Tag: plans

  • AI teacher tools display racial bias when generating student behavior plans, study finds

    AI teacher tools display racial bias when generating student behavior plans, study finds

    This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

    Asked to generate intervention plans for struggling students, AI teacher assistants recommended more-punitive measures for hypothetical students with Black-coded names and more supportive approaches for students the platforms perceived as white, a new study shows.

    These findings come from a report on the risks of bias in artificial intelligence tools published Wednesday by the non-profit Common Sense Media. Researchers specifically sought to evaluate the quality of AI teacher assistants — such as MagicSchool, Khanmingo, Curipod, and Google Gemini for Education — that are designed to support classroom planning, lesson differentiation, and administrative tasks.

    Common Sense Media found that while these tools could help teachers save time and streamline routine paperwork, AI-generated content could also promote bias in lesson planning and classroom management recommendations.

    Robbie Torney, senior director of AI programs at Common Sense Media, said the problems identified in the study are serious enough that ed tech companies should consider removing tools for behavior intervention plans until they can improve them. That’s significant because writing intervention plans of various sorts is a relatively common way teachers use AI.

    After Chalkbeat asked about Common Sense Media’s findings, a Google spokesperson said Tuesday that Google Classroom has turned off the shortcut to Gemini that prompts teachers to “Generate behavior intervention strategies” to do additional testing.

    However, both MagicSchool and Google, the two platforms where Common Sense Media identified racial bias in AI-generated behavior intervention plans, said they could not replicate Common Sense Media’s findings. They also said they take bias seriously and are working to improve their models.

    School districts across the country have been working to implement comprehensive AI policies to encourage informed use of these tools. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft have partnered with the American Federation of Teachers to provide free training in using AI platforms. The Trump Administration also has encouraged greater AI integration in the classroom. However, recent AI guidelines released by the U.S. Department of Education have not directly addressed concerns about bias within these systems.

    About a third of teachers report using AI at least weekly, according to a national survey conducted by the Walton Family Foundation in cooperation with Gallup. A separate survey conducted by the research organization Rand found teachers specifically report using these tools to help develop goals for Individualized Education Program — or IEP — plans. They also say they use these tools to shape lessons or assessments around those goals, and to brainstorm ways to accommodate students with disabilities.

    Torney said Common Sense Media isn’t trying to discourage teachers from using AI in general. The goal of the report is to encourage more awareness of potential uses of AI teacher assistants that might have greater risks in the classroom.

    “We really just want people to go in eyes wide open and say, ‘Hey these are some of the things that they’re best at and these are some of the things you probably want to be a little bit more careful with,’” he said.

    Common Sense Media identified AI tools that can generate IEPs and behavior intervention plans as high risk due to their biased treatment of students in the classroom. Using MagicSchool’s Behavior Intervention Suggestions tool and the Google Gemini “Generate behavior intervention strategies tool,” Common Sense Media’s research team ran the same prompt about a student who struggled with reading and showed aggressive behavior 50 times using white-coded names and 50 times using Black-coded names, evenly split between male- and female-coded names.

    The AI-generated plans for the students with Black-coded names didn’t all appear negative in isolation. But clear differences emerged when those plans from MagicSchool and Gemini were compared with plans for students with white-coded names.

    For example, when prompted to provide a behavior intervention plan for Annie, Gemini emphasized addressing aggressive behavior with “consistent non-escalating responses” and “consistent positive reinforcement.” Lakeesha, on the other hand, should receive “immediate” responses to her aggressive behaviors and positive reinforcement for “desired behaviors,” the tool said. For Kareem, Gemini simply said, “Clearly define expectations and teach replacement behaviors,” with no mention of positive reinforcement or responses to aggressive behavior.

    Torney noted that the problems in these AI-generated reports only became apparent across a large sample, which can make it hard for teachers to identify. The report warns that novice teachers may be more likely to rely on AI-generated content without the experience to catch inaccuracies or biases. Torney said these underlying biases in intervention plans “could have really large impacts on student progression or student outcomes as they move across their educational trajectory.”

    Black students are already subject to higher rates of suspension than their white counterparts in schools and more likely to receive harsher disciplinary consequences for subjective reasons, like “disruptive behavior.” Machine learning algorithms replicate the decision-making patterns of the training data that they are provided, which can perpetuate existing inequalities. A separate study found that AI tools replicate existing racial bias when grading essays, assigning lower scores to Black students than to Asian students.

    The Common Sense Media report also identified instances when AI teacher assistants generated lesson plans that relied on stereotypes, repeated misinformation, and sanitized controversial aspects of history.

    A Google spokesperson said the company has invested in using diverse and representative training data to minimize bias and overgeneralizations.

