Tag: opinion

  • Would We Rather Humanities “Be Ruined Than Changed”? (opinion

    Would We Rather Humanities “Be Ruined Than Changed”? (opinion

    Like most of my colleagues in art history, English, history, modern languages, musicology, philosophy, rhetoric and adjacent fields, I am concerned about the current crisis in the humanities. Then again, as a student of the history of the modern university, I know that there haven’t been too many decades over the last 150 years during which we humanities scholars have not employed the term “crisis” to portray our place in the academy.

    Our Greek forebears, as early as Hippocrates, coined the term “kρίσις” to describe a “turning point”; kρίσις, a word related to the Proto-Indo-European root krei-, is etymologically connected to practices like “sieving,” “discriminating” and “judging.” In fact, the most widely mentioned skill we humanists offer our students, critical thinking, originates from the same practice of deliberate “sieving.” Thus, when we call ourselves critics and write critical theory, we admit that crisis might just be our natural habitat.

    What’s Different This Time Around?

    A look at the helpful statistics provided by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences indicates that this latest crisis in humanities enrollments and degree completions is not like the previous fluctuations in our history, but more foundational. Things sounded bad enough when a state flagship like West Virginia University slashed modern languages (and math!) two years ago. But when that beacon of humanistic learning, the University of Chicago, pauses Ph.D. admissions across all but two of its humanities programs, we know the crisis is existential. Wasn’t it Chicago’s Kalven report that once stated boldly, and for the entire nation, that the university was “the home and sponsor of critics”?

    Cultures of Complaint, and a Pinch of Hubris

    Feeling powerless in the face of dwindling enrollment and support for our disciplines, some of us have resorted to digging up conspiracy theories, perhaps because, as Stanley Fish opined, in the psychic economy of academic critics, “oppression is the sign of virtue.” The tenor of such virtue-signaling complaints is that an unholy alliance of tech and business bros and their programs, together with politicians and academic leaders, promote only “useful” disciplines and crowd out interest in the humanities.

    I think intellectual honesty would demand we remember that it was the humanities, custodians of high-culture education (Bildung), that once upon a time crowded out the applied arts, crafts and technologies, accusing them of lacking intellectual depth. Humanistic Ivy League and Oxbridge schools championed the classics, philosophy and literary studies as “liberal” and sneered at professional education in the “mechanical arts” (engineering, agriculture, business, etc.) as “servile.” When the humanities (and natural sciences) faculty at these elite colleges refused to open their classist “gentlemen’s education” to larger publics, land-grant universities and technological institutes emerged to increase access and to educate teachers, lawyers and engineers.

    Could it be that today’s humanists still retain some of this original hubris toward technical, vocational and applied training, which makes the current inversion of disciplinary hierarchy even tougher to accept? Are warnings against instrumentalizing the humanities for economic gain (Martha C. Nussbaum, Not for Profit) or applying them to support vocational or technical disciplines (Frank Donoghue, The Last Professors) echoes of such hubris? Will this mentality, based on the knowledge economy of the late 19th century, convince today’s students to work with us?

    Angsting About Ancillarity

    The modernist poet W. H. Auden, in his book-length poem about anxiety, wrote that “We would rather be ruined than changed / We would rather die in our dread / Than climb the cross of the moment / And let our illusions die.” For sure, some among us deny the signs of the time, yearning for the golden days when humanities departments were ever expanding, arguing that an essential third Victorianist (focusing on drama) be added to the colleagues already focusing on fiction and poetry. If these golden days ever existed (in the early 1970s?), they are gone now. Nostalgia for the simulacrum persists.

    Closer to reality, many colleagues in the humanities have been “climbing the cross of the moment,” adapting to the inversion of disciplinary hierarchies at our institutions and accepting the mandate to show at least some measurable outcomes instead of our beloved unquantifiable humanistic critique. We have been aligning with the new lead disciplines by creating a vast infrastructure of certificates, degrees, journals, book series and organizations in the medical, health, digital, environmental and energy humanities, in science and technology studies, computational media, and music technology.

    However, as Colin Potts observed, when we partner with our colleagues in these better-funded and high-visibility disciplines, we are rarely “co-equal contributors.” We are like alms seekers, condensing our lifelong training and knowledge into an ethics, civics and policy module required for our partners’ accreditation, or infusing technical writing and communication skills into a STEM curriculum to amplify their majors’ impact. These collaborations offer a modicum of recognition and an honorable mention in a holistically minded National Academies consensus report. But they also make us feel dreadfully ancillary.

    Institutional strategic plans that exalt the value of the humanities with terms like “cornerstone,” “core” and “heart” only deepen our suspicions, especially when our budgets don’t match the performative strategic grandiloquence. From the medieval through the 18th-century university, the humanities suffered the trauma of being “handmaidens to theology” (ancillae theologiae), then the doctrinal master discipline. Now, technology has taken theology’s place, and we are once again “pleasant (but more or less inconsequential) helpmeets.” Trauma redux.

    Hyperbole Won’t Help

    In an existential crisis, hyperbole in the defense of our field no longer feels like a vice. Therefore, some of us now claim that the end of the humanities heralds the end of humanity and human civilization. Brenna Gerhardt, for example, warned that, because of the 2025 funding cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities, “we may find that a society that forgets to ask what it means to be human forgets how to be one.”

    Similarly, the 2024 World Humanities Report asserts that “the humanities are of critical importance” at a time when the “world and planet [are] under duress” and in dire need of “tools and concepts that will foster change and help us live under these shared, if still uneven, conditions.” These kinds of well-meaning statements, and the desperate daily news item (preferably from Oxbridge) amplifying our relevance and adaptability, burden the academic humanities with a responsibility incommensurate with the cultural and educational work we can perform. Their claim that “either you support the humanities, or inhumanity prevails” scares only us, but nobody else. As the authors of WhatEvery1Says: The Humanities in Public Discourse find, “The humanities appear to the public to be siloed in universities (unlike the sciences).”

    This I Believe

    If the previous paragraphs didn’t sound resilient and hopeful enough, please remember that my first obligation as a humanist is to be a critic, not a cheerleader. I believe that the humanities do have an important place in the ecosystem of higher education and at each university, that integrating STEM and liberal arts practices increases student success and leads to better research and scholarship, that humanistic considerations contribute to a more just and benign world, and that we need to continue our important work in core education.

    However, I don’t think that we academic humanists have sufficient standing to make hyperbolic claims about what we can achieve. Just consider: Have we ever advanced how many majors and faculty positions would be enough to keep the world humane and civilized? Have we, as Roosevelt Montás asks in Rescuing Socrates, ever overcome the “crisis of consensus … about what things are most worth knowing”? And should we lecture our STEM colleagues on ethics and gender equity when, as recently as 2019, fewer than one-third of tenure-track faculty and fewer than one-fourth of non-tenure- track professors in U.S. philosophy departments were women?

    We humanists are really good at asking critical questions, “sieving,” “discriminating” and “judging” at the highest levels of abstraction, but we are not so good at offering solutions. When we do, they often come from the same intellectual heights that have alienated us from undergraduate populations and the public. In a recent essay for the Journal of Theoretical Humanities, Wayne Stables takes us beyond hyperbole. He asks us to envision our lives and work “as if the humanities were dead,” thereby (he hopes) freeing us to consider collective action based on the likes of G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Theodor W. Adorno, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Wendy Brown. He believes this kind of “critical orientation” may help us survive “the troubling interregnum” in which we now find ourselves.

    While I sympathize with Stables’s call to action (though I would add Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva, bell hooks and Judith Butler to his list), I believe it takes us back to the time when the humanities strove to be “all breathing human passion far above.”

    I recommend we befriend the idea that our humanistic values and practices may relate to more public-oriented and holistic goals, as exemplified by the University of Arizona’s successful degree in the public and applied humanities, which wants “to translate the personal enrichment of humanities study into public enrichment and the direct and tangible improvement of the human condition” and offers a “fundamentally experimental, entrepreneurial, and transdisciplinary” educational experience that “focuses on public and private opportunities that straddle rather than fall between purviews, or are confined by them.”

