Tag: News

Which Higher Ed Cases Will SCOTUS Take On?

As the Supreme Court begins its new term this week, legal experts predict that higher education will be a frequent subject for the justices. Yet only two college-related cases—both of which center on transgender rights—are currently listed on the main docket.

That’s in large part because of a less formal but increasingly popular second list of cases known as the shadow docket.

Historically, the shadow docket, also called the emergency docket, was used on rare occasions for just that—emergencies. In situations when the lack of a ruling from the highest court could lead to immediate, irreversible consequences, this alternate route allowed the justices to move quickly and issue an interim decision without going through traditional processes such as briefings, oral arguments or written opinions. But over the course of the past three administrations, use of this secondary docket has skyrocketed, creating a lack of predictability and an immense sense of uncertainty for the public.

Normally, it can take months for a case’s petition to be processed, and then once a case is on the docket it can take even longer for it to be heard and ruled upon. This leaves the parties directly involved—and all who may be affected by the decision—time to prepare and create contingency plans for the potential outcomes. But when the shadow docket is used, cases can be introduced and receive a ruling in a matter of weeks, if not days, often without any explanation.

Higher education institutions have already seen the repercussions this can have: Using the shadow-docket process, SCOTUS has overturned lower-court rulings on critical issues including the continuation of federal research funding and major cuts to staffing at the Department of Education.

“Some of these are existential issues about whether universities can continue to function in the way in which they functioned for the past half century,” said former Brandeis University president Fred Lawrence, a higher education legal expert and distinguished lecturer at Georgetown Law. “If erring on the side of caution means shutting down your research operation, then you are unrecognizable to yourself. So it creates a very, very difficult situation for higher education to function.”

While it remains unclear how and when various cases will reach the Supreme Court, Lawrence and others say they have a fairly good idea of what those cases will likely concern. Issues including visa policies for international students and scholars, First Amendment rights, academic freedom, and federal funding are likely to be on the line.

Here’s a quick summary of the cases—on and off the main docket—that experts say colleges and universities should keep a close eye on.

Transgender Athletes

On the first day of his second term in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning “gender ideology” and declaring that the government would only recognize two sexes, male and female. Less than a month later, he signed a second order banning transgender women from participating in women’s sports.

For now, both declarations—and their implications for collegiate sports—are up for consideration by the highest court through two cases, West Virginia v. B.P.J and Little v. Hecox.

Though the former concerns a transgender girl in high school and the latter a transgender woman at Boise State University, the cases are otherwise largely the same. Both involve runners who attempted to participate in track and cross-country but were barred from doing so by state law. And up until a little over a month ago, both were set to be heard before the court at some point this term.

But on Sept. 2 Hecox filed a motion urging the Supreme Court to dismiss her case. In the six-page filing, Hecox’s lawyers explained that due to illness, her father’s recent passing and the “negative public scrutiny” stemming from the litigation, she no longer wished to participate in women’s sports, rendering the case moot.

Still, given the court’s conservative supermajority and their penchant for siding with the Trump administration, some wonder if Hecox’s plea to the court is an attempt to avoid an unfavorable final decision. (Hecox won her case at both the district and circuit court levels.)

Jill Siegelbaum, a former assistant general counsel at the Department of Education and now a partner at Sligo Law Group, said that she understands both the theoretical idea that Hecox could be fearing a loss and the more personal rationale for dismissing the case.

“Every single attorney involved in that case is well aware of who is sitting on the court and the decisions that the court has recently made in the area of transgender rights,” she said. “But I can also say that on its own, simply the fear for her emotional, physical and mental health that would come from further publicity about this case … would certainly be, in my opinion, a reasonable basis for withdrawing.”

So far, it’s unclear whether the court will respect Hecox’s request. But even if the case were dismissed, Siegelbaum and others said, West Virginia v. B.P.J., will almost certainly remain, eventually leading to a ruling on the same overarching issue—interpreting Title IX’s equal protection clause.

Sarah Hartley, a partner and co-chair of the higher education team at BCLP, a law firm headquartered in St. Louis, stressed that regardless of the outcome, the ruling’s implications for colleges and universities could be influenced by what questions the justices ask and how they write their opinions.

“Depending on how the decision is worded, it could have broader impacts than just sport. It could address bathrooms, locker rooms—any number of different things that Title IX and other antidiscrimination laws historically have protected,” she said.

Hartley added that in her view, lack of access to even recreational activities could be a major blow to the mental health of an already “highly marginalized community.”

“Imagine it affecting your club sports at universities or in high schools, or in gym class when there’s any sex segregation,” she said. “As someone who’s particularly concerned with the access to sport because of all the positive impacts it can have, I think the trickle-down effect … will be a big deal.”

Shadow Docket

Higher education legal experts are also keeping a close eye on the shadow docket, as well as on cases that were already addressed on the emergency docket, were sent back to the lower court and now are steadily working their way back up to the Supreme Court for a final merit ruling.

Jessica Ellsworth, a partner at Hogan Lovells and adviser for the American Council on Education, said she thinks the shadow docket cases are the ones that have a “real impact” on higher education.

She added that multiple stays have already been granted on issues like Trump’s ability to terminate congressionally appropriated funds, slash government agencies’ staffs and tighten immigration policies that affect college enrollment. In doing so, the Supreme Court blocked injunctions from the lower courts, allowing the Trump administration to carry out policies before the justices have fully analyzed the facts of the case, considered friend-of-the-court briefs or heard the arguments of each party.

