Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, abruptly removed Bert Ellis—one of his own appointees—from the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Youngkin confirmed the move in a letter to Ellis posted online.
“While I thank you for your hard work, your conduct on many occasions has violated the Commonwealth’s Code of Conduct for our Boards and Commissions and the Board of Visitors’ Statement of Visitor Responsibilities,” Youngkin wrote.
Youngkin, who appointed Ellis to UVA’s board in June 2022, reportedly disapproved of his combative style. The Post reported that the governor had asked him to step down, but Ellis balked at working with the administration to craft a statement about his resignation. Following that hesitation, Youngkin reportedly took the unusual step of removing Ellis from UVA’s board.
Ellis was serving a four-year term set to end next June.
As a member of UVA’s Board of Visitors, Ellis frequently caused controversy. Among other things, he insulted university staffers and sought to downplay the history of slavery at UVA, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson. Before he was appointed to the board, Ellis, who is a UVA graduate, sparked controversy for removing a poster that read “fuck UVA” from a student’s door on campus. Ellis has also been criticized for his connections to the Jefferson Council, a conservative alumni organization, which he led, that is frequently critical of UVA leadership.
Neither UVA nor Ellis responded to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed.
Entering the workforce can be a daunting experience for recent college graduates. A May 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found 68.9 percent of current students are at least somewhat stressed when they think about and prepare for their life after graduation.
Working in a career that resonates with their interests is also a goal for students: Two-thirds of young people globally say they want their job to be meaningful and make them happier than they were last year. Of respondents’ top three work ambitions, young people in the U.S. identified financial stability (65 percent) and achieving work-life balance (52 percent) as priorities.
To help students engage in career wellness, a group of students from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona—supported by advisers from Cal Poly Pomona—created Tune In to Strive Out, which encourages students to channel their inner potential for future success and collective well-being.
The program, housed at the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions (CCWT) at Madison, includes student resources and facilitator training. The initiative launched in spring 2022 and has supported over 150 students to date.
Survey Says
A survey of young people in the workforce (ages 27 to 35) found about one in four respondents strongly agree their employer has policies or structures in place to support work-life balance.
How it works: The Tune in to Strive Out Career Wellness Program guides students through practices that build their self-efficacy and understanding of their wellness. The goal is to bridge theory and practice in ways that are applicable and flexible to various circumstances students may be in.
The intervention can be offered as a stand-alone program or integrated into existing courses.
Tune in to Strive Out includes five modules, rooted in the radical healing framework, which focus on students’ development of values, career goals, resiliency and senses of hope and community. The program includes a supplemental tool kit of resources for students to explore as well.
“The program addresses unique challenges individuals face by emphasizing the importance of community and cultural strengths in healing and strategies to foster radical hope to persist in the face of barriers,” said Mindi Thompson, executive director of CCWT.
To guide practitioners on delivering the intervention, the center provides a three-hour facilitator training, which costs $30 per person and fulfills continuing education hours for National Career Development Association credentials.
Once training is completed, a facilitator receives access to a portal containing the detailed facilitation manual, a student workbook and presentation slides.
The impact: Seventeen students from three different postsecondary institutions participated in a pilot study, which has since been scaled to involve more than 150 student participants and 90 professionals who completed the facilitator training to deliver the program.
In the future, CCWT hopes to further scale and reach practitioners with the resources so they can better support student success.
Do you have a career-focused intervention that might help others promote student success? Tell us about it.
As the Trump administration escalates its attack on universities, three fascism scholars and vocal Trump critics are leaving Yale University for the University of Toronto. But their given reasons for crossing the border vary.
Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale and author of multiple books—including How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them—said he finally accepted Toronto’s long-standing offer for a position on Friday after seeing Columbia University “completely collapse and give in to an authoritarian regime.”
In a move that has unnerved faculty across the country, Columbia’s administration largely conceded to demands from the Trump administration, which had cut $400 million of the university’s federal grants and contracts for what it said was Columbia’s failure to address campus antisemitism. Among other moves, the Ivy League institution gave campus officers arrest authority and appointed a new senior vice provost to oversee academic programs focused on the Middle East.
“I was genuinely undecided before that,” Stanley said. Now he’s leaving Yale to be the named chair in American studies at Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. According to the university, the intent is for Stanley also to be cross-appointed to the philosophy department. Two popular philosophyblogs previously reported the move.
“What I worry about is that Yale and other Ivy League institutions do not understand what they face,” Stanley said. He loves Yale and expected to spend the rest of his career there, he said; while he still hopes for the opportunity to return some day, he’s nervous Yale “will do what Columbia did.”
Stanley said Toronto’s Munk School “raided Yale” for some of its prominent professors of democracy and authoritarianism to establish a project on defending democracy internationally—an effort that began long before the election.
Also leaving Yale for the Munk School is Timothy Snyder, author of books including The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, and Marci Shore, author of The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution and other works. Snyder and Shore are married.
Stanley said Toronto reached out to him back in April 2023, during the Biden administration, and he restarted conversations after the election. He finally took the job Friday. The university told Inside Higher Ed it had been trying to recruit Snyder and Shore for years, saying, “We’re always looking for the best and brightest.”
Snyder, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale, will become the Munk School’s inaugural Chair in Modern European History, supported by the Temerty Endowment for Ukrainian Studies. A spokesperson for Snyder said he made his decision for personal reasons, and he made it before the election.
In an emailed statement Wednesday, Snyder said, “The opportunity came at a time when my spouse and I had to address some difficult family matters.” He said he had “no grievance with Yale, no desire to leave the U.S. I am very happy with the idea of a move personally but, aside from a strong appreciation of what U of T has to offer, the motivations are largely that—personal.”
But when asked for her reasoning, Shore told Inside Higher Ed in an email that “the personal and political were, as often is the case, intertwined. We might well have made the move in any case, but we didn’t make our final decision until after the November elections,” she wrote.
Shore, a Yale history professor, will become the Munk School Chair in European Intellectual History, supported by the same endowment as her husband.
“I sensed that this time, this second Trump election, would be still much worse than the first—the checks and balances have been dismantled,” she wrote. “I can feel that the country is going into free fall. I fear there’s going to be a civil war. And I don’t want to bring my kids back into that. I also don’t feel confident that Yale or other American universities will manage to protect either their students or their faculty.”