    Since the introduction of this new kind of humanities program, connected with such fields as business, engineering and medicine, the number of students majoring in the humanities at Arizona has increased by 76 percent. This true kind of integrated partnership, and similar initiatives at St. Anselm College, Virginia Tech and my home institution of Georgia Tech, give me hope for a turning point—kρίσις—for the humanities in higher education.

    Richard Utz is senior associate dean for strategic initiatives in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Institute of Technology.

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  • The Push for Viewpoint Diversity Misses the Point (opinion)

    The Push for Viewpoint Diversity Misses the Point (opinion)

    Much of the controversy around the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” has focused on its push for viewpoint diversity and the claim that open inquiry does not exist in our classrooms. That push builds on a long-standing conservative critique that today makes hay out of the fact that the vast majority of faculty in U.S. colleges and universities lean left.

    Recent data supports that claim. In elite institutions, like Duke and Harvard Universities, surveys suggest the number of faculty identifying as liberal exceeds 60 percent. The percentages differ not only by type of institution but by discipline, with the humanities and social sciences leaning more liberal than STEM. Some even claim that political bias corrupts academic disciplines.

    Liberal faculty and commentators on higher education sometimes take the bait and respond defensively to what often is a politically motivated attack. In an op-ed in The Guardian, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd argued that the purpose of the conservative critique has been “to delegitimize the academy … [and] return colleges to a carefully constructed environment not to educate all, but to reproduce hierarchy.”

    Whether or not she is right, you don’t have to look hard to see that institutions of higher education are feeling growing pressure to right their ships—to create campuses and classrooms where open inquiry flourishes, where students feel free to say what they think and to challenge ideas they disagree with. Colleges have responded by scrambling to incorporate more ideological diversity into their course offerings, to implement new programming and to recruit guest speakers who challenge progressive thinking.

    All this misses the point and distracts us from the work that needs to be done to further improve the quality of the education students receive in American colleges and universities. Put simply, instead of fixating on who is in the classroom and whether they are liberal or conservative, we should be focused on how we are in the room.

    Higher education’s greatest challenge to achieving open inquiry is not one of ideology or viewpoint diversity, but of disposition. Harvard University’s 2024 report from a working group on open inquiry gestured in this direction but did not flesh it out.

    If we are to truly commit to open inquiry, we need to step back, pause and reflect not just on what we think, but on how we acquire knowledge, how we think, whether we are interested in learning more or if we are content with what we already know.

    You can decorate campuses with all the colors of the political rainbow but not make them better places to learn.

    The issue is how we show up with others. Data suggests that students in our classrooms don’t feel comfortable pushing back on each other or on their professors when they disagree. They engage in what psychologists Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman call “performative virtue-signaling.”

    In conversations with students at Amherst College, we have heard that they are not just constraining their expression in academic settings but in social settings, too. It seems we are afraid of each other.

    It is no wonder. The academic and public squares have not proven themselves to be especially kind or generous as of late. We need look no further than the vitriolic reactions to Charlie Kirk’s murder, and the as-vitriolic reactions to the reactions to his murder. When we do, we can see that the rush to righteousness operates across the ideological spectrum.

    The work of college education is to dislodge the instinct to judge and replace it with a commitment to rigorous listening. The work of college teachers is to model an approach to the world that puts empathy before criticism.

    What if instead of just talking about the right to speech, we emphasized the right to listen? But we don’t just mean any kind of listening; we mean listening in a certain way. Deep listening. The kind of listening that takes in ideas in slow, big gulps and lets them settle deeply, and sometimes uncomfortably.

    It is listening that seeks to catch ideas in flight and carry them further. This is a disciplined kind of listening that resists defensiveness and instead burrows into curiosity.

    To foster it, we have to cultivate in ourselves and in our students a disposition to wonder. Why does someone think that way? What experiences, places, relationships, institutions and social forces have shaped their thinking? How did they get to that argument? How did they get to that feeling? How is it that they could arrive at a different perspective than I did?

    This is the heart of open inquiry, and it is much harder to achieve than it is to bring more conservatives to campus. Without the disposition to wonder, doing so will produce enclaves, not engagement, on even the most ideologically diverse campus.

    This kind of open inquiry would demand that we remove the stance of moral certainty and righteousness from our ways and practices of thinking. That is the real work that needs to animate our colleges and universities.

    It is hard, slow work. There is no magic bullet. Teachers and their students, liberals and conservatives, have to commit to it.

    While open inquiry is a social disposition, it is also about how we orient our thinking when we are alone. We need to challenge our students to wonder not just about others but about themselves.

    What would happen if we all got into the habit of asking ourselves: When was the last time we changed our mind about something? When was the last time we left a conversation or finished a text and actually grappled with our orientation to a subject?

    We yearn for our students to practice open inquiry not just when they are in our classrooms, but when they are in the library or in their dorm room with a book to read, an equation to solve, a painting to finish.

    The promise of this type of inquiry is exhilarating, freeing. And it opens up great possibilities of seeing the world differently or in more complicated ways.

    At the end of the day, the literary scholar Peter Brooks gets it right when he says, “To honor, even only nominally, the call for ‘viewpoint diversity’ is to succumb to a logic that is at its heart hostile to the academic enterprise.” At the heart of that enterprise is a belief that viewpoint diversity is not the same thing as open inquiry. That belief requires changing the culture of learning on our campuses.

    Maybe the shift does not seem responsive to the political clamor of the moment. Maybe it sounds like it demands too much and will be hard to assess.

    But whatever the case, it feels revolutionary to us.

    Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.

    Leah Schmalzbauer is the Clarence Francis 1910 Professor in the Social Sciences and associate provost and associate dean of the faculty at Amherst College.

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  • Anatomy of the Research Statement (opinion)

    Anatomy of the Research Statement (opinion)

    The research statement that you include in your promotion and tenure dossier is one of the most important documents of your scholarly career—and one you’ll have little experience writing or even reading, unless you have a generous network of senior colleagues. As an academic editor, I support a half dozen or so academics each year as they revise (and re-revise, and throw out, and retrieve from the bin, and re-revise again) and submit their research statements and P&T dossiers. My experience is with—and so these recommendations are directed at—tenure-track researchers at American R-1s and R-2s and equivalent Canadian and Australian institutions.

    In my experience, most academics are good at describing what their research is and how and why they do it, but few feel confident in crafting a research statement that attests to the impact of their accomplishments. And “impact” is a dreaded word across the disciplines—one that implies reducing years of labor to mere numbers that fail to account for the depth, quality or importance of your work.

    When I think about “impact,” I think of course of the conventional metrics, but I think as well of your work’s influence among your peers in academia, and also of its resonance in nonacademic communities, be they communities of clinicians, patients, people with lived experiences of illness or oppression, people from a specific equity-deserving group, or literal neighborhoods that can be outlined on a map. When I edit research statements, I support faculty to shift their language from “I study X” to “My study of X has achieved Y” or “My work on X has accomplished Z.” This shift depends on providing evidence to show how your work has changed other people’s lives, work or thinking.

    For researchers who seek to make substantial contributions outside of academia—to cure a major disease, to change national policy or legislation—such a focus on impact, influence and resonance can be frustratingly short-termist. Yet if it is your goal to improve the world beyond the boundaries of your classroom and campus, then it seems worthwhile to find ways to show whether and how you are making progress toward that goal.

    If you’re preparing to go up for tenure or promotion, here’s a basic framework for a research statement, which you can adopt and adapt as you prepare your own impact-, influence- or resonance-focused research statement:

    Paragraph 1—Introduction

    Start with a high-level description of your overarching program of research. What big question unites the disparate parts of your work? What problem are you working toward solving? If your individual publications, presentations and grants were puzzle pieces, what big picture would they form?