Moving forward, “I suspect that we will see First Amendment challenges make their way to the court related to ongoing efforts by the administration to force changes across universities and use threats of cutting off funding to compel those changes,” Ellsworth said. “As a result, it’s important for higher education to keep an eye on both the merits and emergency docket for the foreseeable future.”

Hartley from BCLP noted that transgender rights issues are also on the shadow docket through the case Trump v. Orr, which weighs a transgender or nonbinary individual’s ability to obtain a passport that matches their gender identity. If this ruling is interpreted to extend to IDs beyond passports, it could lead to all kinds of inconsistency between gender presentation and government identification, creating significant hurdles for many university operations, she said.

“You could see complaints that a student who’s male presenting is living in a female dorm, which could then give rise to invasive investigations and force a student to disclose things that they might want to make otherwise private,” she explained.

And while any number of these cases could eventually make it back to the Supreme Court for a final ruling, Lawrence from Georgetown said it’s too soon to predict what will make the cut; just a week into the new term, “the Supreme Court has barely put together its docket for the year,” he said.

But even if these issues do make it back for a full merit review, he added, it may be too late. So far, the Supreme Court has struck down the injunctions blocking Trump from carrying out his policies on every higher ed case that has reached the shadow docket. And in many cases, he said, doing that is like allowing a development company to tear down a historic home before a court has ruled on whether it sits on protected land. Even if the court eventually rules that the property should have been shielded, once the house is gone, it will be impossible to restore.

“If you don’t provide that temporary remedy, then there may be no point to a remedy at all,” Lawrence explained.

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October 10, 2025
Universities Are Curators of Knowledge, Not Chaos (opinion)

In a year already defined by polarization and violence, the assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University plunged higher education into crisis. The killing of one of the nation’s most prominent conservative activists on a college campus has been weaponized by political factions, prompting administrative crackdowns and faculty firings. What were once familiar battles in the campus culture wars have escalated into something more dangerous: a struggle over the very conditions of inquiry, where violence, scandal and political pressure converge to erode academic freedom. And now, a proposed “compact” with higher education institutions would seek to condition federal funding on requirements that colleges ensure a “broad spectrum of viewpoints” in each academic department and that they abolish “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

At the center of this struggle lies a persistent illusion: that the university should provide a platform for “every perspective.” Critics claim campuses suppress conservative voices or silence dissenting students, arguing institutions should resemble open marketplaces where all viewpoints compete for attention. Enticing as this rhetoric may be, the expectation is both unworkable and misguided. No university can present every possible outlook in equal measure, nor should it. The mission of higher education is more demanding: to cultivate, critique and transmit knowledge while attending to perspectives that have shaped history and public life. The contrast between an endless marketplace of opinion and the rigorous pursuit of knowledge is crucial to understanding what universities are for.

Karl Mannheim once distinguished between ideology and knowledge, cautioning against their uncritical conflation. That warning remains essential. Universities are not platforms for unchecked ideology but institutions dedicated to showing how knowledge emerges through observation, interpretation, critique and debate. Perspectives matter, but exposure alone is insufficient; they must be contextualized and weighed against evidence. Free speech and academic freedom overlap but are not the same. Free speech protects individuals from state repression in public life. Academic freedom protects scholars in their pursuit of inquiry and ensures students gain the tools to test claims critically. The distinction is central: The university has an obligation not to amplify all voices equally, but to cultivate discernment.

This does not mean shielding students from offensive or discredited ideas. On the contrary, a serious education requires grappling with perspectives that once commanded influence, however abhorrent they may now appear. Students of American history must study the intellectual justifications once advanced for slavery—not because they deserve validation, but because they shaped institutions and legacies that continue to structure society. Students of religious history should encounter theological controversies that once divided communities, whether or not they resonate today, because they explain enduring traditions and conflicts. To include such perspectives is not to offer them equal standing with contemporary knowledge, but to illuminate their historical weight and consequences.

Confusing exposure with endorsement—or opinion with knowledge—risks leaving students adrift in noise. Universities are not megaphones for any thesis but arenas where students learn how to evaluate sources, test claims and trace the consequences of ideas over time. Academic freedom does not mean a free-for-all. Instead, it allows scholars to curate, critique and contextualize knowledge—including ideas that are controversial, even offensive or (as in the study of slavery or fascism) historically consequential. Education that multiplies opinions without cultivating methods of judgment undermines critical capacity; education that fosters discernment equips students to enter public debates wisely and responsibly.

Recent events in higher education reveal how fragile these principles have become. Violence itself intimidates expression, but administrative and political overreaction magnifies the threat. Faculty have been disciplined for social media posts. In Texas, a lecturer was dismissed for teaching about gender identity. In California, University of California, Berkeley administrators released to federal authorities the identities of more than a hundred students and faculty whose names appeared (as accused, accuser or affected party) in complaints about antisemitism. Faculty watch colleagues punished unjustly, while students—especially international and marginalized ones—face surveillance and potential charges. Across the country, dissent is mistaken for hate, controversial speech treated as threat and scandal avoidance prioritized over defending expressive rights.

