Tag: News

  • Laken Riley Act passes Senate

    Laken Riley Act passes Senate

    The House is preparing to take up the Laken Riley Act later this week after the Senate passed the bill Monday, Politico reported.

    Twelve Democrats joined all of the higher chamber’s Republicans to vote for the immigration bill, named for a 22-year-old woman killed by an undocumented immigrant in Georgia last year. Immigration policy experts say the bill could have consequences for international students applying to study in the U.S.

    The bill would primarily force harsher detention policies for undocumented immigrants charged with crimes, but it also expands the power of state attorneys general, allowing them to sue the federal government and seek sweeping bans on visas from countries that won’t take back deportees. 

    The Department of Homeland Security has said the bill would require billions of dollars in additional funding to enforce.

    The legislation now goes back to the House, which passed a similar but not identical bill earlier this month. If it passes the House a second time, it would then land on President Donald Trump’s desk, providing an early win on one of his highest-priority issues, immigration.

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  • The rise of multidisciplinary research stimulated by AI

    The rise of multidisciplinary research stimulated by AI

    AI research tools such as OpenAI o1 have now reached test score levels that meet or exceed the scores of those who hold Ph.D. degrees in the sciences and a number of other fields. These generative AI tools utilize large language models that include research and knowledge across many disciplines. Increasingly, they are used for research project ideation and literature searches. The tools are generating interesting insights to researchers that they may not have been exposed to in years gone by.

    The field of academe has long emphasized the single-discipline research study. We offer degrees in single disciplines; faculty members are granted appointments most often in only one department, school or college; and for the most part, our peer-reviewed academic journals are in only one discipline, although sometimes they welcome papers from closely associated or allied fields. Dissertations are most commonly based in a single discipline. Although research grants are more often multidisciplinary and prioritize practical solution-finding, a large number remain focused on one field of study.

    The problem is that as we advance our knowledge and application expertise in one field, we can become unaware of important developments in other fields that directly or indirectly impact the study in our chosen discipline. Innovation is not always a single-purpose, straight-line advance. More often today, innovation comes from the integration of knowledge of disparate fields such as sociology, engineering, ecology and environmental developments, and expanding understanding of quantum physics and quantum computing. Until recently, we have not had an efficient way to identify and integrate knowledge and perspectives from fields that, at first glance, seem unrelated.

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    AI futurist and innovator Thomas Conway of Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology addresses this topic in “Harnessing the Power of Many: A Multi-LLM Approach to Multidisciplinary Integration”:

    “Amidst the urgency of increasingly complex global challenges, the need for integrative approaches that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries has never been more critical. Climate change, global health crises, sustainable development, and other pressing issues demand solutions from diverse knowledge and expertise. However, effectively combining insights from multiple disciplines has long been a significant hurdle in academia and research.

    “The Multi-LLM Iterative Prompting Methodology (MIPM) emerges as a transformative solution to this challenge. MIPM offers a structured yet flexible framework for promoting and enhancing multidisciplinary research, peer review, and education. At its core, MIPM addresses the fundamental issue of effectively combining diverse disciplinary perspectives to lead to genuine synthesis and innovation. Its transformative potential is a beacon of hope in the face of complex global challenges.”

    Even as we integrate AI research tools and techniques, we, ourselves, and our society at large are changing. Many of the common frontier language models powering research tools are multidisciplinary by nature, although some are designed with strengths in specific fields. Their responses to our prompts are multidisciplinary. The response to our iterative follow-up prompts can take us to fields and areas of expertise of which we were not previously aware. The replies are not coming solely from a single discipline expert, book or other resource. They are coming from a massive language model that spans disciplines, languages, cultures and millennia.

    As we integrate these tools, we too will naturally become aware of new and emerging perspectives, research and developments generated by fields that are outside our day-to-day knowledge, training and expertise. This will expand our perspectives beyond the fields of our formal study. As the quality of our AI-based research tools expands, their impact on research cannot be overstated. It will lead us in new directions and broader perspectives, uncovering the potential for new knowledge, informed by multiple disciplines. One recent example is Storm, a brainstorming tool developed by the team at Stanford’s Open Virtual Assistant Lab (OVAL):

    “The core technologies of the STORM&Co-STORM system include support from Bing Search and GPT-4o mini. The STORM component iteratively generates outlines, paragraphs, and articles through multi-angle Q&A between ‘LLM experts’ and ‘LLM hosts.’ Meanwhile, Co-STORM generates interactive dynamic mind maps through dialogues among multiple agents, ensuring that no information needs overlooked by the user. Users only need to input an English topic keyword, and the system can generate a high-quality long text that integrates multi-source information, similar to a Wikipedia article. When experiencing the STORM system, users can freely choose between STORM and Co-STORM modes. Given a topic, STORM can produce a structured high-quality long text within 3 minutes. Additionally, users can click ‘See BrainSTORMing Process’ to view the brainstorming process of different LLM roles. In the ‘Discover’ section, users can refer to articles and chat examples generated by other scholars, and personal articles and chat records can also be found in the sidebar ‘My Library.’”

    More about Storm is available at https://storm.genie.stanford.edu/.

    One of the concerns raised by skeptics at this point in the development of these research tools is the security of prompts and results. Few are aware of the opportunities for air-gapped or closed systems and even the ChatGPT temporary chats. In the case of OpenAI, you can start a temporary chat by tapping the version of ChatGPT you’re using at the top of the GPT app, and selecting temporary chat. I do this commonly in using Ray’s eduAI Advisor. OpenAI says that in the temporary chat mode results “won’t appear in history, use or create memories, or be used to train our models. For safety purposes, we may keep a copy for up to 30 days.” We can anticipate these kinds of protections will be offered by other providers. This may provide adequate security for many applications.

    Further security can be provided by installing a stand-alone instance of the LLM database and software in an air-gapped computer that maintains data completely disconnected from the internet or any other network, ensuring an unparalleled level of protection. Small language models and medium-size models are providing impressive results, approaching and in some cases exceeding frontier model performance while storing all data locally, off-line. For example, last year Microsoft introduced a line of SLM and medium models:

    “Microsoft’s experience shipping copilots and enabling customers to transform their businesses with generative AI using Azure AI has highlighted the growing need for different-size models across the quality-cost curve for different tasks. Small language models, like Phi-3, are especially great for:

    • Resource constrained environments including on-device and offline inference scenarios
    • Latency bound scenarios where fast response times are critical.
    • Cost constrained use cases, particularly those with simpler tasks.”