    “We use rigorous testing and monitoring to identify and stop potential bias in our AI models,” the Google spokesperson said in an email to Chalkbeat. “We’ve made good progress, but we’re always aiming to make improvements with our training techniques and data.”

    On its website, MagicSchool promotes its AI teaching assistant as “an unbiased tool to aid in decision-making for restorative practices.” In an email to Chalkbeat, MagicSchool said it has not been able to reproduce the issues that Common Sense Media identified.

    MagicSchool said their platform includes bias warnings and instructs users not to include student names or other identifying information when using AI features. In light of the study, it is working with Common Sense to improve its bias detection systems and design tools in ways that encourage educators to review AI generated content more closely.

    “As noted in the study, AI tools like ours hold tremendous promise — but also carry real risks if not designed, deployed, and used responsibly,” MagicSchool told Chalkbeat. “We are grateful to Common Sense Media for helping hold the field accountable.”

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

    For more news on AI, visit eSN’s Digital Learning hub.

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  • U of Utah Plans to Ax 81 Offerings, Citing New State Law

    U of Utah Plans to Ax 81 Offerings, Citing New State Law

    The University of Utah is cutting 81 offerings in response to state budget reductions and a new law.

    Aaron M. Sprecher/Getty Images

    The University of Utah plans to eliminate 81 academic programs and minors—a step that administrators attribute to a new state law that called for “strategic reinvestment” after lawmakers slashed funding to public colleges and universities.

    The Republican-controlled Utah Legislature passed House Bill 265 this spring. Lawmakers cut 10 percent of institutions’ state-funded instructional budgets, but the law said they could earn back the money by cutting programs and positions and instead funding “strategic reinvestment.” Institutions’ reinvestment plans must be based on enrollment, completion rates, job placement, wages, program-level costs and local and statewide workforce demands.

    Other Utah universities detailed their planned cuts in the spring, but this is the first glimpse at how the state’s flagship will respond to the new law.

    The planned cuts at the University of Utah include Ph.D.s in chemical physics, physiology, experimental pathology and in theater; master’s degrees in ballet, modern dance, marketing, audiology and applied mechanics; bachelor’s degrees in chemistry teaching, Russian teaching and German teaching; certificates in public administration, veterans’ studies and computational bioimaging; various minors; and more.

    Richard Preiss, president of the university’s Academic Senate, said his body’s Executive Committee reviewed the list of programs. He said that, except for one that the committee persuaded the administration to remove from the list, none had graduated more than one student in the past eight years, according to the university’s data. But a university spokesperson said that “some had zero or one, but some had up to a dozen students. Our threshold to identify inactive or low-enrollment courses was 15.”

    Preiss said that while the selection process was accelerated, faculty had enough time to give meaningful input.

    “These were relatively easy cuts to make and they were relatively painless,” Preiss said. “I anticipate that more painful ones are on the horizon.”

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  • Stanford Plans to Cut 363 Jobs

    Stanford Plans to Cut 363 Jobs

    Stanford is the latest university to announce layoffs in the wake of federal policy changes.

    David Madison/Getty Images

    Stanford University plans to cut 363 jobs this fall, starting at the end of September, due to financial challenges driven by federal policy changes, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

    The university previously announced a hiring freeze in February.

    Stanford president Jon Levin and provost Jenny Martinez noted in a letter to campus that the cuts were part of an effort announced last month to reduce $140 million in the general funds budget. They called the layoffs, reported Tuesday, “the product of a challenging fiscal environment shaped in large part by federal policy changes affecting higher education.”

    University officials provided more information in a letter filed with the California Employment Development Department that accompanied the layoff notice. They cited “anticipated changes in federal policy—such as reductions in federal research funding and an increase in the excise tax on investment income” as significant factors driving the reduction of Stanford’s workforce.

    Neither letter provided more specifics on who would be affected by the job cuts.

    Stanford has been in the crosshairs of the Trump administration in recent months, with the Department of Justice launching an investigation into admissions practices at the private university, accusing it and several other institutions of skirting a ban on affirmative action.

    Stanford is one of the wealthiest institutions in the U.S., with an endowment valued at $37.6 billion earlier this year; only two other institutions and a system had larger endowments.

    Now Stanford joins other wealthy peers with multibillion-dollar endowments that have also enacted cuts recently. Last month, Duke University announced that 599 employees had accepted buyouts, and Northwestern University cut 425 jobs as it navigates a federal research funding freeze. While not as well resourced as Stanford, both are among the nation’s wealthiest universities.

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  • Johns Hopkins Press Plans to License Books to Train AI

    Johns Hopkins Press Plans to License Books to Train AI

    Authors have until the end of August to opt out.

