Tag: News

Congress Eying More Control Over Colleges

American voters want to see an overhaul in higher education and Republicans are taking advantage of it. Over the course of its first 75 days, the 119th Congress introduced more than 30 pieces of legislation concerning higher education—more than half of which came from members of the GOP.

Historically, conservative lawmakers have taken a laissez-faire approach to governing colleges and universities. But at a time when students and families are demanding greater accountability and a solution to the debt crisis, Republicans—who hold majority in both the House and the Senate—are laying the legislative groundwork to increase federal control over colleges.

But while the bills do in some ways levy penalties against institutions, lawmakers are also aiming to advance key Trump agenda items, an Inside Higher Ed analysis tracking proposed legislation shows. For example, they’ve introduced bills to crack down on immigration and foreign influence by threatening student visas and restricting international donations; to hamper flexibility for borrowers by capping student loan amounts; and to suppress “liberal ideologies,” by establishing penalties for pro-Palestinian protests. Republicans are also escalating their ongoing attacks on wealthy colleges with proposals to significantly increase the tax on university endowments.

Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Committee on Education and Workforce, has applauded Trump’s “enormous strides” and reinforced that these efforts will be a priority.

“Under President Trump, common sense is returning to America, and House Republicans are committed to enacting his bold vision for the country,” he said in a statement after the President’s March 4 joint address. “I will work in lockstep with this administration to protect students, workers, and job creators to ensure every American has a chance to thrive.”

Meanwhile, Democrats have rallied in defiance, introducing many bills that promote the exact opposite of what Republicans are trying to achieve. For example, the Republican bill that would ban transgender women from participating in female sports has a direct Democrat counterpart that would prohibit discrimination in athletics based on gender identity.

And all of that doesn’t even take into account the possibility that Republicans could revive parts of the College Cost Reduction Act—a comprehensive piece of legislation introduced last Congress to overhaul higher education. Although the bill itself has yet to be introduced, many of its provisions—such as requiring colleges to pay back a portion of students’ unpaid loans—could be part of the forthcoming reconciliation bill, a top priority for Congressional Republicans this spring that could mean billions in cuts to higher education. (Reconciliation is a budgetary tool which can be used once a year to quickly advance high-priority—and often controversial—pieces of legislation.)

Combined, the proposed legislation and potential for sweeping changes via reconciliation could lead to an unprecedented amount of federal focus on higher ed that college and university advocates say could heavily discourage international enrollment, indirectly increase the cost of attendance and cause a chilling effect on campus free speech.

“Higher education has moved to the forefront of the minds of our policy makers,” said Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education. “It has become a point of contention, especially with the increased oversight over institutions themselves by the current administration.”

But regardless of which party’s behind a bill, Guillory said he’s focused on educating lawmakers on how each piece of legislation could also have unintended consequences for institutions and the students they serve.

“Oftentimes what we see with Republicans and Democrats is they have good intentions behind what they’re trying to do, it’s just the way that they go about doing it,” he said. “When we begin to have more detailed conversations. Then [lawmakers] are like, ‘Oh, well no, we didn’t think about that. We didn’t realize this would happen. So it’s just a matter of us still continuing to do our job in advocating and educating.”

Given the emphasis on higher education in this session of Congress and the stakes for colleges, Inside Higher Ed is tracking higher-ed related bills. The searchable database, available here, currently includes 31 bills introduced since January, and we’ll update it regularly. Below you can find a breakdown of the legislation proposed so far.

Legislating at the federal level is complicated, so below you can find more information about how a bill becomes a law in 2025 as well as more details about the legislation raising concerns for institutions.

How a Bill Becomes Law

Few of the introduced bills will ever become law, based on Congress’s recent track record. And while the process is similar to what Schoolhouse Rock! described in the 1970s, partisan divides over policy have led to much gridlock on Capitol Hill.

An Inside Higher Ed cartoon showing a bill on the steps of Congress.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed
dkfielding/iStock/Getty Images

During the 118th Congress—which ran from 2023 to 2025 with a Republican-controlled House and Democrat-controlled Senate—more than 90 percent of measures introduced died in committee and only about 3 percent became law, according to GovTrack.US. Even during the 115th Congress, the last time the Republicans held a trifecta, 85 percent of bills got stuck in committee and only 8 percent became law.

Many pieces of legislation introduced are considered nothing more than messaging bills by which a party or lawmaker signals their priorities. For example, it’s highly unlikely the Democrats will advance either the Closing the College Hunger Gap Act or the Affordable College Textbook Act, but they demonstrate a focus on meeting students’ most basic needs.

But if the legislation comes from Republicans on the House Committee on Education and Workforce and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, it might be more likely to gain traction.

The chairs of those committees hold a lot of power over whether a bill will move forward. They control the schedule for public hearings and mark up sessions—where a bill is debated, amended and then voted on—so if a bill isn’t a priority for the chairs, it’s dead in the water.