    In the near term we will find turnkey private search applications that will offer even more impressive results. Work continues on rapidly increasing multidisciplinary responses to research on an ever-increasing number of pressing research topics.

    The ever-evolving AI research tools are now providing us with responses from multiple disciplines. These results will lead us to engage in more multidisciplinary studies that will become a catalyst for change across academia. Will you begin to consider cross-discipline research studies and engage your colleagues from other fields to join you in research projects?

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  • Q&A with retiring National Student Clearinghouse CEO

    Q&A with retiring National Student Clearinghouse CEO

    Ricardo Torres, the CEO of the National Student Clearinghouse, is retiring next month after 17 years at the helm. His last few weeks on the job have not been quiet.

    On Jan. 13, the clearinghouse’s research team announced they had found a significant error in their October enrollment report: Instead of freshman enrollment falling by 5 percent, it actually seemed to have increased; the clearinghouse is releasing its more complete enrollment report tomorrow. In the meantime, researchers, college officials and policymakers are re-evaluating their understanding of how 2024’s marquee events, like the bungled FAFSA rollout, influenced enrollment; some are questioning their reliance on clearinghouse research.

    It’s come as a difficult setback at the end of Torres’s tenure. He established the research center in 2010, two years after becoming CEO, and helped guide it to prominence as one of the most widely used and trusted sources of postsecondary student data.

    The clearinghouse only began releasing the preliminary enrollment report, called the “Stay Informed” report, in 2020 as a kind of “emergency measure” to gauge the pandemic’s impact on enrollment, Torres told Inside Higher Ed. The methodological error in October’s report, which the research team discovered this month, had been present in every iteration since. And a spokesperson for the clearinghouse said that after reviewing the methodology for their “Transfer and Progress” report, which they’ve released every February since 2023, was also affected by the miscounting error; the 2025 report will be corrected, but the last two were skewed.

    Torres said the clearinghouse is exploring discontinuing the “Stay Informed” report entirely.

    Such a consequential snafu would put a damper on anyone’s retirement and threaten to tarnish their legacy. But Torres is used to a little turbulence: He oversaw the clearinghouse through a crucial period of transformation, from an arm of the student lending sector to a research powerhouse. He said the pressure on higher ed researchers is only going to get more intense in the years ahead, given the surging demand for enrollment and outcomes data from anxious college leaders and ambitious lawmakers. Transparency and integrity, he cautioned, will be paramount.

    His conversation with Inside Higher Ed, edited for length and clarity, is below.

    Q: You’ve led the clearinghouse since 2008, when higher ed was a very different sector. How does it feel to be leaving?

    A: It’s a bit bittersweet, but I feel like we’ve accomplished something during my tenure that can be built upon. I came into the job not really knowing about higher ed; it was a small company, a $13 million operation serving the student lending industry. We were designed to support their fundamental need to understand who’s enrolled and who isn’t, for the purposes of monitoring student loans. As a matter of fact, the original name of the organization was the National Student Loan Clearinghouse. When you think about what happened when things began to evolve and opportunities began to present themselves, we’ve done a lot.

    Q: Tell me more about how the organization has changed since the days of the Student Loan Clearinghouse.

    A: Frankly, the role and purpose of the clearinghouse and its main activities have not changed in about 15 years. The need was to have a trusted, centralized location where schools could send their information that then could be used to validate loan status based on enrollments. The process, prior to the clearinghouse, was loaded with paperwork. The registrars that are out there now get this almost PTSD effect when they go back in time before the clearinghouse. If a student was enrolled in School A, transferred to School B and had a loan, by the time everybody figured out that you were enrolled someplace else, you were in default on your loan. We were set up to fix that problem.

    What made our database unique at that time was that when a school sent us enrollment data, they had to send all of the learners because they actually didn’t know who had a previous loan and who didn’t. That allowed us to build a holistic, comprehensive view of the whole lending environment. So we began experimenting with what else we could do with the data.

    Our first observation was how great a need there was for this data. Policy formulation at almost every level—federal, state, regional—for improving learner outcomes lacked the real-time data to figure out what was going on. Still, democratizing the data alone was insufficient because you need to convert that insight into action of some kind that is meaningful. What I found as I was meeting schools and individuals was that the ability and the skill sets required to convert data to action were mostly available in the wealthiest institutions. They had all the analysts in the world to figure out what the hell was going on, and the small publics were just scraping by. That was the second observation, the inequity.

    The third came around 2009 to 2012, when there was an extensive effort to make data an important part of decision-making across the country. The side effect of that, though, was that not all the data sets were created equal, which made answering questions about what works and what doesn’t that much more difficult.

    The fourth observation, and I think it’s still very relevant today, is that the majority of our postsecondary constituencies are struggling to work with the increasing demands they’re getting from regulators: from the feds, from the states, from their accreditors, the demand for reports is increasing. The demand for feedback is increasing. Your big institutions, your flagships, might see this as a pain in the neck, but I would suggest that your smaller publics and smaller private schools are asking, “Oh my gosh, how are we even going to do this?” Our data helps.

    Q: What was the clearinghouse doing differently in terms of data collection?

    A: From the postsecondary standpoint, our first set of reports that we released in 2011 focused on two types of learners that at most were anecdotally referred to: transfer students and part-time students. The fact that we included part-time students, which [the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System] did not, was a huge change. And our first completion report, I believe, said that over 50 percent of baccalaureate recipients had some community college in their background. That was eye-popping for the country to see and really catalyzed a lot of thinking about transfer pathways.

    We also helped spur the rise of these third-party academic-oriented organizations like Lumina and enabled them to help learners by using our data. One of our obligations as a data aggregator was to find ways to make this data useful for the field, and I think we accomplished that. Now, of course, demand is rising with artificial intelligence; people want to do more. We understand that, but we also think we have a huge responsibility as a data custodian to do that responsibly. People who work with us realize how seriously we take that custodial relationship with the data. That has been one of the hallmarks of our tenure as an organization.