    Paragraph 2—Background (Optional)

    Briefly sketch the background that informed your current preoccupations. Draw, if relevant, on your personal or professional background before your graduate studies. This paragraph should be short and should emphasize how your pre-academic life laid the foundation that has prepared you, uniquely, to address the key concerns that now occupy your intellectual life. For folks in some disciplines or institutions, this paragraph will be irrelevant and shouldn’t be included: trust your gut, or, if in doubt, ask a trusted senior colleague.

    Middle Paragraphs—Research Themes, Topics or Areas

    Cluster thematically—usually into two, three or four themes—the topics or areas into which your disparate projects and publications can be categorized. Within each theme, identify what you’re interested in and, if your methods are innovative, how you work to advance scholarly understandings of your subject. Depending on the expected length of your research statement, you might write three or four paragraphs for each theme. Each paragraph should identify external funding that you secured to advance your work and point to any outputs—publications, conference presentations, journal special issues, monographs, edited books, keynotes, invited talks, events, policy papers, white papers, end-user training guides, patents, op-eds and so on—that you produced.

    If the output is more than a few years old, you’ll also want to identify what impact (yes) that output had on other people. Doing so might involve pointing at your numbers of citations, but you might also:

    • Describe the diversity of your citations (e.g., you studied frogs but your research is cited in studies of salmon, belugas and bears, suggesting the broad importance of your work across related subfields);
    • Search the Open Syllabus database to identify the number of institutions that include your important publication in their teaching, or WorldCat, to identify the number of countries in which your book is held;
    • Link your ORCID account to Sage’s Policy Profiles to discover the government ministries and international bodies that have been citing your work;
    • Summarize media mentions of your work or big, important stories in news media, e.g. magazine covers or features in national newspapers (e.g. “In August 2025, this work was featured in The New York Times (URL)”);
    • Name awards you’ve won for your outputs or those won by trainees you supervised on the project, including a description of why the award-giving organization selected your or your trainee’s work;
    • Identify lists of top papers in which your article appears (e.g., most cited or most viewed in that journal in the year it was published); or,
    • Explain the scholarly responses to your work, e.g., conference panels discussing one of your papers or quotations from reviews of your book in important journals.

    Closing Paragraphs—Summary

    If you’re in a traditional research institution—one that would rarely be described by other academics as progressive or politically radical—then it may be advantageous for you to conclude your research statement with three summary paragraphs.

    The first would summarize your total career publications and your publications since appointment, highlighting any that received awards or nominations or that are notable for the number of citations or the critical response they have elicited. This paragraph should also describe, if your numbers are impressive, your total number of career conference presentations and invited talks or keynotes as well as the number since either your appointment or your last promotion, and the total number of publications and conference presentations you’ve co-authored with your students or trainees or partners from community or patient groups.

    A second closing paragraph can summarize your total career research funding and funding received since appointment, highlighting the money you have secured as principal investigator, the money that comes from external (regional, national and international) funders, and, if relevant, the new donor funding you’ve brought in.

    A final closing paragraph can summarize your public scholarship, including numbers of media mentions, hours of interviews provided to journalists, podcast episodes featured on or produced, public lectures delivered, community-led projects facilitated, or numbers of op-eds published (and, if available, the web analytics associated with these op-eds; was your piece in The Conversation one of the top 10 most cited in that year from your institution?).

    Final Paragraph—Plans and Commitments

    Look forward with excitement. Outline the upcoming projects, described in your middle paragraphs, to which you are already committed, including funding applications that are still under review. Paint for your reader a picture of the next three to five years of your research and then the rest of your career as you progress toward achieving the overarching goal that you identified in your opening paragraph.

    While some departments and schools are advising their pretenure faculty that references to metrics aren’t necessary in research statements, I—perhaps cynically—worry that the senior administrators who review tenure dossiers after your department head will still expect to see your h-index, total number of publications, number of high-impact-factor journals published in and those almighty external dollars awarded.

    Unless you are confident that your senior administrators have abandoned conventional impact metrics, I’d encourage you to provide these numbers and your disciplinary context. I’ve seen faculty members identify, for example, the average word count of a journal article in their niche, to show that their number of publications is not low but rather is appropriate given the length of a single article. I’ve seen faculty members use data from journals like Scientometrics to show that their single-digit h-index compares to the average h-index for associate professors in their field, even though they are not yet tenured. Such context will help your reader to understand that your h-index of eight is, in fact, a high number, and should be understood as such.

    You’ll additionally receive any number of recommendations from colleagues and mentors; for those of you who don’t have trusted colleagues or mentors at your institution, I’ve collected the advice of recently tenured and promoted associate professors and full professors from a range of disciplines and institutional contexts in this free 30-page PDF.

    I imagine that most of the peers and mentors whom you consult will remind you to align with any guidelines that your institution provides. Definitely, you should do this—and you should return to those guidelines and evaluation criteria, if they exist, as you iteratively revise your draft statement based on the feedback you receive from peers. You’ll also need to know what pieces of your P&T dossier will be read by what audience—external readers, a departmental or faculty committee, senior administrators. Anyone can tell you this; every piece of writing will need to consider both audience and context.

    But my biggest takeaway is something no client of mine has ever been told by a peer, colleague or mentor: Don’t just describe what you’ve done. Instead, point to the evidence that shows that you’ve done your work well.

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  • Collective Punishment, Early Decision Edition (opinion)

    Collective Punishment, Early Decision Edition (opinion)

    Tulane University’s admissions office has banned students from four high schools from applying to Tulane through early decision this fall, according to reporting from The New York Times. Though three of the schools have not been publicly identified, the one-year ban (or “suspension”) for Colorado Academy comes after a student from that school backed out of the early-decision agreement they signed when they applied to Tulane last year.

    For those who aren’t card-carrying college admission geeks like I am, early decision is an application option and enrollment management strategy in which students apply earlier and promise to enroll if admitted, in exchange for receiving an earlier decision offer. The binding nature of early decision means that a student can apply to only one college through early decision.

    In most cases students applying through early decision are asked, along with a parent and their school counselor, to sign an early-decision agreement attesting to their understanding of the commitment to enroll if admitted. Early decision is in no way legally binding, but colleges take the early-decision commitment seriously and are appalled and disgusted when students back out of the commitment. The one agreed-upon reason for backing out of an early-decision commitment is when an institution can’t meet a student’s financial need (as determined by the college’s financial aid formula, not what a family thinks it can pay).

    I have had admission deans tell me that they would hold it against a school whose students did not follow through on the early-decision commitment, but Tulane is the first college I’ve seen publicly penalize schools. The Tulane ban raises some interesting and thorny ethical questions.

    The most obvious is whether it is permissible to punish students in the Class of 2026 for offenses committed by students in the Class of 2025. Retribution may be fashionable these days, but punishing the innocent because you have no way to punish the guilty is not retribution, just wrong.

    But that may be just me. The National Association for College Admission Counseling has an “Ethical Dilemmas in College Admission” page on its website that includes a hypothetical case study in which a student wants to back out of an early-decision commitment. Among the suggested advice for counselors is to caution the student and parents that withdrawing could have negative consequences for future applicants from the school. Even if that might be the case, that’s terrible advice from NACAC, making it seem like colleges punishing future applicants is acceptable and normal.

    At least Tulane is being transparent with its early-decision ban for the schools. As bad as that is, there is a scenario that would be worse, if Tulane ostensibly welcomed early-decision applications from the four schools when it had no intention of admitting any of them.

    The Times article didn’t provide any details about the circumstances leading up to the ban for the four schools, but Tulane’s position seems to be, as the Times paraphrased it, that the schools “failed to uphold the expectations of the early decision agreement.” Let’s examine that claim a little more closely.

    What is a school’s responsibility in advising students wanting to apply early decision? As a counselor, I always advised students and parents that it was a binding commitment, not to be taken lightly. I don’t remember any of my students backing out of an early-decision commitment, but on several occasions I had students who told me on Friday they planned to apply early decision to one college and then a different college on Monday. My response was that they were not ready to apply early decision at all if their thinking was that fluid.

