Tag: Public

  • Florida public universities plan to cut at least 18 academic programs

    Florida public universities plan to cut at least 18 academic programs

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    Dive Brief:

    • State University System of Florida institutions collectively plan to terminate 18 academic programs and suspend another eight after reviewing how many degrees they award, Emily Sikes, the public system’s vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, said at a meeting last week with lawmakers. 
    • In the review, SUSF officials identified 214 programs systemwide that they say are underperforming based on how many graduates they’ve produced in the past three years. System universities plan to continue at least 150 of those programs while consolidating another 30.
    • The large majority of underperforming programs, 68%, are in the liberal arts, education and science fields, including ethnic and cultural studies, foreign languages, philosophy and religious studies, and physical and social sciences programs. 

    Dive Insight:

    As required by SUSF regulations, the 12-university system has conducted productivity reviews of degree programs every three to four years for roughly the past decade and a half, Sikes said.

    Over that time, the system’s institutions have axed over 100 programs based on those reviews, she said. Most of those programs were cut in 2011, when the first such review yielded 492 programs deemed to be underperforming, leading university officials to terminate 73 of them.

    In this year’s review, SUSF officials looked for bachelor’s programs graduating fewer than 30 students over the last three years, master’s programs awarding fewer than 20 degrees and doctorate programs with fewer than 10 graduates during that period. 

    Master’s programs made up 55% of the 214 that fell below graduate thresholds. But, Sikes added, there is a reason for that: SUSF universities often award master’s degrees to students who don’t complete doctoral programs so they have something to show for their time and effort.

    Another 31% of the underperforming programs were bachelor’s, and 14% were doctorate.

    For the eight programs set for suspension, the universities will stop enrolling students and “take a hard look” at either updating the curriculum to improve the program or deciding to wind it down, Sikes said.

    While Florida’s university system has reviewed its program productivity for years, other states have begun mandating their public colleges trim their offerings along similar lines. 

    This summer, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education announced that six of the state’s public colleges planned to eliminate 75 programs, suspend another 101 and consolidate 232 others in response to a new state law. 

    In April, Indiana lawmakers introduced graduation quotas for public college programs, requiring a three-year average of at least 15 graduates for bachelor’s programs, 10 for associate degrees, seven for master’s programs and three for doctoral degrees. The quotas were part of a controversial last-minute bonanza of new higher ed policies that lawmakers baked into a budget bill this year. 

    The speed of the program cuts led to confusion and chaos for some Indiana faculty this summer. “Even tenured faculty are wondering, am I going to have a job in two months?” one faculty governance leader in Indiana told local media in June.

    Ohio enacted a similar law this spring, called SB 1, which has led to dozens of proposed program cuts at the state’s public universities.

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  • One Approach High-Performing Public and Charter Schools Share – And How to Do It – The 74

    One Approach High-Performing Public and Charter Schools Share – And How to Do It – The 74


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    US News & World Report released its latest ranking of public elementary schools. The results exposed the key component to student success, even if the topmost schools approached it in vastly different ways.

    For New York City, Lower Lab, an Upper East Side Gifted & Talented school was ranked number one by US News. Also in the top 10 were four citywide G&T programs. Each school exclusively accepts students who have been designated as “gifted.”

    Rounding out the top 10, however, are Success Academy – Bushwick and Success Academy – Bensonhurst, public charter schools that accept students by lottery, while also prioritizing English Language Learners (ELL).

    On the surface, these schools couldn’t be more different. Number one, Lower Lab, has only 13% of students qualifying for Free or Reduced Price Lunch (FRL), and 1% ELLs. Number 10, Success Academy Charter School – Bensonhurst, conversely,  has 65% of its students qualifying for free or reduced price lunch, and 26% who are English language learners. 

    But the selective G&T schools and the unscreened charter schools have one characteristic in common: An expectation that their students can succeed.

    The book, “Science of Learning: 99 Studies That Every Teacher Needs to Know,” describes an experiment where “researchers falsely told teachers some of their students had been identified as potential high achievers. The students were in fact chosen at random.”

    At the end of the year, the “students that were chosen were more likely to make larger gains in their academic performance,” with those “7-8 years old gaining an average of 10 verbal IQ points.”

    This study concluded that “when teachers expected certain children would show greater intellectual development, those children did show greater intellectual development.”

    At the G&T schools, teachers have every reason to believe their students are capable of performing at the highest levels.

    Parents have seen this firsthand.

