Tag: News

Amazon Doc Probes Student Surveillance Harms – The 74
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It all began when school officials mistook a blurry image of a Mike and Ike candy for pills.

Pennsylvania teenager Blake Robbins found himself at the center of a digital surveillance controversy that gave rise to student privacy debates amid schools’ growing reliance on ed tech.

Spy High, a four-part documentary series streaming now on Amazon Prime, puts the focus on a lawsuit filed in 2010 after Robbins’ affluent Pennsylvania school district accused him of dealing drugs — a conclusion officials reached after they surreptitiously snapped a photo of him at home with the chewy candy in hand.

Blake Robbins, then a high school student in Pennsylvania’s affluent Lower Merion School District, speaks to the press about his 2010 lawsuit alleging covert digital surveillance by educators. (Unrealistic Ideas)

The moment had been captured on the webcam of his school-issued laptop — one of some 66,000 covert student images collected by the district, including one of Robbins asleep in his bed.

I caught up with Spy High Director Jody McVeigh-Schultz to discuss why the 15-year-old case offers cautionary lessons about student surveillance gone awry and how it informs contemporary student privacy debates.

How student surveillance plays out today: Meet the gatekeepers of students’ private lives. | The 74

In the news

Courts block DEI directive: Three federal courts ordered temporary halts on Thursday to Trump’s efforts to cancel student diversity initiatives — and demands for states to pledge allegiance to the administration’s interpretation of civil rights laws. | The 74

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that called for school discipline models “rooted in American values and traditional virtues,” taking aim at Obama- and Biden-era efforts to reduce racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions. | Politico

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks about a new autism study during a news conference on April 16, 2025. (Getty Images)

‘The history there is deeply, deeply disturbed’: Disability-rights advocates have decried plans at the National Institutes of Health to compile Amerians’ private medical records in a “disease registry” to track children and other people with autism. | The 74
- Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., faced criticism for recent comments that many kids “were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they’re 2 years old.” | ABC News
A new lawsuit filed by students at military-run schools accuses the Defense Department of harming their learning opportunities by banning books related to “gender ideology” or “divisive equity ideology,” including texts that refer to slavery and sexual harassment prevention. | Military Times

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California lawmakers are demanding answers after Department of Homeland Security agents visited two Los Angeles elementary schools and asked to speak with five students who the federal agency said “arrived unaccompanied at the border.” | LAist

‘We all deserve reparations’: White House aide Stephen Miller said in an interview last week the country “used to have a functioning public school system” until it was destroyed by “open borders.” | The New Republic

The Justice Department seized thousands of photos and videos in an investigation of a former University of Michigan assistant football coach who was indicted on allegations he hacked into student athletes’ private accounts to steal intimate images. | CBS Sports

A 48-year-old mother was arrested and accused of bringing a gun to her daughter’s Indiana elementary school and threatening the girl’s teacher over a classroom assignment about flags. While discussing flags, the teacher reportedly referred to a rainbow flag in the classroom with the words “be kind.” | NBC News

Banning ‘frontal nudity’: A Texas school district has removed lessons on Virginia history from an online learning platform for elementary school students because the commonwealth’s flag depicts the Roman goddess Virtus with an exposed breast. | Axios

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next month to weigh Trump’s executive order eliminating birthright citizenship, bringing into question a 127-year-old court precedent. | NPR

A class-action lawsuit accuses tech giant Google of amassing “thousands of data points that span a child’s life” without the consent of students or their parents. | Bloomberg Law

A Florida teacher is out of a job after she called a student by their preferred name, allegedly violating a 2023 Florida law that requires schools to receive parental permission to refer to students by anything other than their legal names. | Click Orlando

The vice president of the Buffalo, New York, chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse was arrested and accused of sex crimes against children. | WIVB

ICYMI @The74

Supreme Court Shows Support for Parents Who Want Opt-Outs from LGBTQ Storybooks

‘There Goes My Son’s Help:’ Wave of Washington Head Starts Shut Down as Chaos Engulfs Federal Program

State Officials Sue Trump Administration for Halting COVID School Aid

Protecting Children Online Takes Technology, Human Oversight and Accountability

Emotional Support

Don’t even think about touching Matilda’s cactus.

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April 26, 2025
Higher Ed Wins a SEVIS Battle, Not the Visa War

International students, colleges and advocates caught a break Friday after weeks of confusion and disruptions. After thousands of students had learned their Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVIS) status was revoked, they were relieved to hear that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement was restoring students’ statuses nationwide.

“I was in class when the news broke, and there was a sense of relief,” said Chris. R Glass, a professor at Boston University’s Center for International Higher Education. “But it’s not the kind of relief that things are getting better, just that they’re not getting worse.”

The Trump administration’s reversal was a key win in dozens of lawsuits across the country that argued that eliminating thousands of students’ SEVIS records without notice was unconstitutional. But threats against international students still loom large, experts say. The most pressing question: will this happen again?