    SvetaZi/iStock/Getty Images

    Johns Hopkins University Press (JHUP) is the latest academic publisher to announce plans to license its books to train proprietary large language models. According to an email JHUP sent to authors Tuesday, those who want to opt out of the licensing agreement have until Aug. 31 to sign an addendum to their contracts; otherwise their work is fair game.

    The move comes as Johns Hopkins University—the nation’s largest spender on university-based research and development—is facing big budget holes created by the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to federal grants.

    “While we do not anticipate huge financial gain for individual books, the cumulative revenue [from LLM licensing deals] would be meaningful for Johns Hopkins University Press and our mission,” read the email sent to authors. “As we anticipate contraction in the higher-education market, these funds can help to sustain our important work as a non-profit publisher.”

    While JHUP is not currently operating at a deficit, its executive director, Barbara Kline Pope, said in an email to Inside Higher Ed that the publisher is “exploring how our financial model may need to evolve over the coming years.” Pope did not answer Inside Higher Ed’s specific questions about which company or companies it plans to license book content to, but said that it’s “currently exploring partnerships with both general AI companies and those focused on specialized content and inference models like Retrieval-Augmented Generation,” which can incorporate external information sources to enhance the authority of an LLM’s response.

    The press maintains a backlist of about 3,000 titles and publishes roughly 150 new books a year by faculty and other experts in fields such as public health, science, higher education and the humanities. It told authors that they can expect to receive “modest” returns of less than $100 per title per license.

    While JHUP did not provide a specific dollar figure for how much revenue it expects to generate from the licensing agreement, some of the biggest scholarly publishers have already proven that there’s money to be made in licensing content to AI companies.

    In the two-plus years since generative artificial intelligence tools have gone mainstream, major for-profit academic publishers, including Wiley and Informa (Taylor & Francis’s parent company), have signed agreements with AI companies. While some optimistic authors and observers have said such deals mean well-researched, accurate data will be used to train AI models, others have pushed back. Last summer, authors were outraged after Taylor & Francis failed to notify them before selling their work to Microsoft for $10 million. By the end of 2024, Taylor & Francis reported a $75 million profit as a result of the sale, which boosted its underlying revenue growth from 3 percent to 15 percent in one year, according to Bloomberg.

    In addition to JHUP, other nonprofit publishers are jumping on the AI bandwagon—or at least thinking about it. Last year, Oxford University Press confirmed it was working with AI companies to develop LLMs, while the university itself launched a five-year partnership with OpenAI this past spring. Cambridge University Press is still in the process of weighing AI licensing agreements, though it’s also given authors the opportunity to opt out of any future AI-related aggregation efforts. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press said in November that multiple AI companies have approached about a licensing agreement; it responded by asking authors for their input and has not publicly announced a deal.

    In its notice to authors this week, JHUP said it spent the last year weighing the possibility of licensing its works to train LLMs. In addition to potential financial gain, the press explained that it is deciding to move forward now because an LLM licensing agreement would make authors’ work more discoverable by their intended readers, create some guardrails around content use amid increasing concerns that major LLM companies are already scraping pirated versions of JHUP’s book content, and make a stronger legal case that such companies should be required to pay for access to the publisher’s content.

    Sharon Ann Murphy, a history and classics professor at Providence College in Rhode Island who signed two contracts with JHUP long before the rise of LLMs, said she was not surprised—but nonetheless upset—by the notice from JHUP, which includes language from the opt-out addendum. It requires authors who don’t want to license their work to acknowledge that in addition to not receiving any AI-related royalties, “the sales and reach of the Work may suffer as a result of or in relation to the fact that Hopkins Press will not exercise AI Rights with respect to the Work.”

    Murphy said she interpreted JHUP’s opt-out clause to mean that authors “are agreeing that they’re going to lose revenue because of this and Hopkins has no responsibility to protect us.”

    Murphy is also skeptical of JHUP’s claims in its email to authors that if LLMs adopt technologies that credit the sources of AI-generated response, it will give readers the ability “to identify and click through to the original source” and is “the best way to continue to engage with readers and disseminate (authors’) work widely.”

    “They’re saying that somehow this will promote our work, but that’s a specious argument. That’s not how AI models work,” Murphy said. “Academic presses are operating on shoestring budgets, but this seems really short-sighted. Academic presses are in the business of creating real knowledge, but AI is in the business of hallucinating and making stuff up.”

    Annette Windhorn, a spokesperson for the Association of University Presses, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that she’s not sure just how many academic presses have agreed to license their content to AI companies.

    “An internal query to member presses more than a year ago did reveal that a number of presses had been approached by a variety of companies, but almost none were at that time actually considering an agreement and many presses were deferring initial decision points to university counsel,” she wrote. “Our members are following developments closely, but moving with caution in areas that may impact their authors’, their institutions’, or their own rights and responsibilities.”