She also said it didn’t escape her that Yale failed to publicly defend Snyder when Vice President JD Vance criticized him on X in January. After Trump nominated Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Snyder—who has repeatedly excoriated the Trump administration in the media—posted that “a Christian Reconstructionist war on Americans led from the Department of Defense is likely to break the United States.”
Vance reposted that with the caption “That this person is a professor at Yale is actually an embarrassment.” Elon Musk, X’s owner, responded in agreement.
‘They Need to Band Together’
Leaving for Canada might sound like a futile move, given that Trump has threatened to annex it.
“That’s why I’m definitely not thinking of it as fleeing fascism; I’m thinking of it as defending Canada,” Stanley said. “Freedom of inquiry does not seem to be under threat in Canada,” he said, and moving there will allow him to be engaged in “an international fight against fascism.”
Nonetheless, he said it’s heartbreaking to leave the Yale philosophy department. He would consider returning to Yale “if there’s evidence that universities are standing up more boldly to the threats,” he said. “They need to band together.”
Yale spokesperson Karen Peart told Inside Higher Ed in an email that Yale “continues to be home to world-class faculty members who are dedicated to excellence in scholarship and teaching.” She added, “Yale is proud of its global faculty community which includes faculty who may no longer work at the institution, or whose contributions to academia may continue at a different home institution. Faculty members make decisions about their careers for a variety of reasons and the university respects all such decisions.”
To be sure, the Yale professors are not the first or only U.S. faculty to accept academic appointments outside the country. European universities, at least, have been trying to recruit American researchers. But before Trump’s re-election, there was a dearth of data on the previously rumored academic exodus from red states to blue, supposedly spurred by conservative policy changes.
Isaac Kamola, director of the American Association of University Professors’ Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, said he’s now had conversations with multiple faculty members who are naturalized citizens “and still think that the administration might be coming after them.”
And while star professors at Ivy League institutions are more likely than other faculty to have the opportunity to leave, Yale law professor Keith Whittington, founding chair of the Academic Freedom Alliance, said he thinks such professors are more likely to take those opportunities now.
“I’ve seen efforts by high-quality academic institutions in other countries to start making the pitch to American academics,” Whittington said. He noted that even faculty at prestigious and well-endowed universities have concerns that their institution and higher ed as a whole are “not as stable as one might once have thought.”
He said the Trump administration has targeted specific universities with “quite serious efforts to threaten those institutions with crippling financial consequences if they don’t adopt policies that the administration would prefer that they adopt.” And such a playbook could easily be repeated “at practically any institution in the country,” he said.
“Global law firms have for years played an outsized role in undermining the judicial process and in the destruction of bedrock American principles.” —Executive Order (3-14-25)
“Law firms refuse to represent Trump opponents in the wake of his attacks” — The Washington Post (3-25-25)
The wolf is at the door.
Those who do not yet realize this may be forgiven for perhaps two reasons: They do not know the wolf is ravenous, and they do not know the door is ajar.
To get but a whiff of this, just read Brad Karp’s March 23 memo to his colleagues at the Paul Weiss firm, from which the title of this edition of FAN gets its title.
Also this, from MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin:
[The attacks on law firms] began with Trump issuing executive actions punishing three firms — Covington & Burling, which did not react; Perkins Coie, which fought back and won a partial temporary restraining order; and Paul Weiss, which ultimately capitulated to a deal announced last Thursday, the terms of which are still a matter of some debate. But the president has now directed Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a memo issued Friday night, to seek sanctions “against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States.”
Now back to the Paul, Weiss controversy.
A little background at the outset to help set the retributive stage: According to Wikipedia, Karp “is a bundler for Democratic Party presidential candidates . . . having raised sums for the presidential campaigns of Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, and others.”
In other words, if Trump was out for political retribution, Karp was a perfect target. And then consider this: One of Karp’s former partners was Mark Pomerantz, author of “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account,” which details the attempt to prosecute former president Donald Trump, written by one of the lawyers who worked on the case and who resigned in protest when Manhattan’s district attorney refused to act.
And now on to the Executive Order from March 14, “Addressing Risks from Paul Weiss.” Excerpts below:
In 2022, Paul Weiss hired unethical attorney Mark Pomerantz, who had previously left Paul Weiss to join the Manhattan District Attorney’s office solely to manufacture a prosecution against me and who, according to his co-workers, unethically led witnesses in ways designed to implicate me. After being unable to convince even Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg that a fraud case was feasible, Pomerantz engaged in a media campaign to gin up support for this unwarranted prosecution.
Additionally, Paul Weiss discriminates against its own employees on the basis of race and other categories prohibited by civil rights laws. Paul Weiss, along with nearly every other large, influential, or industry leading law firm, makes decisions around ‘targets’ based on race and sex.
My Administration is committed to ending such unlawful discrimination perpetrated in the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies and ensuring that Federal benefits support the laws and policies of the United States, including those laws and policies promoting our national security and respecting the democratic process.
Now, the Weiss law firm’s memo in response, from Brad Karp:
Brad Karp
Only several days ago, our firm faced an existential crisis. The executive order could easily have destroyed our firm. It brought the full weight of the government down on our firm, our people, and our clients. In particular, it threatened our clients with the loss of their government contracts, and the loss of access to the government, if they continued to use the firm as their lawyers. And in an obvious effort to target all of you as well as the firm, it raised the specter that the government would not hire our employees.
We were hopeful that the legal industry would rally to our side, even though it had not done so in response to executive orders targeting other firms. We had tried to persuade other firms to come out in public support of Covington and Perkins Coie. And we waited for firms to support us in the wake of the President’s executive order targeting Paul, Weiss. Disappointingly, far from support, we learned that certain other firms were seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities by aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys.
We initially prepared to challenge the executive order in court, and a team of Paul, Weiss attorneys prepared a lawsuit in the finest traditions of the firm. But it became clear that, even if we were successful in initially enjoining the executive order in litigation, it would not solve the fundamental problem, which was that clients perceived our firm as being persona non grata with the Administration. We could prevent the executive order from taking effect, but we couldn’t erase it. Clients had told us that they were not going to be able to stay with us, even though they wanted to. It was very likely that our firm would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the Administration.
Commentary:
President Donald Trump’s crackdown on lawyers is having a chilling effect on his opponents’ ability to defend themselves or challenge his actions in court, according to people who say they are struggling to find legal representation as a result of his challenges.