Academic freedom has long enjoyed special constitutional protection, granting professors wide latitude in teaching and research. But this protection depends on public trust: the sense that higher education fosters critical inquiry rather than partisan indoctrination. When professors behave as ideologues or exercise poor judgment in public, that trust erodes. Yet the greater danger comes not from individual missteps but from capitulating to the demand that every perspective deserves equal standing—or from letting violence and political pressure set the boundaries of what may be said. Higher education should not resemble a bazaar of endless opinion but a community dedicated to the disciplined creation, transmission and critique of knowledge. By training students not to hear every voice equally but to weigh evidence and evaluate claims, universities preserve both their scholarly mission and their democratic role. Institutions that cave to intimidation, or that mistake neutrality for abdication, abandon their responsibility to defend inquiry.

Equally important, universities serve as legitimating institutions. To place a perspective within their walls signals that it merits serious study, that it has crossed the threshold from private belief to public knowledge. This conferral of legitimacy makes curatorial responsibility critical. Treating perspectives as interchangeable voices distorts the university’s purpose, but so does admitting or excluding them solely under political pressure. Both compromises undermine credibility. External actors understand this and exploit universities’ legitimating authority, pressing institutions to provide platforms that elevate discredited or dangerous views into claims of scholarly validation. The responsibility of the university is not to magnify every claim in equal volume but to steward the line between ideas worth engaging and those demanding correction or refusal. Only in this way can institutions preserve their academic mission and their democratic contribution.

The way forward is neither unbounded opinion nor fearful silence. It is the principled defense of creating, critiquing and reimagining knowledge through inquiry guided by evidence and protected from violence and censorship. To retreat from this responsibility is to weaken not only higher education but democracy itself.

Gerardo Martí is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology at Davidson College.

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October 10, 2025
Senate OKs Richey to Lead ED Civil Rights Office

Kim Richey recently served as a senior chancellor in the Florida Department of Education.

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee

The Senate voted this week to confirm Kimberly Richey as the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights—returning her to a role she held in an acting capacity from August 2020 until November 2021, spanning the end of President Trump’s first term and the start of President Biden’s. Richey also worked in the department during the George W. Bush administration.

The vote was 51 to 47 along party lines, with Democrats and Independents all voting nay.

Over the past few years, Richey worked in state positions as a senior chancellor in the Florida Department of Education and a deputy superintendent in the Virginia Department of Education. She now returns to the federal government to lead a greatly diminished Office for Civil Rights—the Trump administration laid off nearly half the OCR staff in March—with a significant case backlog.

The administration is using what’s left of the office as an arm of its campaign against transgender rights, programs aimed at helping minorities and allegations of antisemitism. The OCR has been investigating both K–12 school districts and universities over these issues. Richey told senators during her June confirmation hearing that she’s committed to pursuing cases related to antisemitism and trans women playing on women’s sports teams.

According to a résumé published by government watchdog American Oversight, Richey has also worked with conservative organizations to draft education legislation and policies. Those policy proposals mostly centered on K–12 and included promoting school choice and banning critical race theory (although the topic is not taught in K–12 schools). A 2022 receipt American Oversight uncovered indicated that Richey’s consultancy, RealignEd LLC, was paid $10,000 to “provide subject matter expertise, review and evaluation, and policy advice related to inherently divisive topics and other provisions” shortly after Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order prohibiting “the use of inherently divisive concepts, including critical race theory,” in schools.

Craig Trainor, the principal deputy assistant secretary for civil rights, has led the office as acting secretary since Trump took office earlier this year. In that post, he sent out controversial guidance banning race-based programming and activities, which was later blocked by the courts. He’s now moving to Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he’ll be the assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity.

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October 10, 2025
Democratic Lawmakers Amplify Pressure on UVA

Months after Jim Ryan stepped down as University of Virginia president, state Sen. Creigh Deeds is still waiting for answers on whether political interference and external pressure played a role.

Ryan resigned in late June, citing pressure from the federal government amid Department of Justice investigations into diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at the public university. Although the Board of Visitors voted to shutter its DEI office in March, conservative critics accused UVA of failing to dismantle such efforts. The DOJ subsequently launched seven investigations, two of which have been closed. The status of the other five remains unclear.

Deeds, a Democrat who represents Charlottesville and the surrounding area, has been seeking answers since Aug. 1 through a series of letters sent to the Board of Visitors and a far-reaching Freedom of Information Act request. But so far, university lawyers have largely refused to answer the state lawmaker’s questions, citing ongoing investigations. Faculty members have also said they can’t get straight answers from the university or face time with the board.

And complaints over an alleged lack of transparency at UVA are piling up as state lawmakers are applying additional pressure over how the university will respond to an invitation to sign on to the proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that the Trump administration sent to UVA and eight other universities last week.

Trading Letters

In office since 2001, Deeds has a long relationship with the university. But for the first time in 20-plus years, the senator said, he’s being shut out by a Board of Visitors that refuses to talk to him.

“We’re just trying to get to the bottom of what role the federal government, the Justice Department, the president’s office, the governor, the [state] attorney general played in the decision that Jim Ryan made to resign,” Deeds told Inside Higher Ed in an interview.

Deeds has sent several inquiries to UVA since Ryan resigned. The first letter included 46 questions related to Ryan’s resignation, the DOJ investigations and whether the UVA Board of Visitors “operated within the bounds of its legal and ethical responsibilities.”

But so far, Deeds says, he’s been given “partial answers” and “gobbledygook.”

