Tag: opinion

  • On the Sensibility of Cognitive Outsourcing (opinion)

    On the Sensibility of Cognitive Outsourcing (opinion)

    I am deeply worried about my vacuuming skills. I’ve always enjoyed vacuuming, especially with the vacuum cleaner I use. It has a clear dustbin, and there’s something cathartic about running it over the carpet in the upstairs hallway and seeing all the dust and debris it collects. I’m worried, however, because I keep outsourcing my downstairs vacuuming to the robot vacuum cleaner my wife and I bought a while back. With three kids and three dogs in the house, our family room sees a lot of foot traffic, and I save a lot of time by letting the robot clean up. What am I losing by relying on my robot vacuum to keep my house clean?

    Not much, of course, and I’m not actually worried about losing my vacuuming skills. Vacuuming the family room isn’t a task that means much to me, and I’m happy to let the robot handle it. Doing so frees up my time for other tasks, preferably bird-watching out the kitchen window, but more often doing the dishes, a chore for which I don’t have a robot to help me. It’s entirely reasonable for me to offload a task I don’t care much about to the machines when the machines are right there waiting to do the work for me.

    That was my response to a new high-profile study from a MIT Media Lab team led by Nataliya Kosmyna. Their preprint, “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task,” details their experiment. The team enlisted 54 adult participants to write short essays using SAT prompts over multiple sessions. A third of the participants were given access to ChatGPT to help with their essay writing, a third had access to any website they could reach through a Google search engine but were prohibited from using ChatGPT or other large language models and a third had no outside aids (the “brain-only” group). The researchers not only scored the quality of the participants’ essays, but they also used electroencephalography to record participants’ brain activity during these writing tasks.

    The MIT team found that “brain connectivity systematically scaled down with the amount of external support.” While the brain-only group “exhibited the strongest, widest‑ranging [neural] networks,” AI assistance in the experiment “elicited the weakest overall coupling.” Moreover, the ChatGPT users were increasingly less engaged in the writing process over the multiple sessions, often just copying and pasting from the AI chat bot by the end of the experiment. They also had a harder time quoting anything from the essay they had just submitted compared to the brain-only group.

    This study has inspired some dramatic headlines: “ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills” and “Study: Using AI Could Cost You Brainpower” and “Your Reliance on ChatGPT Might Be Really Bad for Your Brain.” Savvy news readers will key into the qualifiers in those headlines (“may,” “could,” “might”) instead of the scarier words, and the authors of the study have made an effort to prevent journalists and commentators from overplaying their results. From the study’s FAQ: “Is it safe to say that LLMs are, in essence, making us ‘dumber’? No!” As is usually the case in the AI-and-learning discourse, we need to slow our roll and look beyond the hyperbole to see what this new study does and doesn’t actually say.

    I should state now for the record that I am not a neuroscientist. I can’t weigh in with any authority on the EEG analysis in this study, although others with expertise in this area have done so and have expressed concerns about the authors’ interpretation of EEG data. I do, however, know a thing or two about teaching and learning in higher education, having spent my career at university centers for teaching and learning helping faculty and other instructors across the disciplines explore and adopt evidence-based teaching practices. And it’s the teaching-and-learning context in the MIT study that caught my eye.

    Consider the task that participants in this study, all students or staff at Boston-area universities, were given. They were presented with three SAT essay prompts and asked to select one. They were then given 20 minutes to write an essay in response to their chosen prompt, while wearing an EEG helmet of some kind. Each subject participated in a session like this three times over the course of a few months. Should we be surprised that the participants who had access to ChatGPT increasingly outsourced their writing to the AI chat bot? And that, in doing so, they were less and less engaged in the writing process?

    I think the takeaway from this study is that if you give adults an entirely inauthentic task and access to ChatGPT, they’ll let the robot do the work and save their energy for something else. It’s a reasonable and perhaps cognitively efficient thing to do. Just like I let my robot vacuum cleaner tidy up my family room while I do the dishes or look for an eastern wood pewee in my backyard.

    Sure, writing an SAT essay is a cognitively complex task, and it is perhaps an important skill for a certain cohort of high school students. But what this study shows is what generative AI has been showing higher ed since ChatGPT launched in 2022: When we ask students to do things that are neither interesting nor relevant to their personal or professional lives, they look for shortcuts.

    John Warner, an Inside Higher Ed contributor and author of More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI (Basic Books), wrote about this notion in his very first post about ChatGPT in December 2022. He noted concerns that ChatGPT would lead to the end of high school English, and then asked, “What does it say about what we ask students to do in school that we assume they will do whatever they can to avoid it?”

    What’s surprising to me about the new MIT study is that we are more than two years into the ChatGPT era and we’re still trying to assess the impact of generative AI on learning by studying how people respond to boring essay assignments. Why not explore how students use AI during more authentic learning tasks? Like law students drafting contracts and client memos or composition students designing multimodal projects or communications students attempting impossible persuasive tasks? We know that more authentic assignments motivate deeper engagement and learning, so why not turn students loose on those assignments and then see what impact AI use might have?

    There’s another, more subtle issue with the discourse around generative AI in learning that we can see in this study. In the “Limitations and Future Work” section of the preprint, the authors write, “We did not divide our essay writing task into subtasks like idea generation, writing, and so on.” Writing an essay is a more complicated cognitive process than vacuuming my family room, but critiques of the use of AI in writing are often focused on outsourcing the entire writing process to a chat bot. That seems to be what the participants did in this study, and it is perhaps a natural use of AI when given an uninteresting task.

    However, when a task is interesting and relevant, we’re not likely to hand it off entirely to ChatGPT. Savvy AI users might get a little AI help with parts of the task, like generating examples or imagining different audiences or tightening our prose. AI can’t do all the things that a trained human editor can, but, as writing instructor (and human editor) Heidi Nobles has argued, AI can be a useful substitute when a human editor isn’t readily available. It’s a stretch to say that my robot vacuum cleaner and I collaborate to keep the house tidy, but it’s reasonable to think that someone invested in a complex activity like writing might use generative AI as what Ethan Mollick calls a “co-intelligence.”

    If we’re going to better understand generative AI’s impact on learning, something that will be critical for higher education to do to keep its teaching mission relevant, we have to look at the best uses of AI and the best kinds of learning activities. That research is happening, thankfully, but we shouldn’t expect simple answers. After all, learning is more complicated than vacuuming.

    Derek Bruff is associate director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Virginia.

    Source link

  • The ART of Professionalism (opinion)

    The ART of Professionalism (opinion)

    A career is much like a work of art: We select an area to study—a medium, of sorts—in which to pursue an interest or a desire. We start by obtaining foundational knowledge before creating something that contributes to the greater society. Some may benefit from what is produced; others may not. Some will appreciate the output; others will not gain much, if anything, from what is constructed. At the center of the result is the artist themselves. Others along the way lend their own expertise, time and insights toward the outcome. However, it is the unique skills, perspectives, knowledge, choices and behaviors of the artist that determine what is created.

    We are all artists in the making. We have a profession in which we have chosen to engage. As graduate students or postdoctoral scholars, we gain the foundations needed for our chosen discipline. During our time training in higher education, we focus on acquiring technical skills and techniques to contribute to sustaining and expanding our fields of study. We set upon the path to becoming experts through trial and error, discovery and disappointments, gains and losses.

    Like with a work of art, we may start from a place of uncertainty: What can appear to be confounding fragments of a greater idea can coalesce in ways that surprise and satisfy us. We pull together parts and pieces to make something whole or even construct something unique. Yet while we are engaged in this creative and intellectual process, we must also work within defined boundaries. Expectations and ethical standards guide our professional conduct. Understanding these nuances is essential to forming a professional identity.

    Each profession carries its own expectations for behavior, decision-making and accountability. Cambridge defines “professionalism” as “the qualities connected with trained and skilled people.” We can have strong technical skills and deep knowledge in our particular disciplines; however, these alone do not guarantee our level of professionalism when we are actually in the workforce interfacing with supervisors, colleagues, team members and clients.

    While having the foundational skills and understanding may guarantee some success within a career, it is actually the capacity for acquiring and applying what I’ve termed “human-centered competencies” that ensures a greater degree of career fulfillment. Human-centered competencies consist of behaviors that involve a deeper sense of self-awareness. Recognizing and managing our behaviors, and understanding how they may impact those interacting with us, helps us relate to others in ways that forge effective communication, efficacious decision-making, constructive conflict resolution and fruitful work endeavors.