    Q: Speaking of custodial responsibility, people are questioning the clearinghouse’s research credibility after last week’s revelation of the data error in your preliminary enrollment report. Are you worried it will undo the years of trust building you just described? How do you take accountability?

    A: No. 1: The data itself, which we receive from institutions, is reliable, current and accurate. We make best efforts to ensure that it accurately represents what the institutions have within their own systems before any data is merged into the clearinghouse data system.

    When we first formed the Research Center, we had to show how you can get from the IPEDS number to the clearinghouse number and show people our data was something they could count on. We spent 15 years building this reputation. The key to any research-related error like this is, first, you have to take ownership of it and hold yourself accountable. As soon as I found out about this we were already making moves to [make it public]—we’re talking 48 hours. That’s the first step in maintaining trust.

    That being said, there’s an element of risk built into this work. Part of what the clearinghouse brings to the table is the ability to responsibly advance the dialogue of what’s happening in education and student pathways. There are things that are happening out there, such as students stopping out and coming back many years later, that basically defy conventional wisdom. And so the risk in all of this is that you shy away from that work and decide to stick with the knitting. But your obligation is, if you’re going to report those things, to be very transparent. As long as we can thread that needle, I think the clearinghouse will play an important role in helping to advance the dialogue.

    We’re taking this very seriously and understand the importance of the integrity of our reports considering how the field is dependent on the information we provide. Frankly, one of the things we’re going to take a look at is, what is the need for the preliminary report at the end of the day? Or do we need to pair it with more analysis—is it just enough to say that total enrollments are up X or down Y?

    Q: Are you saying you may discontinue the preliminary report entirely?

    A: That’s certainly an option. I think we need to assess the field’s need for an early report—what questions are we trying to answer and why is it important that those questions be answered by a certain time? I’ll be honest; this is the first time something like this has happened, where it’s been that dramatic. That’s where the introspection starts, saying, “Well, this was working before; what the heck happened?”

    When we released the first [preliminary enrollment] report [in 2020], we thought it’d be a one-time thing. Now, we’ve issued other reports that we thought were going to be one-time and ended up being a really big deal, like “Some College, No Credential.” We’re going to continue to look for opportunities to provide those types of insights. But I think any research entity needs to take a look at what you’re producing to make sure there’s still a need or a demand, or maybe what you’re providing needs to pivot slightly. That’s a process that’s going to be undertaken over the next few months as we evaluate this report and other reports we do.

    Q: How did this happen, exactly? Have you found the source of the imputation error?

    A: The research team is looking into it. In order to ensure for this particular report that we don’t extrapolate this to a whole bunch of other things, you just need to make sure that you know you’ve got your bases covered analytically.

    There was an error in how we imputed a particular category of dual-enrolled students versus freshmen. But if you look at the report, the total number of learners wasn’t impacted by that. These preliminary reports were designed to meet a need after COVID, to understand what the impact was going to be. We basically designed a report on an emergency basis, and by default, when you don’t have complete information, there’s imputation. There’s been a lot of pressure on getting the preliminary fall report out. That being said, you learn your lesson—you gotta own it and then you keep going. This was very unfortunate, and you can imagine the amount of soul searching to ensure that this never happens again.

    Q: Do you think demand for more postsecondary data is driving some irresponsible analytic practices?

    A: I can tell you that new types of demands are going to be put out there on student success data, looking at nondegree credentials, looking at microcredentials. And there’s going to be a lot of spitballing. Just look at how ROI is trying to be calculated right now; I could talk for hours about the ins and outs of ROI methodology. For example, if a graduate makes $80,000 after graduating but transferred first from a community college, what kind of attribution does the community college get for that salary outcome versus the four-year school? Hell, it could be due to a third-party boot camp done after earning a degree. Research on these topics is going to be full of outstanding questions.

    Q: What comes next for the clearinghouse’s research after you leave?

    A: I’m excited about where it’s going. I’m very excited about how artificial intelligence can be appropriately leveraged, though I think we’re still trying to figure out how to do that. I can only hope that the clearinghouse will continue its journey of support. Because while we don’t directly impact learner trajectories, we can create the tools that help people who support learners every year impact those trajectories. Looking back on my time here, that’s what I’m most proud of.

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  • Why small talk is a skill worth developing (opinion)

    Why small talk is a skill worth developing (opinion)

    You walk into the conference networking event, feeling alone, aware of the steady chatter throughout the room. You look to find someone you might know, you sense your breath growing faster and you experience that all-too-familiar pit in your stomach. You walk deeper into the room, taking a few grounding breaths, and notice others standing alone. You approach another conference attendee, feeling as if you are stepping outside of your body, and in your friendliest tone you introduce yourself and ask, “Where did you travel in from?”

    You did it! You initiated small talk with a stranger.

    Small talk is a mode of communication that occurs throughout the world, but not every culture engages in small talk to the same degree. In some cultures, it is expected, and in other cultures it can be perceived as inappropriate or rude. In addition to cultural context, one’s perception of small talk and propensity for engaging in it can be influenced by factors including, but not limited to, personality traits, degree of social comfort, mental health and wellness, past experiences, and the setting of the conversation. Small talk can also present specific challenges to language learners, neurodivergent individuals, people who are unaccustomed to talking with strangers and many others.

    Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines small talk as “light or casual conversation: chitchat.” (Seeing the word “chitchat” immediately brought me back to kindergarten, when my teacher, Mrs. Barker, would frequently say, “Kay, stop your chitchat.”) Cambridge Dictionary defines small talk as, “conversation about things that are not important, often between people who do not know each other well.” The emphasis on “not important” can give the impression that small talk is useless, however, within the U.S cultural context, small talk holds great importance in connecting individuals and laying the foundation for more substantial communication. Think of small talk as the gateway to more meaningful conversations.

    When done well, small talk relies on improvisation and adaptability, allowing for a flow of information and often uncovering unexpected insights and mutual interests. When I think of small talk I think of it as jazz, with each person riffing off the other to create a connection and to also make meaning in the moment. Effectively engaging in small talk by establishing commonalities can open a door for a future collaboration, expand your professional network, build rapport leading to a career or academic opportunity, enhance confidence and ease tension in an interview.