[Such executive orders and pressured settlements set] an ominous precedent for future presidents to exploit. . . . [H]ow can a lawyer who is considering representing a politically controversial client know that she will not be targeted the next time control of the White House changes hands? The safest course of action will be to avoid representing clients of any political salience, right or left, even if their cause is just.
Related
Constitutional scholars on the Trump Administration’s threats against Columbia University
We write as constitutional scholars — some liberal and some conservative — who seek to defend academic freedom and the First Amendment in the wake of the federal government’s recent treatment of Columbia University.
The First Amendment protects speech many of us find wrongheaded or deeply offensive, including anti-Israel advocacy and even antisemitic advocacy. The government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing such viewpoints. This is especially so for universities, which should be committed to respecting free speech.
At the same time, the First Amendment of course doesn’t protect antisemitic violence, true threats of violence, or certain kinds of speech that may properly be labeled ‘harassment.’ Title VI rightly requires universities to protect their students and other community members from such behavior. But the lines between legally unprotected harassment on the one hand and protected speech on the other are notoriously difficult to draw and are often fact-specific. In part because of that, any sanctions imposed on universities for Title VI violations must follow that statute’s well-established procedural rules, which help make clear what speech is sanctionable and what speech is constitutionally protected.
Yet the administration’s March 7 cancellation of $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University did not adhere to such procedural safeguards. Neither did its March 13 ultimatum stipulating that Columbia make numerous changes to its academic policies — including the demand that, within one week, it “provide a full plan” to place an entire “department under academic receivership for a minimum of five years” — as “a precondition for formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government.”
Signatories
Steven G. Calabresi Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern Law School
Erwin Chemerinsky Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, Berkeley Law School
David Cole Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy, Georgetown University Law Center
Michael C. Dorf Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, Cornell Law School
Richard Epstein Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, NYU School of Law
Owen Fiss Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law, Yale Law School
Aziz Huq Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Pamela Karlan Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law, Stanford Law School
Randall Kennedy Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Genevieve Lakier Professor of Law, Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar, University of Chicago Law School
Michael McConnell Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Michael Paulsen Distinguished University Chair and Professor, St. Thomas Law School
Robert Post Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School
David Rabban Dahr Jamail, Randall Hage Jamail, and Robert Lee Jamail Regents Chair in Law, University of Texas Law School
Geoffrey R. Stone Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Nadine Strossen John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita, New York Law School
Eugene Volokh Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Keith Whittington David Boies Professor of Law, Yale Law School
SCOTUS denies review in case urging that Sullivan be overruled
Wynn v. Associated Press (issue: Whether this Court should overturn Sullivan’s actual-malice standard or, at a minimum, overrule Curtis Publishing Co.’s expansion of it to public figures)
On the Trump administration targeting campuses
The United States is home to the best collection of research universities in the world. Those universities have contributed tremendously to America’s prosperity, health, and security. They are magnets for outstanding talent from throughout the country and around the world. The Trump administration’s recent attack on Columbia University puts all of that at risk, presenting the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s. Every American should be concerned.
Until recently, it was a little-known program to help Black and Latino students pursue business degrees.
But in January, conservative strategist Christopher Rufo flagged the program known as The PhD Project in social media posts that caught the attention of Republican politicians. The program is now at the center of a Trump administration campaign to root out diversity, equity and inclusion programs in higher education.
The U.S. Education Department last week said it was investigating dozens of universities for alleged racial discrimination, citing ties to the nonprofit organization. That followed a warning a month earlier that schools could lose federal money over “race-based preferences” in admissions, scholarships or any aspect of student life.
The investigations left some school leaders startled and confused, wondering what prompted the inquiries. Many scrambled to distance themselves from The PhD Project, which has aimed to help diversify the business world and higher education faculty.
Zoom webinar on strategies to combat attacks on free speech in academia
Thursday, March 27, 2025, 1:00 – 2:00 PM ET
As efforts to silence dissent grow more aggressive, the immediate and long-term threats to our constitutional freedoms — especially in educational institutions — cannot be ignored.
This virtual panel will bring together top legal minds and policy experts to examine how these actions affect student activists, journalists, and marginalized communities. Together, we’ll explore the legal strategies needed to safeguard First Amendment rights and resist the erosion of civil liberties.
Featured Panelists: Maria Kari, Human Rights Attorney Rep. Delia Ramirez (IL-03) Jenna Leventoff, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Stephen F. Rohde, MPAC Special Advisor on Free Speech and the First Amendment Whether you’re a student, educator, advocate, or supporter of civil rights, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
➡️ Register today and join us in defending the values that define our democracy.
Whittington on diversity statements and college hiring
Keith Whittington
The University of California is the godfather of the use of so-called diversity statements in faculty hiring. I have a piece forthcoming at the Nebraska Law Review arguing that such diversity statement requirements for general faculty hiring at state universities violate the First Amendment and violate academic freedom principles everywhere. It seems quite likely that in practice such diversity statement requirements are also used to facilitate illegal racial discrimination in faculty hiring.
The University of California system’s board of regents has now put an end to the use of such diversity statements at those schools. This is a truly remarkable development. Not unreasonably, this decision is being put in the context of the Trump administration’s extraordinary attack on Columbia University, a move that I think is both lawless and itself a threat to academic freedom. But there’s no question that it got the attention of university leaders across the country, and if it encourages some of them to rededicate themselves to their core institutional mission and its central values then at least some good will come of it. So silver linings and all that.
Trump rails against portrait at the Colorado Capitol
Institute for Free Speech files brief in campaign disclosure-fee case
The case is Sullivan v. Texas Ethics Commission. The issue in the case is whether — and if so, under what circumstances — the First Amendment permits the government to require ordinary citizens to register and pay a fee to communicate with their government representatives.
Amicus brief here. Counsel of record: Alan Gura. The Institute’s brief argues that the 1954 precedent of United States v. Harriss no longer reflects modern First Amendment jurisprudence and fails to protect the right to speak anonymously about matters of public policy.
Forthcoming book by Princeton’s president on campus free speech
The president of Princeton, a constitutional scholar, reveals how colleges are getting free speech on campuses right and how they can do better to nurture civil discourse and foster mutual respect
Conversations about higher education teem with accusations that American colleges and universities are betraying free speech, indoctrinating students with left-wing dogma, and censoring civil discussions. But these complaints are badly misguided.