In its notice to a federal judge, the administration did not say that it was finished eliminating students’ SEVIS records, just that “ICE will not modify [a] record solely based on the NCIC [National Crime Information Center] finding that resulted in the recent SEVIS record termination,” according to the court filing. And ICE is working a policy framework for terminating SEVIS records.

Reactivating students’ records doesn’t erase questions about the genesis of “this unlawful policy,” said Miriam Feldblum, co-founder, president and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. “We need to understand why it happened and what is the policy structure.”

The Presidents’ Alliance filed a lawsuit Thursday night, challenging the SEVIS record terminations, arguing that students “were stripped of valid status without warning, individualized explanation, and an opportunity to respond,” and that the government’s actions harmed member institutions’ ability to attract, retain and serve international students. The Presidents’ Alliance asks the court to enjoin DHS from future terminations affecting students at member institutions.

“We are gratified to see this change of directions to restore records,” Feldblum said. “That does not erase the need for national, systemic litigation.”

The Trump administration’s decision to reinstate student visas also does not negate the legal grounds for cases to continue, said Elora Mukherjee, Director of the Columbia Law School Immigrant Rights Center. Federal courts have the power to enjoin the executive branch on an issue that’s capable of repetition to stop the harm from occurring in the future, which in this case would be another sweeping removal of students’ legal standings, she added.

The Presidents’ Alliance hopes to learn more about the administration’s intentions, policy structure and plans through its lawsuit, Feldblum said.

Advocates for international students emphasized that while students may have regained legal standing to study and work in the U.S., the change in their status can have greater effects on their immigration status.

The federal government said it would restore terminated SEVIS records, but some students had their visas revoked, said Fanta Aw, CEO and executive director of NAFSA, the association of international educators. Students will have to visit an embassy to receive their visa, facing long wait-times, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to regain it.

For those who didn’t lose their visas, terminations can have serious implications for students’ continuity of time in the U.S., Aw said. The stated reason for SEVIS termination and notation in their records can similarly have negative long-term consequences, Feldblum said.

On campuses, administrators and students are still confused about what comes next, but there’s a clear feeling of relief, Feldblum and Aw said.

As of Friday, Inside Higher Ed identified over 1,840 students and recent graduates from more than 280 colleges and universities who have reported SEVIS record shifts.

Most institutions didn’t receive notification when students’ records changed initially, and they’re not getting notice when they’re reauthorized, Aw said. Just like with revocations, staff are checking SEVIS regularly to see if there’s been a status change.

A few colleges—including Harvard University, Rice University, Stanford University, Tufts University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of California, Berkeley—reported that some of their impacted students have had visas or SEVIS statuses restored. Some students still have terminated records.

The slow restoration is possibly tied to the tedious nature of the work, Aw said, as federal workers have to manually restore each student’s status.

NAFSA is starting to track visa restorations and will report numbers on Monday, Aw said, including the number of restorations and institution type.

The Presidents’ Alliance will be in touch with member institutions to provide updated guidance on how to proceed, Feldblum said.

This reversal doesn’t eliminate the harm the policy caused, experts noted. Students who left the country based on communication from the Trump administration or their own colleges and universities will possibly face challenges returning. Others were told to stop attending class, working or conducting research. With restored SEVIS records, students will be able to resume those activities, but it doesn’t fix everything.

Over the past month, international students have experienced high levels of anxiety and stress and a lack of psychological safety, which can impact their personal well-being and retention in higher education.

“You can’t get that time back, that lack of sleep back, that anxiety back,” Aw said. “Trust is broken for students that this is a system that is fair and consistent and transparent. I don’t have to tell you how hard it is to rebuild that.”

Tonight, at least, some students can get a good night’s sleep, Aw said.

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April 25, 2025
How it Could Impact Schools Nationwide – The 74

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This story was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of The 19th.

“A direct assault on the Texas public education system.”

That’s how social justice groups like the Texas Freedom Network are describing the passage of a bill that would create a $1 billion school voucher program in the state. The Texas House passed Senate Bill 2 early Thursday, with support from Gov. Greg Abbott, who has championed school vouchers. These taxpayer-funded subsidies divert money away from public schools, allowing families to use them to cover their children’s tuition at private or religious schools.

“This is part of a coordinated strategy to dismantle public education statewide and nationally, since Donald Trump literally called Republicans and told them that they had to vote yes on this voucher scheme,” said Emily Witt, spokesperson for the Texas Freedom Network, a grassroots organization of religious and community leaders. “Republicans have done a very coordinated job of framing this as something that it’s not. It’s certainly not ‘choice.’ It’s going to really devastate a lot of public schools and rural communities here in Texas.”

The voucher bill’s passage has been characterized as a win for both Abbott and Trump. Abbott tried unsuccessfully to get voucher legislation passed in 2023. Trump, in January, issued an executive order directing the education secretary to explore ways to route federal funding to states and families interested in school choice initiatives, which give students the option to attend their preferred public, private, charter or religious school. Critics of vouchers, a controversial way to facilitate school choice, worry that they take away valuable resources from public schools. They also argue that private schools may exclude students with disabilities or who are LGBTQ+ or have LGBTQ+ parents. Students from low-income or rural areas may also struggle to access private school, as may those from certain ethnic groups or religious backgrounds. The voucher program does not guarantee students admission to private schools.