But once again, having support and investment from an education committee member is helpful here. If they can make a case for the bill to receive time on the floor, it will face debate, amendments and a final vote. Bills have to pass both chambers and undergo negotiations to settle legislative differences before they go to the White House to become law. And that doesn’t include potential road bumps like the Senate filibuster.

Long story short, it’s a tedious process that can take months or even years. That’s why having support from Republicans on the education-focused committees—especially committee chairs—is critical to gaining momentum this year.

As Guillory said, “There are other members of Congress that are introducing legislation in the higher education space, but it doesn’t mean that those bills will necessarily have legs and actually be able to move through regular order.”

Bills Higher Ed Is Watching

Much of lawmakers’ attention right now is on reconciliation as they work to cut billions in dollars from the federal budget in order to pay for tax cuts and Trump’s other priorities. But outside of that just a handful of bills have received a hearing and/or a markup session so far. One of the most notable and concerning to higher ed advocates is the DETERRENT Act.

Scheduled for a vote on the House floor next week, this bill would require colleges to submit much more information about the foreign gifts and contracts that they receive. Republicans have claimed for years that colleges aren’t sufficiently complying with Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which requires them to disclose twice a year all foreign gifts and contracts totaling $250,000 or more.

The legislation, which supporters say would discourage foreign influence in higher education, would lower the threshold to $50,000. For gifts and contracts from countries of concern—China, Russia, Iran and North Korea—colleges would have to report gifts and contracts of any amount. Institutions that fail to comply could lose access to federal student aid.

The House passed a nearly identical bill last Congress, but it died in the then-Democrat controlled Senate. House Republicans argued that as tensions with communist countries like China rise, universities have not taken their reporting obligations and vetting processes for international students seriously and in doing so are risking national security by granting foreign governments access to American research.

But institutional advocates say this bill goes well beyond what Section 117 of the Higher Education Act ever intended, making an already time consuming and confusing process more difficult.

Sarah Spreitzer, ACE’s chief of staff for government relations, said that these added steps and the processing workload that will come with it for the shrinking Education Department could lead to major delays in launching countless research collaborations and study abroad programs

In addition to the DETERRENT Act, Guillory said ACE is also paying attention to any measures focused on accountability, affordability and transparency of institutional data, many of which represent threads of last year’s College Cost Reduction Act (CCRA).

For example, the Graduate Opportunity and Affordable Loans Act would put a cap on the amount of loans available to graduate students and terminate their access to PLUS loans. The Endowment Tax Fairness Act would increase the amount of excise tax private institutions pay each year. And the Ensuring Distance Education Act would reverse some components of the Education Department’s 90-10 rule.

“In a lot of ways, CCRA is still alive, even though it has not been reintroduced this Congress,” Guillory said.

Lastly, he noted that many of the bills echo the Trump administration’s focus on more culture war facing topics like campus protests and immigration. The Laken Riley Act, which has already been passed, could impact visa access for international students from countries with a large number of undocumented immigrants. And several bills focused on antisemitism are likely to be discussed in the HELP Committee’s first education-specific hearing, Guillory said.

In general, he noted, a lot of the agenda is left to be determined. “I think it’s a matter of what can we accomplish in reconciliation first? Then, after that, what would we have to move through regular order?”

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March 21, 2025
Pro-Palestinian Journalism Professor Denied Tenure

Steven Thrasher, an assistant journalism professor who tried to block police from breaking up a pro-Palestinian encampment at Northwestern University last spring, announced he was denied tenure and will lose his job in August 2026, the end of the next academic year.

“This has nothing to do with my scholarship or teaching,” Thrasher wrote in a statement he shared on Bluesky. “It is a political hit job over my support for Palestine and for trying to protect our student protesters last year from physical attack, by nonviolently subjecting my own body to assault by the Northwestern Police instead of our students.”

The incident between Thrasher and campus police came up when Northwestern president Michael Schill went before Congress during a hearing on campus antisemitism. In a June 2024 letter, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce accused Schill of not fully answering members’ questions at the hearing, including about Thrasher.

Thrasher was suspended from teaching last summer. According to an email from Medill School of Journalism dean Charles F. Whitaker, which Thrasher’s lawyer provided to Inside Higher Ed, the dean initiated disciplinary proceedings in response to complaints about Thrasher’s social media activity and allegedly sexist comments to students, as well as his failure to disclose major course changes and his comments about journalism standards that were “antithetical to our profession.”

According to Thrasher’s statement, posted Thursday, Whitaker wrote in an explanation of the tenure denial that Thrasher’s teaching was “inadequate with serious concerns reported by some students.” Thrasher said he previously received a “glowing” mid-tenure review in 2023. He also said a university-wide ad hoc faculty committee “exonerated” him after a four-month investigation into issues, including student concerns.

“I read the situation as a Plan B by Northwestern after Dean Whitaker tried (and failed) to exclude me through the disciplinary process,” Thrasher wrote. “I will appeal this decision at Northwestern and have much more to say.”