In a series of letters to Deeds from two law firms (Debevoise & Plimpton and McGuireWoods), the outside legal counsel offered little insights into Ryan’s resignation, arguing in an Aug. 15 response that UVA is “is currently focused on navigating an unprecedented set of challenges,” which includes the ongoing DOJ investigations.

Some information included in the responses is already in the public sphere, such as how the board voted to shutter DEI initiatives, and details on the presidential search committee, which Deeds had also asked about. UVA also included letters sent by the DOJ to the university when it closed two investigations; while the DOJ referenced “appropriate remedial action” by the university, it did not offer specifics. But the focus across several letters sent to Deeds by university lawyers was mostly on why UVA can’t respond.

“Counsel handling the discussions with the Department of Justice has indicated that providing a substantive response to the August 1 letter while negotiations are ongoing would be inconsistent with the need for confidentiality. Counsel has therefore requested that the Board refrain from doing so until a resolution with the Department of Justice is finalized,” wrote David A. O’Neil, an attorney with Debevoise & Plimpton.

UVA lawyers also repeatedly took issue with Deeds’s characterization of the events surrounding Ryan’s resignation.

In an Aug. 29 response, O’Neil wrote that the board “would like to correct a number of inaccurate premises and assumptions in your letter” but was “duty-bound to place the University’s interests above all else” and honor its “fiduciary obligation to the University.” However, UVA legal counsel did not specify what, if anything, was inaccurate.

O’Neil also asked the senator not to “draw conclusions or promote unfounded speculation.”

Deeds responded in a Sept. 4 letter that he was “surprised and concerned” that the Board of Visitors “felt the need to secure outside counsel to respond to a legislative request.” He added that he was equally troubled by the failure to fully answer any questions.

Frustrated by UVA’s response, Deeds filed a FOIA request Sept. 18, seeking a trove of documents related to Ryan’s resignation and the DOJ investigations. UVA has not yet fulfilled the FOIA request but did send Deeds a $4,500 bill to process the information, which he plans to pay.

Deeds then followed up in a Sept. 29 letter, pressing the university on what it agreed to in exchange for the DOJ closing two investigations and for more details on where the other five currently stand.

To date, Deeds is still seeking answers.

UVA spokesperson Brian Coy told Inside Higher Ed by email that the university has offered “as much information as possible at the time” in its multiple responses to Deeds. However, he said, the university is constrained by “active discussions with the Department of Justice regarding several investigations, and publicly disclosing information that relates to those investigations could hamper our ability to resolve them in a way that protects the institution from legal or financial harm.” He added that UVA is processing Deeds’s FOIA request in accordance with state law.

Coy did not address several specific questions sent by Inside Higher Ed asking about potential political interference, remedial action for closed investigations or the status of the active DOJ investigations.

Mounting Pressure

Deeds isn’t the only one struggling to get answers from UVA’s Board of Visitors.

Jeri Seidman, UVA Faculty Senate chair, said the board has declined to answer faculty questions about Ryan’s resignation and DOJ investigations. She added that the board has been less responsive since the Faculty Senate voted no confidence in the Board of Visitors in July.

“We have not had interactions with the rector or the vice rector since July 11,” Seidman said, adding that the board had declined an invitation to address the Faculty Senate last month.

Seidman credited UVA interim president Paul Mahoney with being accessible, though, she noted, he and other leaders have also declined to answer faculty questions due to DOJ investigations.

“We appreciate his willingness to come and answer questions. Those questions are never gentle. But it’s disappointing that the rector has not acknowledged any [faculty] resolutions or requests for information, even if the response were simply to say that now is not the right time,” Seidman said.

Recent Faculty Senate resolutions include demands for an explanation on Ryan’s resignation, the no-confidence vote and calls for UVA leadership and the board to reject the proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” The compact would require changes in admissions and hiring and a commitment to institutional neutrality, while simultaneously suppressing criticism of conservatives, among other demands. In exchange, the administration says signatories would receive preferential treatment from the federal government on research funding, though the document also threatens the institution’s funding if it doesn’t sign or comply.

Virginia Democrats have also opposed the compact and threatened to restrict funding to the university if it signs on. That threat comes as lawmakers are ratcheting up pressure on UVA and waging a legal battle to block Republican governor Glenn Youngkin’s board appointments.

The letter, sent Tuesday by Senate majority leader Scott Surovell, expressed “grave concern” over the compact and referenced Ryan’s resignation, which, he wrote, was “forced” by the DOJ via alleged “extortionate tactics—threatening hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding and the livelihoods of employees, researchers, and students unless he stepped down.”

Surovell warned that “the General Assembly will not stand by while the University surrenders its independence through this compact” and that there would be “significant consequences in future Virginia budget cycles” for UVA should the Board of Visitors agree to the arrangement.

Surovell’s warning shot comes amid a broader dispute over who can serve on Virginia boards. While a Senate committee has blocked a recent slate of gubernatorial appointments, including at UVA, Youngkin has insisted that members can still serve until they are rejected by the full Legislature. A related legal case will be heard by the Virginia Supreme Court later this month.

Board leadership and Mahoney replied to Surovell’s letter Wednesday with a noncommittal reply shared with Inside Higher Ed that did not indicate whether the university intended to sign on to the proposed compact or not. They wrote in part that UVA’s “response will be guided by the same principles of academic freedom and free inquiry that Thomas Jefferson placed at the center of the University’s mission more than 200 years ago, and to which the University has remained faithful ever since.”