    It’s hard for me to imagine how the schools would have failed in their responsibilities. The counselor part of the early-decision agreement states, “I have advised the student to abide by the early decision commitment outlined above.” As long as they have done that, are they responsible for policing the student’s actions? The school could withhold sending transcripts to other colleges, but in today’s litigious environment, it could face legal action from parents for doing so. I have learned that parents who are lawyers are especially skeptical of the early-decision commitment. If the student wanted to renege on early decision, I would require the student to inform the college. An applicant owes the college that courtesy. Beyond that, schools can’t be expected to enforce early decision.

    There are several other issues that deserve scrutiny. One is Tulane’s claim in a statement to the Times that “A last-minute withdrawal without explanation unfairly impacts other applicants who may have missed opportunities due to the limited number of early-decision offers a university can make.” Excuse me, my BS detector is going off. Tulane has no restriction that I am aware of in the number of students it can admit through early decision, as suggested by the fact that, in recent years, it’s admitted more than 60 percent of its freshman class using early decision, and it has other opportunities to make up for any loss through early decision 2, early action and regular decision.

    There is also an interesting philosophical question about the nature of the early-decision binding commitment. At what point does the binding commitment kick in? Or, more to the point, when does Tulane believe that the commitment is binding?

    The common understanding across the world of college admission is that students take on the binding commitment either as soon as they sign the early-decision agreement, or at least as soon as they are accepted. Tulane’s application instructions state that early decision is binding and that students are expected to withdraw all other applications once accepted and issued a financial aid offer, but there are two other points in the same instructions that bring into question whether Tulane really believes that students are committed as soon as accepted.

    The first bullet point in Tulane’s instructions for early decision defines it as an “application timeline for students whose first choice is Tulane and who are prepared to enroll soon after (italics mine) being admitted and receiving a financial aid offer.” The use of the phrase “soon after” suggests that there is a period of time after acceptance when the student is not yet committed.

    In addition, Tulane expects accepted early-decision applicants to submit a $1,000 enrollment deposit by Jan. 15. Asking for a deposit is not unique to Tulane, but if the student is committed to attend Tulane as soon as they sign the early-decision agreement or upon acceptance, why require an enrollment deposit? If a student is accepted early decision but doesn’t then make the deposit, have they broken the commitment or does that commitment only kick in with the deposit? Am I the only one who sees a contradiction here? (The answer may well be yes, and it wouldn’t be the first time.)

    The broader issue here has to do with early decision itself. Early decision has been around since the 1950s, and it’s controversial. The early-decision “bargain” can be argued to benefit both colleges and students, but it is far more beneficial to institutions as a way to manage enrollment. It doesn’t work well for students for whom financial aid is essential or those who come from schools without savvy college counselors who understand the early-decision game.

    Tulane is the poster child for how colleges and universities use early decision to manage both enrollment and prestige. Its admit rate has declined precipitously in recent years largely through strategic use of early decision. According to its most recent Common Data Set, about 63 percent of the freshman class was admitted through early decision (that’s assuming a 100 percent yield rate for early-decision admits).

    That may actually understate the impact of early decision. Another 20 percent of the class was admitted off the wait list (the CDS shows the number of students admitted off the wait list but does not break it down in terms of enrollments, but there are universities that only admit students off the wait list if they know they will enroll, almost a form of “early decision 3”).

    The heavy use of early decision means that there is a huge variance in the admit rates for early decision and other admissions plans at Tulane (it also has nonbinding early action). According to the Common Data Set, the admit rate for early decision was 59 percent, compared with 11 percent for all other options. That’s not new. A 2022 Inside Higher Ed article reported that Tulane had admitted only 106 students in regular admission. In any case, the numbers suggest that not applying early decision is hugely disadvantageous at Tulane, which makes the ban even more punitive.

    I am trying to be sympathetic to Tulane’s hurt feelings over being dissed by students they admitted in early decision, but I would hope the university’s admissions office will take to heart the wisdom of Gilbert and Sullivan, as well as the Ramones, and let the punishment fit the crime.

    Jim Jump recently retired after 33 years as the academic dean and director of college counseling at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Va. He previously served as an admissions officer, philosophy instructor and women’s basketball coach at the college level and is a past president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. He is the 2024 recipient of NACAC’s John B. Muir Excellence in Media Award.

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  • Want to Protect American Children? End the Shutdown – The 74

    Want to Protect American Children? End the Shutdown – The 74


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    Politicians love to say, “We must protect our children. They are our future.” But looking at what’s happening in Congress right now, children are not being protected. Families are not being prioritized. Instead, lawmakers are locked in a standoff, waiting to see who blinks first as they fight over who gets the last word and how big of a tax break they can give the wealthiest Americans.

    Meanwhile, families — especially families of color and low-income families — are left to hold their breath and wonder what this shutdown means for them. As members of Congress keep making their rounds on television, babies still need formula, toddlers still need health screenings, children still need breakfast and lunch at school and in their child care programs, and parents still need child care so they can work. Amid extreme stress, families are left, wondering how they will be able to take care of their children.

    The demands of children and their families do not stop just because Congress is at a standstill. 

    According to Kids’ Share 2024, an annual report published by the Urban Institute about federal expenditures, children received only about 9% of all federal spending in 2023, while about 43% of federal spending went toward health and retirement benefits for adults 18 years and older. That’s a very small percentage for a nation in which politicians on both sides of the aisle have expressed interest in increased government investment in children. These numbers contradict the narrative that claims children matter because they are our future.

    That 9% starts to feel even smaller during a government shutdown. Some programs, like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, are mandatory, meaning they don’t require annual congressional approval. But others, including a number of crucial children’s programs, such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), are funded through the annual appropriations process, which Congress must approve. This means when lawmakers can’t agree on a budget, these critical programs are left in limbo.

    The fallout on the horizon from this needless dysfunction is becoming clearer.

    In September, the National WIC Association reminded the public that WIC only had enough funds to temporarily remain open during a government shutdown. Now, according to Reuters, at least two dozen state websites warn there could be an unprecedented benefit gap for more than 41 million people in America who get aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the nearly 7 million people who rely on WIC. 

    Georgia Machell, president and chief executive officer of the National WIC Association, delivered this sobering news last week.

    “Without additional support, State WIC Agencies face another looming crisis,” she said. “Several are set to run out of funds to pay for WIC benefits on November 1 and may need to start making contingency plans.”

    Many families in historically marginalized communities, who already face greater barriers to health care, housing and early education, will feel this impact even more sharply. For example, we know that tens of thousands of young children and families rely on vital support received through Head Start, a service that promotes early learning and development, health and well-being. The shutdown is already in its fourth week, and, according to a statement issued on Oct. 16 from the National Head Start Association, if the government shutdown doesn’t end by Nov. 1, more than 65,000 children and families will be at risk of losing critical services. 

    A missed doctor’s appointment, a delay in SNAP benefits or a gap in child care isn’t just inconvenient. It can destabilize a family and hinder a child’s development, especially in the classroom.

    A research brief published by The Food Research & Action Center highlighted the links between hunger and learning, stating that “behavioral, emotional, mental health, and academic problems are more prevalent among children and adolescents struggling with hunger” and that young people experiencing hunger have lower math scores and poorer grades. The shutdown will have real and lasting consequences on the learning, development and well-being of America’s children because these programs are being impacted.

    It’s frustrating to watch lawmakers stand at podiums and declare how much they care about children while their actions — or inaction — puts children at risk. 

    Words don’t put food on the table. Words don’t pay rent. But actions do. 

    And right now, the actions coming out of Congress are sending an unfortunate message to families: protecting children is not the priority.

    If children truly are our future, then they cannot be treated as bargaining chips. Children deserve more than 9% of America’s federal spending budget. We need federal budgets that reflect children’s needs and protection for essential services. Critical programs that protect child health and well-being should never be disrupted by a government shutdown.

    Finally, Americans deserve government accountability. Policymakers should be held responsible for their words and actions, especially when they fail to deliver on the promises they make about protecting children.

    Children cannot wait. They are growing, learning and developing right now. The choices we make as a country today will shape their tomorrow.