The approval of a voucher program in the nation’s second most populous state could create a ripple effect across the United States, where the voucher movement has gained momentum in recent years in places like Arizona, Arkansas, Florida and Wisconsin — often with the help of billionaire backers. The Texas bill next goes to the state Senate, where lawmakers in each chamber are expected to work out the disparities in their voucher plans such as how much money participants should get and which participants should be prioritized.

“It is absurd for Gov. Abbott and his pro-voucher allies to claim that a diversion of $1 billion in tax funds to private schools over the next budget cycle will not hurt our underfunded public schools, where the vast majority of our students will remain,” Ovidia Molina, president of education labor organization the Texas State Teachers Association, said in a statement. “That voucher drain will increase to $3 billion by 2028 and more than $4 billion by 2030 if this voucher bill becomes law, the Legislative Budget Board projects.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sits before President Donald Trump arrives to speak at an education event and executive order signing in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (Ben Curtis/AP Photo)

In Texas, most students attend public schools, with an estimated 6 percent enrolled in private schools. Rural communities overwhelmingly attend public schools because of the dearth of private schools in such areas. Accordingly, voters in the country have typically opposed school vouchers, perceived as vehicles to help families in cities send their kids to private school. Even with the school voucher program, experts do not expect private schools to be inundated with new students from public schools.

“Most kids are still going to have to be served by public schools,” Witt said. “We do know that in other states where vouchers have passed, that most of the kids using those vouchers already were in private schools.”

While vouchers have been promoted as a way to help low-income families choose a quality education for their children, the subsidies often aren’t large enough to cover the tuition and fees associated with a private school education. The school voucher program the Texas House just approved is generous, as it will give families who qualify up to about $10,000 per child. The average K-12 private school tuition in Texas is over $11,000, with tuition for schools that specialize in special education topping $19,000 and elite institutions reaching as high as $40,000. Parents would need to make up the difference for tuition costs that vouchers don’t cover, a move critics of the subsidies say is out of reach for disadvantaged families.

“So it’s still going to benefit mostly wealthy families,” Witt said. “Let’s say that it does cover the cost of tuition. It’s not going to cover extracurriculars. It’s not going to cover transportation. Private schools are not required to offer free transportation to and from school like public schools are, and they also don’t have to accept every child.”

Religious institutions, she said, could turn away students who don’t belong to the faith affiliated with the school. A private school could accept a student with a disability only to discharge them later if the school doesn’t have the resources to educate that child or is no longer interested in doing so.

“They could essentially reject a child that they feel just doesn’t meet the culture of their school,” Witt continued. “That could be because a child comes from a low-income family. It could be because they’re not White. It could be because they’re LGBTQ or their parents are LGBTQ or not married.”

Private schools also don’t have to use standardized tests, like the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR), used in public schools to track student progress. The GOP-run Texas House, she said, rejected an amendment that would have required private schools to use standardized testing to measure student outcomes just as public schools do.

“I don’t know how we’ll see if this program works and how it benefits kids, especially kids with disabilities,” she said.

House Republicans tabled 44 amendments to the legislation, including one that would have led to a referendum on school vouchers in November, effectively blocking voters from deciding the issue.

The bill is an additional blow as public schools slash programs and raise class sizes under a budget crunch, Molina said in her statement.

“Texas already spends more than $5,000 less per student than the national average, ranking Texas 46^th among the states and the District of Columbia,” she said. “The school finance bill also approved by the House will not come close to ending the state’s financial neglect of public education. The House’s $395 increase in the basic allotment, which hasn’t been increased in six years, will provide only a third of what is needed to cover districts’ losses from inflation alone.”

Supporters of the voucher program may not be happy with it a year from now, Witt predicts. In 2022, Arizona passed its universal school voucher program. It covers expenses related to private school tuition, homeschooling and related academic needs, but now the program faces a backlash as the costs associated with it have led to questions about oversight and funding for public schools.

“Republicans have sold people a lie,” Witt said. “They’ve said repeatedly that it won’t harm public schools, and there’s just no way that it won’t. And I do think that’s their goal. I genuinely think that their goal is to eliminate public education, and this is the first step there. A year from now, people are going to see that the neighborhood schools in their communities are shuttering or having to cut resources for students, and they’re going to be really upset. And I think that there’s going to be hell to pay at the ballot box.”

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April 25, 2025
UC Berkeley Faces Foreign Gifts Investigation

The Education Department is investigating the University of California, Berkeley, regarding compliance with a federal law that requires colleges to disclose certain foreign gifts and contracts.

It’s the first such review launched since President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday aimed at increasing transparency over the “foreign influence at American universities.”

A notice of the investigation and corresponding records requests were sent to UC Berkeley on Friday morning after the department found that the university’s disclosures might be incomplete.