    With this in mind, let’s explore the ART of professionalism through some simple reflective exercises. Think about the questions presented here as intended to encourage an honest reflection on the art we are creating within our own spheres of influence.

    Attitude

    Our attitude is an outward reflection of what we are thinking and how we are feeling. Our attitude toward an assignment, toward a co-worker, toward ourselves or toward life itself is exemplified through our behaviors. Are we respectful and kind to others? Do we smile at who we see in the mirror or constantly chastise ourselves for what we have done (or not done)? Do we tend to jump to negative conclusions regarding those with whom we interact? Do we shake hands, look people in the eye and smile? Or are we downcast, avoidant and possibly even surly? How do we appear? Are we dressed for the part—one in which we want to be respected and taken seriously—or do we look like we would rather be on the couch bingeing on Netflix and eating potato chips?

    Our attitude says a lot about ourselves, and sometimes we do not even have to open our mouths to reveal it. Our internal dialogue can have an impact on our external behaviors, so we need to be aware of our attitude. We can improve it, if needed. We can start by examining how we carry ourselves, as our posture and physical appearance convey nonverbal messages. How we show up is also important to consider. Are we prepared for meetings? Do we speak up with confidence? Do we actively listen to others and appreciate their contributions?

    Our attitude reflects our frame of mind, and we illustrate who we are through our attitude. We also should keep in mind that each of us represents more than ourselves; we reflect the values and credibility of our professional communities.

    Responsibility

    Within the work environment we all have duties, projects or assignments that we manage. Responsibility involves taking ownership of our decisions, our actions and our outcomes. Work involves interdependence; it is rare that we can achieve a goal all on our own. Even artists need people who help them develop their skills, manufacture their tools, market their work and provide venues to exhibit their talent. Within the workplace, we will need others and others will need us.

    Responsibility, therefore, is a crucial competency to have as a professional. Exhibiting responsibility involves both dependability and accountability. Being dependable is a choice, and this can involve time management, setting boundaries and fulfilling obligations; we show up on time and we follow through with what we say we are going to do. Accountability means that we acknowledge when things have not worked out as planned, we recognize our contributions to successes and we face the consequences of our decisions and actions, whether positive or negative. Instead of evaluating situations as win or lose, we can choose to look at outcomes as win or learn. Whether we experience a victory or suffer a defeat, we can always learn from the process. In essence, responsibility is about us doing our part so that we contribute, in a mindful way, to the success and well-being of our colleagues and co-workers.

    Trust

    Trust is by far the most important component of professionalism. Trust looks different in a professional atmosphere than it does in personal life. Trust involves being genuine with others. We want to be able to count on others and to believe that they are being honest with us. The same expectations for honesty should hold when it comes to our own behavior.

    Trust involves being reliable, striving to meet expectations, fulfilling obligations, avoiding gossip and feeling secure in the knowledge that harm will not be done or betrayal will not occur. As professionals, it is imperative that we are trustworthy, as this is a fundamental component of human interactions. Being competent at trust involves building goodwill, being cooperative, displaying integrity, adhering to our values, engaging in sincere interactions and forming strong alliances. Without trust, bonds are broken, relationships are destroyed and organizations fail. We need to examine our words and our actions to evaluate how trustworthy we may seem to others. Being empathetic, reliable and ethical will serve us well as we pursue our passion and contribute our talents to the well-being of those with whom we work, as well as those who benefit from what our teams and organizations produce.

    Conclusion: Building a Body of Work

    As professionals, we are not just building careers; we are creating something much more enduring: a body of work, a reputation, a legacy. The skills we acquire in our chosen disciplines are only part of the equation. Equally important are the attitudes we embody, the responsibilities we accept and the trust we build. It takes time, reflection and endurance to create a great work of art; the same is true for our careers. The process may be unpredictable, but the core elements—our values, our character and our professionalism—will determine how our work is received and remembered.

    So ask yourself: What kind of professional artist do you want to be? What are you creating through your everyday choices? How will your ART— attitude, responsibility and trust—shape your path forward?

    Rhonda Sutton is dean of professional development at North Carolina State University’s Graduate School. She oversees a team that provides programming focused on career readiness, communication skills and teaching for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. She also facilitates professional development initiatives on leadership, mentoring and wellness. Rhonda is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium, an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.

    Source link

  • The Meaning of July 4 to Political Science Teacher (opinion)

    The Meaning of July 4 to Political Science Teacher (opinion)

    Every year for the past 25 years, I have taught an intermediate-level undergraduate course at Indiana University Bloomington called The Declaration of Independence and the Meaning of American Citizenship. I love teaching this course, because it allows students to engage history by interpreting a rather simple text that is well recognized even if not necessarily well understood—and this tension between vague familiarity and real understanding makes the teaching fun.

    My basic approach to the topic and the course, outlined on the syllabus, has remained pretty fixed over the years:

    This class will pay special attention to the meaning of “America.” It will address serious questions about what it means to think “historically.” It will trace and analyze the many ways that the meanings of American citizenship have been contested since 1776, and it will do so through a focus on alternative interpretations of the Declaration of Independence, which has sometimes been called the “birth certificate of American democracy.”

    The Declaration is not the only important text in American political history. In particular, we will pay attention to its complex relationship to the U.S. Constitution, the other seminal “founding” document of the U.S. political system. But it is a very important touchstone for many important historical debates, and it is an even more important symbol of American political identity (which is why the late historian Pauline Maier referred to it as “American Scripture”).

    The Declaration is also a very instructive example of the fact that core political symbols, texts and principles can be interpreted in different ways and are often heavily contested. Such rhetorical contests play an important role in the evolution of democracy over time, as disenfranchised groups appeal to “foundational” texts, like the Declaration, to justify their demands for recognition and inclusion—and as those who oppose recognition and inclusion also sometimes draw upon the same texts, though in very different ways.

    In this course we will discuss how the Declaration has been a source of inspiration for activists and social movements seeking to democratize American society, and how it has also been used, differently, by opponents of democratization.

    As we will see, there is not one true “meaning” of the Declaration.

    But there are more and less nuanced, and more and less inclusive, interpretations of the Declaration. The primary goal of this course is to develop a historically and philosophically informed understanding of the Declaration—what it says, what it has meant, how it has justified many of the things most of us hold dear and some things many of us find revolting—and, by doing so, to nurture a more informed and reflexive understanding of contemporary American democracy. And because it is a course taught in a U.S. public university, to students most if not all of whom are citizens of the U.S., such an understanding has potentially significant implications for the way each of us thinks and acts as a citizen.

    The course was originally inspired by a chance encounter, many decades ago, with a fascinating anthology, published in 1976—the year of the Bicentennial—and edited by famed labor historian Philip S. Foner, entitled We, The Other People: Alternative Declarations of Independence by Labor Groups, Farmers, Woman’s Rights Advocates, Socialists, and Blacks, 1829–1975. This volume, as its title suggests, furnishes a wide range of texts to explore with students. Over the years, I have incorporated dozens of other texts, some modeled directly on the 1776 Declaration, others simply drawing heavily on it, including the speeches of a great many presidents, especially Lincoln.

    Central to the course are three famous speeches delivered by dissenters who were widely reviled in their time: Frederick Douglass’s 1852 “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”; Eugene V. Debs’s “Liberty,” given in 1895 upon his release from six months in prison for leading the 1894 Pullman strike; and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, given at the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

    But the syllabus also includes speeches by Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens; populist Tom Watson; and segregationist governor George C. Wallace. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments,” adopted in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention for women’s rights, plays an important role; so too the 1898 “White Declaration of Independence” published by white racists in Wilmington, N.C., who overthrew a multiracial city government and terrorized the Black community.

    The course is very historical, but also very contemporary, because July 4 comes every year, and because past historical struggles over the meaning of the Declaration continue to resonate in the present—and indeed are sometimes revived in the present.

    But in the coming year the course will be more relevant than ever, because President Donald Trump has made clear that he plans to turn the entire year leading up to next year’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration’s signing into a celebration of “American greatness”—and thus of himself.

    Back in May 2023, Trump released a campaign video promising what Politico described as “a blowout, 12-month-long ‘Salute to America 250’ celebration,” including “a ‘Great American State Fair,’ featuring pavilions from all 50 states, nationwide high school sporting contests, and the building of Trump’s ‘National Garden of American Heroes’ with statues of important figures in American history.”