    “I strongly believe that when teachers are told their students are gifted, they begin to treat them as gifted — and this changes everything,” asserts mom Natalya Tseytlin. “In a gifted classroom, if a student struggles, teachers don’t assume it’s because of laziness or inability; they respond with patience and extra attention. In a regular class, that student might not receive the same support or challenge, because the teacher sees the child as average. 

    Tseytlin said her son started his first grade gifted and talented program with limited English skills. But because his teacher offered consistent support and believed in him, he excelled. 

    “Today he is performing at the same level as his peers,” she said.

    “I don’t think the expectations at (my child’s) G&T school are so high that only gifted kids can meet them,” another parent, who only asked to be identified as M.K. opined. “Regular schools don’t ‘push’ kids enough to reach their potential. Those G&T schools that do push, get results because most kids are capable of this level of learning without being ‘gifted.’ If teachers treat students as capable, students will indeed meet expectations.”

    The belief that all students can perform at a “gifted” level is sacrosanct at Success Academy.

    “Success Academy is Gifted for All,” CEO Eva Moskowitz affirms. “When adult expectations are high, our scholars — mostly low-income, Black and Hispanic — can meet the highest academic standards.”

    The same is true at Harlem Academy, a kindergarten through 8th grade private school for students whose potential might otherwise go unrealized. 

    “It’s tough to decouple the influence of high-quality programming from high expectations,” concedes Head of School Vinny Dotoli, “but authentically challenging students is central to the ethos of our school. When great teachers set ambitious goals and provide the structure and support to reach them, it almost always makes a lasting difference in student achievement.”

    Parents with children in schools where high expectations aren’t the norm would love to see changes. 

    “I have a daughter in a dual language program in East Harlem,” Maria McCune relates. “A neighbor who used to attend our school changed his daughter to a G&T program at another school in East Harlem. He immediately noticed a difference in the quality of instruction and in his daughter’s performance (MUCH improved). I participate in my daughter’s School Leadership Team and I have seen the apathy teachers there exhibit. It is concerning. When I tried to provide feedback about improving the educational experience, teachers/staff often became defensive. It is this that leads me to want to pursue G&T for my daughter.”

    For Tiffany Ma, the solution is obvious. “Our second grader that transferred into G&T writes much neater and does her homework much more happily since she’s in an environment where academics and homework is valued by other classmates and parents. We should expand G&T programs. It’s regular programming that shouldn’t exist.”

    Yet New York City seems headed in the opposite direction. Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani has vowed to get rid of elementary school G&T programs  that begin in kindergarten. He would wait until students enter third grade, even though the research referenced above specifically mentioned children 7 and 8 years of age( i.e. second graders), as being the biggest beneficiaries of high expectations. He is against charter schools, as well. 

    This move would lower the academic standards and expectations of all schools, which deeply concerns parents like McCune. She fears “Children like my daughter may be left as collateral damage of an educational experience that falls short of setting them up for significant academic success.”

    The top schools in NYC have repeatedly demonstrated that high expectations are key to helping all students reach their full potential.

    We need more such schools, be they public G&T, charter, or private. And more teachers who believe in all our kids.


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  • Public Universities Don’t Want to Discuss the Compact

    Public Universities Don’t Want to Discuss the Compact

    As the stated deadline to sign the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” arrived Friday, multiple universities have already rejected the deal while only a few institutions have expressed interest.

    But among the public universities that were either formally invited to sign the compact or that participated in a call with the White House to provide feedback on higher education issues, none are willing to discuss their deliberations about the proposal or interactions with federal officials.

    Last month, Inside Higher Ed sent public records requests to Arizona State University, the University of Arizona, the University of Kansas, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Virginia, seeking emails, text messages, internal presentations and other documents related to how presidents, trustees and other officials discussed the compact.

    As of Friday, none had provided those records. Only the University of Kansas indicated a willingness to do so, but it requested an up-front $100 fee for staff time to conduct the search. However, officials said they could not guarantee the requested records would be provided.

    Texas, meanwhile, has appealed to the state attorney general to avoid releasing the requested records. Now uncertainty abounds about what UT Austin will do on the day of the initial deadline, though conservative media has reported the Trump administration could push that date back (which officials did not confirm Thursday) as it struggles to find signatories.

    Texas

    Some public universities, such as Arizona and Virginia, have rejected the compact outright, but others, like Arizona State, have noted they never received a formal invitation to join and therefore they have nothing to decline. But UT Austin has remained silent about whether it will sign the compact.