In a statement to Inside Higher Ed, a university spokesperson wrote, “As policy, Northwestern does not comment on personnel matters. The University takes the tenure process very seriously and has adhered to the rules that govern that process. The University has full confidence in the decision-making process of our Medill faculty and dean.”

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March 21, 2025
Academic Publishers Braced for Slowdown as Trump DEI Purge Bites

Academic presses may face a slump in sales as U.S. university librarians become more cautious about buying books related to gender, politics or race in light of Donald Trump’s attack on “woke” research, publishers have warned.

With the Trump administration seeking to slash what it calls “radical and wasteful” spending on government diversity, equity and inclusion programs, American science agencies have begun cancelling active research projects on transgender populations, gender identity, environmental justice and any studies seen to discriminate on race or ethnicity.

Peer review panels have also been halted to ensure new grants align with “agency priorities,” with researchers urged to steer clear of diversity-linked language.

There are now fears that U.S. university libraries might soon be targeted if they are seen to be buying new titles related to politically sensitive areas.

Nicola Ramsey, director of Edinburgh University Press, told Times Higher Education that the DEI crackdown could significantly impact the global academic publishing industry.

“If librarians are told they cannot purchase content that references topics on gender, race, sexuality or minorities, sales will be negatively affected due to the nature of our publishing,” said Ramsey who noted the U.S. academic library market is “key for most university presses and other academic publishers as it’s so large and [universities] traditionally have had much bigger budgets.”

The “real commitment to bibliodiversity” among U.S. university libraries “especially among the Academic Research Libraries” underscored their importance to publishing, she added.

“Those libraries which had sought to build big collections—with a real commitment to bibliodiversity—might soon have to make difficult decisions on what they can buy,” explained Ramsey.

The Trump administration’s antipathy toward DEI initiatives was also likely to reduce research related to diversity that might lead to academic books on such subjects, she said.

“Most academic publishers have been committed in recent years to diversifying our lists, both in terms of author base and research areas [but] this research has relied heavily on federal grant funding, which is being cut from areas connected to DEI initiatives.”

Some university presses, such as Edinburgh, are still committed to publishing on diverse topics from a range of authors, added Ramsey. “This [crackdown] will not deter our editors from continuing to diversify in our publishing—it’s a fundamental commitment that can’t be swayed by one administration,” she said.

That need to uphold diversity in publishing was echoed by Anthony Cond, president of the Association of University Presses and director of Liverpool University Press.

“Many university presses have long histories of publishing on topics that could be construed as DEI. Recent policy announcements make that work more important, not less,” he said.

“In a challenging higher education sector across several countries, including financial pressure on libraries, the university press focus on values-based publishing will remain an essential component for the bibliodiversity of scholarship.”

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March 21, 2025
USDA Cancels Hundreds of Journal Subscriptions

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has canceled nearly 400 of the National Agricultural Library’s roughly 2,000 journal subscriptions, Science reported this week.

The decision to cancel the subscriptions came at the direction of the Department of Government Efficiency, a new agency led by South African billionaire Elon Musk who donated $288 million to President Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign.

The eliminated journal titles include any of those published by 17 presses, most of which are affiliated with universities or nonprofit scientific societies, including Cambridge University Press; Oxford University Press; the American Phytopathological Society, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which publishes the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

However, the cuts spared journals published by for-profit publishers Elsevier, Springer Nature and Wiley, which collectively accounted for more than half of the library’s journal subscriptions, according to Science’s analysis.

USDA told staff members Friday that though the agency would consider restoring some of the journals, they were only given hours to submit justifications.

“Peer-reviewed publications are literally the cornerstones and building blocks of science, and taking these away from scientists at USDA is like you’re building a house and pull out the foundation: Everything else above becomes more unstable,” said Chris Stelzig, executive director of the Entomological Society of America. “USDA scientists are doing this work to protect the American food supply, and it frustrates me that that’s not being recognized here.”

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March 21, 2025
UC System Freezes Hiring, Bans Diversity Statement Mandates

The University of California System’s president announced a systemwide hiring freeze and other “cost-saving measures, such as delaying maintenance and reducing business travel where possible.”

“Because every UC location is different, these plans will vary,” president Michael V. Drake said in a Wednesday letter to the campuses of one of the country’s largest higher education systems. He said “every action that impacts our University and our workforce will only be taken after serious and deliberative consideration.”

Drake pointed to a “substantial cut” to the system in the California state budget atop the Trump administration’s disruptive national reduction in support for postsecondary education. He said the administration’s executive orders and proposed policies “threaten funding for lifesaving research, patient care and education support.”

“The Chancellors and I are preparing for significant financial challenges ahead,” Drake wrote.

Whenever hiring does resume, UC universities and their components will no longer be able to require that applicants submit diversity statements. Janet Reilly, chair of the UC Board of Regents, said in a separate statement Wednesday that the board directed the system to eliminate such mandates.

“While the University has no systemwide policies requiring the submission of diversity statements as part of employment applications, some programs and departments have used this practice,” Reilly said.