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October 10, 2025
Institutions, Over Peers and Tribes, Bolster Indigenous Student Belonging

At all institution types, students living off campus reported a 16 percent higher sense of belonging than those living on campus.

Daniel de la Hoz/iStock/Getty Images Plus

A new study from the American Indian College Fund and National Native Scholarship Providers found that Indigenous students report a stronger sense of belonging on campus when their college provides “perceptions of a sense of acceptance, inclusion and identity.”

They call this “institutional support,” and it’s the primary predictor of belonging, trailed by peer support, campus climate and tribal support, the study showed.

The “Power in Culture Report,” released Wednesday, examined Indigenous students’ sense of belonging at the institutional and state level. NNSP surveyed more than 560 students enrolled at 184 institutions across multiple sectors, including tribal colleges and universities, predominantly white institutions, Hispanic-serving institutions, and other minority-serving institutions. The survey was conducted between March and April of 2024.

Unsurprisingly, tribal colleges foster a greater sense of institutional belonging among Indigenous students than other institution types. At nontribal institutions, Indigenous students must create belonging via “informal networks and cultural resilience amid institutional neglect or performative inclusion.” Indigenous students at nontribal campuses also report experiencing more microaggressions and cultural isolation. Students at institutions with larger populations of Indigenous students report a 14 percent higher sense of belonging than those at schools with fewer Native peers.

When looking at Indigenous student belonging at the state level, students attending college in states with larger tribal populations actually report a lower sense of belonging and say they feel less supported than students in states with smaller tribal populations, “suggesting that population size alone does not equate to meaningful support,” the study noted. Students in states with a tribal college or university reported an 18 percent lower sense of belonging than students in states without a tribal institution.

At all institution types, students living off-campus reported a 16 percent higher sense of belonging than those living on-campus.

The report includes several policy recommendations to bolster Indigenous student belonging, including recruiting Indigenous faculty and staff, funding Native language revitalization courses, and establishing meaningful relationships with local tribal nations.

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October 10, 2025
How teachers and administrators can overcome resistance to NGSS

Key points:

Although the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were released more than a decade ago, adoption of them varies widely in California. I have been to districts that have taken the standards and run with them, but others have been slow to get off the ground with NGSS–even 12 years after their release. In some cases, this is due to a lack of funding, a lack of staffing, or even administrators’ lack of understanding of the active, student-driven pedagogies championed by the NGSS.

Another potential challenge to implementing NGSS with fidelity comes from teachers’ and administrators’ epistemological beliefs–simply put, their beliefs about how people learn. Teachers bring so much of themselves to the classroom, and that means teaching in a way they think is going to help their students learn. So, it’s understandable that teachers who have found success with traditional lecture-based methods may be reluctant to embrace an inquiry-based approach. It also makes sense that administrators who are former teachers will expect classrooms to look the same as when they were teaching, which may mean students sitting in rows, facing the front, writing down notes.

Based on my experience as both a science educator and an administrator, here are some strategies for encouraging both teachers and administrators to embrace the NGSS.

For teachers: Shift expectations and embrace ‘organized chaos’

A helpful first step is to approach the NGSS not as a set of standards, but rather a set of performance expectations. Those expectations include all three dimensions of science learning: disciplinary core ideas (DCIs), science and engineering practices (SEPs), and cross-cutting concepts (CCCs). The DCIs reflect the things that students know, the SEPs reflect what students are doing, and the CCCs reflect how students think. This three-dimensional approach sets the stage for a more active, engaged learning environment where students construct their own understanding of science content knowledge.

To meet expectations laid out in the NGSS, teachers can start by modifying existing “recipe labs” to a more inquiry-based model that emphasizes student construction of knowledge. Resources like the NGSS-aligned digital curriculum from Kognity can simplify classroom implementation by providing a digital curriculum that empowers teachers with options for personalized instruction. Additionally, the Wonder of Science can help teachers integrate real-life phenomena into their NGSS-aligned labs to help provide students with real-life contexts to help build an understanding of scientific concepts related to. Lastly, Inquiry Hub offers open-source full-year curricula that can also aid teachers with refining their labs, classroom activities, and assessments.

For these updated labs to serve their purpose, teachers will need to reframe classroom management expectations to focus on student engagement and discussion. This may mean embracing what I call “organized chaos.” Over time, teachers will build a sense of efficacy through small successes, whether that’s spotting a studentconstructing their own knowledge or documenting an increased depth of knowledge in an entire class. The objective is to build on student understanding across the entire classroom, which teachers can do with much more confidence if they know that their administrators support them.

For administrators: Rethink evaluations and offer support

A recent survey found that 59 percent of administrators in California, where I work, understood how to support teachers with implementing the NGSS. Despite this, some administrators may need to recalibrate their expectations of what they’ll see when they observe classrooms. What they might see is organized chaos happening: students out of their seats, students talking, students engaged in all different sorts of activities. This is what NGSS-aligned learning looks like.

To provide a clear focus on student-centered learning indicators, they can revise observation rubrics to align with NGSS, or make their lives easier and use this one. As administrators track their teachers’ NGSS implementation, it helps to monitor their confidence levels. There will always be early implementers who take something new and run with it, and these educators can be inspiring models for those who are less eager to change.