    Do you wish that small talk felt less awkward and more meaningful? Apply these strategies to reduce your small talk stress and to contribute to your career success:

    • Get curious. Harness your curiosity as you engage in small talk. Take the scenario we began with: Someone might ask, “Where did you travel in from?” because they are generally interested in meeting people from different parts of the country or world. Someone else might ask this question as a gateway to finding a future collaborator from a specific country or academic institution. Don’t just ask questions for the sake of chatting, but rather ask about topics in which you are genuinely interested. This approach will make engaging in small talk more enjoyable and valuable to you, and your interaction will feel authentic to the person with whom you are speaking.
    • Listen actively. As the other person responds to your question, try to refrain from planning what you will next ask, but rather focus on absorbing what they are sharing. Consider reflecting an aspect of something they mentioned. For example, if in response to “Where did you travel in from?” they say, “I flew in from Greece last night, and this is my first time in the States; I’m a Ph.D. student at the University of Crete,” you might empathize with their journey and ask how long they are visiting. After further discussion, you might feel inclined to offer to host the individual if they plan to travel around. Your one question, the one that initiated the small talk exchange, could even lead to a lifelong professional relationship.
    • Consider the context. The definition of small talk in the Cambridge Dictionary refers to a “conversation about things that are not important.” I would challenge you to not dismiss small talk as trivial but rather leverage it for more meaningful conversation. When thinking about the setting in which you are engaging in small talk, you can guide the conversation toward greater meaning. It would be odd if the individual attending the networking event at the conference opened the conversation with their name and asked, “What do you think about the weather?” This question would seem very disconnected from the event and purpose of the networking session. However, if the individual were waiting outside at an uncovered bus stop, it might be natural to strike up a conversation about the weather. Having an awareness about the context and setting will lead to an authentic conversation.
    • Have go-to questions. While you don’t want to arrive at every occasion with a script of possible questions, it can be a good exercise to reflect on the things about which you are genuinely curious. When attending a conference networking event, you may be interested in hearing about individuals’ career paths, learning about their research, gaining their advice, etc. In developing questions, focus on ones that are open-ended, where the response requires more than a yes or no. You might ask, “Which conference sessions are you most interested in attending?” Maybe that seems unimportant to you or even a bit superficial, but hearing about the other individual’s interest might inspire you to attend a session you would not have initially chosen. As the conversation unfolds, so will the opportunities to guide the conversation toward more meaningful topics, and you might next ask, “What research projects are you currently working on?”
    • Practice. It is likely that you have attended interview preparation and practice sessions but far less likely that you have attended a small talk training. This is not your fault. My plea to my fellow career development practitioners is this: If we know that many individuals approach small talk with feelings of discomfort or dread, and we also recognize that it is an important skill that leads to positive career outcomes, then we need to actively train and create opportunities for our students and postdocs to practice small talk in low-stakes settings. Consider building small talk into your interview preparation offerings, add a small talk learning module to an upcoming campus networking event, collaborate with your campus’s English language learning program to incorporate small talk activities and reinforce the many places and spaces where your students and postdocs are already engaging in small talk. An example would be when a student comes in for an appointment and asks, “How was your weekend?” By asking they might learn, for instance, that you were recently in Miami, a city on the top of their list of places to visit. In this exchange you could draw attention to how the student effectively engaged in small talk, reinforcing that it is a skill they already possess.
    • Know what topics not to lead with. In the U.S. cultural context, it is safe to say that you would not want to lead small talk with questions about politics, religion, finances, health or overly personal topics. Aspects of these topics might be categorized as sensitive or controversial and can create tension and lead to misunderstanding. Through engaging in small talk, you should be building a foundation of connection that can facilitate greater openness toward engaging in more meaningful topics. That said, maybe you are at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting—in that context, it would be common for the small talk to include politics. The setting and context can serve to guide the topics and direction of the small talk.

    In academia, where emphasis on depth and scope of knowledge is highly valued, small talk can be easily viewed as a burden and overlooked as a necessary competency. But by applying a few small talk communication strategies, you will find that it can open doors and enhance career success. If you have yet to do so, embrace small talk as a skill worth developing, and get out there and chitchat. The effects on your professional life could be both profound and long-lasting.

    Kay Gruder is the associate director of graduate student and postdoc career programs and services at the University of Connecticut. She is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium, an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.

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  • Colleges were quiet after the Nov. election. Students don’t mind

    Colleges were quiet after the Nov. election. Students don’t mind

    Colleges can be hot spots for debate, inquiry and disagreement, particularly on political topics. Sometimes institutional leaders weigh in on the debate, issuing public statements or sharing resources internally among students, staff and faculty.

    This past fall, following the 2024 presidential election, college administrators were notably silent. A November Student Voice survey found a majority (63 percent) of student respondents (n=1,031) said their college did not do or say anything after the election, and only 17 percent released a statement to students about the election.

    A more recent survey from Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found this aligns with students’ preferences for institutional response.

    Over half (54 percent) of respondents (n=1,034) to a December Student Voice survey said colleges and universities should not make statements about political events, such as the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. One-quarter of students said they weren’t sure if institutions should make statements, and fewer than a quarter of learners said colleges should publish a statement.

    Across demographics—including institution size and classification, student race, political identification, income level or age—the greatest share of students indicated that colleges shouldn’t make statements. The only group that differed was nonbinary students (n=32), of whom 47 percent said they weren’t sure and 30 percent said no.

    Experts weigh in on the value of institutional neutrality and how college leaders can demonstrate care for learners without sharing statements.

    What’s the sitch: In the past, college administrators have issued statements, either personally or on behalf of the institution, to demonstrate care and concern for students who are impacted by world events, says Heterodox Academy president John Tomasi.

    “There’s also an element, a little more cynically, of trying to get ahead of certain political issues so they [administrators] couldn’t be criticized for having said nothing or not caring,” Tomasi says.

    Students Say

    Even with a majority of colleges and universities not speaking out after the 2024 election, some students think colleges are still being supportive.

    The November Student Voice survey found 35 percent of respondents believed their institution was offering the right amount of support to students after the election results, but 31 percent weren’t sure.

    The events of Oct. 7, 2023, proved complicated for statement-issuing presidents, with almost half of institutions that published statements releasing an additional response after the campus community or others pushed back. Initial statements, according to one analysis, often lacked caring elements, such as the impact to students or health and well-being of university community members in the region.