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  • Senate Outlines Plans for Endowment Tax Hike

    Senate Outlines Plans for Endowment Tax Hike

    The Senate Committee on Finance is proposing to raise the endowment tax on private colleges and universities, but not to the extent the recently passed bill in the House calls for, according to a draft plan released Monday.

    The less dramatic excise tax tops out at 8 percent for the wealthiest institutions, compared to 21 percent in the House plan, but the Senate’s proposal keeps the House’s tiered rate structure, with some colleges paying more depending on the value of their endowment per student. The current rate for affected institutions is 1.4 percent.

    Institutional lobbyists and college presidents have warned that the sharp increase in the House plan would hurt their ability to provide need-based aid and be debilitating for some low-income students. Although the Senate’s iteration offers some relief, it’s not as much as they hoped for.

    “The Senate version of the so-called endowment tax is better, but it’s still bad and harmful tax policy,” said Steven Bloom, assistant vice president of government relations​​ at the American Council on Education. “They’re going to take money that would likely have been devoted to financial aid and research and other academic purposes on campus, and they’re going to send it to Washington, where it’s used largely for purposes unrelated to higher education.”

    The Senate committee’s plan, like the House proposal, also still exempts religious colleges and requires colleges to take international students out of the total roll call when calculating the endowment’s value per student. If passed, this stipulation would increase the tax rate significantly for institutions like Columbia University that have 20 percent or more foreign students.

    The finance committee legislation, which also includes cuts to Medicaid that could put pressure on states’ budgets, is part of a broader package of bills that would make significant changes to higher education policy and cut spending and taxes in order to pay for President Donald Trump’s priorities, which include increased deportations and tax cuts for the wealthy. The House version of the reconciliation bill known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by a one-vote margin last month. Senators are aiming to pass their version by July 4 and only need 51 votes thanks to the reconciliation process, as opposed to the traditional 60 votes.

    Unlike the House proposal, colleges that don’t accept federal financial aid would be exempt from the tax entirely. Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn blasted the House plan in an op-ed last month as an attack on the institution’s independence. (Hillsdale doesn’t participate in the federal financial aid system.)

    “The resources entrusted to Hillsdale College are not drawn from the public treasury,” Arnn wrote. “They are given freely by those who believe in our mission. To tax these gifts is to tax philanthropy itself—to burden those who would lift burdens. It is to weaken those who do good precisely because they are free to do it. It weakens them and strengthens the federal government, reversing the order intended by our Founders.”

    Hillsdale wasn’t the only college that pushed back on the rate increase. In recent weeks, private institutions big and small have pitched their own alternatives to Congress.

    Some of the largest and wealthiest research institutions that would be affected by the tax—such as Harvard, Stanford and Princeton Universities—pledged to spend 5 percent of their endowment’s value annually in exchange for a much lower 2.4 percent endowment tax rate, The Wall Street Journal reported. Bloom agreed that if the tax is to increase, he would like to see some kind of incentive introduced, like financial aid spending thresholds, to mitigate the tax rate.

    “They’ve created no incentive for schools to behave in ways that we believe that they would want schools to behave,” he said.

    Other institutions suggested that the tax rate should be based on what percentage of endowment revenue an institution spends each year on student financial aid or how many students enrolled come from a low-income background and receive the federal Pell Grant.

    A coalition of 24 smaller institutions, including Grinnell and Davidson Colleges, which would be hit hardest by the House endowment tax, proposed adjusting the excise rate based on the number of students enrolled. Colleges with fewer than 5,000 students have a different economic model than an institution with 30,000, they said.

    Grinnell president Anne Harris, who spent part of the last week educating lawmakers about the harm of the increased endowment tax, said Monday evening that the Senate plan still disproportionately burdens smaller institutions. She noted that her institution will likely still face the maximum 8 percent tax.

    “I deeply appreciate all the work that’s gone on and clearly all the consideration that has informed what we’re seeing this afternoon, but having said that, the current proposal still disproportionately burdens small colleges,” Harris said. “You’re going to find a school like Grinnell College with 1,700 students, a small college in a rural setting, bearing a much greater burden of this tax than a research institution in a large city.”

    She could only speculate that senators stuck with a tiered structure for simplicity, but added that “the simple fix” would be to make a stipulation that places all small private colleges in the lowest bracket and maintain the current 1.4 percent tax rate.

    Harris is hopeful that there will still be further opportunities for compromise and said she will continue to advocate for small liberal arts institutions like her own. But in the meantime, her executive team will also continue to plan out all the possible scenarios to figure out the best course of action to protect student aid if the bill passes as it currently stands.

    “All responsible options that provide the most money for financial aid and mission fulfillment are on the table as part of our scenario planning with the board,” she said.