The overall goal for administrators is to make classrooms safe spaces for experimentation and growth. The more administrators understand about the NGSS, the better they can support teachers in implementing it. They may not know all the details of the DCIs, SEPs, and CCCs, but they must accept that the NGSS require students to be more active, with the teacher acting as more of a facilitator and guide, rather than the keeper of all the knowledge.

Based on my experience in both teaching and administration roles, I can say that constructivist science classrooms may look and sound different–with more student talk, more questioning, and more chaos. By understanding these differences and supporting teachers through this transition, administrators ensure that all California students develop the deeper scientific thinking that NGSS was designed to foster.

Nancy Nasr, Ed.D., Santa Paula Unified School District

Nancy Nasr is a science educator and administrator at Santa Paula Unified School District. She can be reached at [email protected].

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October 9, 2025
Many 2025 “Genius” Fellows Affiliated with Universities
Fourteen of the new MacArthur fellows announced Wednesday are associated with universities.

ilbusca/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images
Numerous academics are part of the 2025 class of MacArthur Foundation fellows announced Wednesday. This year, the foundation selected a slate of 22 “extraordinarily creative individuals” to receive the “genius award.” Each recipient will get $800,000—no-strings attached—over the next five years to “foster and enable innovative, imaginative, and ground-breaking ideas, thinking, and strategies.”

Since the fellowship launched in 1981, fellows have included writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers and entrepreneurs. While no institutional affiliation is required, the award went to the following 2025 fellows with ties to a college or university:
- Atmospheric scientist Ángel F. Adames Corraliza, an associate professor in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, for investigating the mechanisms underlying tropical weather patterns.
- Epidemiologist Nabarun Dasgupta, director of the Opioid Data Lab at the University of North Carolina’s Injury Prevention Research Center, for advocating for harm reduction and creating practical programs to mitigate harms from drug use, particularly opioid overdose deaths.
- Archaeologist Kristina Douglass, associate professor of climate at Columbia University, for investigating how human societies and environments co-evolved and adapted to climate variability.
- Astrophysicist Kareem El-Badry, assistant professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, for leveraging astronomical data sets and theoretical modeling to investigate binary star systems, black holes, neutron stars and other stellar bodies.
- Political scientist Hahrie Han, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Professor in the political science department at Johns Hopkins University, for employing a range of ethnographic, sociological, experimental and quantitative methods to examine organizational structures and tactics that encourage individuals to interact across lines of difference and work together for change in the public sphere.
- Cultural anthropologist Ieva Jusionyte, the Watson Family University Professor of International Security and Anthropology at Brown University, for exploring the political and moral ambiguities of border regions, where state policies regulate historically shifting distinctions between legal and illegal practices.
- Evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers, research chair and professor in the Ecology and Evolution Department at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, for illuminating the evolutionary mechanisms underlying cooperation between species and the role of plant-microbe mutualisms in ecosystem health.
- Structural biologist Jason McLellan, professor and Robert A. Welch Chair in Chemistry in the Department of Molecular Biosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, for investigating virus fusion proteins and developing new interventions to prevent infectious diseases.
- Fiction writer Tommy Orange, faculty mentor in the creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, for capturing a diverse range of Native American experiences and lives in novels that traverse time, space and narrative perspectives.
- Nuclear security specialist Sébastien Philippe, assistant professor in the Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics Department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, for exposing past harms and potential future risks from building, testing and storing launch-ready nuclear weapons.
- Interdisciplinary artist Gala Porras-Kim, visiting critic in sculpture at the Yale School of Art, for proposing new ways to make visible the layered meanings and functions of cultural artifacts held in museums and institutional collections.
- Neurobiologist and optometrist Teresa Puthussery, associate professor in the Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry and Vision Science at the University of California, Berkeley, for exploring how neural circuits of the retina encode visual information for the primate brain.
- Chemical engineer William Tarpeh, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, for developing sustainable and practical methods to recover valuable chemical resources from wastewater.
- Mathematician Lauren K. Williams, the Dwight Parker Robinson Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University, for elucidating unexpected connections between algebraic combinatorics and concepts in other areas of math and physics.
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October 9, 2025
Team Teaching Benefits Faculty and Students

Most students expect to see one professor at the front of the classroom throughout the semester. But for those attending Harvey Mudd College, a STEM-focused institution in California, it’s not unusual to have four or more faculty members teaching one course.

At Harvey Mudd, team teaching has been a distinguishing facet of the student experience for decades; most general education STEM courses for incoming students are taught by two or more professors.

“It’s the water we swim in,” said Kathy Van Heuvelen, associate dean of faculty. “It’s so embedded in our culture.”

Implementing team teaching as standard practice has helped the college train early-career faculty, establish more holistic courses and ensure students are aware of the various resources and experts available to them on campus.

What is team teaching? Also called collaborative teaching or co-teaching, team teaching involves multiple instructors leading a course, each with their own responsibilities.

Often, team teaching involves faculty of different disciplines covering a topic or issue from multiple perspectives. At Harvey Mudd, for example, a group of faculty taught a course on California wildfires, and the content included the history of forestry, atmospheric chemistry and air pollution, as well as the social implications of fires. Sometimes that means two professors teaching side by side, but often faculty split up lessons and take turns delivering content to students.

Team teaching is less common than solo teaching, in part because it requires more time to implement. Faculty sometimes face logistical barriers, such as aligning schedules and co-creating materials, as well as personal differences in assessment or classroom management. But when done well, the format can equip students with greater critical thinking skills and a richer understanding of content.