    A growing number of colleges and universities are choosing to opt out of public political conversations at the executive level, instead selecting to be institutionally neutral. Heterodox Academy, which tracks colleges’ commitments to neutrality, saw numbers rise from a dozen in 2023 to over 100 in 2024.

    Some students are experiencing political fatigue in general, says Vanderbilt University chancellor Daniel Diermeier, particularly relating to the war in Gaza. “This dynamic of ‘which side are you on, and if you’re not with me, you’re against me’ was troubling to many students and was exhausting and had a detrimental impact on the culture of learning, exploration and discussion.”

    Vanderbilt University has held a position of neutrality for many years, part of a free expression policy, which it defines as a “commitment to refrain from taking public positions on controversial issues unless the issue is materially related to the core mission and functioning of the university.”

    College students aren’t the only group that want fewer organizations to talk politics; a November survey by Morning Consult found two-thirds of Americans believe companies should stay out of politics entirely after the 2024 presidential election and 59 percent want companies to comment neutrally on the results.

    However, an earlier survey by Morning Consult found, across Americans, 56 percent believe higher education institutions are at least somewhat responsible for speaking out on political, societal or cultural issues, compared to 31 percent of respondents who say colleges and universities are not too or not at all responsible.

    Allowing students to speak: Proponents of institutional neutrality say the practice allows discourse to flourish on campus. Taking a position can create a chilling effect, in which people are afraid to speak out in opposition to the prevailing point of view, Diermeier says.

    Recent polls have shown today’s college students are hesitant to share their political opinions, often electing to self-censor due to fears of negative repercussions. Since 2015, this concern has grown, with 33 percent of respondents sharing that they feel uncomfortable discussing their political views on campus, compared to 13 percent a decade ago.

    Part of this hesitancy among students could be an overstepping on behalf of administrators that affirms the institution’s perspective on issues one way or another.

    “I hear from students that they want to be the ones making the statements themselves … and if a president makes a statement first, that kind of cuts off the conversation,” says Tomasi, who is a faculty member at Brown University.

    A majority of campus community members want to pursue learning and research, Diermeier says, and “the politicization that has taken hold on many university campuses … that is not what most students and faculty want.”

    Institutional neutrality allows a university to step back and empower students to be political agents, Tomasi says. “The students should be platformed, the professors should be platformed, but the university itself should be a neutral framework for students to do all those things.”

    Neutral, not silent: One distinction Tomasi and Diermeier make about institutional neutrality is that the commitment is not one of silence, but rather selective vocalization to affirm the university’s mission.

    “Neutrality can’t just be the neutrality of convenience,” Tomasi says. “It should be a neutrality of a principle that’ll endure beyond the particular conflict that’s dividing the campus, because it celebrates and stands for and flows from that high ideal of university life as a community of imperfect learners that does value intellectual pluralism.”

    Another area in which universities are obligated to speak up is if the issue challenges the core mission of an institution. Examples of this could include a travel ban against immigration from certain countries, a tax on endowments, a ban on divisive topics or scrutiny of admissions practices.

    “On issues that are core to the academic mission, we’re going to be vocal, we’re going to be engaged and we’re going to be advocates,” Diermeier says, and establishing what is involved in the core mission is key to each institution. “Inside the core doesn’t mean it’s not controversial—it just means it’s inside the core.”

    So what? For colleges and university leaders considering how to move forward, Diermeier and Tomasi offer some advice.

    • Start with the mission in mind. When working with learners, practitioners should strive to advance the mission of seeking knowledge and providing a transformative education, Diermeier says. For faculty in particular, it’s important to give students “room to breathe” and to be exposed to both sides of an argument, because there’s power in understanding another position, even if it’s not shared.
    • Create space for discourse. “It’s expected that the groups that are organized and vocal, they’re more in the conversation and claiming more of the space,” Diermeier says. “It’s our responsibility as leaders of universities to make sure that we are not being unduly influenced by that.” Students should be given the opportunity to engage in free speech, whether that’s protesting or counterprotesting, but that cannot dictate administrative decisions. Vanderbilt student organizations hosted debates and spaces for constructive dialogue prior to the election, which were well attended and respectful.
    • Lean into the discomfort. Advancing free speech and scholarship can be complicated and feel “unnatural,” Tomasi says, because humans prefer to find like-minded people and others who agree with their views, “but there’s something pretty elevated about it that’s attractive, too,” to students. Colleges and universities should consider how promoting discourse can help students feel they belong.
    • Provide targeted outreach. For some issues, such as natural disasters, colleges and universities can provide direct support and messaging to impacted students. “It’s just so much more effective and it can be targeted, and then the messages are also more authentic,” Diermeier says.

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  • College costs have grown, but so has the return (opinion)

    College costs have grown, but so has the return (opinion)

    FG Trade Latin/E+/Getty Images

    What’s the biggest problem facing college students today? Cost is a big concern, of course, for good reason. But many would point to something equally troubling—misperceptions about the value of college degrees. That’s no surprise when reasonable questions are raised about whether graduates are job-ready—and if too many jobs unnecessarily require diplomas.

    There has long been a paper ceiling that penalizes applicants who lack degrees. And more companies are now taking a closer look at so-called STARs—people Skilled Through Alternative Routes.

    The group Tear the Paper Ceiling says that 61 percent of Black workers, 55 percent of Hispanic workers, 66 percent of rural workers and 62 percent of veterans are considered STARs. They have learned valuable work skills through military service, certificate programs, on-the-job training and boot camps. But too often, they’ve been shut out unfairly.

    I applaud the work of this national group and their partners. The equity barriers to jobs are real. Only half of working-age people have a quality degree or other credential beyond high school, even as millions of jobs go unfilled in part because applicants lack the required background or credentials. It only makes sense to make sure we’re not leaving behind talented but uncredentialed neighbors.

    But to take a deeper look is to understand this isn’t only about expanding opportunity and filling today’s open jobs, but the jobs that an increasingly tech-driven, interconnected world will demand in coming years. Skills-based hiring is a good idea, but it won’t on its own come close to solving the nation’s human talent crisis. Increasing higher educational attainment by making sure many more people get better credentials—credentials of value—is the key.

