher education groups and research advocacy organizations had warned that slashing NSF’s budget by more than half would be catastrophic and set U.S. research back by decades. The Trump administration sought to end funding for STEM training and NSF’s education programs and significantly reduce the money available for scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships.

    The committee didn’t release any other information about the budget bill such as the text or a summary, so it’s not clear what the line-item budget for NSF looks like. The available details come from what lawmakers said at Thursday’s meeting.

    Van Hollen and Moran said that NASA would get about $24.5 billion to boost space exploration, whereas the administration has requested $18.8 billion.

    The additional $10 million for the National Weather Service would go toward restaffing an agency that’s lost about 17 percent of its head count—or 600 employees—due to buyouts and layoffs. NWS’s parent agency, NOAA, lost about 11 percent of its staff. The Trump administration requested about $91 million more for NWS and to cut NOAA’s budget by about $1.8 billion.

    After the government imposed significant reductions in force across federal agencies, lawmakers wrangled over details in the proposal that ensure NWS has enough personnel to continue functioning. The bill requires the agency to be fully staffed, but it doesn’t specify what that means aside from requiring the agency have enough employees to fulfill its statutorily required mission. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, didn’t think that language was strong enough to protect NWS and wanted to set the minimum staffing levels at the number of employees as of Sept. 30, 2024.

    “My judgment and the judgment of a lot of people who work at the National Weather Service is that ‘to fulfill the statutory mandate’ gives a fair amount of room to assert that the current staffing levels and the current layoff process fulfills the statutory mandate,” he said. “It’s clear to me that this administration has already made the judgment that the National Weather Service has too many human beings.”

    Moran said he and Schatz shared the “same desire,” but he didn’t want to specify a number. Other Republicans pointed out that NWS staff has fluctuated over the years. In fiscal year 2024, the agency had about 4,300 full-time employees, according to budget documents. Republicans voted down Schatz’s amendment.

    Moran noted earlier in the meeting that the language in the budget bill should protect NWS employees from furloughs or future reductions in force and end a hiring freeze.

    “This bill protects key science missions that are fundamental to furthering our understanding of the Earth and better stewards of our natural resources, and supports critical programs, not only to drive discovery, but to safeguard the Earth from natural disasters,” Moran said.

    Congress has until Sept. 30 to pass the 12 appropriations bills that make up the federal budget or else the government could shut down. Democrats and some Republicans also want to use this process to reassert Congress’s authority in spending decisions.

    “The challenges we face and the threats to this very process are greater than ever before with the president and administration intent on ignoring the laws that we write and seizing more power for themselves,” said Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington and vice chair of the appropriations committee.

    “But at the end of the day, I do believe these bills are all a good compromise starting point, delivering critical resources to continue key programs and make targeted new investments—rejecting some of the truly harmful proposed cuts by the president and steering clear of the extreme partisan policies he’s requested.”

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