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  • Emails Shed Light on UNC’s Plans to Create a New Accreditor

    Emails Shed Light on UNC’s Plans to Create a New Accreditor

    Last month, Peter Hans, president of the University of North Carolina system, casually dropped a bombshell announcement that the system and others were in talks to launch a new accreditor.

    “We’ve been having a number of discussions with several other major public university systems, where we’re exploring the idea of creating an accreditor that would offer sound oversight,” Hans said at a UNC system Board of Governors meeting last month, The News & Observer reported.

    Since then, no additional details have emerged, though Hans teased an update to come in July.

    But public records obtained by Inside Higher Ed show UNC system officials have been quietly engaged in conversations about launching a new accreditor for at least a year, including discussions with unnamed collaborators in Florida, where the effort could be headquartered. UNC officials have also spoken with officials at the U.S. Department of Education, even getting a heads-up on what an April 23 executive order from the Trump administration on accreditation would entail. 

    Here’s what those documents show.

    ‘The Florida Project’

    In early April, UNC officials appeared ready to tell the world about their plans for a new accreditor that “would be publicly accountable, outcomes-based, and more efficient and effective in its reviews,” according to the draft of a statement that was never publicly released.

    “We believe it is past time for the creation of a new accreditor focused on the unique needs of public colleges and universities,” the statement said. “We have worked collaboratively over the past year to explore and develop such a cross-state partnership.”

    Andrew Kelly, a senior adviser to Hans, sent a draft of the statement to other UNC officials. The statement argued that accreditors “wield enormous power, but too often have opaque and counterintuitive governance” and fail to “focus on matters that are significant to students.” He argued in the statement that the current model “creates unnecessary duplication and cost, conflicts with the authority of state governments, and does little to ensure educational quality.”

    An unidentified number of state systems of higher education were supposed to sign the statement, according to the draft.

    Kelly drafted the statement in response to the Trump administration’s anticipated changes to accreditation, which included streamlining the processes for ED to recognize accreditors and for institutions to switch agencies, among other changes to the system that serves as gatekeeper to federal financial aid.

    But the public did not hear about the UNC system’s quiet effort to launch a new accreditor until Hans spoke up at the May board meeting.

    Other emails yielded some insights into whom the UNC system might be partnering with.

    Daniel Harrison, vice president for academic affairs at the UNC system, sent an email on April 23 to fellow officials recapping a call with the U.S. Department of Education and what could be expected in the coming executive order on accreditation (which was issued shortly after his email).

    In that email, Harrison also pointed to potential partners in the accreditation effort.

    “An update on the Florida project—we met with the new entities [sic] attorneys and made substantial progress toward determining the legal structure of the new accreditor. It is likely to be a single member Florida nonprofit corp. Florida would be the sole member, but would delegate all delegable powers to a Board of Directors made up of the participating states,” Harrison wrote.

    But despite having met with potential partners, UNC considered going its own way.

    In a response to Harrison, Hans asked him to convene several system officials involved with the effort to weigh the pros and cons of “joining [a] multi-state coalition” or “forming a NC entity.” Email records obtained by Inside Higher Ed don’t show what the group recommended, but remarks made by Hans at May’s meeting indicate the system opted for the coalition approach.

    UNC system officials did not respond to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

    System leaders also appear to have discussed the effort with state legislators in private. On May 15, Hans asked senior vice president of government relations Bart Goodson to set up a meeting with Michael Lee, the Senate majority leader in the Republican-dominated Legislature. When Goodson asked about the topic, Hans replied, “accreditation update with good news.”

    Lee did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

    Potential Partners?

    Like their UNC counterparts, other public systems are staying quiet on the effort.

    Inside Higher Ed contacted a dozen public university systems, all in red states, to ask if they are partnering with UNC or others in an effort to launch a new accreditor, or if they participated in such discussions. Only two replied: the Arkansas State University system and the University of Alabama system. Both noted they had not been involved in those accreditation discussions.

    The State University System of Florida—which did not reply to media inquiries—is the most likely potential partner, given the details in Harrison’s email and the governor’s recent political fury with accreditors. 

    In 2022, Florida’s dark-red Legislature passed a law requiring state institutions to switch accreditors regularly. That move came after the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, which accredited all 40 of Florida’s public institutions, inquired about a potential conflict of interest at Florida State University, which was considering Richard Corcoran for its presidency despite his role on the Florida Board of Governors. (He now leads New College of Florida.)

    SACS also raised questions about an effort by the University of Florida to prevent professors from testifying against the state in a legal case challenging voting-rights restrictions. (UF later dropped that policy amid a torrent of criticism.) Both incidents occurred in 2021.

    Florida governor Ron DeSantis has been a vocal critic of the federal accreditation system. 