“There have been widespread media reports over the last several years of Berkeley’s very substantial—in the hundreds of millions of dollars—receipt of money from foreign governments, in this case, particularly China,” a senior Education Department official said on a press call Friday. But while the development of “important technologies” has been shared with foreign nations, the funding that made it possible “has not been reported to the department, as it’s required by law,” in Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, the official added.

Under Section 117, colleges and universities must report twice a year all grants and contracts with foreign entities that are worth more than $250,000. The department opened a similar review into Harvard last week.

UC Berkeley administrators will have 30 days to respond with the requested records. From there, the Department of Education’s general counsel, in partnership with the Departments of Justice and Treasury, will “verify the degree to which UC Berkeley is or is not compliant.” (Unlike with Harvard, the Department of Education did not disclose the specific records it had requested from Berkeley.)

“The Biden-Harris Administration turned a blind eye to colleges and universities’ legal obligations by deprioritizing oversight and allowing foreign gifts to pour onto American campuses,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a news release. “I have great confidence in my Office of General Counsel to investigate these matters fully.”

Trump and congressional Republicans have been trying to crack down on the enforcement of Section 117 since the first Trump administration. Already this year, House Republicans passed a bill, known as the DETERRENT Act, which would lower the general threshold required for reporting foreign donations from $250,000 to $50,000. Gifts from some countries, like China and Russia, would have to be reported no matter the value. The Senate has yet to move forward with the bill.

When asked how Trump’s executive order differentiates itself from the DETERRENT Act, the department official said the legislation would be “entirely consistent with the EO’s directives” and that the department is “very supportive” of congressional Republicans’ efforts.

“The EO basically just says, enforce the law vigorously, return to enforcement of the law, stop the nonsense and work with other agencies to do it,” the official explained. “So whether the reporting requirement is for $250,000 or more per year or the lower threshold, our approach will be the same.”

Inside Higher Ed asked the department if there would be more investigations but has not yet received a response.

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April 25, 2025
ICE Reverses Course on SEVIS Terminations

Nearly 2,000 students have had their SEVIS records terminated in recent weeks. On Friday, some records began being restored.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | aapsky/iStock/Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Over the past three weeks, several thousand international students received notice that their status in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System was changed, which threatened their legal ability to stay in the country and resulted in some students being detained or self-deporting. But as of late last night, the federal government is reversing course and reinstating students’ SEVIS records.

Elora Mukherjee, director of the Columbia Law School Immigrant Rights Center, first heard Thursday evening that 50 percent of affected students had had their SEVIS records reinstated. At the time, immigration lawyers didn’t know if it would be a blanket reversal.

But Friday morning, a lawyer for the government told a federal judge that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was restoring students’ SEVIS statuses nationwide while ICE develops a policy framework for record terminations. In the meantime, “ICE will not modify the record solely based on the NCIC [National Crime Information Center] finding that resulted in the recent SEVIS record termination,” according to the court filing.

So far, both students who filed lawsuits and those who didn’t have seen records restored, Mukherjee said.

Federal judges across the country have already ordered the government to restore some students’ records in SEVIS, a key database that tracks international students, after those students sued. The judges, for the most part, have expressed skepticism that the terminations were legal. Of the more than 100 lawsuits, judges have granted temporary restraining orders in at least 50 cases, Politico reported.

The sudden terminations have led to widespread confusion and fear for international students. Lawyers said in court filings and interviews that students affected are afraid to leave their homes or have lost out on income because of the terminations, among other consequences.

As of Friday morning, Inside Higher Ed has identified over 1,840 students and recent graduates from more than 280 colleges and universities who have reported SEVIS record shifts. Many institutions didn’t receive clear communication when student records were changed in the first place, making it likely that they won’t receive updates if and when records are restored.

Two colleges have already seen the changes take place. At the University of California, Berkeley, 23 students had their SEVIS statuses changed since April 4, but overnight a dozen students regained their status without warning or explanation, the university’s student paper, The Daily Californian, reported. Stanford University said late on April 24 that one student whose visa was revoked had their record restored.

This reversal doesn’t eliminate harm, Mukherjee noted. A few students elected to self-deport based on communication from the Trump administration or their own colleges and universities. Others were told to stop attending class or working. Among those who did continue their daily lives, a lapse in their SEVIS status could potentially cause them harm in the future, Mukherjee said.

In the policy update shared Friday, government officials provided more clarity about what prompted the sweeping visa revocations: a search in the National Crime Information Center.

Of students who had their SEVIS status changed, many were classified as “OTHER—Individual identified in criminal records check and/or has had their VISA revoked,” according to court filings. Students who did have criminal records were cited for a variety of reasons ranging from driving without a license and overfishing to underage drinking. Some students didn’t have a criminal record at all.

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April 25, 2025
Test yourself on this week’s K-12 news

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How well did you keep up with this week’s developments in K-12 education? To find out, take our five-question quiz below. Then, share your score by tagging us on social media with #K12DivePopQuiz.

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April 25, 2025
We Already Have an Ethics Framework for AI (opinion)
For the third time in my career as an academic librarian, we are facing a digital revolution that is radically and rapidly transforming our information ecosystem. The first was when the internet became broadly available by virtue of browsers. The second was the emergence of Web 2.0 with mobile and social media. The third—and current—results from the increasing ubiquity of AI, especially generative AI.