    In his second week in office, Trump issued two executive orders centered on the Declaration. The first, “Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday,” announced that “it is the policy of the United States, and a purpose of this order, to provide a grand celebration worthy of the momentous occasion of the 250th anniversary of American Independence on July 4, 2026.” The other, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling,” mandated the termination of “radical, anti-American ideologies” and the re-establishment of a “President’s Advisory 1776 Commission” charged with promoting patriotic education.

    Trump has long laid claim to “the spirit of July 4, 1776.” In the final days of his first term, as the nation was overtaken by a wave of Black Lives Matter demonstrations protesting the police killing of George Floyd, he established his “1776 Commission,” which was intended to legitimate his increasingly repressive approach to the demonstrations and to energize his 2020 re-election campaign (the resulting report was also an explicit repudiation of The New York Times’ 2019 “The 1619 Project”).

    The commission and its hurriedly drafted “The 1776 Report” failed to help fuel Trump’s failing 2020 campaign. But its broader ideological mission—to inaugurate a MAGA-inflected cultural revolution in a second Trump term—was hardly defeated.

    The MAGA movement’s attempt to overthrow Joe Biden’s 2020 election— “Today is 1776,” tweeted MAGA congresswoman Lauren Boebert on Jan. 6, 2021, speaking for the thousands of “3 Percenters,” “Proud Boys” and assorted “patriot” groups that invaded the Capitol building—may have failed. But only temporarily. For Trump has returned to the White House with a vengeance and has commenced an ideological and economic assault on higher education, committed to “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” by purging society of “divisive narratives that distort our shared history.”

    Historical understanding and social criticism are out and national reverence is in.

    I cannot imagine a more exciting time to be teaching a course on the Declaration of Independence and the meaning of American citizenship.

    But I also cannot imagine a more challenging and indeed precarious time to do so.

    For the course—which does not seek to promote reverence or national pride or “American greatness”—is at odds with the prevailing spirit of the time, or at least its ascendant ideology.

    It seeks to promote historical understanding, based on serious historical scholarship, and a general appreciation for the complex ways that the Declaration has figured in debates and conflicts over the shifting meaning of American citizenship. The course refuses to ignore or whitewash the ways that patriotism and even the preamble of the Declaration itself have been mobilized to oppose the forms of inclusion, and democratization, that we now take for granted (like the abolition of chattel slavery, considered by Southern states to be such a despotic violation of slaveholder property rights that they seceded from the Union, and formed the Confederacy, by appealing to the Declaration’s “consent of the governed”).

    It also refuses to treat American history as the happy working out over time of a beneficent commitment to universal freedom that was embraced from the beginning by all Americans. For while certain universalist words were there from the beginning—coexisting with much less universalistic words, to be sure—a commitment to their universal application was most definitely not there from the beginning. That promise took decades and even centuries to be even haltingly redeemed, partially and in steps, due to the blood, sweat and tears of generations of brave activists—a process that continues to this day. And the fact that the Declaration’s words played such an important role in this contentious politics is the very reason why it is such a seminal text, one that deserves appreciation and celebration even as it is a human invention not above moral reproach or historical critique.

    In politics as in life, criticism, and not easy praise, is the sincerest form of flattery.

    As a professor, my approach to the course material is not partisan in any sense. I have no interest in changing the minds of any of my students, whatever they happen to think, except in the sense that all good teaching is about getting students to think more deeply and more regularly. In this sense, I seek to change the mind of every student, by engaging every student with historical materials, and ideas, and intellectual challenges, and by fostering a climate of respectful questioning and disagreeing in the classroom so that students can hear and listen to those with viewpoints different from their own. The pedagogy of higher education is not normal out in the world beyond the academy, though it would not be a bad thing if it were much more normalized than it currently is. That is why colleges and universities exist.

    All the same, we have arrived at a historical moment in the U.S., perhaps unlike any before, in which such education is considered partisan, and denounced as “indoctrination,” by a MAGA movement and a Trump administration obsessed with a closing of borders, and ranks, and minds, in the name of patriotic “unity” and “American greatness.”

    At a time when historical education is reduced to the celebration of national greatness, a historically serious course on the Declaration of Independence that treats it as a text to be critically engaged, not worshipped, might be considered subversive. Indeed, GOP-controlled state legislatures across the country, following the Trump administration’s lead, have instituted a wide range of measures designed to subject university teaching to heightened political scrutiny (in my own state of Indiana, vague “intellectual diversity” standards have been enacted into law, and Attorney General Todd Rokita has created a web portal, ominously named “Eyes on Education,” that encourages parents and teachers to report “objectionable” forms of teaching).

    The problem with such censoriousness is that, if taken seriously, it is hard to see how the Declaration is worth anything at all. None other than Frederick Douglass himself noted precisely this back in 1852: “There was a time when, to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men’s souls. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! Here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers.”

    Since July 4, 1776, the Declaration’s words have resonated at every moment when citizens have together sought to make the society, in the words of that other foundational text, the Constitution, “a more perfect union.” To dismiss the critical appropriation of the Declaration is to devalue both the text itself and the entire course of American history.

    This July 4, I will be reflecting on the historical and the contemporary meaning of the text whose publication Americans will celebrate, and gearing up to once again teach The Declaration of Independence and the Meaning of American Citizenship at a time when it could not be more relevant.

    Jeffrey C. Isaac is completing a book, entitled Defending Democracy’s Declaration, that challenges the ways that the MAGA movement is poised to weaponize the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University Bloomington, Isaac writes regularly on current affairs at his blog, Democracy in Dark Times, and at his new Substack dedicated to the forthcoming book, also named Defending Democracy’s Declaration.

    Source link

  • A Re-Engagement Strategy for Administrators (opinion)

    A Re-Engagement Strategy for Administrators (opinion)

    In American higher education, teaching is our business, research our currency and service our obligation. It has always perplexed me that the pursuit of higher education administration has traditionally compelled individuals to move away from a continued practice of two of these core faculty functions. The path of a faculty administrator is typically marked by a shift away from teaching and research, an evolution that makes returning to the faculty for some almost an impossibility, after years of being disconnected from the disciplinary practices that propelled their trajectory through the faculty ranks to secure an administrative role in the first place.

    At Kennesaw State University, we are exploring a new approach to academic leadership that reverses this traditional model of administrative disconnect. Starting this past academic year, every senior academic administrator serving on the provost’s leadership team (including all deans) joined me (serving as provost) in a commitment to teaching or researching annually, with the goal of helping us better understand and serve our university community. For some, the move to formally carve out approximately 10 percent of their time for either teaching or research validates ongoing teaching and research practices, while for others, it provides administrative latitude to reignite their passion for teaching and/or research.

    KSU’s president, Kathy Stewart Schwaig, co-taught an honors course with me this past spring, leading this strategy by example. President Schwaig, who holds a Ph.D. in information systems and whose leadership trajectory has evolved through faculty ranks across two Georgia institutions, takes this philosophical commitment to staying connected to the business of higher education even a step further, as she is currently enrolled as a graduate student at Dallas Theological Seminary pursuing a master’s in biblical and theological studies.

    As Kennesaw State, a Carnegie-designated R-2 institution that serves a population of more than 47,800 students, some could see this strategy as a pragmatic way of extending the capacities of the senior academic administrators to serve the institution’s growing needs in research and teaching. At a time when the capacities of faculty colleagues are being optimized to serve one of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing public institutions, the members of the senior academic administrative team are committing to optimize their own collective capacities to serve the mission of the university.

    The consequences will be more than just pragmatic, however. The annual commitment to serve as a higher education practitioner in addition to a higher education administrator could help us pursue administrative approaches that are rooted in a pragmatic understanding of both the shifting needs of industry and the changing needs of students entering higher education today. And it can also help build goodwill among faculty colleagues, who sometimes feel university administrators fail to fully comprehend the growing challenges of the classroom and pressures of research productivity.

    Serving as provost, I have found my annual commitment to teaching an opportunity to inform administrative priorities. In fall 2020, when we struggled to comprehend how best to reopen and calibrate to the safety needs of the COVID pandemic, I was scheduled to teach a senior seminar course in the Department of Dance, while I served as dean of the College of the Arts at KSU. For a moment, I thought I should excuse myself from the added responsibilities of teaching a course at a time when my administrative capacities were being tested in rather unconventional ways. Better judgment prevailed, however, as I realized that out of every year that I continued to teach in my higher education career, this would be the semester when being in the classroom and experiencing the challenge alongside my faculty colleagues was most critical.