Prepped for success: To help professors navigate team teaching, Harvey Mudd offers them a variety of resources. New instructors participate in a weekly lunch led by college administrators where they gather, eat and engage in professional development, Van Heuvelen said. “Our sessions have included team-teaching strategies for communicating with your team and navigating this mode of teaching.”

Van Heuvelen also provides a team-teaching checklist for faculty each semester to help them prepare for the upcoming term, which includes items such as communication, timeline for developing materials, classroom management and other course policies.

“It has a list of questions for the team to discuss ahead of time to try to help teams get out In front of any challenges and establish their team norms,” she said.

The college is part of the Claremont Consortium—a group of seven higher education institutions in Claremont, Calif.—which has a Consortium Center for Teaching and Learning and provides workshops on team teaching, as well.

Most team-taught courses are designed to feature a junior and senior faculty member, allowing the early-career professional to learn from a more experienced instructor, Van Heuvelen said.

“For an early-career hire who maybe does not have extensive teaching experience, it is like attending a master class,” Van Heuvelen said. “There is tremendous mentoring that can go on there.”

Newer instructors also bring fresh perspectives and ideas to the classroom, which ensures content does not get stale over time.

Supporting student success: One of the benefits of the model is that students have a group of instructors to engage with and call on if they need academic support, Van Heuvelen said.

“For example, when we have a team that’s teaching, we all hold common office hours, so students can go to any office hours,” Van Heuvelen said.

Past research shows that students are often unaware of the full range of supports available to them on campus, but engaging with many professors can get students more plugged in to institutional services, or at least provide more touch points, Van Heuvelen said.

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October 9, 2025
Why Founder’s College Is the Answer to Declining College-Going
In a recent Forbes column, Lumina Foundation president Jamie Merisotis reminded us that degrees must do more than certify coursework—they must create real value for students and employers. In Indiana, where Sagamore Institute’s 2040 workforce economy study and the Indiana Commission for Higher Education warn of falling college-going rates, this challenge is especially urgent.

That is the backdrop for Butler University’s boldest experiment yet: Founder’s College, launched August 2025.

Compressing Time, Expanding Values

The Founder’s College model confronts a growing national conversation: does the U.S. need more pathways beyond the traditional four-year degree? Institutions across the country are piloting three-year bachelor’s options and embedded two-year credentials to align faster, more affordable education with urgent labor market shortages while maximizing current infrastructure to meet needs.

Butler University has placed itself in this conversation with uncommon clarity. At Founder’s College, students complete a two-year associate degree in six structured semesters, front-loading the critical skills usually acquired in a student’s junior and senior years—career motivation, professional identity and workforce readiness. This compressed pathway is not cut-rate—it is deliberately sequenced with degree programs tied to Classification of Instructional Programs codes and O*NE T occupational standards synced to NACE competencies, ensuring that every credential reflects real career demand in Indiana and beyond.

A Workforce-Aligned, Equity-Driven Blueprint

The Indianapolis labor market, seeing a 3.1 percent GDP growth, underscores the need for this approach (Indiana University News, 2004). The monetary value of all that is produced in the state is outpacing state and national averages. At the same time, in-demand industries—especially health care, professional services, technology and advanced manufacturing—are confronting skill mismatches. Employers are offering jobs, yet Indiana’s college-going rate has slipped to historic lows, leaving pipelines partially empty (Indiana Business Research Center, 2024). The Indiana Department of Workforce Development reports wages are rising, up 4.1 percent in the metro area in 2025 according to InContext Indiana.

Institutions like Butler University are not blind to the demographic challenges either. A declining birth rate, an aging workforce, admissions redesigns and disruptive technologies such as AI intensify the demand for midlevel, adaptable credentials to reskill workers quickly.

Here is where Founder’s College shifts the ground. It builds wraparound supports—career coaching, social workers, family inclusion and embedded apprenticeships—into the core of its structure rather than leaving them at the margins. By lowering tuition costs to nearly debt-free levels for students and building in work-integrated experiences, Founder’s College creates a system where opportunity is the design, not the exception.

Global Research, Local Application

Butler’s experiment does not arise in a vacuum. It mirrors and operationalizes the findings of major policy reports:

A 2024 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report recommends expanded investment in skills and high-quality education to combat slowing productivity growth coupled by aging, digitalization and climate changes. It stresses repeatedly that the U.S. is falling behind peer nations in connecting academic programs to workplace readiness, particularly in apprenticeships and microcredentials. The Founder’s College requirement that every student engage in structured, mentored, for-credit work experience directly addresses that gap.

The America AI Action Plan 2025 highlights the accelerating impact of artificial intelligence on the skills profile of jobs. Handshake reports increase in generative AI usage too. While OECD 2025 reminds us that there is a changing landscape requiring adaptability, complex interdisciplinary problem-solving and liberal arts and professional academic digital fluency are no longer optional. At Founder’s College, technical writing studios, digital credentialing, industry certification and technology integration prepare students to thrive in an AI-mediated workplace.

FutureEd research from 2023 emphasizes transparency in skills attainment and the use of short-term, stackable credentials as levers of equity. By awarding credentials midjourney and maximizing learning mobility, a call from the LEARN Commission—not just at degree completion—Founder’s College signals value to students, employers and families at every step.
Taken together, these frameworks make Founder’s College not just a local response to Indiana’s challenges, but a globally informed model tuned to the future of work.