Paulette Granberry Russell, president and chief executive officer of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, told Inside Higher Ed that, “while I think diversity statements added value on the front end of a search,” it’s far more important to have a structured approach to faculty hiring. She said this approach should eliminate biases and consideration of “non–job-related criteria,” such as accents or lack of eye contact, from the process.

Diversity statements, she said, are “not the defining factor in whether or not somebody’s going to be successful” if they earn the position.

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March 21, 2025
Trump Administration Attempts to Deport, Bar Entry to Scholars

Earlier this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and recent Columbia University graduate, and threatened him with deportation. The Trump administration said Khalil, who is of Palestinian descent, was a national security threat and accused him of terrorist activity for leading student protests at Columbia last year.

In a public statement to The Guardian, Khalil described himself as a “political prisoner.”

“The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent,” he said. “Visa holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs.”

That prediction has begun to come true. In the past three weeks, immigration officers have targeted international students they suspected of participating in pro-Palestinian protests, raiding their dorm rooms and revoking their visas. In recent days, the administration’s dragnet has widened to include faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars and researchers.

At least two of those international scholars were employed by U.S. institutions and in the country on valid work or academic visas. An Indian postdoctoral research fellow at Georgetown University was detained outside his home for alleged pro-Palestinian activity that the administration has yet to specify; and a Lebanese professor at Brown University’s medical school was denied reentry after attending the funeral of assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nusrallah.

Another case involves an unidentified French scientist, who, according to a statement from the French Minister of Higher Education and Research, was denied entry into the U.S. because of his “personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy.”

Isaac Kamola, director of the American Association of University Professors’ Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom and an associate political science professor at Trinity College in Connecticut, said the administration’s “completely arbitrary” crackdown on foreign scholars threatens academic freedom and undermines the role of U.S. institutions in global research exchange and scholarship networks.

“I think it’s pretty clear that the administration has decided it’s going to use the force of the state to intimidate faculty and students,” he said. “They’re basically doing a kind of stochastic terrorism.”

The administration is also targeting international doctoral candidates who participated in pro-Palestinian protests last year, revoking their visas and sending ICE agents to apprehend them.

Momodou Taal, a British Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University who made national headlines when he overturned an academic suspension for protest activity that would have forced him to leave the country, received a visit from ICE agents on Wednesday. Just days earlier, Taal filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking to block immigration officials from deporting international students for protesting.

Taal told Inside Higher Ed he’d been expecting a knock on his door since Trump’s inauguration, and that immigration officials were targeting students and scholars for protected pro-Palestinian speech.

“It goes against the ideals that this country espouses, or at least claims to espouse,” Taal said. “I’ve not been convicted of a crime, I’m not being charged with any crime or accused of any crime. So why should I be living in fear over what I decide to say and the causes I support?”

Teresa R. Manning, director of policy at the conservative National Association of Scholars, said, “We see it as more an issue of security and safety than an issue of academics or free speech.”

“The real threat to free speech is the complete leftwing domination of American education,” Manning said. “No conservatives are allowed. That’s the real threat, not our attempt to guard the nation’s security and safety and protect against potential terrorist threats.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment Thursday, nor did a spokesperson for ICE. A spokesperson for the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which oversees and promotes global academic and research exchange, did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

Georgetown Fellow Detained

On Monday night, immigration officials arrested and detained Badar Khan Suri, an Indian postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, outside his home in Rosslyn, Virginia. Suri was in the country on a J-1 visa, a nonimmigrant document meant to promote academic and cultural exchange that is usually reserved for students and scholars; according to his lawyers, Department of Homeland Security agents told him his visa had been revoked.

A peace and conflict studies scholar, he was at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service conducting research for his dissertation on the U.S. peace process in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“If an accomplished scholar who focuses on conflict resolution is whom the government decides is bad for foreign policy, then perhaps the problem is with the government, not the scholar,” Suri’s lawyer Hassan Ahmad wrote in a statement Thursday.

After his arrest, Suri was first brought to a migrant holding cell in Virginia before being transported to Louisiana, where he’s currently awaiting trial in the same detention center as Khalil, according to Suri’s lawyers.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement on X that Suri had been detained for “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,” though she failed to provide any evidence.

Suri’s wife, a U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent and a graduate student at Georgetown, is the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, former adviser to the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, The New York Times confirmed. Yousef, who has called the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks a “terrible error,” told The Times that he left his position a decade ago and that his daughter and son-in-law have no involvement in political activism on behalf of the organization.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Virginia ordered that Suri be kept in the country until a lawsuit brought by his lawyers is resolved, according to The Washington Post.

In a post on BlueSky Thursday, Virginia representative Don Beyer wrote that “the arrests of academics like Suri and Mahmoud Khalil are intended to have a chilling effect and discourage the free expression of political views which Trump dislikes.”

A Georgetown spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that the university was “not aware of [Suri] engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention.”

“Suri is an Indian national who was duly granted a visa to enter the United States to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “We support our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable. We expect the legal system to adjudicate this case fairly.”