    I would be lying if I said the experience was transformative. The challenges of lecturing with a face mask to socially distant students, split into two groups and separated by technology and physical space, was an experience that most faculty would likely agree was frustrating. But serving as dean and being in the classroom all semester allowed me to skip past several steps to serve the needs of my faculty colleagues with an understanding and empathy that was experientially relevant.

    I am hoping that the impact of KSU’s administrative re-engagement strategy will be similarly impactful, ensuring that all senior academic administrators reignite their capacities to contribute to the teaching and research mission of the university. The idea seems to have been embraced at the outset by most; its sustainability, however, will require a continued institutional commitment and individual prioritization. While the true outcomes are yet to be empirically assessed, my hope is that this move will convert administrative faculty into faculty administrators, building their capacities to more effectively serve the growth of our institution with relevant, ongoing experiences in teaching and research.

    Ivan Pulinkala is the provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Kennesaw State University.

    Source link

  • University Autonomy Stems From Corporate Rights (opinion)

    University Autonomy Stems From Corporate Rights (opinion)

    In an April 21 article entitled “We Haven’t Seen a Fight Like Harvard vs. Trump in Centuries,” Steven Brint wrote that the ongoing dispute between Harvard University and the federal government is “the most important showdown between state power and college autonomy since 1816, when the New Hampshire Legislature attempted to convert Dartmouth College into a public entity.”

    While the Dartmouth College case, which the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1819 in Dartmouth’s favor, looms large in American history, universities have, prior to and since that decision, regularly fought for their rights—their corporate rights.

    Today, we call this institutional academic freedom. But, as Richard Hofstadter wrote in his portion of The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (1955), co-authored with Walter Metzger, “academic freedom is a modern term for an ancient idea.” That ancient idea holds that university freedom is based on corporate rights, which is why Hofstadter begins with a section subtitled “Corporate Power in the Middle Ages.” Recovering that old idea could not be more important today.

    It is no exaggeration to say that, in spring 2025, we may have entered the nadir of American academic freedom. Austin Sarat rightfully urged us, even before then, to find new ways to guard academic freedom “against external threats.” Now, in the face of ongoing hostility from both state and federal governments, it is imperative that universities deploy the full range of arguments at their disposal, including those based on their forgotten corporate rights. In other words, it’s time for universities to invoke their corporate rights. Allow me to explain.

    Corporateness is the university’s hidden superpower. While every university is constituted differently, they are all corporations, regardless of whether they present themselves as public or private. That is because “corporation” is a general legal term denoting a unity at law.

    “Incorporation,” David Ciepley has written, “is a powerful tool.” Corporations can sue and be sued in their own names, hold property, enter contracts, use their own seals and legislate. Importantly, the university’s corporateness bears no necessary relationship to its current autocratic constitution, whereby, according to Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn, universities are “ruled by external lay governing boards vested with the panoply of powers customarily granted to corporations, including the power to adopt, amend, and revoke its basic rules of institutional governance.” Thus, we can use the university’s corporateness to rebuff external attacks, while also working, as Arjun Appadurai wrote recently, “to break the unilateral power of boards of trustees.”

    The university’s cherished autonomy springs from its corporate rights. In the U.S., these rights were first articulated in a now-forgotten line of cases starting with the 1805 North Carolina Supreme Court case Trustees of University of North Carolina v. Foy, a decision issued more than a century before the American Association of University Professors’ famous 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure—and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1957 discovery of a theretofore unknown academic freedom right in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

    Like Dartmouth College, these cases were about corporate rights. But, unlike Dartmouth College, they concerned universities we now consider public; they were decided by state supreme courts, rather than by the U.S. Supreme Court; and, when they implicated constitutional rights, they implicated rights protected by state constitutions, rather than by the federal one.

    What I call the corporate theory of academic freedom explains why the rights that originally protected the American scholarly enterprise, including in the Dartmouth College case, were corporate rights by emphasizing that universities are, by law, corporations. (It’s actually in the name itself: “university,” derived from the Latin universitas, simply means “corporation.”)

    Rather than an individual right, academic freedom is, properly understood, what Stanley Fish called “a guild concept.” More specifically, it is a concept belonging to the incorporated guild of professors and students (and others). This theory bases academic freedom not on freedom of speech—a troublesome basis for academic freedom—but on the university’s corporate rights. These corporate rights, not infrequently finding expression in constitutions, are also sometimes constitutional rights. By substituting corporate rights for freedom of speech, we turn a foundation of sand into stone.

    It might prove difficult for some in the university to embrace a term they associate only with business corporations, but corporate rights have been, and still can be, used to protect universities. In this connection, it might help to recall the many corporations that are not business corporations, including municipal corporations, nonprofit corporations (often euphemized as “organizations”), church corporations and university corporations.

    At a moment when the U.S. Supreme Court seems keen on granting corporate rights to business corporations, one might wonder why business corporations should get all the rights. With state and federal governments increasingly targeting universities, we simply cannot afford to leave these arguments on the table. Understanding and utilizing these neglected corporate rights cases requires shifting our focus, on the one hand, from private to public universities, and, on the other hand, from federal to state courts (where Dartmouth College began).

    While the federal government’s recent attacks on Columbia and Harvard have captured headlines across the country, state legislatures continue to menace public universities. Although these universities have, through centuries of experience, become highly familiar with governmental intrusion, they have become less adept at repulsing it than they once were. As a result, one recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education could observe that “it’s well understood that public colleges are in the thrall of their state lawmakers.” The corporate theory of academic freedom challenges this understanding.

    Consider two post–Dartmouth College cases about universities we call public today. The first is an 1887 Indiana Supreme Court case about Indiana University. The second is an 1896 Michigan Supreme Court case about the University of Michigan. Each case furnishes ideas about how to address academic freedom’s most vexing and persistent challenge: protecting public universities from state legislatures.

    In an 1887 case called Robinson v. Carr, the Indiana Supreme Court considered what interest rate applied to a fund established by the Indiana Legislature for Indiana University. The statute that established the university fund indicated that any loan made from the university fund would carry a 7 percent interest rate. The trustees of Indiana University, who were established as a “body politic” by the Indiana Legislature, could then use the interest to cover annual university expenses. But a later statute repealed laws concerning certain funds, including “public funds,” and applied an 8 percent interest rate instead. The question as to which interest rate applied therefore turned on whether the university fund was a “public fund.” If it was a public fund, an 8 percent rate would apply; if it was not, the 7 percent rate would remain.

    The Indiana Supreme Court concluded that the university fund was not a public fund because “the university, although established by public law, and endowed and supported by the state, is not a public corporation, in a technical sense.” The court meant by this that the Board of Trustees “has none of the essential characteristics of a public corporation.” The university was “not a municipal corporation,” and “its members are not officers of the government, or subject to the control of the legislature in the management of its affairs.”

    The court reasoned, “That the university was established under the direct authority of the state, through a special act of the legislature, or that the charter contains provisions of a purely public character, nor yet that the institution was wisely established, and is and should be perpetually maintained at the public expense, for the public good, does not make it a public corporation, or constitute its endowment fund a public fund.” In the final analysis, “the legal status of the state university being that of a technically private, or at most a quasi public, corporation, the university fund, of which it is the sole beneficiary, is therefore not a public fund, within the meaning of the law.” In short, the court’s careful analysis under the corporate framework led it to conclude that the university’s legislative establishment and public funding did not make it public.

    Less than a decade after Robinson, the Michigan Supreme Court decided a case called Regents of the University of Michigan v. Sterling. There, the court had to decide whether the Michigan Legislature could require the University of Michigan Board of Regents to relocate its homeopathic medical college from Ann Arbor to Detroit. The Michigan regents had refused to comply with the Legislature’s relocation law, and Charles Sterling, a private citizen, then asked the Michigan Supreme Court to order the Regents to comply.

    The court denied Sterling’s request, noting that, “under the [Michigan] constitution of 1835, the legislature had the entire control and management of the university and the university fund. They could appoint regents and professors, and establish departments.” But, after the university languished under this governance model, the people of Michigan withdrew the power of the Legislature to control the university. To that end, the 1850 Michigan Constitution ordained that “the board of regents shall have the general supervision of the university, and the direction and control of all expenditures from the university interest fund.”