Once again, I am hearing a combination of fear-based thinking alongside a rhetoric of inevitability and scoldings directed at those critics who are portrayed as “resistant to change” by AI proponents. I wish I were hearing more voices advocating for the benefits of specific uses of AI alongside clearheaded acknowledgment of risks of AI in specific circumstances and an emphasis on risk mitigation. Academics should approach AI as a tool for specific interventions and then assess the ethics of those interventions.

Caution is warranted. The burden of building trust should be on the AI developers and corporations. While Web 2.0 delivered on its promise of a more interactive, collaborative experience on the web that centered user-generated content, the fulfillment of that promise was not without societal costs.

In retrospect, Web 2.0 arguably fails to meet the basic standard of beneficence. It is implicated in the global rise of authoritarianism, in the undermining of truth as a value, in promoting both polarization and extremism, in degrading the quality of our attention and thinking, in a growing and serious mental health crisis, and in the spread of an epidemic of loneliness. The information technology sector has earned our deep skepticism. We should do everything in our power to learn from the mistakes of our past and do what we can to prevent similar outcomes in the future.

We need to develop an ethical framework for assessing uses of new information technology—and specifically AI—that can guide individuals and institutions as they consider employing, promoting and licensing these tools for various functions. There are two main factors about AI that complicate ethical analysis. The first is that an interaction with AI frequently continues past the initial user-AI transaction; information from that transaction can become part of the system’s training set. Secondly, there is often a significant lack of transparency about what the AI model is doing under the surface, making it difficult to assess. We should demand as much transparency as possible from tool providers.

Academia already has an agreed-upon set of ethical principles and processes for assessing potential interventions. The principles in “The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research” govern our approach to research with humans and can fruitfully be applied if we think of potential uses of AI as interventions. These principles not only benefit academia in making assessments about using AI but also provide a framework for technology developers thinking through their design requirements.

The Belmont Report articulates three primary ethical principles:
1. Respect for persons
2. Beneficence
3. Justice
“Respect for persons,” as it’s been translated into U.S. code and practiced by IRBs, has several facets, including autonomy, informed consent and privacy. Autonomy means that individuals should have the power to control their engagement and should not be coerced to engage. Informed consent requires that people should have clear information so that they understand what they are consenting to. Privacy means a person should have control and choice about how their personal information is collected, stored, used and shared.

Following are some questions we might ask to assess whether a particular AI intervention honors autonomy.
- Is it obvious to users that they are interacting with AI? This becomes increasingly important as AI is integrated into other tools.
- Is it obvious when something was generated by AI?
- Can users control how their information is harvested by AI, or is the only option to not use the tool?
- Can users access essential services without engaging with AI? If not, that may be coercive.
- Can users control how information they produce is used by AI? This includes whether their content is used to train AI models.
- Is there a risk of overreliance, especially if there are design elements that encourage psychological dependency? From an educational perspective, is using an AI tool for a particular purpose likely to prevent users from learning foundational skills so that they become dependent on the model?
In relation to informed consent, is the information provided about what the model is doing both sufficient and in a form that a person who is neither a lawyer nor a technology developer can understand? It is imperative that users be given information about what data is going to be collected from which sources and what will happen to that data.

Privacy infringement happens either when someone’s personal data is revealed or used in an unintended way or when information thought private is correctly inferred. When there is sufficient data and computing power, re-identification of research subjects is a danger. Given that “de-identification of data” is one of the most common strategies for risk mitigation in human subjects’ research, and there is an increasing emphasis on publishing data sets for the purposes of research reproducibility, this is an area of ethical concern that demands attention. Privacy emphasizes that individuals should have control over their private information, but how that private information is used should also be assessed in relation to the second major principle—beneficence.

Beneficence is the general principle that says that the benefits should outweigh the risks of harm and that risks should be mitigated as much as possible. Beneficence should be assessed on multiple levels—both the individual and the systemic. The principle of beneficence demands that we pay particularly careful attention to those who are vulnerable because they lack full autonomy, such as minors.

Even when making personal decisions, we need to think about potential systemic harms. For example, some vendors offer tools that allow researchers to share their personal information in order to generate highly personalized search results—increasing research efficiency. As the tool builds a picture of the researcher, it will presumably continue to refine results with the goal of not showing things that it does not believe are useful to the researcher. This may benefit the individual researcher. However, on a systemic level, if such practices become ubiquitous, will the boundaries between various discourses harden? Will researchers doing similar scholarship get shown an increasingly narrow view of the world, focused on research and outlooks that are similar to each other, while researchers in a different discourse are shown a separate view of the world? If so, would this disempower interdisciplinary or radically novel research or exacerbate disciplinary confirmation bias? Can such risks be mitigated? We need to develop a habit of thinking about potential impacts beyond the individual in order to create mitigations.