Founder’s College directly widens the workforce pipeline—by lowering the cost barrier, embedding workforce credentials and signaling to families that college is not just accessible, but immediately useful.

A Case Study and a Challenge

Across the United States, demographic and migration patterns are reshaping where and how higher education demand will grow. The U.S. South, with its younger, more racially and ethnically diverse populations and steady in-migration, stands poised to lead the nation in enrollment growth through 2035. In contrast, much of the Midwest faces different headwinds: smaller cohorts of college-age students, declining K–12 enrollments and out-migration of young families.

Rather than a simple story of winners and losers, this shift underscores the divergent opportunities that regions face. In the South, higher education systems will need to expand capacity, affordability and culturally responsive pathways that meet the aspirations of new, more diverse learners. In the Midwest, the challenge is not only to stabilize enrollment but to re-engage adults with some college, no credential and to strengthen the link between education and regional economic renewal.

Nationally, forecasts for the next decade suggest that the future of higher education will depend on how well institutions adapt to a shrinking pool of traditional-age learners while expanding access for new groups, including working adults and first-generation students. Recruitment, funding models and program design will need to evolve accordingly.

Using the 2020 U.S. Census as a baseline, when 43 percent of Americans identified as people of color and more than half of minors identified as nonwhite, it’s clear that the next generation of university-bound students will be more multiracial and more globally connected than ever before. Their appetite for education will be shaped by digital fluency, early exposure to STEM and environmental learning, and a social consciousness steeped in sustainability, mental health and civic responsibility.

For Indiana, where college-going rates are at historic lows, this is more than institutional innovation. Founder’s College is therefore both a case study and a challenge.
- To other universities: Reimagine the traditional degree in ways that speak to today’s students and employers.
- To states: Invest in models that don’t just get more students in the door, but get them to good jobs, faster.
- And to students themselves: Butler is showing you that higher education is within reach, aligned with your life and positions you for thriving success.
As Merisotis wrote, the future belongs to institutions that make degrees more valuable. Indiana may have just found its vanguard.
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October 9, 2025
Transparency Now or Regulation Later

Doctors predicted Wayne Frederick, the president of Howard University, wouldn’t live past 8. Now he’s 54. Frederick came to the U.S. from Trinidad and Tobago with a dream of finding a cure for his disease, sickle cell anemia, but detoured into higher ed administration.

At an event hosted by the American Council on Education at Howard University this week, Frederick said CRISPR gene editing, a technology developed in academia, made his dream a reality. Finding cures to debilitating diseases is one of “the intangible things that higher ed does to change lives,” he said.

Higher ed has changed lives in thousands of other ways; institutions are the largest employers in 10 states; colleges have helped regenerate many of America’s Rust Belt centers. Higher education is undeniably a public good. But as concerns grow about the affordability of college, do Americans care?

In the ACE event’s discussion about the economic impact of higher ed, Alex Ricci, president of the National Council on Higher Education Resources, pointed out that despite college’s role in local and regional economies, the debate about the value of higher ed comes down to whether one thinks the benefit to the individual is greater than to society as a whole. “Many colleges and universities see themselves as a benefit shared broadly by society. Most Americans—especially those carrying thousands of dollars in student loan debt—see it as a transaction where the individual is the primary beneficiary or victim, depending on the student’s long-term outcomes,” he said.

Regardless of whether you think higher ed is a public or private good, institutions are losing the value debate. In recorded remarks for the discussion, Representative Burgess Owens, a Utah Republican, chairman of the House subcommittee on higher education and workforce development, said, “Higher education should be about value, not just prestige.” He also presided over the “No More Surprises: Reforming College Pricing for Students and Families” hearing last month where lawmakers examined ways to make college costs more transparent.

The lack of transparency on the cost of college can be life-altering for students and poses existential risks for colleges. Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 student survey found that three-fourths of the 5,000 respondents encountered some surprises in the cost of their education. These surprises can derail education journeys. One in five students said that an unexpected expense of $500 to $1,000 would threaten their ability to persist. Bad surprises also harm colleges: Students say that the lack of affordability is the biggest driver of declining public trust in higher education.

College cost transparency has been a government priority since the Obama administration, but never has public trust in higher ed been so low or institutions so vulnerable to government overreach. Republican lawmakers have seized on the problem of college affordability and cost transparency and are looking for bipartisan solutions. In May, Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, introduced the Understanding the True Cost of College Act 2025, which calls for standardization of financial aid offers so students understand in simple terms what the direct costs, indirect costs and net price of college will be. Last month the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions formally requested information from the sector on ways to improve transparency, lower costs and ensure a college degree is valuable to students.

Some colleges sense the urgency of the moment and are taking action on affordability. More are offering free tuition to households earning as much as $200,000 a year. Last month Whitworth University made a radical decision to stop tuition discounting and decrease its annual sticker price from $54,000 to $26,900. At the same time, a recent study found that tuition discounting is on the rise among public four-year institutions. But tuition discounts create more confusion around the true cost of college.

A reasonable question to ask is: Why are only 730 colleges members of the College Cost Transparency Initiative? If higher ed stakeholders wanted to win the value debate, they would listen to lawmakers—and students and their families—and act on affordability and cost transparency. Otherwise, policymakers will do it for them. By demonstrating their impact for individual students, colleges can make a compelling case for their broader societal value.

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October 9, 2025