    The court offered three “reasons to show that the legislature has no control over the university or the board of regents.” First, both entities “derive their power from the same supreme authority, namely, the constitution,” and, “in so far as the powers of each are defined by that instrument, limitations are imposed, and a direct power conferred upon one necessarily excludes its existence in the other, in the absence of language showing the contrary intent.”

    Second, the Board of Regents “is the only corporation provided for in the constitution whose powers are defined therein”—whereas “in every other corporation provided for in the constitution it is expressly provided that its powers shall be such as the legislature shall give.” Third, “in every case except that of the regents the constitution carefully and expressly reposes in the legislature the power to legislate and to control and define the duties of those corporations and officers.”

    Because the constitution entrusted “the general supervision” of the university to the regents, “no other conclusion … is possible than that the intention was to place this institution in the direct and exclusive control of the people themselves, through a constitutional body elected by them.” The people of Michigan had entrusted the university’s governance to the regents directly, thereby removing the university from the Legislature’s purview. As a result, the Legislature could no longer govern the university.

    These 19th-century cases, together with many other state cases like them, contain resources that universities can use to meet today’s extraordinary challenges. (Edwin D. Duryea lists many, but not all, of these cases in the first appendix to his 2000 monograph, The Academic Corporation: A History of College and University Governing Boards.) Indeed, the cases remain relevant today. The Montana Supreme Court’s 2022 decision affirming the Montana regents’ “exclusive authority to regulate firearms on college campuses” borrowed, with slight alterations and no attribution, one of the aforementioned passages from Sterling.

    Harvard’s battle with the federal government is truly momentous, but it is one of many that American universities—public and private—have consistently waged for centuries. When these universities rose up to defend their corporate rights, state supreme courts across the country often affirmed those rights. The time has come to assert those rights once again. As state governments, along with the federal government, apply new and in some ways unprecedented pressure, universities can no longer ignore their powerful claims to corporate rights. Continuing to do so may incur costs none of us are willing to pay.

    Michael Banerjee, a 2019 graduate of Harvard Law School, is a doctoral candidate in jurisprudence and social policy at the University of California, Berkeley, where his dissertation focuses on universities’ corporate rights.

    Source link

  • A Multiday In-Class Essay for the ChatGPT Era (opinion)

    A Multiday In-Class Essay for the ChatGPT Era (opinion)

    A successful humanities course helps students cultivate critical, personally enriching and widely applicable skills, and it immerses them in the exploration of perspectives, ideas and modes of thought that can illuminate, challenge and inform their own outlooks.

    Historically, the out-of-class essay assignment has been among the best assessments for getting students in humanities courses to most fully exercise and develop the relevant critical thinking skills. Through the writing process, students can come to better understand a problem. Things that seem obvious or obviously false before spending multiple days thinking and writing suddenly become no longer obvious or obviously false. Students make up their minds on complex problems by grappling with those problems in a rigorous way through writing and editing over a sustained period (i.e., not just writing in a blue book in one class session).

    Unfortunately, since ChatGPT became widely available, out-of-class writing assignments keep becoming harder to justify as major assessments in introductory-level humanities courses. The intense personal engagement with perspectives and cultural artifacts central to the value of the humanities is more or less bypassed when a student heavily outsources to AI the generation and expression of ideas and analysis. As ChatGPT’s ability to write convincing papers goes up, so does the student temptation to rely on it (and so too does the difficulty for professors of reliably detecting AI).

    Having experimented very extensively with ChatGPT, I have found that, at least when it comes to introductory-level philosophy courses, the material that ChatGPT can produce with 10 minutes of uninformed prompting rivals much of what we can reasonably expect students to produce on their own, especially given that one can upload readings/course materials and ask ChatGPT to adjust its voice (the reader should try this).

    And students are relying on it a lot. Based on my time-consuming-and-quickly-becoming-obsolete detection techniques, about one in six of my students last fall were relying on ChatGPT in ways that were obvious. Given that it should take a student no more than 10 extra minutes on ChatGPT to make the case no longer obvious, I have to conclude that the real number of essays relying on ChatGPT in ways that conflict with academic integrity must be at least around 30 percent.

    It is unclear whether AI-detection software is sufficiently reliable to justify its use (I haven’t used it), and—at any rate—many universities prohibit reliance on it. Some instructors believe that making students submit their work as a Google Doc with track-changes history is an adequate deterrent and detection tool for AI. It is not. Students are aware of their track-changes history—they know they simply have to type ChatGPT content instead of copying and pasting it. Actually, students don’t even have to type the AI-generated content: There are readily available Google Chrome extensions that take text and “type” it at manipulable speeds (with pauses, etc.). Students can copy/paste a ChatGPT essay and have the extension “type” it into a Google Doc at a humanlike pace.

    Against this backdrop, I spent lots of time over the last winter break familiarizing myself with Lockdown Browser (a tool integrated with learning management software like Canvas that prevents access to and copying/pasting from programs outside of the LMS) and devising a new assignment model that I happily used this past semester.

    It is a multiday in-class writing assignment, where students have access through Lockdown Browser to (and only to): PDFs of the readings, a personal quotation bank they previously uploaded, an outlining document and the essay instructions (which students were given at least a week before so they had time to begin thinking through their topic).

    On Day 1 in class, students enter a Canvas essay-question quiz through Lockdown Browser with links to the resources mentioned above (each of which opens in a new tab that students can access while writing). They spend the class period outlining/writing and hit “submit” at the end of the session.

    Between the Day 1 and Day 2 writing sessions, students can read their writing on Canvas (so they can continue thinking about the topic) but are prevented from being able to edit it. If you’re worried about students relying on ChatGPT for ideas to try to memorize/regurgitate (I don’t know how worried we should be about students inevitably trying this), consider introducing small wrinkles to the essay instructions during the in-class sessions (e.g. “your essay must somewhere critically discuss this example”).

    On Day 2, students come to class and can pick back up right from where they left off.

    A Day 2 session looks like this:

    One can potentially repeat the process for a third session. I had my 75-minute classes take two days and my 50-minute classes take three days for a roughly 700-word essay.

    This format gives students access to everything we want them to have access to while working on their essays and nothing else. While it took lots of troubleshooting to develop the setup (links behave quite differently across operating systems!), this new assignment model offers an important direction worthy of serious exploration.

    I have found that this setup preserves much of what we care about most with out-of-class writing assignments: Students can think hard about the topic over an extended period of time, they can make up their minds on some topic through the process of sustained critical reflection and they experience the benefits and rewards of working on a project, stepping away from it and returning to it (while thinking hard about the topic in the background all the while).

    Indeed, I have talked with several students who noted that they ended up changing their minds on their topic between Day 1 and Day 2—they (for instance) set out to object to some view, and then they realized (after working hard through the objection on Day 1 and reflecting on it) that what they now wanted to do was defend the original view against the objection that they had developed. Perfect: This is exactly the kind of experience I have always wanted students to have when writing essays (and it’s an experience that students don’t get with a one-day blue-book essay exam).

    Because the setup documents each day’s work, it invites wonderful opportunities for students to reflect on their writing process (what are they seeing themselves prioritizing each session, and how/why might they change their approach?). The opportunities for peer review at different stages are also robust.

    For those interested, I have made a long (but time-stamped) video that illustrates and explains step by step how to build the assignment in Canvas (it also discusses troubleshooting steps for when a device isn’t getting into Lockdown Browser). The video assumes very minimal knowledge of Canvas and Lockdown Browser, and it describes the very specific ways to hyperlink everything so that students aren’t bumped out of the assignment or given access to external resources (in Canvas—I cannot currently speak to other LMS platforms). The basic technical setup for the assignment is this:

    • Create a Canvas quiz for Day 1, create an essay question, link to resources in the question (PDFs must be uploaded with the “Preview Inline” display option to work across devices), require a Lockdown Browser with a password to access it, then publish the quiz.
    • Post arbitrary, weightless grades for Day 1 after the first writing session so that students can read (but not edit) what they wrote before Day 2 (students cannot read their submitted work until you post some grade for it).
    • Create a Canvas quiz for Day 2 just like Day 1, but this time, in the essay question, link to the Day 1 Canvas quiz (select “external link” rather than “course link,” and copy/paste the Day 1 Canvas quiz link).