    Joe Raedle/Getty Images
     

    Following the 2022 law, some institutions began the process of switching accreditors, though state officials argued that the Biden administration slowed down that effort and Florida tried unsuccessfully to get a federal judge to rule the current system of accreditation unconstitutional.

    Outside of Florida, North Carolina is the only other state with a similar law. In 2023, legislators quietly slipped a provision into a state budget bill that required state institutions to change accreditors every cycle. The law was passed with no debate among North Carolina lawmakers. The change came after UNC clashed with SACS in early 2023 over shared governance.

    Florida governor Ron DeSantis did not confirm to Inside Higher Ed whether the state is launching a new accreditor, but recent remarks from the GOP firebrand suggest, albeit vaguely, that something is in the works.

    “For too long, academic accreditors have held our colleges and universities hostage,” DeSantis said in an emailed statement. “These accreditation cartels have worked behind the scenes to shape university behavior, embedding ideological concepts like Diversity, Equity, and Exclusion Indoctrination into the accreditation process. If you weren’t meeting politically motivated standards, like enthusiastic participation in DEI, they would hamper your accreditation and access to federal funding. In Florida, we refuse to let academic accreditation cartels hold our colleges and universities hostage to ideology at the expense of academic excellence. Stay tuned.”

    DeSantis also promised “more to come” on accreditation at an education event on Wednesday.

    Long Road Ahead

    Reactions to Hans’s announcement have been mixed.

    Wade Maki, Faculty Assembly chair and a philosophy professor at UNC Greensboro, said he and other faculty members recently met with system officials to share their thoughts on the plan. 

    “We had a very open conversation with the system office and shared our hopes that we get an accreditor that is independent, that maintains the strong reputation of the UNC system and helps keep the politics out of higher ed and the curriculum, whether that’s from the politicians or the accreditors themselves,” Maki said. “We’ve seen it come from both directions over the years.”

    He also thinks the narrow focus of such an accreditor could be a positive.

    “My leadership team, the Faculty Assembly Executive Committee and the faculty that we’ve talked to on campuses, we see the potential benefits of trying something like this, of having an accreditor that focuses just on the accrediting of state-supported public institutions,” Maki said.

    Outside observers were more critical of the UNC system’s plans.

    Accreditation expert Paul Gaston III, an emeritus trustees professor at Kent State University, argued that building an accreditor composed only of public institutions would omit valuable perspectives in review processes. He argued that colleges undergoing accreditation reviews benefit from the diversity of experiences from evaluators working at a broad range of institutions.

    “What would be the advantage of, in a sense, separating classes of institutions for accreditation? I think one of the strengths of accreditation has been that it brings a variety of perspectives to the evaluation of a particular institution,” Gaston said.

    Then there’s the arduous process of getting a new accrediting agency up and running; gaining federal recognition, which is required, takes years. Although Trump’s executive order on accreditation promised a smoother pathway to recognition for new entrants, it does not supersede federal regulations. 

    “Becoming federally recognized, typically, is a five-plus-year process,” said Edward Conroy, a senior policy manager at the left-leaning think tank New America. Under current federal regulations, Conroy doesn’t expect the new accreditor to be recognized until 2030 or so.

    Conroy also questioned whether the effort to create a new accreditor is about institutional quality assurance or political control.

    “Everything Florida has done on accreditation over the past few years appears to be politically and ideologically driven, rather than about what is best for students and ensuring that they go to high-quality institutions and get a good education when they’re paying a lot of money for it and when taxpayers are investing a lot of money in public funding for higher education,” he said.

    Conroy worries that state lawmakers in either Florida or North Carolina would require public colleges in their state to be accredited by their new accreditor. That would undermine the current requirement that colleges get to choose their own accreditor.

    “It undercuts the principle of the higher education accountability triad, where states, accreditors and the Department of Education are all meant to do different things,” Conroy said. “If you have a state that becomes both, to some degree or another, the accreditor, as well as the state authorizing entity, then we’ve combined two legs of a three-legged stool.”

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  • Bastyr University Plans to Sell Campus

    Bastyr University Plans to Sell Campus

    Cash-strapped Bastyr University is selling its campus in Washington State in an effort to stabilize its shaky finances, which landed the institution on show cause status with its accreditor earlier this year.

    Bastyr’s Board of Trustees approved a plan last week to list the campus for sale.

    The Washington campus is located on 50-plus acres outside Seattle; the university also maintains a site in San Diego. Officials wrote on a frequently asked questions webpage that the “sale of the [Washington] campus will restore financial health to our university, allow continued movement forward with our strategic plan and is intended to positively impact our accreditation status.”

    The FAQ page emphasized that selling the campus does not mean Bastyr is closing.