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  • Advice on Building a Strategic Digital Presence (opinion)

    Advice on Building a Strategic Digital Presence (opinion)

    For early-career researchers (ECRs), building a digital research space can feel like another burden piled onto an already demanding schedule. The idea of online professional networking often evokes images of overwhelming social media feeds and self-promoting influencers.

    Yet ECRs face a significant risk by solely relying on institutional platforms for their digital footprint: information portability. While university websites offer high visibility as trusted sources, most ECRs on short-term contracts lose web and email access as soon as their contracts expire. This often forces a hasty rebuild of their online presence precisely when they need to navigate critical career transitions.

    Having worked with doctoral and postdoctoral candidates across Europe, common initial hesitations to establishing a digital research space include: uncertainty about how and where to start, discouragement from senior researchers who dismiss digital networks as not “real” work, fears of appearing boastful and/or the paralyzing grip of impostor syndrome. Understanding these hesitations, I emphasize in my coaching the ways that building a digital research space is a natural extension of ECRs’ professional growth.

    Why a Strategic Digital Research Space Matters

    A proactive, professional digital strategy offers several key advantages.

    • Enhancing visibility and discoverability: A well-curated, current, consistent and coherent digital presence significantly improves discoverability for peers, potential collaborators, future employers, funders, journal editors and the media.
    • Networking: Strategically using digital platforms transcends institutional and geographical boundaries, enabling connections with specific individuals, research groups and relevant industry contacts globally.
    • Showcasing expertise and impact: Your digital space allows you to present a holistic view of your contributions beyond publications, including skills, ongoing projects, presentations, teaching, outreach and broader impacts.
    • Meeting communication expectations: As research advances, particularly with public funding, the demand to communicate findings beyond academic circles increases. Funders, institutions and the public expect researchers to demonstrate broader impact and societal relevance and a strategic digital presence provides effective channels for these crucial communications.
    • Controlling your narrative: Actively shape your professional identity and how your expertise is perceived, rather than relying on fragmented institutional profiles or database entries.
    • Ensuring information portability and longevity: Platforms like LinkedIn, ORCID, Google Scholar or a personal website ensure your professional identity, network and achievements remain consistent, accessible and under your control throughout your career.

    Getting Started: Choosing Your Digital Network Combination

    The goal isn’t to be online everywhere, but to be online strategically. Select a platform combination and engagement style aligned with your specific objectives and target audience, considering the time you have available.

    Different platforms serve distinct strategic aims and audiences at various research stages. Categorizing digital platforms into three subspaces helps map the landscape and can help you develop a more balanced presence across the research cycle.

    First, identify the primary strategic goal(s): public dissemination, professional networking expansion or deeper engagement within your academic niche? Your answer will guide your platform selection, as you aim for eventual presence in each space.

    Figure 1: Align your digital platform choices with your strategic goals and target audience.

    Next, consider your audience spectrum. Effective research communication depends on understanding your target audience and their needs.

    • Scholarly discourse: At the outset of your career, specialized academic platforms like ResearchGate, Academia.edu, institutional repositories and reference managers with social features (e.g., Mendeley) are key for engaging directly with peers. Foundational permanent identifiers like ORCID are crucial for tracking outputs across systems.
    • Professional network: As you seek to develop your career, LinkedIn, Google (including Google Scholar) and X (formerly Twitter) are vital hubs across academia, industry and related sectors.
    • Share for impact: TikTok, Facebook and Instagram excel for broader dissemination. Do adjust style and tone: While academics can process jargon and complex concepts, a broader audience will engage more in plain English.

    A strong, time-efficient and pragmatic starting point is to create a free and unique researcher identifier number like an ORCID, develop a professional LinkedIn profile and engage with a relevant academic platform (this would be in addition to your presence on a university or lab website). Because the ORCID requires no upkeep and a LinkedIn profile can leverage existing institutional and biographical information, with this combination ECRs can quickly establish a solid foundation for gradual digital expansion over the medium term.

    Make It Manageable: Time, Engagement and Content

    Once the platform combination is in place, effective digital management requires balancing three core elements: time, engagement and content.

    This figure displays different opportunities for digital engagement depending on factors including time engagement (with options including daily engagement, platform-specific and project-based campaigns, and regular content creation); engagement (e.g. active participation by commenting, sharing and asking questions or building relationships); and content type (including written, visual and multimedia forms of content).

    Figure 2. Key considerations for a sustainable digital networking strategy: balancing realistic time investment, meaningful engagement and appropriate content types.

    Time Investment

    Key message: Prioritize consistency over quantity.

    • Focused engagement: Allocate short, regular blocks (e.g., 15 to 30 minutes weekly) for specific activities like checking discussions, sharing updates or thoughtful commenting between periods of focused research.
    • Platform nuance: Invest strategically, recognizing that platforms have different tempos and life spans (e.g., a LinkedIn post typically has a longer life span than an X post).
    • Campaign bursts: Plan ahead to strategically increase activity around key events like publications or conferences, utilizing scheduling tools for automated posting.
    • Content cadence: Consistency beats constant noise, so plan a realistic posting schedule such as once a month.

    Engagement

    Key message: Focus on short but regular efforts.

    • Active participation: Move beyond passive consumption by commenting, sharing relevant work and asking insightful questions.
    • Build relationships: Genuine interaction fosters trust and meaningful connections.
    • Monitor your impact (optional): Use platform analytics to understand what resonates and refine your strategy.

    Content Type

    Key message: Your hard work should work hard online.

    • Written: Summaries, insights, blog posts, threads, articles.
    • Visual: Infographics, diagrams, cleared research images, presentation slides.
    • Multimedia: Short explanatory videos, audio clips, recorded talks.
    • Cross-post: Share content across all relevant platforms (e.g., post your YouTube video on LinkedIn and ResearchGate).

    Overcoming Reluctance

    If you’re hesitant, consider these starting points:

    • Start small, stay focused: Choose one or two platforms aligned with your top priority. Master these before expanding.
    • Embrace learning: Your initial digital content may not be perfect, but consistent practice leads to significant improvement. Give yourself permission to progress.
    • Integrate, don’t isolate: Weave digital engagement into your research workflow. Share insights from webinars or interesting papers with your network.
    • Give and take: Focus on offering value by sharing insights, asking stimulating questions and amplifying others’ work. Reciprocity fuels networking.
    • Set boundaries: Protect your deep work time. Schedule dedicated slots for digital engagement during lower-energy periods and manage notifications wisely.
    • Be patient: Recognize that building meaningful networks and visibility is a long-term career investment.

    Your Digital Research Space: A Career Asset

    A strategic digital research space is essential for navigating and succeeding in a modern research career. A thoughtful approach empowers you to control your professional narrative, build lasting networks, meet communication expectations and ensure your valuable contributions are both visible and portable.

    Maura Hannon is based in Switzerland and has more than two decades of expertise in strategic communication and thought leadership positioning. She has worked extensively for the last 10 years with doctoral and postdoctoral candidates across Europe to help them build strategies that harness digital networks to enhance their research visibility and impact.

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  • Loan Forgiveness Becomes Tool for Authoritarianism (opinion)

    Loan Forgiveness Becomes Tool for Authoritarianism (opinion)

    By now, it’s obvious that the Trump administration’s efforts to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities go far beyond enforcing federal immigration policy. The near-daily stories of inhumane detainment conditions, open violence against citizens and noncitizens alike, wanton civil rights violations, and purposeful shielding of these abuses from any form of public accountability lay bare that President Trump is now using ICE as a key component for advancing his administration’s hateful agenda.

    This context is essential to evaluate why the administration has sung such a different tune with the advertised $60,000 student loan forgiveness offers to new ICE recruits, compared to the normal song and dance about how higher education is evil incarnate. Trump and his political allies didn’t suddenly discover the societal benefits of affordable education, as evidenced by his simultaneous efforts to strip loan forgiveness pathways from those who are deemed obstructors to Trump’s political goals. What’s clear is that federal student loan forgiveness is now a poverty draft, coercing increased ICE and military enlistment from among those experiencing economic desperation.