Brown Professor Denied Entry

Media outlets have reported that Rasha Alawieh, an assistant professor of medicine and clinician educator at Brown, was flown out of the U.S. last week despite a court order requiring the government to inform a judge ahead of any deportation. The federal government said Alawieh was returning from Lebanon, where she had attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nusrallah. Officials also said she had deleted “sympathetic photos and videos” of Hezbollah leaders from her phone.

Alawieh never made it past Boston’s Logan International Airport. On Monday, a DHS spokesperson posted on X that Nusrallah was “a brutal terrorist” and that Alawieh had “openly admitted” attending his funeral and supporting him.

“A visa is a privilege not a right—glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied,” the spokesperson wrote. “This is commonsense security.”

The White House then reposted DHS’s statement with a photo of President Trump waving goodbye out of a drive-thru window at McDonald’s during a campaign stop.

Kamola, of the AAUP, said claims of Alawieh’s supposed connections to Hezbollah were “spurious.” One of Alawieh’s lawyers didn’t respond to requests for comment Thursday.

Asked whether Brown is defending Alawieh’s academic freedom or disciplining her, Amanda McGregor, a spokesperson for Brown, replied only that “Alawieh is an employee of Brown Medicine with a clinical appointment to Brown University.”

“Such appointments carry a faculty title, though the employment resides with Brown Medicine,” McGregor wrote in an email.

Interrogated for Anti-Trump Texts

Meanwhile, foreign academics traveling to the U.S. are being hassled and turned away by border agents.

Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, told Agence France-Presse that a French scientist from the country’s National Center for Scientific Research was heading to a conference near Houston, Texas, when the scientist was denied entry and expelled. The minister did not reveal the scientist’s name.

“This measure was apparently taken by the American authorities because the researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy,” Baptiste said. “Freedom of opinion, free research and academic freedom are values we will continue to proudly uphold.”

On Wednesday, Baptiste met with counterparts from other European Union nations to discuss “threats to free research in the United States,” according to a post on X.

As the Trump administration escalates its attacks on foreigners in American academe, international students are increasingly apprehensive about studying at U.S. institutions and scholars worry about attending conferences or accepting fellowships in the country. Kamola said the end result may be the destruction of America’s reputation as a bastion of academic freedom.

“I think the message is: Everybody who wants to speak about Palestine, everybody who wants to argue that higher education should be more inclusive or diverse, anybody who wants to defend free speech in ways that the current regime finds unacceptable could potentially face retaliation,” Kamola said. “The intention is to not only sow chaos but to sow fear.”

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March 21, 2025
Ithaka’s New Transfer Explorer Maps Transfer Courses to Degree Requirements
Over two-thirds of adult Americans who have attempted to transfer academic credit report having at least one negative experience, according to a recently released survey from Public Agenda. Student mobility is increasing, as is student access to college-level learning from multiple sources. But as evidenced by the Public Agenda survey and slow progress toward improving outcomes for transfer students, higher education institutions are still struggling to improve the transfer experience.

Part of this continued struggle is the siloed and opaque nature of information about how prior learning will be accepted and applied toward a credential upon transfer to a new institution. With 1.2 million students transferring between institutions in 2024—a 4.4 percent increase from 2023—it is more critical than ever to overcome the barriers students face moving academic credit to and between institutions to earn a degree.

To help address these complex and longstanding challenges, our teams at not-for-profit Ithaka have launched a new, public, national credit mobility website, Transfer Explorer. Currently in its beta release, Transfer Explorer will expand in 2025 to contain data from a growing number of institutions across four states, thanks to collaborations with the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system, the City University of New York, the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education, and the Washington Student Achievement Council.

To break down transfer data silos, Transfer Explorer member schools establish an automated data feed of evaluated course equivalencies, course catalog information and program requirements directly from their institutions’ student information and degree audit systems. This enables Transfer Explorer to create exploration tools with the most accurate and up-to-date information and allows institutions to easily maintain accurate information on the website simply by maintaining data within their existing systems. Data integration from member college source systems is powered by CampusAPI Requisite and Equivalency services from the nonprofit DXtera Institute.

Students can use Transfer Explorer beta to:
- Create a personal wallet of courses they have taken or plan to take at one or more schools
- Explore how courses in that wallet transfer and apply to degree requirements at Transfer Explorer member schools
- Create multiple explorations and research different schools and degrees
- Save and share explorations by creating a personal, unique, and editable hyperlink
- Discover information about Transfer Explorer member schools
Three schools in South Carolina are the first to be featured as destination schools on Transfer Explorer: Aiken Technical College, Coastal Carolina University and Lander University. These represent three different source systems (Colleague, Banner and DegreeWorks), but their data are normalized for a consistent exploration experience in Transfer Explorer.

Lander University was the first institution to launch Transfer Explorer in February 2025.