In Terms of Respect, constitutional scholar and Princeton University president Christopher L. Eisgruber argues that colleges and universities are largely getting free speech right. Today’s students engage in vigorous discussions on sensitive topics and embrace both the opportunity to learn and the right to protest. Like past generations, they value free speech, but, like all of us, they sometimes misunderstand what it requires. Ultimately, the polarization and turmoil visible on many campuses reflect an American civic crisis that affects universities along with the rest of society. But colleges, Eisgruber argues, can help to promote civil discussion in this raucous, angry world — and they can show us how to embrace free speech without sacrificing ideals of equality, diversity, and respect.
Urgent and original, Terms of Respect is an ardent defense of our universities, and a hopeful vision for navigating the challenges that free speech provokes for us all.
Forthcoming scholarly article on AI and the First Amendment
This paper challenges the assumption that courts should grant outputs from large generative AI models, such as GPT-4 and Gemini, First Amendment protections. We argue that because these models lack intentionality, their outputs do not constitute speech as understood in the context of established legal precedent, so there can be no speech to protect. Furthermore, if the model outputs are not speech, users cannot claim a First Amendment right to receive the outputs.
We also argue that extending First Amendment rights to AI models would not serve the fundamental purposes of free speech, such as promoting a marketplace of ideas, facilitating self-governance, or fostering self-expression. In fact, granting First Amendment protections to AI models would be detrimental to society because it would hinder the government’s ability to regulate these powerful technologies effectively, potentially leading to the unchecked spread of misinformation and other harms.
2024-2025 SCOTUS term: Free expression and related cases
Cases decided
Villarreal v. Alaniz(Petition granted. Judgment vacated and case remanded for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam))
Murphy v. Schmitt (“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam).”)
TikTok Inc. and ByteDance Ltd v. Garland (The challenged provisions of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.)
Review granted
Pending petitions
Petitions denied
Free speech related
Thompson v. United States (decided: 3-21-25/ 9-0 w special concurrences by Alito and Jackson) (interpretation of 18 U. S. C. §1014 re “false statements”)
This article is part of First Amendment News, an editorially independent publication edited by Ronald K. L. Collins and hosted by FIRE as part of our mission to educate the public about First Amendment issues. The opinions expressed are those of the article’s author(s) and may not reflect the opinions of FIRE or Mr. Collins.
Our scientific enterprise in the United States is the envy of the world. Top scientists from around the globe want to come to work here, specifically because of the environment that we have fostered over decades to support scientific innovation and intellectual freedom. Federal investment in research is one of the primary foundations upon which this extraordinarily successful system has been constructed.
It is not simply the dollar amount of federal funding that makes this system so successful. It is also about how we allocate and distribute the funds. Long before “DEI” was common parlance, we made robust efforts to distribute funds broadly. For example, instead of concentrating funding only in the top research institutions, as many other countries do, we created programs such as EPSCoR (1979) to direct funding to support research and development throughout the entire country, including rural areas. This was done in recognition that excellence in research can be found anywhere that and colleges and universities serving rural and impoverished communities deserve to benefit from and contribute to the economic and scientific engine that the federal government can provide.
The National Science Foundation also implemented Broader Impacts in its grant review process (originating in the 1960s and formalized in 1997). The goal of the NSF review criteria for broader impacts was to ensure that every federally funded project would have some benefit for society. These broader impacts could take a wide variety of forms, including but not limited to new tools and innovations, as well as efforts to grow the STEM workforce by supporting those historically and economically excluded from becoming scientists.
Diversity, equity and inclusion funding is one of the mechanisms that we use to continue this legacy of equity in federal funding of scientific research. This approach has also helped reduce public mistrust of science and scientists—a mistrust attributable to science’s historical abuses—by ensuring that the benefits of scientific progress are shared widely and equitably and by making the work of scientists more transparent and accessible.
Until fairly recently in history, science was primarily an activity for the wealthy. Training as a scientist requires many years of deferred salary, due to the extensive education and practical skill development needed to conduct independent research and start a laboratory. For those who make it through this training, research jobs can be scarce, and the salaries are not high, considering the highly specialized skills required and the high demands of the job. Many of the best and brightest minds have been excluded from the scientific process by this economic reality. Federal funding provides critical support for science workforce development, primarily through stipends and salaries for undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. These stipends ease (but do not erase) the economic burden of training as a scientist.
When you hear “DEI in science,” this is largely what we are talking about. A vast portion of federal DEI funds in the sciences goes directly to support highly talented and accomplished trainees who have deferred their personal economic progress for the opportunity to contribute to science in the U.S. This wise national investment helps to ensure that our science workforce can recruit the most meritorious trainees, regardless of their economic backgrounds. Without these initiatives, our science workforce would be much smaller with a narrower set of perspectives. Our national investment in science training is not altruistic—it is the very reason why the U.S. is a global leader in science and technology. This leadership contributes to our nation’s safety and capacity to deal with the existential problems we now face.
The framework of DEI recognizes that systemic economic and social injustices are present in our society, due to historical and contemporary realities such as slavery, Jim Crow, genocide of Native peoples, redlining, a broken immigration system, educational and health-care disparities, and discriminatory practices in housing and employment against nonwhite, disabled and LGBTQ+ communities. These disparities have resulted in a lack of intergenerational wealth and resources among many communities in the U.S., leading to unequal access to scientific training and careers.
The claim, now made by our federal government, that a meritocracy can be achieved by ignoring these injustices is simply false and illogical. DEI is not only about diversity training and hiring practices. In the sciences, it is essential and existential to the goal of developing the most robust, talented and highly skilled science workforce in the world.
With Executive Order 14151, issued by the Trump administration, this funding is under attack, undoing decades of progress that have fostered some of the most talented and brilliant minds of our time. Rigorous training programs are beingcanceled, graduate students are losing their funding and the training of an entire generation of scientists is being jeopardized. Science will lose an extraordinary amount of talent, necessary for our nation’s industrial and economic leadership, because of this executive order.