    As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, a successful humanities course helps students cultivate critical, personally enriching and widely applicable skills, and it immerses them in the exploration of perspectives, ideas and modes of thought that can illuminate, challenge and inform their own outlooks. The research I have done over the past three years tells me I can no longer be confident that an intro-level course that nontrivially relies on out-of-class writing assignments can be a fully successful humanities course so understood. Yet a humanities course that fully abandons sustained essay assignments deprives students of the experience that best positions them to fully exercise and develop the skills most central to our disciplines. Something in the direction of this multiday in-class Lockdown Browser essay assignment is worthy of serious consideration.

    Source link

  • A Framework for Moving Up or Moving On (opinion)

    A Framework for Moving Up or Moving On (opinion)

    Over my 16-plus years in higher education, mostly in administration, I’ve had many colleagues reach out and ask a version of the same question:

    “How do I know if I should stay or move on?”

    They are leaders in their field. Most are excelling on paper, teaching, mentoring, leading committees, serving on task forces and writing grants. But they’re tired, stuck or sense that something in the role, or the institution, no longer fits.

    Lately, I’m finding that we don’t talk enough about what to do when we’ve outgrown a role but aren’t sure what comes next. In academic culture, staying where we are is often seen as loyalty, moving up is luck and leaving can feel like defeat. But I’ve learned that career momentum doesn’t always mean climbing a ladder. Sometimes it means building a bridge or choosing a new path entirely.

    So, what do you do when you hit a fork in the road? I recently saw a post on LinkedIn that outlined a relatively simplistic framework, aligned with the business world, which can help if you find yourself questioning your next move: assess, align, act. I’ve taken the liberty to modify it, without losing the concept: reflect, revise, recommit.

    Reflect: Where Are You?

    Before planning your next move, take an honest look at your current professional state. Start by asking yourself the following:

    • Have I grown in the past year, or am I mostly going through the motions?
    • Am I viewed as a contributor or an afterthought?
    • How do I feel at the end of the day, mostly energized or mostly depleted?
    • Are my ideas welcomed or tolerated?
    • Do I see myself staying here for five more years?

    These questions aren’t about job satisfaction alone. They’re about where you are professionally. Assess your responses to the questions above. If you feel stuck where you are and don’t see changes or opportunities for professional growth in the future, it may be time to shift.

    Revise: Is This Still the Right Place for You?

    Consider how your values and contributions align (or don’t) with your work environment.

    In one of the classes I teach, we spend a considerable amount of time discussing values, both personal and professional. Keeping this in mind, ask yourself whether the following statements are true for you:

    • I can ask difficult questions or present unconventional ideas.
    • I feel heard and my input is valued.
    • I can contribute in ways that reflect my strengths.
    • My work is recognized, and not just when it’s convenient.
    • I feel hopeful about my professional future here.

    If you answer “no” more times than “yes,” it’s not a failure on your part. Instead, look at it as an opportunity to implement changes strategically.

    Recommit: Move Up, Move Over or Move On

    Once you’ve assessed your growth and alignment, you’re ready to make a deliberate decision to go deeper, shift roles or step toward something new. Here are three potential paths, each with concrete next steps:

    1. Move Up (Internal Advancement)

    If you still believe in the institution and want more responsibility:

    • Build your case: Document leadership wins, pilot programs or change initiatives—things that show you’re already operating at the next level.
    • Get visible: Let your supervisor or mentor know you’re open to advancement. Ambition isn’t arrogance; it’s clarity.
    • Ask for expanded roles: Volunteer to chair a new initiative or represent your unit on a strategic planning team.
    • Find advocates: You need more than mentors. Advocates promote and back you behind closed doors.
    1. Move Over (Lateral Change)

    If you like the institution but not the role:

    • Explore cross-campus opportunities in centers, institutes or new initiatives.
    • Consider a hybrid position that merges your skills (e.g., combining research and student success).
    • Talk with human resources or a trusted senior leader about other opportunities within your organization—professionally, quietly and strategically.

    Remember: lateral doesn’t mean lesser. Sometimes a lateral move can be the smartest option for long-term impact (and sanity).

    1. Move On (External Transition)

    If the position and the institution don’t fit your needs anymore:

    • Name what you want next: More autonomy? More responsibility? A different kind of leadership role?
    • Update your materials: Be sure to identify transferable skills. If you’ve led change, managed crises or built programs, remember these skills are valued in most industries.
    • Use your network: Former students, collaborators and conference contacts might hold the key to your next chapter.
    • Leave well: Give your employer sufficient notice. Offer to train your successor. Write a transition plan. Protect your reputation and exit with grace and gratitude.

    A Final Note: You’re Not Alone

    I recently spoke with a colleague who worried her career had stalled over the last several years and that she hadn’t grown in her position. When we discussed her accomplishments, we saw that she’d proposed several new initiatives, launched a new program, mentored students and staff, and learned to navigate the complexity of higher education with professionalism and courage. In short, she hadn’t wasted any time; she’d built resilience and capacity. She also realized she was more ready for change and leadership opportunities.

    If you’re at that fork in the road, know this: Moving on isn’t quitting; it’s choosing. Moving up isn’t selling out; it’s stepping in. And staying where you are is perfectly valid if it still serves your purpose, your values and your professional goals.

    Ask yourself this question: “Am I building a future here or am I just getting by?”

    Either way, you get to choose your next steps.

    Laura Kuizin is director of the master of applied professional studies in the Graduate School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Laura is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium, an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders. Laura dedicates this article to Sadie-dog, who was by her side as she navigated her professional path over the last 16 years.

    Source link

  • What Does It Mean to Redefine R-1? (opinion)

    What Does It Mean to Redefine R-1? (opinion)

    The recent decision by the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation to simplify the classification of research universities may have been well meaning, but it represents a serious misstep with consequential results.

    By reducing a comprehensive system of research metrics down to just two—in order to gain coveted R-1 status, an institution must now spend $50 million annually on research and award 70 research doctorates per year—ACE has fundamentally changed what it means to be a top-tier research institution. The shift away from more holistically evaluating research activity risks distorting public understanding and perception of university excellence while incentivizing behavior that undermines long-term research creativity and innovation.

    To most effectively appreciate the importance of this change, it is helpful to trace the history of the Carnegie classification system. Initially conceived in 1973 by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, the system was intended as a tool to support research and policymaking by categorizing U.S. colleges and universities according to their missions and output.

    Over the decades, the classification system has become a trusted compendium for the public, media and higher education community. Designations such as “R-1” (which historically stood for “Doctoral University—Very High Research Activity”) and “R-2” (“Doctoral University—High Research Activity”) gained prominence, indicating robust levels of scholarly productivity, research funding, doctoral education and infrastructure.

    The methodology used for the 2021 classifications (the most recent until this year) involved a suite of indicators that aimed to quantify research excellence, with partial normalization for institutional size. These included total research expenditures in science and engineering, research expenditures in non–science and engineering fields, science and engineering research personnel size (postdoctoral appointees and other nonfaculty Ph.D. researchers), and the number of doctoral degrees awarded annually in humanities, social sciences, STEM fields and other fields like business and education.

    A principal components analysis then allowed for the creation of indices representing both total and per-capita research activity, enabling close and equitable comparisons across different institutions. This methodology was, in many ways, one of the most comprehensive and encompassing frameworks to date, providing a statistical assessment of American research universities founded on publicly available data.

    For the 2025 classifications, however, the landscape changed. With ACE’s leadership, the Carnegie Foundation developed a new framework that substantially simplifies the standards for achieving flagship research status. The revised criteria focus on just the two metrics mentioned above: Institutions must spend at least $50 million annually on research activities and award at least 70 research doctorates per year. Institutions qualifying on both criteria are R-1; those that fail to qualify but spend at least $5 million on research activities and award at least 20 research doctorates are R-2. These terms now stand for very high and high “spending and doctoral production,” respectively, and not the previously used very high and high “research activity.”

    This change may appear technical, but it removes numerous subtle measures of academic involvement and output and represents a profound shift in values. Under the previous activity-based framework, institutions were rewarded for building a diverse research ecosystem across a range of disciplines. Now, the metric has been reduced to total money spent and degrees awarded—inputs and outputs that do not necessarily equate to research excellence.

    Moreover, this move opens the door for institutions to “teach to the test.” Rather than pursuing organic growth in their research missions, universities may instead make tactical investments to reach the magic numbers needed for R-1 status. This situation is a textbook case of Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

    By selecting just two metrics to assess national standing, the classification system invites institutions to game the criteria, boosting research spending and degree output not necessarily through improved research performance but administrative and accounting shifts. This oversimplification of a complex and holistic evaluation tool can have unintended consequences, such as distorting institutional priorities and stifling the motivation to invest in long-term, mission-driven scholarship.