    Foundation of Growth

    Higher education has always been about producing graduates who are ready to start careers, not just jobs. This matters because a person who is a good applicant for a position now could face challenges moving to better and higher-paying positions because they lack the foundation for career growth fostered in postsecondary programs.

    The American Association of Colleges and Universities has surveyed executives and hiring managers eight times since 2006. The most recent survey, from 2023, found that 80 percent of employers strongly or somewhat agree that college prepares people for success in the workforce. Getting a degree is certainly worth the time and money, respondents suggested, as the survey “found a strong correlation between the outcomes of a liberal education and the knowledge and skills employers view as essential for success in entry-level jobs and for advancement in their companies.”

    There will always be conflicting data points in times of change. For example, the push for skills-based hiring, including at the federal level, is opening doors to a broader array of good jobs that historically required a college degree. However, research by Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute shows that college graduates still have an advantage when it comes to getting jobs with higher salaries and better benefits.

    It turns out that employers aren’t committing to skills-based hiring at the level that recent headlines might suggest. The Harvard–Burning Glass report tracked more than 11,000 jobs where a bachelor’s degree was no longer required in the job description. It found only a 3.5-percentage-point increase in the share of non-degree-holders hired into those roles—a decidedly underwhelming number suggesting the buzz about skills-based hiring may be more hype than trend.

    The Lifelong Payoff

    This and other signs reinforce the enduring value of degrees: A recent report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce found that 72 percent of jobs in the United States will require post–high school education or training by the year 2031. The center also found:

    • People with bachelor’s degrees earn, on average, $1.2 million more over their lifetime than those with only a high school education.
    • Of the 18.5 million annual job openings we expect in the coming years, more than two-thirds will require at least some college education.
    • Earnings for people without degrees have been growing over the past decade, but so has pay for degree holders. Even as people without degrees earn more, they are still not catching up with those with diplomas.

    Durable Skills Matter

    Employers often say they’re looking for “durable” skills, such as critical thinking, communication and problem-solving.

    Someone looking to hire an entry-level software developer might consider a candidate with skills in Python or other programming languages developed through informal learning. Many gifted techies are self-taught or developed skills through coding boot camps or working at start-ups, for example.

    But a college graduate with similar skills might stand out because of their experience working in groups to complete projects, their communication and presentation skills, analytical thinking, and other traits fostered in college classes.

    The catch: Across the board, we need better definitions of what our credentials mean. What defines a credential of value, exactly, and how do we make sure that the people obtaining credentials can do the work of the future?

    Certainly, our fast-moving, tech-driven economy increasingly rewards nimble problem-solvers. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs report, employers estimate that 44 percent of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years.

    “Cognitive skills are reported to be growing in importance most quickly, reflecting the increasing importance of complex problem-solving in the workplace,” the report said. “Surveyed businesses report creative thinking to be growing in importance slightly more rapidly than analytical thinking.”

    There are many implications to this change. Embedded in the education pay premium is a fairness issue when it comes to who goes to college and how we support them. The Georgetown center has long reported on the value of a college degree and the persistent opportunity gaps for women and people of color.

    The Change-Ready Nation

    Whatever the impact of skills-based hiring on the nation’s labor shortage, we shouldn’t stop there. Addressing the long-standing inequities in higher education and the workforce means ensuring that these skills-based pathways include opportunities for all workers, especially when it comes to pursuing further education and training even after they enter the workforce.

    Skills-based hiring and the push for increasing attainment aren’t countervailing forces. They’re aimed at ensuring that the nation grows and applies the talent it needs to be prepared for the human work of the 21st century, and to achieve the civic and economic benefits that people with good-paying jobs bring to their communities.

    In the end, this is about more than the job readiness of our students. We’re talking about the change readiness of our entire nation in a rapidly evolving economy. It makes sense to revamp job requirements to meet workforce demands, but there’s no denying we’ll need the best-educated country we can build if we’re going to deliver opportunity and economic prosperity fairly for everyone.

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  • A short college course for students’ life, academic skills

    A short college course for students’ life, academic skills

    While many students experience growing pains in the transition from high school to college, today’s learners face an extra challenge emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. Many students experienced learning loss in K-12 as a result of distance learning, which has stunted their readiness to engage fully in academia.

    Three faculty members in the communications division at DePaul University noticed a disconnect in their own classrooms as they sought to connect with students. They decided to create their own intervention to address learners’ lack of communication and self-efficacy skills.

    Since 2022, DePaul has offered a two-credit communication course that assists students midway through the term and encourages reflection and goal setting for future success. Over the past four terms, faculty members have seen demonstrated change in students’ self-perceptions and commitment to engage in long-term success strategies.

    The background: Upon returning to in-person instruction after the pandemic, associate professor Jay Baglia noticed students still behaved as though their classes were one-directional Zoom calls, staring blankly or demonstrating learned helplessness from a lack of deadlines and loose attendance policies.

    “We were seeing a greater proportion of students who were not prepared for the college experience,” says Elissa Foster, professor and faculty fellow of the DePaul Humanities Center.

    Previous research showed that strategies to increase students’ collaboration and participation in class positively impacted engagement, helping students take a more active role in their learning and classroom environment.

    The faculty members decided to create their own workshop to equip students with practical tools they can use in their academics and their lives beyond.

    How it works: Offered for the first time in fall 2022, the Communication Fundamentals for College Success course is a two-credit, five-week course that meets for two 90-minute sessions a week, for a total of 10 meetings. The class is housed in the College of Communication but available to all undergraduate students.

    The course is co-taught and was developed by Foster and Kendra Knight, associate professor in the college of communication and an assessment consultant for the center for teaching and learning. Guest speakers from advising and the Office of Health Promotion and Wellness provide additional perspective.

    (from left to right) Jay Baglia, Elissa Foster and Kendra Knight developed a short-form course to support students’ capabilities in higher education and give them tools for future success.

    Aubreonna Chamberlain/DePaul University

    Course content includes skills and behaviors taught in the context of communication for success: asking for help, using university resources, engaging in class with peers and professors, and learning academic software. It also touches on more general behaviors like personal awareness, mindfulness, coping practices, a growth mindset, goal setting and project management.