Furthermore, this removal of funding is being enacted on the basis of identity, effectively endorsing a form of government-imposed segregation of science. Advancements in science are often determined by the demography of those doing the science, and a diversity of perspectives and research questions is necessary for scientific innovation. For example, sickle cell disease is chronically underfunded and underresearched, despite the severity of the disease, likely because it affects descendants of people from regions with high instances of malaria, including many African Americans. Indeed, some scientific breakthroughs and technologies may never materialize or be greatly delayed due to the exclusion of talented individuals on the basis of their identity. This is a fundamental threat to scientific progress and academic freedom.
The federal banning of DEI programs is a slap in the face to every person who has struggled to become a scientist in the face of systemic injustices. These trainees, past and present, have missed out on economic opportunities, deferred building their families and made many personal sacrifices so that they can create innovative solutions to our nation’s most pressing scientific and technological challenges. The creation of these DEI programs came from the extraordinary efforts of thousands of people, many of whom have overcome injustices themselves, working tirelessly across many decades so that the most meritorious and talented individuals all have an opportunity to succeed as scientists.
Referring to these efforts as “shameful discrimination,” as the Trump administration has now done, is a cruel attempt to destabilize the emotional well-being of everyone who has created and been supported by these essential programs. It is an example of blaming the victims of past and ongoing injustice for their plight in society, rather than working to dismantle the systems that perpetuate inequality and limit access to a fair and just future, where a true meritocracy in science becomes possible.
We believe that the efforts to ban, diminish and misrepresent DEI and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs should be immediately stopped and reversed to avoid the most serious negative impacts of these new policies. Removal of DEI programs will demoralize and disincentivize an entire generation of scientists in training. It will greatly reduce the scientific workforce and remove top talent from our training programs as funding mechanisms are dismantled.
Our graduate students, undergraduates, postdoctoral fellows and other early-career scientists are those most greatly impacted by the removal of this support. This will severely jeopardize the status of the U.S. as a global leader in science, and the catastrophic impacts will be felt for decades. We stand by those most affected by the DEI ban, especially our trainees, and we demand an immediate reinstatement of DEI funding.
We are speaking out using the speech and intellectual freedoms afforded to us by the U.S. academic system and the U.S. Constitution. We are calling on our institutions to stand with us in defense of DEI in science. Institutions and professional societies must reaffirm their own commitments to DEI. Some institutions have already made strong statements of reaffirmation of these values, but others have begun to remove their internal and external DEI initiatives pre-emptively. We understand the need for institutions to protect their employees and students from adverse consequences, but we argue that the consequences of dismantling diversity programs are much greater for our communities, as these steps usher in a new era of segregation in science and academia.
We urge the public, our lawmakers and politicians to stand with us. We believe that DEI is foundational to science and an attack on DEI is an attack on the core of science itself in the United States.
Joseph L. Graves Jr. is the MacKenzie Scott Endowed Professor of Biology and the director of the Genomic Research and Data Science Center for Computation and Cloud Computing at North Carolina A&T State University.
Stacy C. Farina is an associate professor of biology at Howard University.
Parvin Shahrestani is an associate professor of biological science at California State University, Fullerton.
Vaughn S. Cooper is a professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the University of Pittsburgh.
Gilda A. Barabino is president and professor of biomedical and chemical engineering at Olin College of Engineering.
Days after Columbia University yielded to a list of demands from the Trump administration, the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit on behalf of members at Columbia over $400 million in frozen federal research funding.
The lawsuit names multiple government agencies, including the Departments of Justice, Education and Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration.
Columbia had been in a standoff with the Trump administration over the decision to freeze federal research funding due to alleged antisemitism stemming from pro-Palestinian student protests last year. Ultimately, university leaders decided to avoid a legal fight, even as legal scholars at Columbia and in conservative circles questioned whether the demands were lawful.
In a news release Tuesday, the same day they filed the lawsuit, the AAUP and AFT alleged that the Trump administration used “cuts as a cudgel to coerce a private institution to adopt restrictive speech codes and allow government control over teaching and learning.”
The 87-page lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of New York.
The AAUP and AFT have cast Trump’s demands and the freezing of $400 million in grants and contracts as a “coercive tactic” that undermines institutional autonomy and harms scientific research. Plaintiffs are asking the court to order the Trump administration to lift its freeze on Columbia’s research funding and declare the government’s demands for reform unlawful. They have also requested unspecified damages.
“We’re seeing university leadership across the country failing to take any action to counter the Trump administration’s unlawful assault on academic freedom,” Reinhold Martin, president of Columbia-AAUP and a professor of architecture, said in the statement announcing the lawsuit. “As faculty, we don’t have the luxury of inaction. The integrity of civic discourse and the freedoms that form the basis of a democratic society are under attack. We have to stand up.”
The Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.
Last time we checked in with Lee Bradshaw, the founding CEO of Rhodes Advisors, he shared insights into how universities might grow online programs without breaking the bank. As a follow-up, I wanted to pick Lee’s brain about what he is hearing from the higher education leaders he works with on the evolving online program landscape.
Q: As the online program ecosystem has grown and a few large universities have invested heavily in scaling their offerings, do you still see room for colleges and universities to enter the online degree market?
A: Yes, the demand is still there, but the landscape has changed. We’re supporting universities launching new programs that achieve substantial first-term numbers—even in saturated markets. Growth is happening, but expecting 1,000 percent five-year ROIs like a decade ago isn’t realistic. Universities must temper expectations and/or focus on innovative, sustainable wins. That said, as we address in your third question later, I’m unaware of many investments an institution can make that carry a 275 percent ROI over five years.
If institutions want to launch online degrees that start strong and stay strong, here are four things they should prioritize.
Market research that drives big decisions. Legacy OPMs excelled at data-driven market research before launching a program. Universities taking control of their growth need to do the same. Predictive, high-quality market research isn’t cheap or easy, but it’s indispensable. I’m bullish on how AI-facilitated deep research is advancing—within two years, I expect the cost to drop by 90 percent or more. However, the need for sound, evidence-based planning remains the same.
Regionalization for most institutions. The earliest entrants focused on scaling national brands. But for universities growing in-house, regional strategies pay off, too. Think targeted regional marketing, employer partnerships tied to local workforce needs and even weaving apprenticeships or other learn-and-earn models directly into degree pathways. It’s not about being everywhere—it’s about playing to your strengths in your region.