    Unfortunately, proof of this phenomenon is already visible. A cursory search of the internet will reveal multiple universities that have recently announced their elevation to R-1 status: More than 40 new institutions gained R-1 status under the revised criteria. While many have made commendable progress, it’s worth noting that their elevation to “elite” research status occurred not as a result of a significant shift in scholarly output, but because they met the two quantitative benchmarks.

    The concern is not that these institutions shouldn’t be proud of their growth—it’s that the public will now assume parity between these universities and others whose research footprints are significantly deeper, broader and more globally impactful. ACE has effectively redefined what it means to be an “R-1” institution without clearly communicating that this designation no longer reflects the same type of achievement it once did.

    To prevent confusion and preserve the integrity of the classification system, ACE and the Carnegie Foundation should consider rebranding the new categories to reflect their true nature. Rather than continuing to use the historically meaningful “R-1” and “R-2” terms, a more accurate labeling system might be RS-1 and RS-2, signifying “research spending.” This small change would clarify for stakeholders that these categories are now based largely on spending thresholds, not a holistic measure of research activity.

    Whereas simplification may make the classifications more politically appealing and easier to administer, it does so at the cost of such vital ingredients as analytical comprehensiveness, contextual responsiveness and evaluative accuracy. To appropriately recognize and support genuine centers of research excellence, it is imperative to adopt a multidimensional evaluative framework—one that ideally encompasses not only research expenditures and doctoral degree program productivity, but also incorporates measures of scholarly impact, the quality of research publications, the development of research infrastructure and the extent of faculty engagement in research activities.

    Also, to balance the structural advantages of larger institutions, appropriate normalization factors—such as costs per faculty member, publications per capita and doctoral degrees per research-active department—must be factored in. The 2021 classification model better reflected such a comprehensive and equitable approach, in contrast to the more reductive orientation observed in the 2025 iteration.

    In order to preserve the integrity of American research universities as engines of discovery and innovation, their evaluation should be grounded in objective scholarly metrics that meaningfully reflect institutional excellence in research. Given the multifaceted nature of research excellence, our classification systems should be equally nuanced and comprehensive.

    G. Dale Wesson is the dean and director of land-grant programs at Florida A&M University’s College of Agriculture and Food Science. He holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Michigan State University, an M.S. in chemical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and a B.S. in chemical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology.

    Source link

  • Four Principles for Hosting More Impactful Gatherings (opinion)

    Four Principles for Hosting More Impactful Gatherings (opinion)

    Have you attended a research seminar that managed to deepen faculty members’ understanding of the topic, while also encouraging trainees new to the field to engage with the speaker? When you hosted your last career panel, were you able to intentionally moderate conversations with professionals from different fields while also allowing serendipitous tangents inspired by audience questions?

    Higher education is filled with gatherings intended to engage various audiences and deepen understanding of diverse topics. Hosting and facilitating these gatherings (be they large-scale conferences, interactive workshop discussions or weekly team meetings with office staff) is no easy feat and rarely comes with a guidebook.

    Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering (Riverhead, 2018) is that guidebook. Reading it has influenced how I think about organizing and facilitating seminars, events and group meetings for graduate students and postdocs.

    Reflecting ahead of time on defining the event’s purpose, inviting with intention, understanding your role as a host and ending well can elevate professional gatherings and make even a simple seminar more meaningful.

    Establish the Purpose

    An alum is coming to visit your department: The first idea you have is, “They should give a department seminar!” I’ve done this, too, but it’s not the starting point. When picking the type of event to have, don’t conflate its classification with its intention.

    Applying the purpose filter to your event planning will help dictate the format to best serve your specific goal. If an occasion requires many goals to be met, consider creating multiple avenues to address these different purposes and audiences. If your intent is too broad, no one will feel like the event is for them.

    Maybe an alum visiting is a great chance for graduate students to learn about alternative career paths. With this purpose in mind, a roundtable discussion could be a more effective format. Maybe the alum is a star in the field and the faculty will want to learn about their research. In this case, a seminar would be best. Maybe the alum has made it big in the business world and the department is looking for a new donor. Perhaps a lab or building tour and one-on-one meetings can serve this goal.

    Make the Invite Clear

    No event can please everyone, and that shouldn’t be the goal. We should not be discriminatory in our invitations, but instead think of protecting those who are attending. In the above example, if the purpose of an alum visiting the department is for career development programming and to expose trainees to unique career paths, the invites and advertising should be consistent with that purpose.

    Intentional invitations can start even earlier when contacting guest speakers or panelists. If you’ve decided a department symposium should be focused on allowing trainees to share their research, inviting an alumnus of the department to talk about their current research could enhance this intention. Carefully considering and reaching out to potential guests requires an understanding of the purpose first.

    Another element of the invite is physical logistics: the number of people attending, where it is, the setup of the venue. Again, these should be influenced by the goals of the gathering. A roundtable discussion limited to 20 people could be more conducive to trainees learning about the career journey of an alum. In contrast, if the speaker is giving a groundbreaking research talk, a large lecture hall with a high capacity would suit better.

    As Parker writes, “Gatherings that please everyone occur, but they rarely thrill. Gatherings that are willing to be alienating—which is different from being alienating—have a better chance to dazzle.” Anyone can see a seminar poster hanging in the hall and decide to come. The content, however, should be clear, and the invite specific enough, so the guests understand whom the seminar is intended for.

    Be an Intentional Host

    I have been organizing events, outside and inside higher ed, for many years. But only recently have I understood the power and influence that the host can have. For years, I strove to have oversight of all logistics and ensure an airtight planning timeline—but once the event started, I took a hands-off approach so as to not interfere with the guest’s experience. I have come to realize that abdicating host power in an attempt to be easygoing is actually counterproductive.

    The host sets the stage, from the first announcement email to when people enter the room. Rules and limitations are necessary and appreciated. Having a generous authority lets people know what to expect early on. This can be achieved by finding the right balance of warmth and order—by developing a method to confidently run a gathering and steer the ship, while selflessly protecting the guest’s connection and experience. The host isn’t controlling the situation but is responsible for creating a container for the experience to expand into.

    With seminars and panel discussions, the host is crucial for orchestrating the flow of conversation. If multiple people are on a panel, being clear whom your question is addressed to and directing the order eases the speakers and creates less tension. It may feel uncomfortable having this power, but this is not the time to relinquish it.

    When moderating a Q&A or panel discussion, listen carefully to the speakers and be perceptive of the audience and energy flow. Summarizing and synthesizing what was said, transitioning to new topics, and keeping the momentum is tricky when all eyes are on you.

    It is vulnerable to be a host, and it’s a responsibility from start to finish.

    Finish Strong

    People often remember the beginning and end of something (a movie, a speech, an event) the most. Finishing strong means making the event memorable. As a host, you’ve constructed this container for others to learn and connect. You’ve thought of all the logistical details and brought the speakers and audience through a journey. Now it’s time to be mindful about how you end by facilitating looking inward and turning outward.

    Looking inward is about asking the guests to reflect on what they’ve learned or experienced. If you’ve been moderating a panel discussion, pose a final question that requires reflection. Ask the speakers to reiterate the one thing they hope everyone takes away from the session. Technology has made it easier to request interaction from the audience. Ask everyone to share one lesson learned, or how they’re feeling now. This can be typed in the chat box for an online event or submitted using programs such as Slido. The goal is to make space for synthesis.

    Turning outward involves encouraging everyone to take the experience back out into the world. Ask the audience, “What is one action you plan to do following this?” Or ask the speakers to suggest the next small step someone can take. Help the audience bring what they learned to others outside of the event. Remind everyone what the purpose of the gathering was, what was achieved and where they can go from here.

    After an event ends, there are ways to continue the inward and outward response. Follow up thank-you notes and feedback forms can be methods to encourage participants to look inward and offer ideas for the future. Providing any resources or content from the event can help the audience turn outward and use their learnings in the real world.

    When you build in time to define a gathering’s purpose, incorporate intentional invitations and pay attention to your influence as a host, you can shape the event from beginning to end and revolutionize how we connect. These are the first steps to take a program or event from routine to meaningful.

    What’s one upcoming gathering that you can apply even one of these four principles to?