There are many potential benefits to certain uses of AI. There are real possibilities it can rapidly advance medicine and science—see, for example, the stunning successes of the protein structure database AlphaFold. There are corresponding potentialities for swift advances in technology that can serve the common good, including in our fight against the climate crisis. The potential benefits are transformative, and a good ethical framework should encourage them. The principle of beneficence does not demand that there are no risks, but that we should identify uses where the benefits are significant and that we mitigate the risks, both individual and systemic. Risks can be minimized by improving the tools, such as work to prevent them from hallucinating, propagating toxic or misleading content, or delivering inappropriate advice.

Questions of beneficence also require attention to environmental impacts of generative AI models. Because the models require vast amounts of computing power and, therefore, electricity, using them taxes our collective infrastructure and contributes to pollution. When analyzing a particular use through the ethical lens of beneficence, we should ask whether the proposed use provides enough likely benefit to justify the environmental harm. Use of AI for trivial purposes arguably fails the test for beneficence.

The principle of justice demands that the people and populations who bear the risks should also receive the benefits. With AI, there are significant equity concerns. For example, generative AI may be trained on data that includes our biases, both current and historic. Models must be rigorously tested to see if they create prejudicial or misleading content. Similarly, AI tools should be closely interrogated to ensure that they do not work better for some groups than for others. Inequities impact the calculations of beneficence and, depending on the stakes of the use case, could make the use unethical.

Another consideration in relation to the principle of justice and AI is the issue of fair compensation and attribution. It is important that AI does not undermine creative economies. Additionally, scholars are important content producers, and the academic coin of the realm is citations. Content creators have a right to expect that their work will be used with integrity, will be cited and that they will be remunerated appropriately. As part of autonomy, content creators should also be able to control whether their material is used in a training set, and this should, at least going forward, be part of author negotiations. Similarly, the use of AI tools in research should be cited in the scholarly product; we need to develop standards about what is appropriate to include in methodology sections and citations, and possibly when an AI model should be granted co-authorial status.

The principles outlined above from the Belmont Report are, I believe, sufficiently flexible to allow for further and rapid developments in the field. Academia has a long history of using them as guidance to make ethical assessments. They give us a shared foundation from which we can ethically promote the use of AI to be of benefit to the world while simultaneously avoiding the types of harms that can poison the promise.

Gwendolyn Reece is the director of research, teaching and learning at American University’s library and a former chair of American’s institutional review board.
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April 25, 2025
Majority of AP Tests to Be Delivered Online

Put down your pencils: The Advanced Placement test will take place entirely online.

Starting this May, the College Board will discontinue paper exams for 28 of the 36 AP subjects that offer end-of-year exams, reflecting a growing transition to digital testing.

All the AP exams will be offered via Bluebook, a digital testing application that also hosts the SAT and PSAT.

Students will take the exam completely online or with a mix of online and handwritten responses, depending on the subject matter. Essay-based exams, like AP U.S. History and AP English Language and Composition, will be fully online, while computational tests, like AP Biology and AP Statistics, will be a mix of multiple-choice online and free response on paper. The remaining paper exams are language and music exams, which require audio files.

College Board has offered digital AP exams for select subjects since 2022, after first providing at-home online test taking for students in 2020, when the pandemic caused challenges in administering and collecting students’ tests.

The transition to digital testing hasn’t been smooth for the College Board; thousands of students experienced difficulties completing the English and Chinese tests in 2023.

Cheating has also hurried College Board’s digitization plans, as the organization seeks to improve security after a higher-than-normal share of student scores had to be canceled in 2024 due to alleged academic misconduct.

Changes to the AP exam have raised doubts about the rigor of the tests and scoring methodology. College Board acknowledged an overhaul of its AP scoring system in 2024, which it claims creates a more data-informed approach to scoring, though critics argue it is boosting student scores.

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April 25, 2025
College Offers Free Housing, Meals for Dependents of Students

College students who live on campus are more likely to feel a sense of belonging to their institution and have better educational outcomes, but on-campus housing facilities frequently neglect parenting students, thus limiting their opportunity to be more engaged at their institution.

Additionally, students with dependents are more likely than their nonparenting peers to experience financial hardships and lack access to basic needs, according to a 2021 survey by Trellis Strategies. Three in five student parents had experienced housing insecurity in the previous 12 months, and one in five had very low food security.

A January brief by Generation Hope identified housing as a key area for colleges to expand support for parenting students, since a lack of secure housing can impede students’ degree progress as well as negatively impact the socioemotional development of their dependents.

For decades, Wilson College in Pennsylvania has offered special housing to single parents enrolled at the institution, alleviating financial barriers to on-campus living and providing greater access to educational resources. The Single Parent Scholar Program has helped dozens of single parents persist and opened doors for their children to be exposed to postsecondary education in a unique way.

“It breaks my heart to think people would ever have to choose between your child and your education, so we’re trying to take that awful choice away,” said Katie Kough, dean of students at Wilson College. “You don’t have to make that choice.”

Paving new ground: Wilson College was founded as a women’s college in 1869 and in 1996 first started the Single Parent Scholar Program—then called the Women With Children program—as a way to serve single mothers in the area.