“At Lander University, we have made major changes over the past five years to make our institution more transfer friendly: We have streamlined our general education curriculum, modified the maximum number of credit hours we will accept and added staff to enhance the transfer student onboarding experience,” said Lloyd Willis, dean of the College of Graduate and Online Studies.

“We view Transfer Explorer as the next step of this evolution. We love the tool’s user interface, the level of data it contains and the functionalities it contains that empower students to engage in course articulation and transfer conversations with their academic advisers.”

Community and technical colleges play a critical role in student mobility both as preparers of students for transfer and careers, as well as receivers of transfer students from all sectors of higher education. Aiken Technical College is planning to use Transfer Explorer in its recruitment and admission activities for new students, as well as to support students planning to transfer to a university.

“Aiken Technical College is excited to be a part of the Transfer Explorer project. The website is very user-friendly for students and advisors and will go a long way in avoiding lost college credits for students upon transfer,” said Chad Crumbaker, vice president of academic affairs and workforce innovation at Aiken Technical College.

Crumbaker is also eager to see how Transfer Explorer can help Aiken improve transfer processes and rules: “It also will help us identify additional opportunities to analyze course equivalencies to ensure that students get credit towards their programs for the courses they have already taken and to confirm that our transfer agreements are in practice in our transfer process.”

Transfer Explorer will continue to expand and grow in 2025 and beyond. Upcoming additions to the site include enabling users to add credit for prior learning experiences (e.g., exams, military training) to their explorations, improving the interoperability of school data by allowing comparisons across destinations and enhancing the user experience in collaboration with member schools and systems.

Transfer Explorer is inspired by and builds upon the groundbreaking CUNY Transfer Explorer (T-Rex) created by the City University of New York and Ithaka S+R in 2020, which has helped hundreds of thousands of people explore, discover and use the over 1.6 million credit transfer rules for the CUNY system’s 20 undergraduate colleges.

Transfer Explorer and the broader Articulation of Credit Transfer Project have been generously funded by Ascendium Education Group, the Gates Foundation, the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation, ECMC Foundation, the Heckscher Foundation for Children, and the Ichigo Foundation.

Chris Buonocore is product manager for Transfer Explorer at Ithaka and founding member of the CUNY Transfer Explorer platform.

Alex Humphreys is vice president for innovation at Ithaka, where he leads a team that scouts and develops the future of research and education through projects, partnerships and investments.

Martin Kurzweil is vice president for educational transformation at Ithaka S+R and principal investigator of the ACT project.

Emily Tichenor is a senior program manager at Ithaka S+R leading initiatives and research focused on credit mobility, including Transfer Explorer.
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March 20, 2025
Philanthropic Giving to Higher Ed on the Rise

Philanthropic giving to higher ed institutions increased 3 percent when adjusted for inflation—for a total of $61.5 billion—between 2023 and 2024, according to a new report from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

Philanthropy from foundations, higher ed’s biggest supporter, increased 13.3 percent over that period, while alumni giving, the second-largest source of support, increased 7.5 percent; giving from nonalumni donors increased 4.7 percent. Giving from corporations, however, dropped 7.3 percent.

Donors’ priorities have also shifted somewhat. Gifts supporting current operations increased 2.3 percent, while those earmarked for capital purposes—like endowments, property, buildings or equipment—grew 11.7 percent.

Nearly half of endowment gifts, 48.3 percent, were designated for student financial aid. Almost 16 percent of endowment gifts went toward faculty and staff compensation, 23 percent funded academic divisions, and 8.8 percent supported research. Smaller shares supported athletics and student life, 2.4 percent and 1.6 percent respectively.

Gifts toward current operations represented 58.2 percent of gifts to higher ed in 2024. Research dominated, receiving 43.6 percent of those funds. A little over 28 percent of those gifts went toward academic divisions, 12.8 percent supported athletics and 12 percent funded student financial aid; 2.2 percent was designated for faculty and staff compensation, and 1.3 percent supported student life.

“Philanthropy remains essential to the success and sustainability of higher education,” Sue Cunningham, president and CEO of CASE, wrote in the report. “The consistent generosity of donors reflects a collective belief in the transformative power of education and its ability to create a more prosperous society.”

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March 20, 2025
Trump Admin Questions Canadian, Australian Researchers

The Trump administration has sent questionnaires to U.S.-funded Canadian and Australian researchers asking whether their research is a “DEI project,” whether it defends against “gender ideology” and whether it reinforces “U.S. sovereignty,” according to organizations in those countries.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers, a federation that says it represents 72,000 employees, provided Inside Higher Ed a copy of one of these surveys. One question asked, “Can you confirm that your organization does not work with entities associated with communist, socialist, or totalitarian parties, or any party that espouses anti-American beliefs?” Another asked, “Does this project reinforce U.S. sovereignty by limiting reliance on international organizations or global governance structures (e.g., UN, WHO)?”

David Robinson, executive director of the Canadian association, said his organization was informed of the questionnaires by U.S. Department of Agriculture–funded researchers who received them. The White House didn’t return Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment Wednesday.