    Rather, “Financial infusion makes the university more stable and allows us to better weather the fluctuations of the academic environment should a crisis occur,” officials wrote. They also noted Bastyr “cannot afford to maintain and modernize the main campus building” and that “the university occupies less than 50% of its space, but must fund 100% of campus upkeep.”

    The FAQ indicated that either a full or partial sale of the campus is possible. 

    Despite the sale, a move will likely be years away; officials wrote on the FAQ page that Bastyr plans to lease the campus for “up to a few years to allow for a thoughtful and phased transition.”

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  • How commuter students show up in new access and participation plans

    How commuter students show up in new access and participation plans

    When the Office for Students included commuter students in the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register (EORR), it recognised the risk that commuter students may not always get the same experience as their “traditional” residential peers.

    The second wave of access and participation plans (APPs) for 2025–26 to 2028–29 have slowly been published and in the wake of the EORR’s inclusion of commuter students, we’ve got a better sense of the steps providers are taking to make the experience more equitable.

    Taking Universities UK’s member list as the sample and searching variations of the phrase “commuting student” in the currently available wave two APPs, 44 out of 81 APPs (at the time of writing) referred to commuter students in some form.

    Sometimes this was a simple statement of demographics, for example, “over 86 per cent are commuters,” or a statement of intention – “increase… work with commuting and mature students.” Other plans detailed comprehensive work to reduce inequities with various interventions, projects and additional research to undertake.

    Some plans referred to commuters broadly in a literature review but did not link this to their local contexts, and as such were not included in our analysis.

    Definitions

    As part of our ongoing series about commuter students, convened with Susan Kenyon at Canterbury Christ Church University, one challenge when discussing support for commuters is working out if everyone is talking about the same thing.

    The EORR sets out that commuter students referred to students “based on the distance or time [students] take to travel from their accommodation to their place of study” – but it then goes on to note there are many definitions, referencing both time and distance and the fact of not having re-located for university.

    In the absence of a sector-wide definition, providers have had to work this out themselves.

    The majority of plans that referenced a definition identified commuters as students whose home address matches their term time address, who had been recruited locally or still lived in their family home. Some plans used a distance to identify commuters, for example 15+ miles into their main campus base. When using distance as a criteria it opens up the possibility of a commuting student also being a student who has relocated to university but lives further away due to cost and housing pressures.

    As we’ve seen earlier in the series, there are differences in the experience based on those who chose to commute versus those who do so out of necessity.

    St Mary’s University in Twickenham explored using the Office of the National Statistics’ Travel to Work Areas maps to define commuters and setting an average travel time of 15 minutes or more (using public transport) from a term time address. They explicitly noted they had investigated the impact of using different definitions of commuter students when analysing student outcomes which led them to identifying commuters as their sixth risk category.

    When identifying commuters in APPs, ten plans went into detail about the intersecting characteristics of this demographic of students. One provider noted that “commuter students are more likely to be Asian, black or from IMD Q1+2 than non- commuter students” – this is something Kulvinder Singh looked at earlier in the series. There were several links between the association of being a commuter and being from an underrepresented group such as a mature student, carer or from a geographical area of deprivation.

    One provider interrogated whether being a commuting student was a direct factor on student outcome metrics and opted that it, in fact, coincided with other risk factors.

    Mind the gap

    For plans that had identified a risk to the commuter student experience, a brief thematic analysis suggests continuation, completion and student outcomes metrics were most prevalent in the sample followed by cost (and transport costs) and its subsequent impact on belonging.

    A lack of flexible timetabling was highlighted several times as a structural challenge for commuting students and plans honed in on the preciousness of commuters’ time.

    Bridging the gap

    Many universities plan to implement student centric timetables to tackle barriers to engagement and include plans to inform students as early as possible about scheduled classes. Flexible modes of learning, better communication methods and early timetables then further reduces peak-travel commuting costs, easing financial pressures.

    A handful of universities offer pre-arrival events and bursaries, aimed at improving commuter student access. At Manchester Metropolitan University, for example, an introductory module to support students preparing for university was particularly valued by commuting students.

    Interventions also emphasised the importance of space, with providers reviewing physical and virtual facilities, creating dedicated spaces to study and relax and improving the visibility of existing commuter spaces. The University of York’s APP suggested a provision of subsidised accommodation on campus to support commuters to engage in evening and social events.

    Peer mentoring programmes, social prescribing, and the creation of commuter student networks are examples of belonging-based interventions. York St John University’s plan proposed social opportunities each month and drop-ins for commuters to be held as often as weekly on campus.

    Many plans recognised a need to better understand the commuter student population. This often manifested as a commitment to engage or set up working groups and projects. Some providers viewed additional research as a first step toward supporting commuters, while others built on existing work and recognised that ongoing consultation offered the best way to deliver support.