    The demographics of students enrolled in the course vary; some are transfers looking for support as they navigate a university for the first time. Others are A students who wanted an extra course in their schedule. Others are juniors or seniors hoping to gain longer-term life skills to apply to their internships or their lives as professionals and find work-life balance.

    Throughout the course, students turned in regular reflection exercises for assessment and the final assignment was a writing assignment to identify three tools that they will take with them beyond this course.

    What’s different: One of the challenges in launching the course was distinguishing its goals from DePaul’s Chicago Quarter, which is the first-year precollege experience. Baglia compares the college experience to taking an international vacation: While you might have a guidebook and plan well for the experience beforehand, once you’re in country, you face challenges you didn’t anticipate or may be overwhelmed.

    Orientation is the guidebook students receive before going abroad, and the Communication for Success Class is their tour guide along the way.

    “I think across the country, universities and college professors are recognizing that scaffolding is really the way to go, particularly with first-generation college students,” Baglia says. “They don’t always have the language or the tools or the support or the conversations at home that prepare them for the strangeness of living on their own [and navigating higher education].”

    A unique facet of the course is that it’s offered between weeks three and seven in the semester, starting immediately after the add-drop period concludes and continuing until midterms. This delayed-start structure means the students enrolled in the course are often looking for additional credits to keep their full-time enrollment status, sometimes after dropping a different course.

    The timing of the course also requires a little time and trust, because most students register for it later, not during the course registration period. Baglia will be teaching the spring 2025 term and, as of Jan. 10, he only has two students registered.

    “It has not been easy convincing the administrators in our college to give it some time … Students have to register for this class [later],” Baglia says.

    The results: Foster, Knight and Baglia used a small grant to study the effects of the intervention and found, through the data, a majority of students identified time management and developing a growth mindset as the tools they want to keep working on, with just under half indicating self-care and 40 percent writing about classroom engagement.

    In their essays, students talked about mapping out their deadlines for the semester or using a digital calendar to stay on top of their schedules. Students also said they were more likely to view challenges as opportunities for growth or consider their own capabilities as underdeveloped, rather than stagnant or insufficient.

    The intervention has already spurred similar innovation within the university, with the College of Science and Health offering a similar life skills development course.

    Course organizers don’t have plans to scale the course at present, but they are considering ways to collect more data from participants after they finish the course and compare that to the more general university population.

    Get more content like this directly to your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe to the Student Success newsletter here.

    This article has been updated to clarify the course is housed in the College of Communication.

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  • Three questions for UVA’s Anne Trumbore

    Three questions for UVA’s Anne Trumbore

    The Teacher in the Machine: A Human History of Education Technology (Princeton University Press) will be published this May. I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy. It is too early to interview the author, the University of Virginia’s Anne Trumbore, about the book, as you will not be able to get your hands on it for a few months. I can’t help myself, though.

    Like Anne, I am also a practitioner-scholar, working in and writing about the intersection of technology, learning and higher education change. While The Teacher and the Machine covers much of the same ground as my first co-authored book, Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education (JHUP, 2020), I learned much of what I didn’t know from reading Anne’s book.

    As the publication of The Teacher in the Machine approaches, I’ll share a full (highly positive) review. Until then, to help build anticipation about the book’s launch and also get to know its author better, I thought the best place to start is a Q&A.

    Q: Tell us about your current role at Darden (UVA) and the education and career path that you have followed.

    A: I’m currently the chief digital learning officer, where I lead a team that designs, develops and delivers education that enables career mobility for learners at all ages and stages. I arrived at this stage through a pretty circuitous path that included time as a journalist and obituary writer, a copywriter for motion picture advertising, a writing teacher at SFSU and Stanford, and then a lateral hop into ed tech. My education path was somewhat more straightforward: straight to undergrad from high school. But my graduate degrees were driven by career aspirations and occurred decades apart. (I resemble a lot of the learners we are helping now in that regard.)

    Oddly enough, my “unmarketable” undergrad degree in semiotics and my graduate work in writing and teaching writing got me hired full-time at Stanford, working on an adaptive grammar program that provided asynchronous personalized instruction and creating curriculum for and teaching at Stanford Online High School. That led to a role on the early team at Coursera, with a focus on working with university professors using (and developing) online peer review, which morphed into a role on the founding team at NovoEd, developing designs for social and project-based learning at scale. Then I pivoted back to higher ed with a role at Wharton, where I established Wharton Online.

    The questions I was trying to answer there, most of which revolved around maximizing the effectiveness of, and revenue for, online education in business topics, led me to UVA. Its Darden School of Business had just received a transformational gift to establish the Sands Institute for Lifelong Learning, which is where I saw the puck going at the intersection of higher education and technology. I earned an education doctorate at Penn GSE during my time at Wharton because the questions I began asking about what we were doing and why were not easily answered within the confines of the business school.

    Q: In The Teacher and the Machine, you tell the story of the birth and evolution of massive open online courses within the context of the history of educational technology. What are the lessons from the history of ed tech that we in higher education should absorb as we make decisions about the future of online education and AI for teaching and learning?

    A: The main takeaway is that innovation in ed tech is particularly reliant upon ignorance of its history for a couple of main reasons: Innovation drives adoption (no one wants to invest in an “old” idea), and the idea of using technology to make education both more efficient and democratic consolidates power in the hands of the disrupters, who are almost always businessmen and scientists educated at the most elite universities in the world.

    I believe that once you understand the history of ed tech and its intertwined beginnings with artificial intelligence, universities can be more clear-eyed about their business partnerships with ed-tech companies and their purchasing decisions, which are usually not driven by evidence-backed research. We also have the opportunity to be more thoughtful about our motives in distributing education “to the masses” and ask ourselves who this strategy benefits and why it is attractive to venture capital.

    Finally—and this is a point you and a few others have made extremely well—it’s incumbent upon higher ed institutions to be informed about the innovation narrative that gets circulated, which enriches the same set of people and institutions over and over again. I have to believe that if we have a greater understanding of the history and the motives of the major players in ed tech, we can also ask better questions of our ed-tech providers and partners so that we can create educational experiences that provide more returns to learners than ed-tech investors.

    Q: You are not only a student of higher education and digital learning, you are also a practitioner. How did your role throughout your career as a participant in the creation and development of MOOCs and other online learning initiatives impact how you write about that history in The Teacher in the Machine?