    Weaponizing educational debt to fuel armed forces conscription from lower-income individuals is essentially socioeconomic hostage taking. It deprives people of their agency in choosing whether conscription is truly the career and life pathway they desire by forcing the decision as a survival tactic, especially when nearly half the country is approaching an economic recession deliberately caused by Trump’s policies.

    A History of Weaponizing College Affordability

    The easiest way for an authoritarian regime to maintain a highly militarized state is to make enlistment the only means of socioeconomic survival for the masses. This is exactly why the Trump administration is promoting student loan forgiveness for ICE recruits while curtailing eligibility for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. By passing the reconciliation bill that nearly tripled ICE’s budget while restricting Pell Grant eligibility for some students and cutting back basic needs programs like food stamps and Medicaid, congressional leaders have identified themselves as active participants in this strategy.

    Though Trump’s tactics are an unprecedentedly naked attempt to weaponize student loan relief in the service of authoritarianism, this is a foundational concept in federal higher education policy that he’s taking the opportunity to exploit. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, the first federal educational assistance program for veterans, and most follow-up educational assistance programs were more focused on rewarding military service in already-declared conflicts than using benefits as a recruitment draw.

    That shift came with the larger 1960s push to align higher education with the Cold War. California’s Master Plan of 1960 provided an opening for later attacks on college affordability, because it codified into public policy the idea that some types of institutions were worth attending more than others, mainly by segregating various types of educational experiences offered by different institutions. Later in the decade, then–California governor Ronald Reagan slashed public university budgets, in this way punishing students for antiwar protests. Reagan’s camouflaging of draconian education funding cuts as a necessary tool to combat the “filthy speech movement” became the groundwork for today’s deep inequality across all levels of the educational system.

    Over the next several decades, federal and state policymakers abandoned their responsibilities to fund public higher education, which has strengthened the ties between college (un)affordability and militarization. In 2022, 20 Republican House members—14 of whom are still in office—wrote a joint letter to then-president Biden expressing concern that his efforts to provide widespread student loan forgiveness would harm the ability of the military to use higher educational benefits as a recruitment tool.

    Last fall, 48 percent of 16- to 21-year-olds surveyed by the Department of Defense identified “to pay for future education” as a main reason they would consider joining the armed forces. This was the second-most common reason expressed in the survey, behind only “pay/money.”

    Student Loan Forgiveness Is Not Siloed Public Policy

    Public policy is rarely siloed into neat categories, and we are now experiencing the widespread consequences of allowing an inequitable and unaffordable higher education system to exist for so long in the United States. Trump isn’t the only federal policymaker endorsing this strategy, but he is the primary beneficiary. The more people willing to join ICE’s march toward martial law or forced to join ICE due to socioeconomic necessity, the easier it is for Trump to fully embrace authoritarianism and stay in power past January 2029.

    This is the framing that should be used in every policy conversation about student loan forgiveness moving forward, not just for the offers given to new ICE recruits. These actions are not distinct or separate from the administration’s federalizing of the National Guard, ICE’s vast increase in weapons spending or Trump’s public consideration of invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy more troops to U.S. cities; they’re a vital complement. Ransoming access to an affordable higher education, along with its associated socioeconomic benefits, based on how willing someone is to inflict terror on immigrant communities or any other population that the administration deems undesirable, is a deliberate tactic to build an authoritarian military state.

    Ideally, the current scenario facing higher education will end the usual hemming and hawing from policymakers about universal student loan forgiveness or tuition-free higher education being too expensive. Are the cost savings from not offering widespread forgiveness truly worth militarizing the country against the estimated 51.9 million immigrants living in the U.S., including more than 1.9 million immigrant and undocumented higher education students? Is appeasing Trump’s desire to play dictator dress-up so vital that policymakers feel compelled to willingly eradicate recent progress in national college affordability, discourage or outright bar international students from coming to learn in the United States, and shrink the economies of every state and congressional district due to the loss of international students?

    State Legislatures Are the Last Line of Defense

    The Trump administration is desperate to expand domestic militarization through ICE, as evidenced by advertisements on popular media streaming services and during nationally televised football games, public commitments to keep paying ICE agents as roughly 1.4 million federal workers go without pay during the government shutdown and the elimination or loosening of recruitment and training requirements for new ICE agents in relation to their age, physical fitness and ability to speak Spanish. As the Trump administration through ICE utilizes every available tool to further its authoritarian agenda, policymakers and institutions must use every available tool to combat said authoritarianism.

    State legislatures wield vast amounts of legal authority over education policy in comparison to the federal government. However, that authority is useless if states capitulate or are otherwise unwilling to use that authority to protect their education systems and their larger communities.

    Efforts like Connecticut’s new statewide student debt forgiveness program, California’s prohibition on campus police departments providing personal student information for immigration enforcement purposes and Colorado’s adoption of a new state law requiring public campuses to limit federal agents’ access to campus buildings are all welcome ways that state policymakers can fight back against ICE.

    These efforts must be expanded to more states as ICE continues to ramp up its domestic terrorism and congressional leadership remains content to abandon its constitutional responsibilities to hold the executive branch in check. For institutions, advocates and concerned community members, resources available through the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration and its Higher Ed Immigration Portal, and from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, provide essential guidance on how to act in protecting immigrants and their families.

    Student loan forgiveness, and the larger concept of an affordable and equitable higher education, could now be a matter of life and death for millions of people. The traditional willingness of policymakers to resist supporting higher education during times of economic surplus, while eagerly cutting educational funding at the first sign of economic distress, has now imperiled American democracy. Every image of ICE committing authoritarian violence is a stark call for policymakers to ask themselves what they value more: the fiscal savings of making no meaningful effort to address the more than $1.6 trillion owed in student debt, or American democracy itself.

    Christian Collins is a policy analyst with the education, labor and worker justice team at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit organization focused on reducing poverty and advancing racial equity.

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  • The Case Against AI Disclosure Statements (opinion)

    The Case Against AI Disclosure Statements (opinion)

    I used to require my students submit AI disclosure statements any time they used generative AI on an assignment. I won’t be doing that anymore.

    From the beginning of our current AI-saturated moment, I leaned into ChatGPT, not away, and was an early adopter of AI in my college composition classes. My early adoption of AI hinged on the need for transparency and openness. Students had to disclose to me when and how they were using AI. I still fervently believe in those values, but I no longer believe that required disclosure statements help us achieve them.

    Look. I get it. Moving away from AI disclosure statements is antithetical to many of higher ed’s current best practices for responsible AI usage. But I started questioning the wisdom of the disclosure statement in spring 2024, when I noticed a problem. Students in my composition courses were turning in work that was obviously created with the assistance of AI, but they failed to proffer the required disclosure statements. I was puzzled and frustrated. I thought to myself, “I allow them to use AI; I encourage them to experiment with it; all I ask is that they tell me they’re using AI. So, why the silence?” Chatting with colleagues in my department who have similar AI-permissive attitudes and disclosure requirements, I found they were experiencing similar problems. Even when we were telling our students that AI usage was OK, students still didn’t want to fess up.

    Fess up. Confess. That’s the problem.

    Mandatory disclosure statements feel an awful lot like a confession or admission of guilt right now. And given the culture of suspicion and shame that dominates so much of the AI discourse in higher ed at the moment, I can’t blame students for being reluctant to disclose their usage. Even in a class with a professor who allows and encourages AI use, students can’t escape the broader messaging that AI use should be illicit and clandestine.

    AI disclosure statements have become a weird kind of performative confession: an apology performed for the professor, marking the honest students with a “scarlet AI,” while the less scrupulous students escape undetected (or maybe suspected, but not found guilty).

    As well intentioned as mandatory AI disclosure statements are, they have backfired on us. Instead of promoting transparency and honesty, they further stigmatize the exploration of ethical, responsible and creative AI usage and shift our pedagogy toward more surveillance and suspicion. I suggest that it is more productive to assume some level of AI usage as a matter of course, and, in response, adjust our methods of assessment and evaluation while simultaneously working toward normalizing the usage of AI tools in our own work.