Historical data shows single parents are less likely to enroll and complete a degree, which negatively affects their earning potential over time and can create generational impact on their socioeconomic situation.

A brief by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that only 28 percent of single mothers who entered college between 2003 and 2009 earned a degree or certificate within six years, compared to 40 percent of married mothers and 57 percent of women without children. Single mothers are also more likely to have higher levels of debt and financial insecurity while enrolled, according to the brief.

“I’ve always said [supporting single mothers] was the right thing to do, but it was a brave thing to do,” Kough said, noting that Wilson was one of the first colleges to do so. “There’s obviously been growing pains throughout the years, but since that time, the college has made a commitment to this population in helping them earn their degree.”

How it works: As the name suggest, the Single Parent Scholar Program is open to unmarried students who have a dependent between the ages of 20 months and 10 years old. Wilson College has been coed since 2014, so single fathers are also eligible to participate.

Program participants and their dependents reside in a modified student housing complex; each unit includes two bedrooms and a bathroom, and residents share a common lounge and kitchen space with their peers. The Single Parent Scholars Program can accommodate up to 12 students per year.

The college subsidizes childcare in the local community, though the parent is responsible for providing transportation and shuttling their dependents on and off campus.

Single parent scholars must purchase a meal plan, but their dependents eat for free at on-campus dining facilities. Many opt for the lowest-priced plan to maintain their SNAP eligibility, Kough said.

Parents are also allowed to stay on campus during academic breaks and summer term, which helps provide some stability.

The impact: Program eligibility is dependent on the age of the child, not the parent, so the students range in age from teens straight out of high school to those in their 20s or 30s. To date, all participants have been single mothers, which could be due in part to the type of student who seeks out Wilson, Kough said, or the small number of single fathers who enroll in higher education.

The campus is welcoming to the parents and their dependents, offering various events and activities geared toward families, such as kid-friendly movie screenings and visits to the college farm. Many parents engage in athletics, clubs and other on-campus activities, allowing them to have the full college experience.

“The kids are a blast—they’re a lot of fun and they bring a lot of joy to this campus,” Kough said. Dependents of program participants are given their own cap and gown to walk at graduation, and some children have returned to Wilson as legacies.

Wilson College Single Parent Scholars alumnae say the program helped them achieve their dreams through providing housing and community.

Program alumnae also note the value of living in community with other single parents who are working toward the same goal of earning a bachelor’s degree.

“I’m proud of the women who have come in, perhaps giving up a lot. In some cases, they gave up houses and apartments and jobs with some immediate gratification of a paycheck, just putting all that aside for a dream that was down the road,” Kough said. “It’s hard to put into words but it certainly makes a lot of the struggle and the work absolutely worth it.”

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April 25, 2025
Accreditors Sound Off on Executive Order

President Donald Trump followed through on his campaign trail rhetoric Wednesday, taking aim at accreditors in an executive order that targets diversity, equity and inclusion standards; makes it easier for institutions to switch accrediting agencies; and opens the door for new entrants.

In May 2023, Trump said in a campaign video that accreditors had failed “to ensure that schools are not ripping off students and taxpayers.” He promised to “fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics,” adding that his administration would accept applications for new accreditors to “impose real standards.” Nearly two years later, he revealed his plan to “fire” accreditors in the executive order.

The directive accused accreditors of failing to hold institutions accountable for mediocre graduation rates and for leaving students with “enormous debt.” Trump also charged accreditors with having “unlawfully discriminatory practices” related to DEI standards.

In response, accrediting bodies have suggested that the executive order’s conclusions about their approach to DEI are sweeping and untrue, and argue that new accreditors should be held to the same standards as existing bodies. They also noted their willingness to work with the Trump administration.

Higher education experts and support organizations were much sharper in their critiques, save for some conservative commentators who applauded the accreditation reforms as necessary.

Accreditors Weigh In

The Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions, which represents all major institutional accreditors, pushed back on Trump’s order in a statement Wednesday.

“Accrediting agencies are instrumental to promoting quality assurance and protecting student and taxpayer investments in higher education,” C-RAC president Heather Perfetti, who also leads Middle States Commission on Higher Education, wrote in the statement. “While we firmly reject President Trump’s mischaracterization of accreditors’ role in the nation’s postsecondary education system, we stand ready to work with the Secretary of Education on policies that will advance our shared mission of enhancing quality, innovation, integrity, and accountability.”

In an accompanying fact sheet, C-RAC disputed Trump’s claim that DEI standards conflict with state and federal law and that accreditors had failed to hold institutions accountable, among other allegations.

Other accreditors released their own individual statements.

“Contrary to claims of lax oversight, [the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges] has taken necessary action against institutions that fail to meet ACCJC Standards and has seen continued improvements across the membership in financial stability, completion rates, and compliance with ACCJC Eligibility,” ACCJC president Mac Powell wrote on Wednesday.

While the Higher Learning Commission quoted from the C-RAC letter, officials also emphasized in a Thursday statement that HLC’s standards “require compliance with all applicable laws.”