Breaking down silos to build relevant programs. One trend I like and am supporting is cross-campus collaborations leading to hybrid or interdisciplinary graduate programs. Northeastern’s combined majors model is well-known in undergraduate circles. We’re seeing more deans replicate that at the graduate level—joint programs, additional tracks and revenue-sharing agreements between schools. They’re savvy partnerships that pull together institutional strengths rather than competing internally.
Scrutinize your tech stack. When I started the company, I assumed going inside universities would be illuminating. I wasn’t prepared for the delta in capability between OPM and campus technology stacks. Technology should be frictionless to the point that it’s invisible. And you should feel your stack moving from software as a service to results as a service. Before spending hundreds of thousands or millions in digital marketing to grow, I suggest a rigorous evaluation and professionally led tech discovery phase before doing any significant online endeavors. We’ve begun doing assessment and development work on Salesforce, Slate, WordPress, Drupal and more to unlock technological gains for our partners. Candidly, it wasn’t on my 2025 bingo card. But it’s critical work, so we had to add it as a service.
Q: Given the pricing pressures on online degrees, with some well-known universities offering sub-$30,000 online master’s, how might institutions unable to offer lower-cost online degrees compete?
A: Josh, I founded my first business in high school and my second in college—so I always nerd out on the entrepreneurial edges of higher education. And, of course, I’m in favor of lowering the cost of degrees while preserving quality. Some innovative higher education leaders and friends I deeply respect have entered the low-cost arena. They’ve gone to market with the support of MOOC platforms, which point millions of course takers’ eyes to the programs.
And if you’ve spent enough time around John Katzman, you’ve probably heard him say, “Low cost generally means low faculty.” That’s stuck with me. So, if that’s the architecture, we need to ask ourselves where the “low-faculty” model can work before stripping away any components required for quality learning outcomes. For example, I wouldn’t point that strategy at clinical nursing, education or health sciences degrees anytime soon. And frankly, we haven’t seen rigorous, long-term research on these $30,000 degrees yet, outside of self-published enrollment and graduation rates. Before diving in headfirst, I’d argue it’s worth conducting objective studies on the ROI for learners.
To your question about institutions that might not have access to that scale, I’d advise them to call me. My team will sign an NDA and pressure-test their plan as a favor. I won’t tiptoe around this: I predict a MOOC-fed degree correction within a year from now. So, Rhodes Advisors is architecting solutions that leverage a next-gen course platform, AI-guided admissions and fresh tactics to drive lead volume, should that correction happen.
MOOC platforms (and, to an extent, significant B2B relationships) are the only proven route for low-cost degrees to compete at scale in the hand-to-hand combat environment of online degree growth. Why? Fundamentally, platforms reduce your marketing overhead and let you tap into sophisticated conversion practices they’ve been working hard on.
If you’re using a low-cost degree to serve a mission-driven purpose, you don’t need millions of learners from a platform. I’d suggest covering the delta in tuition with a foundation or donor. And I’d focus heavily on messaging and positioning so learners see you’ve struck the right balance between value and price. Rhodes Advisors is often brought in to do that work, too.
Q: Let’s talk numbers. Say a university wants to build a new online master’s degree or certificate program. How much money does developing, launching, recruiting and running that program cost? To set some boundaries, let’s say that the online master’s tuition is about $50,000 and the target enrollment at steady state is 150. Help us understand the economics of the online learning business.
A: I prefer talking numbers and using them to cut through the noise, so I’m glad you went there. We’ve recently run this analysis for several universities evaluating alternative revenue strategies. I’ll extend this answer beyond the basic analysis data and into some significant trends I’m seeing that your readers will find helpful.
But first, any degree analysis requires a few caveats—there are a lot of variables when estimating costs to launch a stand-alone program. But assuming you have a competent tech stack, a skilled team and you’re building something the market favors, you can launch a 30-credit online master’s degree for roughly $900,000 to $1.2 million in the early years before breaking even as enrollment comes in. As your readers know, most of those costs fall into course development, faculty compensation and marketing/enrollment services. Assuming steady demand, the five-year ROI will land around 275 percent, or about $3.7 million. Anyone quoting a smaller up-front investment number is likely at a small private with fully centralized operations—or running programs with a few dozen students, not 150-plus as you asked about. And anyone quoting a significantly larger ROI has been lucky enough to find a niche.
On the certificate side, launching a 12-credit stand-alone certificate typically requires $200,000 to $400,000 up front, with a best-case five-year ROI of around 70 percent or $500,000 total return. But certificates face steeper competition: They’re up against degrees in the digital keyword bids, and the market heavily favors industry certifications (Google, Microsoft, etc.) or programs offered by elite universities in business, tech, or licensure-required fields. So, while master’s degrees demand more up front, long-term economics almost always favor them.
Reducing costs while maintaining growth has never been more critical than it is in 2025. Improving ROI, especially in new ventures, requires scrutinizing every operational lever—especially in learning design, marketing and enrollment management. There are two things I’m seeing play out that have a material impact on efficiency:
Integrating core online and in-person program operations and functions like admissions, recruitment, student services, alumni affairs and career services has become essential. When universities unify these areas, they eliminate redundancies, lower operational costs and deliver a seamless experience for students moving between all modalities. That said, I typically see skill and knowledge gaps surface quickly when tasking a residentially focused function with online program efforts, so we’ll usually dedicate capacity-building and training efforts during a transitional period.
Anywhere AI can streamline effort or lower direct costs should be surfaced immediately and prioritized. For instance, we’ve worked closely with the University of Virginia this year, and they have been able to drive down centralized course production directionally by applying AI tools in specific and strategic ways. Another partner is preparing to launch a master’s degree in our co-pilot DIY model, intentionally designing enrollment operations to be AI-first. Applicants interact with an AI chat bot to handle basic program details before reaching a human adviser. Early signs suggest that approach will cut costs by more than 50 percent—though we’ll let the data speak as it matures.
I hope this check-in was helpful. And I’d love to come back and share more as we continue down an exciting and fulfilling path at Rhodes Advisors!
Accusing the Trump administration of creating a “climate of repression and fear on university campuses,” two faculty groups sued the federal government Tuesday to stop the president’s efforts to deport noncitizen students and faculty who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests.
The Middle East Studies Association and the American Association of University Professors argue in the lawsuit that what they call Trump’s “ideological-deportation policy” violates the First and Fifth Amendments and the Administrative Procedure Act. They are asking a federal judge to rule that the policy is unconstitutional. This is the second lawsuit challenging the policy, though this legal action includes more faculty and students.