    Anne Meyer-Miner is the manager of graduate and postdoctoral affairs in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of British Columbia. She holds a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from the University of Toronto and is an active member of the Graduate Career Consortium—an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders. The views expressed here are Anne’s alone.

    Source link

  • Financial Pressures Could Have Cascading Effects (opinion)

    Financial Pressures Could Have Cascading Effects (opinion)

    In April, Harvard University, despite its $53.2 billion endowment, announced plans for a $750 million bond issuance to bolster liquidity amid uncertainties over federal funding. Similarly, Brown University concluded its decade-long BrownTogether fundraising campaign, raising more than $4.4 billion, yet soon after secured a $300 million loan in the face of a structural budget deficit and the cancellation of federal grants. And in May, Columbia University announced layoffs of approximately 180 staff members after the federal government revoked $400 million in federal grants and contracts, citing the university’s handling of antisemitic harassment on campus.

    Together, these actions underscore that even the nation’s most selective and well-resourced universities are vulnerable to financial strain and are recalibrating rapidly in response to shifting economic and political forces. By contrast, less well-resourced, tuition-dependent institutions often confront the same headwinds, or their downstream effects, with fewer financial options and diminished capacity to respond.

    Liquidity and the Endowment Misconception

    A common misconception is that universities can freely tap into their endowments to address financial shortfalls. In reality, a significant portion of endowment assets are legally restricted by external donor agreements, regulatory frameworks and board policies. According to the NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments, an average 71.1 percent of endowment funds are restricted by donor agreements alone. These funds are typically earmarked for specific purposes such as scholarships, endowed faculty positions or capital projects.

    Endowments are vital to institutional operations but are not unbounded. In fiscal year 2024, colleges and universities withdrew a total of $30 billion from their endowments, representing a 6.4 percent increase over the prior year, with nearly half of that spending (48.1 percent) dedicated to student financial aid. On average, endowments funded 15.3 percent of institutional operating budgets, underscoring their importance in day-to-day fiscal planning.

    At the same time, most institutions cap annual withdrawals at approximately 4.5 to 5 percent of a rolling three-year average to preserve long-term value. Exceeding these thresholds can jeopardize an endowment’s sustainability and may violate both donor restrictions and regulatory requirements. Consequently, when immediate cash needs surpass allowable draws, universities often turn to bond markets or bank loans, trading short-term liquidity for future debt obligations. According to a Forbes report, U.S. universities issued a record $11.6 billion in municipal bond debt in the first quarter of 2025 to safeguard operations amid federal funding cuts.

    Fiscal and Legal Acumen: A New Leadership Imperative

    In the current climate, effective university leadership requires not only academic vision but also robust financial and legal expertise. Leaders must navigate complex debt covenants, bond rating pressures and donor restrictions while transparently communicating difficult decisions to trustees, faculty, students and the public. These challenges, at least financially, arguably surpass those faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, when federal relief funds temporarily masked underlying vulnerabilities.

    Rising Insolvency Risk Beyond Public Campuses

    Recent announcements by private Research-1 universities suggest several well-known institutions—among them Duke and Northwestern Universities—could encounter significant fiscal strain if current federal research funding trends persist. While nonselective public research universities are often viewed as the most vulnerable to federal funding cuts, some prominent private institutions also face rising risk. High fixed costs, tuition and/or research dependency, and limited unrestricted endowment income create financial fragility as grants plateau.

    Enrollment Shocks: A Cascade in Waiting

    An often-overlooked but potentially destabilizing factor is the cascading effect on enrollment should elite institutions expand freshman classes and nonresearch focused graduate programs by aggressively tapping wait lists to compensate for financial shortfalls. While larger cohorts can spread overhead costs and generate additional tuition revenue, rapid expansion without strategic planning can strain housing, advising and support services, potentially degrading the student experience and affecting retention.

    For example, if the top 50 universities each increase enrollment by even 5 percent, thousands of well-qualified students may shift upward, siphoning tuition dollars from regional publics, tuition-dependent privates and community colleges. For institutions already operating on thin margins, this loss of yield could prove existential.

    This scenario recalls the 2008 financial crisis: a shock at the top reverberated across sectors. Here, if highly selective colleges “catch a cold,” more vulnerable campuses may suffer a deeper freeze.

    Equity and Access Under Pressure

    The most severe consequences are likely to impact lower-income students. Potential elimination of federal support programs like federal TRIO programs and Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, coupled with the potential cascading effects outlined above, risk widening the affordability gap. To shore up budgets, financially stressed institutions may tighten aid packages and prioritize full-pay applicants. Simultaneously, regional institutions that disproportionately serve these populations face their own budget constraints, compounding threats to access and social mobility. Conversely, other financially stressed colleges may opt to elevate unfunded tuition discount rates to unsustainable levels in order to meet enrollment targets, an action we have witnessed during less stressful periods.

    Summer Melt: An Immediate Barometer

    The impending summer melt period—when students who have submitted deposits ultimately decide not to enroll—may serve as a real-time stress indicator. Historically, national melt rates hover around 10 to 20 percent, but even a two- to three-percentage-point uptick for small, tuition-driven colleges can force emergency cuts. If selective universities reach deeper into their wait lists this summer, downstream institutions could experience sudden enrollment gaps as fall semesters are about to begin.

    Toward Long-Term Resilience: Strategic Levers

    As the financial headwinds intensify, universities must couple urgency with discipline. Ensuring alignment among institutional leaders, preserving trust and activating institutional flexibility will be key. The following strategic levers offer a practical framework for leaders aiming to build resilience without losing sight of mission.

    1. Ensure board and leadership alignment: Any misalignment between governing boards and executive teams can slow decision-making and erode credibility. Clear alignment around scenario planning, liquidity thresholds and contingency triggers is paramount.
    2. Embrace shared governance: Genuine engagement with faculty, staff and students in fiscal deliberations can enhance adaptability and morale. Institutions that bypass shared governance risk midcareer talent attrition, as well as diminishing instructional quality and grant productivity.
    3. Rethink spending policies: Regular reassessment of endowment draw methodologies, debt covenants and liquidity lines is essential. Short-term borrowing can bridge operational gaps but should be paired with disciplined multiyear plans that include potential program realignment and other austerity measures.
    4. Diversify revenue streams: Institutions must increase nontraditional tuition income, such as from online certificates, executive education and micro-credentials. Commercializing research can generate revenue, however, safeguards are necessary to prevent a slide into “University Inc.” cynicism—the sense that institutions are prioritizing profit over scholarship.
    5. Strengthen financial transparency: Open dashboards tracking liquidity ratios, debt service coverage ratios and aid spending cultivate trust and temper rumor-driven resistance. Responsible transparency should extend to explaining why certain programs may face review in the name of institutional sustainability.

    The Faculty and Staff Dimension

    Financial pressures inevitably affect human capital. Institutions that announce austerity plans without clear road maps invite uncertainty and, ultimately, attrition among faculty and staff. Retention of human capital is crucial not only for educational quality but also for grant productivity and student success. Engaging employees in strategic trade-offs—such as phased retirement options, the cross-training of staff to handle multiple roles as part of new revenue initiatives or shared services efficiencies—can transform potential resistance into collaborative resilience. But these strategic trade-offs also impact human capital.

    What About Academic Mission?

    Some argue that larger entering classes could enhance diversity or increase institutional reach. Others worry that an aggressive growth mindset dilutes faculty engagement and student mentorship. Both perspectives merit consideration. Growth for growth’s sake, particularly when propelled by crisis rather than strategy, risks eroding the very qualities that make a campus distinctive.

    A Crucible Moment

    Higher education has weathered wars, recessions and a global pandemic, but today’s convergence of shrinking research support, demographic shifts and rising debt costs presents a challenge not witnessed in recent history. Liquidity stress is reaching even elite campuses.

    The lessons from recent bond issuances, emergency loans and layoffs are clear: Action must come before distress spreads further. Institutions that act now by aligning leadership, engaging stakeholders, adjusting spending, diversifying revenue and communicating clearly will emerge stronger and more mission‑focused.

    Those that delay risk letting early warning signs become full‑blown alarms.

    As summer melt data arrives and fiscal year budgets close, we will soon learn whether these echoes from the Ivies were just noise—or the first tremors of something more.

    Joseph E. Nyre served as president of Seton Hall University from 2019 to 2023 and of Iona University from 2011 to 2019. He is the founder and managing director of Veritas Solutions Advisors, a higher education and nonprofit consulting company.

    Source link