“HLC’s requirements do not mandate decision making or preferences based on federally protected characteristics; prescribe any specific training or programming involving concepts related to diversity, equity or inclusion; nor require that an institution have elements as part of its curriculum involving concepts related to diversity, equity or inclusion,” agency officials wrote.

The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities also emailed a statement from Interim President Jeff Fox on Thursday in which he emphasized that any changes to accreditation as proposed by the Trump administration must not weaken the core mission of accreditors.

“Accreditation ensures institutions remain accountable to their missions and the students they serve,” Fox wrote in a statement. “NWCCU strongly supports thoughtful reform in higher education that expands access, improves outcomes, and supports all students. At the same time, such reforms must preserve the foundational safeguards of accreditation, which are critical for upholding academic quality, institutional integrity, and the responsible use of public resources.”

The Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission wrote in an emailed statement that it was assessing how the order might affect its standards.

“WSCUC remains committed to assuring educational quality, institutional effectiveness, and the success of every student. Our Standards emphasize academic excellence and institutional integrity in service of student success and meaningful student outcomes. We are working diligently to provide clear guidance on our Standards for all accredited and candidate institutions, maintaining our focus on student success,” WSCUC officials wrote.

(In December WSCUC rejected a proposal to drop DEI language from its standards.)

In Trump’s Crosshairs

The executive order also called out three organizations by name.

The Trump administration specifically took aim at the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, over DEI standards.

Trump accused the ABA accreditor of violating federal law by asking its members to demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion, which includes efforts to recruit a diverse student body in terms of race, gender and ethnicity. (ABA, as noted in the executive order, suspended enforcement of its DEI standards in February.)

Contacted by Inside Higher Ed, ABA declined to comment.

Trump leveled similar criticism at LCME and ACGME, arguing that both maintained an inappropriate focus on diversity and that “standards for training tomorrow’s doctors should focus solely on providing the highest quality care, and certainly not on requiring unlawful discrimination.”

LCME struck a conciliatory tone in an emailed statement.

“In agreement with the Executive Order, the LCME shares the Administration’s goal that medical education programs and their graduates be of the highest caliber. In pursuit of this shared goal, the LCME will work with the Administration to provide requested information and to provide evidence of our ongoing commitment to outcomes-based evaluations of medical education program quality with the goal of producing outstanding physicians,” LCME officials wrote.

An ACGME spokesperson wrote by email that the organization is “currently evaluating the President’s Executive Order and its implications for our accreditation standards.”

A Range of Reactions

Trump’s executive order spurred both positive and sharply negative reactions across the higher education sector.

Andrew Gillen, a research fellow at the conservative Cato Institute, argued that the possible revocation of recognition of “accreditors that require their colleges to discriminate” was “on more solid ground” than “other anti-DEI initiatives from the [Trump] administration.” He also noted that the executive order directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon “to launch an experimental and voluntary quality assurance program,” arguing that “such an experiment could serve as a prototype for a much better accountability system in the future” if properly implemented.

Career Education Colleges and Universities, a trade association for for-profit institutions, celebrated the executive order on accreditation, as well as another that landed the same day in which Trump promised federal investments in workforce development and to expand apprenticeships.

“These long-overdue reforms will expedite America’s leadership in manufacturing and the skilled trades, greatly expanding the pipeline of qualified workers for in-demand jobs,” CECU president and CEO Jason Altmire wrote. “With these actions, President Trump has taken a significant step in providing increased opportunity for students to pursue their goals and life passions, while ensuring educational programs are held accountable for student outcomes.”

Other groups were less sanguine.

Officials at the Institute for College Access and Success blasted the executive order, arguing that it would open the door to accreditation shopping, allow inappropriate political pressures to seep into college classrooms and undermine data collection to improve student outcomes.

“The federal government should not dictate what is taught in college classrooms or prevent universities from collecting data that will help them serve their students better,” TICAS president Sameer Gadkaree wrote. “Without data disaggregating performance by race, ethnicity, or sex, accreditors—along with researchers, evaluators, and policymakers—will lack the information they need to truly assess quality.”

The American Association of University Professors also struck a sharply critical tone, casting the executive order as “yet another attempt to dictate” classroom instruction on college campuses.

“Threats to remove accreditors from their roles are transparent attempts to consolidate more power in the hands of the Trump administration in order to stifle teaching and research. These attacks are aimed at removing educational decision-making from educators and reshaping higher education to fit an authoritarian political agenda,” AAUP officials wrote in a statement.

The AAUP also noted the historic role of accreditors in policing predatory institutions, such as the president’s own Trump University, a for-profit institution that shut down in 2010. In 2017, a federal judge approved a $25 million settlement for 6,000-plus students who alleged they were misled by the then–real estate mogul. Trump did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement.

“Accrediting agencies have protected both students and the government from wasting money on scam institutions—like Trump University—that engage in deceit and grift. Trump’s executive order makes both students and the government more vulnerable to such fraud,” AAUP officials wrote.

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April 25, 2025