The litigation comes after immigration officers have, over the past month, targeted international students and postdoctoral fellows for alleged participation in pro-Palestinian protests, raiding their dorm rooms and revoking their visas.
Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from deporting a Columbia student, who moved to the United States from Korea when she was 7 but is now a legal permanent resident. The New York Timesreported that the government argued Yunseo Chung’s “presence in the United States hinders the administration’s foreign policy goal of stopping the spread of antisemitism.”
But the judge said Tuesday that “nothing in the record” showed that Chung posed a “foreign-policy risk,” according to the Times.
Chung has not yet been detained. She’s just the latest student to come under fire from the administration’s crackdown on those who protested the Israel-Hamas war. That crackdown has included revoking the visas of students and faculty, giving universities names of students to target, and a social media surveillance program, according to the AAUP lawsuit.
The MESA and AAUP lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, specifically cites the cases of Chung; Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University postdoc; and Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate. Judges have also blocked the government from deporting both men.
“While President Trump and other administration officials have described pro-Palestinian campus protests as ‘pro-Hamas,’ they have stretched that label beyond the breaking point to encompass any speech supportive of Palestinian human rights or critical of Israel’s military actions in Gaza,” the suit says. “They have left no doubt that their new policy entails the arrest, detention and deportation of noncitizen students and faculty for constitutionally protected speech and association.”
Attorneys from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia are among the lawyers representing the scholarly groups.
MESA and the AAUP—along with the AAUP chapters at Harvard, New York and Rutgers Universities—filed the suit against the federal government, Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons, plus their agencies.
A DHS spokesperson said in a statement that “taking over buildings, defacing private property, and harassing Jewish students does not constitute free speech.”
“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America,” the spokesperson added. “When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.”
The White House provided a similar statement from a Justice Department spokesperson, who said, “This department makes no apologies for its efforts to defend President Trump’s agenda in court and protect Jewish Americans from vile antisemitism.”
Beyond the immediate implications for students and faculty who face deportation, the policy has a broader chilling effect on campus free speech, the lawsuit argues.
“Out of fear that they might be arrested and deported for lawful expression and association, some noncitizen students and faculty have stopped attending public protests or resigned from campus groups that engage in political advocacy,” the suit says. “Others have declined opportunities to publish commentary and scholarship, stopped contributing to classroom discussions, or deleted past work from online databases and websites. Many now hesitate to address political issues on social media, or even in private texts.”
The lawsuit adds the policy harms the plaintiff associations “because they are no longer able to learn from and engage with noncitizen members to the extent they once did, and because they have had to divert resources from other projects to address the all-too-real possibility that their noncitizen members will be arrested, imprisoned, and deported for exercising rights that the Constitution guarantees.”
College students are known to be strapped for time. A May 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed found the No. 1 stressor in students’ lives is balancing academics with personal, family or financial responsibilities such as work.
Research shows campus involvement is tied to students’ retention, career development and sense of belonging while in college, but helping time-strapped students access these experiences can be a challenge for institutions.
This year, Goucher College in Maryland created a new forum through the office of Community-Based Learning. The short-term micro-experiences allow students to dip their toes into service without committing to a semester or longer. The college first piloted the unpaid opportunities in spring 2024, and student participation in service learning has increased as a result.
The background: The Office of Community-Based Learning offers seven focus areas for community engagement: animal welfare, empowering ability, environmental sustainability, food and housing security, K-12 education and youth development, immigrant and refugee programs, and health and wellness.
Participation could include off-campus Federal Work-Study roles, volunteering with a social justice student club or through a campus organization, taking a Community-Based Learning course, engaging in an internship, or serving as a student director. The office also partners with faculty members to provide experiences in the classroom, such as a semester-long project for a nonprofit partner or a field trip to a partner site.
One of the reasons CBL has previously not offered short-term or one-day service opportunities is because of ethical concerns of how impactful these experiences are for the organizations or individuals being served.
The change is reflective of the needs of today’s students, who are more likely to be working for pay or on a compressed timeline to complete their undergraduate program as quickly as possible, CBL director Lindsay Johnson Walton said.
To ask students to invest in a long-term program that requires three, four or five semesters’ worth of time, “it’s not practical,” she said.
On the other side, nonprofit and community partners can be so desperately in need of support that they hold fewer concerns about the model of service. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the same students as long as it’s engaged students,” Johnson Walton explained.
Offering short-term participation opportunities requires more work from the college to generate the experience and fill out paperwork because it only happens once, but Johnson Walton hopes with future iterations the process will become more streamlined.
How it works: CBL offers around one micro-experience per week, many taking place on a Saturday morning or afternoon. Each experience has a cap of 10 to 12 students.
Students sign up in advance and commit to volunteering for a few hours. College staff handle logistics, including transportation, covering background checks and coordinating with the site, so students just have to show up and serve. Student coordinators, who are part-time staff working for CBL, also contribute to the organization and execution of events.
Some experiences that work well as short-term offerings include volunteering at the food bank or assisting at an animal shelter, while other partners, such as public schools, still operate best with more sustained interactions.
On the trip back, staff lead a short debrief and guided reflection to help students connect their experiences to larger learning objectives and provide additional opportunities to learn or serve, if needed. Students are also sent a short questionnaire that asks them to reflect on their work.
Short-Term Experiential Learning Grows
Community-based learning isn’t the only area where Goucher College has shortened the duration of experiential learning opportunities.
In 2020, Goucher launched micro-internships for students, primarily to address a lack of offerings available to students due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The remote offerings help connect students with alumni and other college partners and give students a project to assist in their career development and growth.
Similarly, the global education office has seen a growth in student interest for three- to five-week study abroad offerings rather than semester-long programs.
Who’s doing it: The micro-experiences have attracted a wide variety of students, some who are curious about service learning and just want to dip their toes in. International students often fall into this category because volunteering can be a uniquely American experience, and the projects give them insight into different organizations and spaces they may not otherwise engage in, such as schools, Johnson Walton said.
Others have a passion for service but are unable to devote much time to it, so micro-experiences provide a flexible opportunity.