    A: The closest metaphor I can think of is that it felt like putting together a 2,000-piece puzzle of a photograph I was in: I knew what it would look like, but I had to break down and examine all the pieces and then reassemble. The questions I asked of the events were less about what happened and more about why did it happen that particular way? What were the conditions that produced our actions? Living the history also provided opportunities to fill in the gaps that some more traditional records leave out.

    I’m thinking especially of the daily minor decisions that were made under pressure that drove the history in unplanned directions, as well as the personalities of the main players. Experiencing these elements of the story and being able to report firsthand is one of the benefits to being in the circus ring instead of in the seats. Another is that you can directly see the audience, which provides a different lens than a more traditional history. Hopefully, the narrative benefited from the inside-out point of view.

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  • Joe Biden Commutes Life Sentence of Indigenous Activist Leonard Peltier (APTN News)

    Joe Biden Commutes Life Sentence of Indigenous Activist Leonard Peltier (APTN News)

    From Minnesota Public Radio News

    In one of his last official acts before leaving the White House, President Joe Biden released Leonard Peltier from prison. The action is an extraordinary move that ends a decades-long push by Indigenous activists, international religious leaders, human rights organizations who argued that the 80-year-old Native American activist was wrongly convicted.

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  • Now in office, how Trump could overhaul higher ed

    Now in office, how Trump could overhaul higher ed

    President Trump’s second inauguration took place in the Capitol rotunda Monday.

    Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

    President Donald Trump’s inauguration today kicks off what is likely to be a disruptive four years for higher education.

    He enters office at a time when college and university enrollment numbers are floundering, public disillusionment with the cost of a degree is growing and culture wars are raging on. Combined, these circumstances give the president—and his Republican counterparts on Capitol Hill—an opportunity to ramp up scrutiny and accountability measures for the nation’s top institutions while also decreasing the federal footprint in education.

    During the campaign, Trump said he plans to abolish the Education Department, ban the participation of trans athletes in women’s sports, “fire” accreditors and cut funding for scientific research. He has also discussed expanding short-term financial aid offerings, making student unionization more difficult, protecting conservatives’ speech on campuses, disallowing college vaccine mandates and creating a free online national college funded by new taxes on wealthy private universities.

    Since winning the election, Trump has yet to offer more details on how he will fulfill the policy promises he’s made.

    Colleges, meanwhile, have mostly adopted a wait-and-see approach to the incoming Trump administration. Over all, reactions to Trump’s election on college campuses were more muted this time around compared to the protests and outcry in 2016.

    But Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric and calls for mass deportations worry some college leaders. Several institutions advised international students to get back to campus before Monday, warning them that executive orders from the new president could complicate their return. Others pledged not to participate in mass deportations and said they would defend DEI programs and policies.

    Trump’s impact on higher education will likely vary according to the type of institution. For instance, for-profits and other colleges are expecting less red tape and oversight from the administration, while historically Black colleges and universities are preparing to educate the administration and Congress about their institutions and their value.

    Trump’s Team So Far

    He tapped Linda McMahon—former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, co-chair of his transition team and founder of a pro-Trump think tank—to carry out his anti–diversity, equity and inclusion education agenda and shrink the department.

    McMahon has yet to receive a confirmation hearing in the Senate, but she’s expected to get the green light. Who else will serve with McMahon in key roles related to higher ed such as the under secretary, assistant secretary of civil rights and chief operating officer for Federal Student Aid is not yet clear.

    Trump did nominate former Tennessee commissioner of education Penny Schwinn as deputy secretary Friday. Schwinn, who will likely focus primarily on K-12 policy, was part of former University of Florida president Ben Sasse’s cabinet as vice president for PK-12 and pre-bachelor’s programs.

    McMahon’s appointment surprised some education policy observers given her lack of education experience. But others see her as a loyal lieutenant with a strong track record in business who can get things done at the department.

    Day One Plans

    Trump doesn’t need McMahon and her team in place to get started. While day one of the administration will be filled with much of the traditional pomp and circumstance, the president’s transition team has also said it will include the signing of 200 executive orders, Fox News reported Sunday, which would be a record.

    It’s not clear how many of those orders will affect colleges and universities, but higher education, which received little attention from Trump in his first term, is expected to rank higher on the administration’s priority list this time around. Actions related to diversity, equity and inclusion programs; transgender students; campus antisemitism; and immigration could be among the first on the docket.

    During his first administration, Trump toned down oversight of for-profit colleges, issued new Title IX rules that bolstered due process protections for those accused of assault and appointed a conservative majority to the U.S. Supreme Court, paving the way for justices to later strike down affirmative action in June 2023, among other changes.

    Now, just as he did in the first term with Obama’s policies, Trump will likely roll back many of the regulations President Biden put in place. Those include added steps to the process of merging or acquiring colleges, protections for borrowers who were misled by their higher ed institution and an income-driven repayment program that lowered monthly payments for millions of borrowers. Others, however, including gainful employment, might remain in place, as the GOP considers increasing federal oversight of colleges and universities.

    Biden’s Team Wraps Up

    Trump’s list of potential repeals grew shorter when a federal judge vacated the Biden administration’s Title IX rules. Other lawsuits challenging rules made by the Biden administration are still pending.

    The outgoing president and his team have been scrambling to wrap up loose ends. In just a few weeks, they finalized new rules for online education and college prep programs, announced settlements in multiple civil rights and antisemitism investigations, and issued several rounds of debt relief. That’s along with new guidance related to online program managers and the Title IX requirements for financial payments to college athletes.

    Before the holidays, Biden withdrew two debt-relief proposals, half-baked rules on accreditation and state authorization, and a controversial rule regarding the participation of transgender student athletes in women’s sports. The decision forces Trump to start at square one rather than leaving the existing policies open to amendment.

    But the president may not even need to act himself on some of these issues as Republicans take the lead in Congress. House Republicans have passed legislation to ban trans women from women’s sports teams nationwide and to crack down on the detention of undocumented immigrants. The immigration bill could also potentially make it more difficult for international students from China and India to study in the U.S. The Senate voted Friday to advance that bill for a final vote, which could come as soon as Monday.

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