“It’s just unbelievable,” Robinson said. He said the U.S. government is trying to “impose a certain ideological viewpoint on research.”

Robinson also provided a survey that he said Australian researchers received. It contains the same questions and more, including, “What impact does this project have on protecting religious minorities, promoting religious freedom, and combatting Christian prosecution [sic]?”

Both surveys say “OMB”—standing for Office of Management and Budget—at the top. Chennupati Jagadish, president of the Australian Academy of Science, said in a statement Monday that “Australian scientists have been surveyed to disclose their institution’s compatibility with United States (US) foreign and domestic policy.”

“Any reasonable assessment of the survey indicates that US Government funded research in Australia could be terminated because an Australian institution—not the research project—has links with several named countries, or links with the United Nations and its agencies, or impacts the protection and promotion of specific religions,” Jagadish said.

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March 20, 2025
Who Is Katrina Armstrong?

Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong is no stranger to crisis.

During her time in medical school and residency in Baltimore in the early 1990s, Armstrong treated patients with AIDS as the epidemic claimed tens of thousands of lives with no cure in sight.

Then, on Armstrong’s first day as physician in chief and chair of the department of medicine at Harvard University’s Massachusetts General Hospital in 2013, terrorists set off bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring nearly 300 others. Staff at Mass General responded immediately, activating emergency protocols and mobilizing trauma teams and other resources to treat the victims.

But in recent months, Armstrong has navigated a crisis that no medical training could prepare her for, one that threatens the financial health and public standing of Columbia.

She was thrust into the spotlight eight months ago, elevated from CEO of Columbia’s Irving Medical Center to the Ivy League institution’s top job after then-president Minouche Shafik stepped down following a difficult year of protests and congressional scrutiny. Now, months after her ascent, the Trump administration has Columbia squarely in its crosshairs for, it claims, failing to address antisemitism in the wake of the pro-Palestinian protests that roiled the campus last spring and spread nationwide.

Already Trump officials have stripped Columbia of $400 million in federal grants and leveled a series of sweeping and legally dubious demands to overhaul student disciplinary policies, reform admissions and clamp down on an academic department—moves experts have cast as an autocratic attack on higher education. They come even though the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has not yet completed a Title IV investigation into reports of antisemitism on campus.

Columbia law professors and conservative legal scholars have questioned the legality of Trump’s actions. But whether they are lawful or not, Columbia is facing an unprecedented threat to its finances and autonomy with a first-time president at the helm.

Soon enough, the university will find out if she’s up to the challenge.

The Leader

Originally from Alabama, Armstrong earned a bachelor of arts in architecture from Yale University in 1986 and added a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1991. She joined the medical school faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 1996, where she stayed until 2013, when she was hired as a professor at Harvard University and its affiliate, Massachusetts General Hospital.

Over the course of her academic career, Armstrong has churned out more than 300 publications. Her body of work includes research on “cancer risk and prevention in Black and Latino patients; racial inequities in genetic testing and neonatal care; and the impact of segregation, discrimination, and patient distrust on the health of marginalized populations,” according to Columbia Magazine. Many of those topics have drawn scrutiny from the Trump administration in recent months, raising the question of whether such projects would receive federal funding now.

(Columbia did not make Armstrong available for an interview.)

To her supporters, Armstrong is a brilliant researcher with a celebrated career in medicine and academia, someone they describe as charismatic and magnetic with a strong moral compass.

But to her detractors, Armstrong is someone who has capitulated to the Trump administration and failed to defend the institution from politically motivated and possibly unlawful broadsides.

Roy Vagelos is firmly in the supporters’ camp.

Now 95, Vagelos earned a medical degree from Columbia in 1954 and went on to a career in academia and medical science, serving as chief executive officer of the pharmaceutical giant Merck. In August, amid ongoing antiwar protests, Vagelos and his wife, Diana Vagelos (whom he met on campus in 1951), donated $400 million to Columbia’s medical school.

That gift, he told Inside Higher Ed, reflects his confidence in Armstrong, whom he praised for having a nonstop work ethic and developing a clear vision for the medical school.

“Katrina is different from other academic leaders in that she wants to impact society beyond just education,” Vagelos said. “She is a doctor, she wants to cure disease, she wants to improve lives throughout the world by improving health. I had a different kind of career, but our objectives are the same.”

Claire Shipman, vice chair of the Columbia Board of Trustees, complimented Armstrong as an authentic and “exceptional leader” who “came in to help us heal and get our campus in order.” She added that Armstrong is cool under pressure despite the enormity of the current threats.

“Columbia is the epicenter of the political struggle somehow, and she’s getting a crash course in politics,” Shipman said. “Maybe it’s because she’s a doctor, but she’s definitely used to working in crisis conditions, and she just gets into the zone and handles it.”

(Shipman declined to discuss board deliberations on the Trump administration’s demand letter ahead of today’s deadline for a response.)

Columbia students protest on campus, Nov. 14, 2023.

Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty Images

James McKiernan, who holds several roles at Columbia, including interim dean of the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, argued that Armstrong is making the most of a tough situation, balancing legal compliance with a continued commitment to student free speech.

“I think she inherited a situation where the boundaries had not been established, particularly physical boundaries on time, manner, and place for demonstrations,” McKiernan said.

While he noted Armstrong has been criticized for allowing federal agencies, including Immigration and Custom Enforcement, on campus, “she’s doing what is required by the law.”

Colleagues from other phases of Armstrong’s career also spoke effusively about her.

David Asch, a professor and senior vice president for strategic initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania who worked with Armstrong years ago, called her “completely electric in the classroom.” He added that he was unsurprised she ascended to the top job at Columbia.

“She had ‘university president’ written all over her,” Asch said.

Johns Hopkins Medicine International president Charles Wiener, who also worked with Armstrong in the 1990s, said she had a good personal touch with patients and their families and was motivated by a “relentless drive to take care of people.”

Even critics looking for her to take a stronger stand against Trump had positive things to say about Armstrong.

Michael Thaddeus, a math professor and vice president of the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors, described her as the most open and accessible leader he’s seen in his 27 years at the university.

“When I was in her office, I mentioned that AAUP was having a happy hour at a nearby bar that evening,” Thaddeus said. “She and her husband showed up at the happy hour and stayed for 90 minutes. That’s just something inconceivable that any previous president wouldn’t have dreamed of doing.”

Still, he voiced concerns about her leadership, including that the campus remains closed to the public and that she has yet to clearly articulate a response to Trump. Thaddeus noted that the university has been in a “holding pattern” since the “turbulent reign” of Shafik, and that Armstrong has largely focused on calming campus tensions. But now that the federal government has brought the fight to Columbia, he wants to see her step it up.

“She’s in a very difficult position now, and what she’s done in the last seven or eight months is not going to work anymore,” Thaddeus said. “She needs to commit to some course of action.”

Others argue that Armstrong is in fact crumbling in the face of threats from the federal government.

Last week AAUP president Todd Wolfson blasted Columbia in a statement that accused campus leaders of surrendering to authoritarianism and sacrificing students to appease Trump.

“The subjugation of universities to state power is a hallmark of autocracy. Columbia University’s immediate submission and betrayal of the core mission of higher education reflects cowardice and capitulation to a government that seems intent on destroying US higher education,” Wolfson wrote.

The Response

The largest decision of Armstrong’s short tenure as president is looming.

Columbia faces a deadline today to respond to a demand letter from the Trump administration, which called on leadership to make sweeping changes, including expelling or suspending student protesters, overhauling disciplinary procedures, banning masks on campus, and reforming admissions. Arguably the most onerous demand is placing the Middle East, South Asian and African Studies Department into “academic receivership” for a minimum of five years, though Trump officials did not specify what that should entail.

A Wall Street Journal article published Wednesday indicated the university is likely to yield to Trump’s demands. Armstrong’s public statements have offered few clues as to what Columbia will do. But on March 13, Columbia punished student protesters who occupied Hamilton Hall last spring—months after Armstrong apologized for the “hurt” their arrests caused on campus. Sanctions included multiyear suspensions, expulsions and temporary degree revocations. Though the punishments were announced the same day the Trump administration sent the demand letter, Columbia officials said the decisions were the result of lengthy investigations.

In a series of public statements, Armstrong has emphasized the importance of unity and standing up for Columbia’s values, a commitment to free speech, and her guiding principles.

Experts have mixed views of Armstrong’s communiqués.

Lisa Corrigan, a communications professor at the University of Arkansas and an expert on rhetoric and political communication, believes the president is scapegoating protesters and taking a tepid stance.

After analyzing her statements, Corrigan told Inside Higher Ed by email that she thinks Armstrong is “trying to walk the line between the larger national higher ed community and the donors/Trump administration.” Her statements seem to accept “the administration’s rationale for financial sanctions,” Corrigan said, which “only paves the way for further funding and speech assaults at Columbia and elsewhere using the antisemitism canard. Given the speedy exit of her immediate predecessor, Minouche Shafik, after her catastrophic testimony in congressional hearings in April 2024 on antisemitism on Columbia’s campus, Armstrong’s remarks clearly paint her as more amenable to the administration’s increasing control over the future of the institution.”

Former Columbia president Minouche Shafik testifies before Congress in April 2024. She resigned from the post last August.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Larry Ladd, a subject matter specialist at AGB Consulting, emphasized that Armstrong is navigating an unprecedented moment, treading carefully as she tries simultaneously to listen to the concerns of the campus community and to respond to threats from the federal government.

He likened the situation at Columbia to the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and its neighbors.

“The president of Columbia has the same challenge the president of Mexico or the prime minister of Canada has: how to create constructive conversation with the federal government. She is doing the best she can to engage in that conversation, because the government has power to help or harm the university, and she is trying to protect the university and its values,” Ladd said. “She has to be careful to defend its values without causing harm to the university.”

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March 20, 2025