Many students had a service requirement while in high school or were told that volunteering is a good feature for their college application, which makes service more of a reflex, Johnson Walton said. “They think they should be doing it, because culturally it’s been built into the list of things you’re supposed to do.”
Each of these students reflects an opportunity to further engage them in longer-term community-based learning in a curricular or co-curricular setting.
Feedback from participants shows that even small or short projects can have an impact on the student. At a volunteer appreciation event, one student wrote they learned how to plant a tree, which is a simple action, but one that can help a lot of people and a skill they can take and use again and again, Johnson Walton said.
Similarly, sorting food at the food bank can seem insignificant, but recognizing how many people that food will feed can help students gain perspective on their service impact.
For organizers of community-based learning experiences, it can be hard to grapple with the potential harm done by short-term community service because of the power dynamics involved, but Johnson Walton has learned that allowing students to get out and do can be a great first start to thoughtful and intentional service.
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Clarivate, the company behind ProQuest, dropped a bombshell in the academic publishing world last month when it announced that it will “phase out one-time perpetual purchases of digital collections, print and digital books for libraries.” Instead, institutions will pivot to subscription-based access models. Clarivate justifies this seismic shift by pointing to the need for regular content updates, particularly as AI-enhanced research tools reshape scholarly publishing.
While perpetual-access options for ebooks won’t vanish entirely—they’ll remain available through certain marketplaces like Clarivate’s Rialto platform—this decision drastically curtails traditional purchasing options. More troubling, it signals an acceleration of a broader industry trend toward subscription-only models, raising profound questions about the future of academic scholarship and underscoring libraries’ critical role in ensuring equitable, continuous access to scholarly resources.
The Critical Difference Between Books and Journals
In recent years, some major commercial publishers like Hachette and Penguin Random House have moved from perpetual access to subscription-based access models for ebooks, a shift that to date has primarily impacted public libraries.
This subscription push mirrors the established practice for scholarly journals but presents unique challenges for academic ebooks. Unlike journals, which primarily deliver new findings, academic books represent enduring intellectual investments. A monograph acquired today often remains essential to scholarship decades later, particularly in humanities disciplines like history, literature, philosophy and sociology, where foundational texts retain their relevance across generations.
Financial and Academic Risks
Given academic books’ distinctive value, subscription-only access threatens to undermine teaching and research continuity. Faculty who design courses around specific texts may suddenly find essential works unavailable due to licensing changes. Researchers engaged in long-term projects risk losing access to crucial resources if subscriptions lapse. Though subscription models initially offer lower up-front costs and greater flexibility, the cumulative expenses can become substantial over time, introducing budgetary uncertainty.
Yet subscription models also offer distinct advantages for certain institutions. Programs with rapidly evolving content, especially in STEM fields requiring frequent updates, may benefit from subscription flexibility. Smaller colleges and institutions experiencing enrollment fluctuations or curricular shifts might find subscriptions economically viable due to lower immediate costs. Subscriptions can help institutions avoid large up-front expenditures, manage predictable annual budgets more effectively and ensure continuous access to current scholarly content.
Understanding these potential financial implications becomes crucial, especially as other industries have navigated similar challenges when transitioning to subscription-based models.
Lessons From Other Industries
Higher education can extract valuable insights from similar transitions in software and media streaming sectors. Traditionally, software represented a one-time transaction granting perpetual access, allowing customers indefinite use after an initial investment. The shift to software as a service (SaaS) fundamentally altered this paradigm, providing continuous access through recurring subscriptions. SaaS models initially attracted organizations due to lower up-front costs and greater flexibility to scale services as needed. However, this transition introduced budgetary uncertainty, as ongoing subscription fees can be unpredictable over time.
The media industry’s experience with subscription models offers another cautionary tale. Platforms like Netflix and Spotify initially captivated consumers with affordable, convenient access to vast content libraries. Yet over time, numerous competing services entered the market, fragmenting content distribution. Consumers found themselves juggling multiple subscriptions to maintain comprehensive access, resulting in “subscription fatigue” and significantly increased total costs. This fragmentation not only impacted household budgets but also created complexity in managing multiple services, ultimately diminishing the convenience these platforms initially promised.
Drawing parallels to higher education, subscription-only models could similarly fragment access to academic resources, forcing institutions to maintain multiple subscriptions for comprehensive collections. Over time, this fragmentation could increase administrative complexity and total costs, complicating resource management. Institutions must therefore approach subscription-only models with caution and deliberation.
Open Access as a Strategic Solution
One proactive strategy for addressing subscription challenges involves embracing open access (OA), a model providing free, unrestricted online access to scholarly research. Unlike traditional commercial models dependent on paywalls, OA enables anyone to read, download and distribute content without cost barriers. This dramatically increases research visibility and democratizes knowledge by making it accessible regardless of institutional affiliation or financial capacity.
Institutions can strategically support OA by investing in university presses, institutional repositories and collaborative publishing platforms. Successful examples include the Directory of Open Access Books, Open Book Publishers and the Open Library of Humanities, which have demonstrated sustainable, rigorous academic publishing methods. Redirecting a portion of subscription budgets to these initiatives can build permanent collections while fostering transformative scholarly communication practices.
However, OA models face their own challenges. Financial sustainability concerns emerge because publication costs often fall on authors or institutions, potentially disadvantaging researchers without institutional backing. Moreover, robust infrastructure, consistent funding and effective policy frameworks remain essential to maintaining quality and longevity of OA content.
Moving Forward: A Call to Action
As academic scholarship navigates these transformative currents, institutional leaders must proactively engage with their libraries, publishers and vendors. Delaying action risks fragmented access, escalating costs and compromised academic integrity.
Leaders should urgently prioritize collaborative actions to:
Develop balanced subscription and perpetual-access models in partnership with publishers and vendors.
Invest strategically in open-access initiatives while acknowledging and addressing their implementation challenges.
Strengthen consortia and partnerships to enhance negotiating power, reduce fragmentation and streamline resource management.
Foster structured communication among faculty, libraries, publishers and vendors to align acquisitions with academic priorities.
The proactive decisions we make today will shape academic scholarship for decades to come, ensuring that vital resources remain accessible, sustainable and equitable for all.
Leo S. Lo is dean and a professor in the College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences at the University of New Mexico and president of the Association of College and Research Libraries.
The author serves as a volunteer member of the Clarivate Academic AI Advisory Council. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Clarivate.