    Studies show that AI disclosure carries risks both in and out of the classroom. One study published in May reports that any kind of disclosure (both voluntary and mandatory) in a wide variety of contexts resulted in decreased trust in the person using AI (this remained true even when study participants had prior knowledge of an individual’s AI usage, meaning, the authors write, “The observed effect can be attributed primarily to the act of disclosure rather than to the mere fact of AI usage.”)

    Another recent article points to the gap present between the values of honesty and equity when it comes to mandatory AI disclosure: People won’t feel safe to disclose AI usage if there’s an underlying or perceived lack of trust and respect.

    Some who hold unfavorable attitudes toward AI will point to these findings as proof that students should just avoid AI usage altogether. But that doesn’t strike me as realistic. Anti-AI bias will only drive student AI usage further underground and lead to fewer opportunities for honest dialogue. It also discourages the kind of AI literacy employers are starting to expect and require.

    Mandatory AI disclosure for students isn’t conducive to authentic reflection but is instead a kind of virtue signaling that chills the honest conversation we should want to have with our students. Coercion only breeds silence and secrecy.

    Mandatory AI disclosure also does nothing to curb or reduce the worst features of badly written AI papers, including the vague, robotic tone; the excess of filler language; and, their most egregious hallmark, the fabricated sources and quotes.

    Rather than demanding students confess their AI crimes to us through mandatory disclosure statements, I advocate both a shift in perspective and a shift of assignments. We need to move from viewing students’ AI assistance as a special exception warranting reactionary surveillance to accepting and normalizing AI usage as a now commonplace feature of our students’ education.

    That shift does not mean we should allow and accept any and all student AI usage. We shouldn’t resign ourselves to reading AI slop that a student generates in an attempt to avoid learning. When confronted with a badly written AI paper that sounds nothing like the student who submitted it, the focus shouldn’t be on whether the student used AI but on why it’s not good writing and why it fails to satisfy the assignment requirements. It should also go without saying that fake sources and quotes, regardless of whether they are of human or AI origin, should be called out as fabrications that won’t be tolerated.

    We have to build assignments and evaluation criteria that disincentivize the kinds of unskilled AI usage that circumvent learning. We have to teach students basic AI literacy and ethics. We have to build and foster learning environments that value transparency and honesty. But real transparency and honesty require safety and trust before they can flourish.

    We can start to build such a learning environment by working to normalize AI usage with our students. Some ideas that spring to mind include:

    • Telling students when and how you use AI in your own work, including both successes and failures in AI usage.
    • Offering clear explanations to students about how they could use AI productively at different points in your class and why they might not want to use AI at other points. (Danny Liu’s Menus model is an excellent example of this strategy.)
    • Adding an assignment such as an AI usage and reflection journal, which offers students a low-stakes opportunity to experiment with AI and reflect upon the experience.
    • Adding an opportunity for students to present to the class on at least one cool, weird or useful thing that they did with AI (maybe even encouraging them to share their AI failures, as well).

    The point with these examples is that we are inviting students into the messy, exciting and scary moment we all find ourselves in. They shift the focus away from coerced confessions to a welcoming invitation to join in and share their own wisdom, experience and expertise that they accumulate as we all adjust to the age of AI.

    Julie McCown is an associate professor of English at Southern Utah University. She is working on a book about how embracing AI disruption leads to more engaging and meaningful learning for students and faculty.

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  • Can AI Keep Students Motivated, Or Does it Do the Opposite? – The 74

    Can AI Keep Students Motivated, Or Does it Do the Opposite? – The 74

    Imagine a student using a writing assistant powered by a generative AI chatbot. As the bot serves up practical suggestions and encouragement, insights come more easily, drafts polish up quickly and feedback loops feel immediate. It can be energizing. But when that AI support is removed, some students report feeling less confident or less willing to engage.

    These outcomes raise the question: Can AI tools genuinely boost student motivation? And what conditions can make or break that boost?

    As AI tools become more common in classroom settings, the answers to these questions matter a lot. While tools for general use such as ChatPGT or Claude remain popular, more and more students are encountering AI tools that are purpose-built to support learning, such as Khan Academy’s Khanmigo, which personalizes lessons. Others, such as ALEKS, provide adaptive feedback. Both tools adjust to a learner’s level and highlight progress over time, which helps students feel capable and see improvement. But there are still many unknowns about the long-term effects of these tools on learners’ progress, an issue I continue to study as an educational psychologist.

    What the evidence shows so far

    Recent studies indicate that AI can boost motivation, at least for certain groups, when deployed under the right conditions. A 2025 experiment with university students showed that when AI tools delivered a high-quality performance and allowed meaningful interaction, students’ motivation and their confidence in being able to complete a task – known as self-efficacy – increased.

    For foreign language learners, a 2025 study found that university students using AI-driven personalized systems took more pleasure in learning and had less anxiety and more self-efficacy compared with those using traditional methods. A recent cross-cultural analysis with participants from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Poland who were studying diverse majors suggested that positive motivational effects are strongest when tools prioritize autonomy, self-direction and critical thinking. These individual findings align with a broader, systematic review of generative AI tools that found positive effects on student motivation and engagement across cognitive, emotional and behavioral dimensions.

    A forthcoming meta-analysis from my team at the University of Alabama, which synthesized 71 studies, echoed these patterns. We found that generative AI tools on average produce moderate positive effects on motivation and engagement. The impact is larger when tools are used consistently over time rather than in one-off trials. Positive effects were also seen when teachers provide scaffolding, when students maintain agency in how they use the tool, and when the output quality is reliable.

    But there are caveats. More than 50 of the studies we reviewed did not draw on a clear theoretical framework of motivation, and some used methods that we found were weak or inappropriate. This raises concerns about the quality of the evidence and underscores how much more careful research is needed before one can say with confidence that AI nurtures students’ intrinsic motivation rather than just making tasks easier in the moment.

    When AI backfires

    There is also research that paints a more sobering picture. A large study of more than 3,500 participants found that while human–AI collaboration improved task performance, it reduced intrinsic motivation once the AI was removed. Students reported more boredom and less satisfaction, suggesting that overreliance on AI can erode confidence in their own abilities.

    Another study suggested that while learning achievement often rises with the use of AI tools, increases in motivation are smaller, inconsistent or short-lived. Quality matters as much as quantity. When AI delivers inaccurate results, or when students feel they have little control over how it is used, motivation quickly erodes. Confidence drops, engagement fades and students can begin to see the tool as a crutch rather than a support. And because there are not many long-term studies in this field, we still do not know whether AI can truly sustain motivation over time, or whether its benefits fade once the novelty wears off.

    Not all AI tools work the same way

    The impact of AI on student motivation is not one-size-fits-all. Our team’s meta-analysis shows that, on average, AI tools do have a positive effect, but the size of that effect depends on how and where they are used. When students work with AI regularly over time, when teachers guide them in using it thoughtfully, and when students feel in control of the process, the motivational benefits are much stronger.

    We also saw differences across settings. College students seemed to gain more than younger learners, STEM and writing courses tended to benefit more than other subjects, and tools designed to give feedback or tutoring support outperformed those that simply generated content.

    There is also evidence that general-use tools like ChatGPT or Claude do not reliably promote intrinsic motivation or deeper engagement with content, compared to learning-specific platforms such as ALEKS and Khanmigo, which are more effective at supporting persistence and self-efficacy. However, these tools often come with subscription or licensing costs. This raises questions of equity, since the students who could benefit most from motivational support may also be the least likely to afford it.

    These and other recent findings should be seen as only a starting point. Because AI is so new and is changing so quickly, what we know today may not hold true tomorrow. In a paper titled The Death and Rebirth of Research in Education in the Age of AI, the authors argue that the speed of technological change makes traditional studies outdated before they are even published. At the same time, AI opens the door to new ways of studying learning that are more participatory, flexible and imaginative. Taken together, the data and the critiques point to the same lesson: Context, quality and agency matter just as much as the technology itself.