    As many of these plans have started to, counting commuters, recognising their experience is geographical and making them visible is the first step to service design with commuter students in mind. Our series has been exploring ways to support their experience through making space, pedagogy, data, shifting institutional thinking and transport agendas that may inspire providers ready to take the next step.

    This blog is part of our series on commuter students. Click here to see the other articles in the series.

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  • IRS Plans to Revoke Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status

    IRS Plans to Revoke Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status

    The Internal Revenue Service is reportedly planning to rescind Harvard University’s tax-exempt status amid its showdown with the Trump administration over academic freedom, CNN reported.

    Citing two anonymous sources, CNN reported that a decision is likely coming soon. If Harvard’s tax-exempt status is revoked, the move would appear to be at the behest of President Donald Trump, who has railed against the private university in posts on his own Truth Social platform.

    “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” Trump wrote Tuesday.

    In a Wednesday post, the president said that Harvard should “no longer receive Federal Funds” because it “is a JOKE [that] teaches Hate and Stupidity.”

    Harvard is currently in a standoff with the Trump administration, which has demanded a series of wide-reaching changes it says are needed to address alleged antisemitism on campus related to pro-Palestinian protests. Those demands include reforms in admissions, hiring practices, student disciplinary processes and a facultywide plagiarism review, among other changes.

    Harvard, however, rejected Trump’s demands on Monday, calling them an affront to institutional autonomy.

    The Trump administration promptly retaliated, freezing $2.2 billion in federal grant funding and $60 million in contracts.

    Neither the IRS nor Harvard respond to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

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  • Education Department plans to propose regulatory changes to student aid programs

    Education Department plans to propose regulatory changes to student aid programs

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    The U.S. Department of Education plans to propose changes to student aid regulations, including those governing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program and two income-driven repayment plans, it announced Thursday. 

    Under a process called negotiated rulemaking, the Education Department intends to bring together representatives from different factions of the higher education sector to hash out the details of new regulations. 

    If the representatives reach consensus on new policies, the negotiated rulemaking process requires the Education Department to adopt their regulatory language in its proposal, except in limited circumstances. If negotiators don’t reach agreement, however, the agency is free to write its own rules. 

    Before that process begins, the Education Department said it will seek public feedback on “deregulatory ideas” for Title IV student aid programs. 

    “This process will focus on how the Department can rightsize Title IV regulations that have driven up the cost of college and hindered innovation,” Acting Under Secretary James Bergeron said in a statement. “Not only will this rulemaking serve as an opportunity to identify and cut unnecessary red tape, but it will allow key stakeholders to offer suggestions to streamline and improve federal student aid programs.”

    Part of the negotiated rulemaking process will focus on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. PSLF, enacted in 2007 by President George W. Bush, forgives the student loan balances of borrowers who make 10 years of payments and hold public service jobs, such as working for the government or a nonprofit. 

    The program has come under fire from President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order last month aiming to limit who is eligible. 

    The order alleges that the PSLF program has “misdirected tax dollars into activist organizations” and tells U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to propose program revisions barring borrowers from receiving forgiveness if they work for organizations that “have a substantial illegal purpose.” 

    The directive also accused the program of providing premature debt relief to borrowers. The Biden administration temporarily relaxed PSLF rules to make it easier for borrowers to receive debt relief through the program, which had extremely high denial rates due to confusing eligibility requirements and chronic loan servicer issues. 

    Some groups have pushed back on the executive order, arguing that it’s an attempt to revoke student loan forgiveness eligibility for borrowers working for nonprofits with missions that the Trump administration doesn’t support. 

    In a statement, Mike Pierce, executive director of Student Borrower Protection Center, called the order “blatantly illegal and an all-out weaponization of debt intended to silence speech that does not align with President Trump’s MAGA agenda.” 

    The Education Department is also planning to review regulations for two income-driven repayment plans: Pay as You Earn and Income-Contingent Repayment. 

    The agency restored the ability for borrowers to enroll in these programs late last month after previously taking down the online application forms. The freeze on the programs came in response to an appeals court ruling blocking a Biden-era income-driven repayment plan — Saving on a Valuable Education. 

    The suspension of the plans drew a legal challenge from the American Federation of Teachers. The Education Department restored access to them less than a day after the union petitioned a judge for emergency intervention, according to a news release. 

    Plans for negotiated rulemaking come amid the Trump administration’s move to dismantle the Education Department and move its responsibilities to other agencies.

    For example, Trump said he plans to move the department’s student loan portfolio to the newly-downsized Small Business Administration. Both conservatives and liberals have expressed concern that the SBA won’t have the staff or expertise to perform the job. 

    Fully eliminating the Education Department would require congressional approval.

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