    Why it matters for all of us

    The lessons from this growing body of research are straightforward. The presence of AI does not guarantee higher motivation, but it can make a difference if tools are designed and used with care and understanding of students’ needs. When it is used thoughtfully, in ways that strengthen students’ sense of competence, autonomy and connection to others, it can be a powerful ally in learning.

    But without those safeguards, the short-term boost in performance could come at a steep cost. Over time, there is the risk of weakening the very qualities that matter most – motivation, persistence, critical thinking and the uniquely human capacities that no machine can replace.

    For teachers, this means that while AI may prove a useful partner in learning, it should never serve as a stand-in for genuine instruction. For parents, it means paying attention to how children use AI at home, noticing whether they are exploring, practicing and building skills or simply leaning on it to finish tasks. For policymakers and technology developers, it means creating systems that support student agency, provide reliable feedback and avoid encouraging overreliance. And for students themselves, it is a reminder that AI can be a tool for growth, but only when paired with their own effort and curiosity.

    Regardless of technology, students need to feel capable, autonomous and connected. Without these basic psychological needs in place, their sense of motivation will falter – with or without AI.

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Rethinking Leadership Development in Higher Ed (opinion)

    Rethinking Leadership Development in Higher Ed (opinion)

    Higher education is in the midst of a crisis of confidence that has long been building. In this time of volatility, complexity and uncertainty, the steady hand of leaders matters more than ever. Yet academia does—at best—a very uneven job of preparing academic leaders for steady-state leadership, much less for times when the paradigm is shifting. This moment is creating an opportunity to reconsider how we prepare leaders for what will come next.

    Why Is Leadership So Uneven in Higher Ed?

    A primary reason lies in how we select and develop leaders. In academia, searches for department chair, dean and provost often emphasize top-level scholarly and research credentials and only secondarily consider an individual’s experience, perspective and ability to influence and motivate others to support shared missions. Academics in general do not respond well to directives: They expect to be persuaded, not commanded. Additionally, it is often only after being hired that those in formal positions of authority are provided with leadership-development opportunities to help foster those interpersonal skills—too late for foundational growth.

    These approaches to recruiting formal leaders are rooted in flawed assumptions about how leadership works. True leadership is not about commanding compliance but about shaping unit culture through influence. Many leaders fail by not understanding the difference. An effective leader is a person of strong character who can build trusting relationships with others; these skills take time to develop and usually take root even before a person assumes a leadership role.

    Another important reason that leadership in higher ed is uneven arises from conceptualizing leadership as a “heroic” individual endeavor. The same skills that help a formal leader to be successful—such as understanding the alignment of their actions with the unit’s mission; strong communication skills, including listening; the ability to navigate conflict, negotiation and conflict resolution; and formulating and articulating clear collective goals— are equally crucial for others to exercise to be fully engaged participants.

    Leaders with formal roles and titles play a crucial role in promoting a productive and collegial culture. At the same time, they do not do so alone: It is equally important that participants who are not in formal administrative roles are also seen (and see themselves) as central in shaping these environments, and that they are aware of how their own actions and interpersonal dynamics contribute to their working and learning experiences.

    In short, leadership responsibility is not limited to administrators. There are layers of formal leadership roles embedded inside departments and schools, visible whenever faculty members and staff take on responsibilities for shared governance and advisory roles; lead team research or manage grant portfolios; and select (hire), supervise, evaluate and mentor colleagues and other early-career individuals. These faculty and staff are leaders, too, whether or not they see, accept or internalize those roles.

    When leadership is viewed simply as an individual attribute rather than a process that emerges from the relationships among people in teams, organizations miss the opportunity to develop cultures of excellence that support integrity, trust and collaboration at all levels. Thus, we argue that leadership ought to be understood as an ongoing process of character development and a responsibility shared by all members of an organization—not something that can be addressed in a one-off workshop, but as an integral dimension of the work.

    The Foundations of Leadership: Influence Before Authority

    Rather than framing leadership as something only people with formal authority do, a more productive model is to view leadership as influence. By influence we mean modeling the behaviors we seek to share and promote in our groups so that we can better shape the way we solve problems collectively. Leadership is not in essence a position; it is contributing to an ongoing process of shaping culture, norms and behavior within a unit.

    Social psychology shows that we influence each other constantly. The more time we spend with people, the more we become like them and vice versa. This means that bad habits can spread as easily as good ones. When everyone is given an opportunity to develop good habits, they are more likely to spread throughout the community. Our character affects how we influence others. We are much more likely to be influenced by a person who demonstrates integrity and curiosity than we are by someone who is demanding and unwilling to listen.

    Here are some areas of practice for developing better influence:

    • Self-awareness and self-management: Focusing on oneself first helps individuals identify their strengths and areas for growth, while encouraging them to recognize and respect their roles and responsibilities in the current situation. Understanding oneself, one’s values, habits and motivations, is foundational to recognizing how we affect and are affected by those around us.
    • Conflict resolution: Healthy debate is foundational to innovation and growth. Developing strong conflict-resolution skills contributes to increased perspective-taking, depersonalizing disagreement and yielding more effective discussion and problem solving.
    • Decision-making: Understanding how we make decisions, and more importantly how heuristics influence and bias our decision-making, can help people slow down to make more ethical and effective decisions.

    Opportunities for influence are available to everyone, not just those in formal leadership roles. Early-career faculty, staff and students can cultivate influence by setting examples for collaboration, through ethical behavior and by contributing to collective problem-solving. Leadership is not centrally about having authority over others; it is about shaping an environment in which ethical decision-making, respect and shared purpose flourish.

    Reimagining Leader Development in Higher Ed

    Now more than ever, individuals need support in managing their careers with integrity and purpose—aligning their personal values and goals with those of their institutions. Leadership development should not be viewed as a costly add-on. In fact, it can be integrated into the everyday fabric of academic life through accessible and scalable methods, including:

    • Peer-learning cohorts that provide space for discussion and reflection on leadership challenges.
    • Guided personal reflections on workplace dynamics, communication and decision-making.
    • Structured mentoring programs that cultivate leadership skills through real-world interactions.
    • Deliberative conversations around such themes as research ethics, authorship and collaboration to build trust and integrity within teams.
    • Conflict-resolution training embedded in routine professional development activities.

    Our experience at the National Center for Principled Leadership and Research Ethics shows that even modest efforts—like those above—can spark essential conversations between mentors and mentees, improve communication, and positively influence both unit climate and individual well-being. To support this work, we offer a free Leadership Collection—an online collection of tools, readings and practical exercises for anyone seeking to lead more effectively, regardless of their title or career stage.

    When leadership development is embraced as a core part of academic life—not just a formal program or a luxury for a few—it can become a catalyst for healthier, more purpose-driven institutions.

    Conclusion: Leadership Development as a Cultural Foundation

    Reserving leadership-development programming only for when people reach formal leadership roles is a missed opportunity to develop broader and more inclusive working cultures. Such cultures emerge from the relationships among the members of a group. Building better relationships starts with personal growth, self-awareness and emotional intelligence for each member. Taking responsibility for one’s own professional growth and for one’s influence on others is also an important kind of leadership.

    True leadership, therefore, is not about directing others but about fostering environments in which good habits, strong ethics and meaningful engagement flourish. If universities want to build sustainable cultures of excellence, in which leadership is no longer an individual endeavor but a shared commitment to collaboration, they should start embedding it in professional development and routine practice for all. As uncertainty prevails, budgets are cut and people are navigating deep change, now is the moment to reconsider how we shape leaders in higher education.

    Elizabeth A. Luckman is a clinical associate professor of business administration with an emphasis in organizational behavior and director of leadership programs at the National Center for Principled Leadership and Research Ethics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

    C. K. Gunsalus is the director of NCPRE, professor emerita of business and research professor at the Grainger College of Engineering’s Coordinated Sciences Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

    Nicholas C. Burbules is the education director of NCPRE and Gutgsell Professor Emeritus in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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