    Although University of Texas system Board of Regents chairman Kevin P. Eltife issued an early statement saying that he welcomed the “the new opportunity presented to us and we look forward to working with the Trump Administration on it,” officials have said little since then.

    In response to an Oct. 22 public records request from Inside Higher Ed, UT Austin shared only the initial emails exchanged by federal and university officials inviting the university to consider the compact, a copy of the proposal itself, and Eltife’s statement. The rest it wants to keep private.

    UT system officials argued in a letter sent Tuesday to the attorney general’s office that the requested records are protected by attorney-client privilege and should not be disclosed.

    “In the information at issue, University and UT System attorneys are providing legal counsel, gathering information in order to provide legal counsel, or their clients are seeking legal advice from the attorneys and include the necessary background information so that counsel will be able to render an opinion on a given situation,” UT system attorney Jennifer Burnett wrote in the letter. “From the text of the communications, it is evident that the University and UT System attorneys for were [sic] involved in providing legal counsel to employees of the University.”

    Now the attorney general’s office has 10 business days to make a determination on the request.

    Gunita Singh, a staff attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told Inside Higher Ed by email that the university “is within its rights to argue that the records are privileged but they need to make a particularized showing that that is the case,” proving the requested documents “pertain to the provision of legal advice” and have been confidential at all times.

    Virginia

    The University of Virginia has yet to provide documents requested Oct. 22 in what appears to be a pattern of delayed responses, according to others who sought records from the public university in recent months.

    UVA’s student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, reported that it has submitted 25 public records requests to the university, but UVA officials have reportedly not provided records since July 1. Other journalists across the commonwealth have taken to social media to note that they have struggled to get information on athletic staffing and internal communications.

    State Senator Creigh Deeds, a Democrat who has represented the Charlottesville area for more than two decades, also struggled to get public records out of the university related to the resignation of former UVA president Jim Ryan, who stepped down in June under federal pressure. Deeds initially reached out to the university Aug. 1 seeking information, which he only obtained after submitting a public records request and paying $4,500 for the documents.

    Chris Seaman, a law professor at Washington and Lee University, requested public records related to costs for outside legal counsel on July 2. But Seaman still has not “received a substantive response from UVA regarding my FOIA request,” he told Inside Higher Ed by email. In an August email exchange shared by Seaman, a UVA official noted a delay in processing his request and wrote that “in the last few weeks, our office has received an unusually large volume of requests with limited staff to process them.” They also promised to “expedite handling” of his request, but more than three months later, Seaman said, he is still awaiting those documents.

    UVA spokesperson Brian Coy did not address the pattern of delays in a response to Inside Higher Ed, writing that the university “has received this request and is processing it in accordance with Virginia law” and is “preparing an estimate of anticipated costs” for review.

    Arizona and Arizona State

    Public records requests at Arizona State and the University of Arizona also remain unfulfilled after 30 days.

    Arizona State spokesperson Jerry Gonzalez said that he would check on the state of the request but noted that ASU was not invited to sign the compact, and so “there is nothing for the university to accept, reject, or negotiate.” (However, President Michael Crow has said he’s had discussions with Education Secretary Linda McMahon and other officials about higher education issues.)

    University of Arizona spokesperson Mitch Zak said that Inside Higher Ed’s public records request “remains in process” and “response time varies.” He noted that factors such as “the specificity of the request, the volume of requests received, and the time required to locate, review, and redact materials subject to disclosure” all shape public records response times.

    Arizona law does not specify how long public entities have to hand over documents but instructs that they do so “promptly.” Singh, the RCFP attorney, pointed to past legal cases in which Arizona courts found that 24 business days “satisfied the promptness standard” but that “a delay of 49 days, or 34 working days, did not meet the promptness standard” outlined in state law.

    Currently, she said, Arizona and Arizona State are “inching toward noncompliance territory.”

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  • Transparency, collaboration, and culture, are key to winning public trust in research

    Transparency, collaboration, and culture, are key to winning public trust in research

    The higher education sector is focussing too much on inward-facing debates on research culture and are missing out on a major opportunity to expose our culture to the public as a way to truly connect research with society.

    REF can underpin this outward turn, providing mechanisms not only for incentivising good culture, but for opening up conversations about who we are and how we work to contribute to society.

    This outward turn matters. Research and Development (R&D) delivers enormous economic and societal value, yet universities struggle to earn public trust or support for what they do. Recent nation-wide public opinion research by Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) has shown that while 88 per cent of people say it is important for the Government to invest in R&D, just 18 per cent can immediately think of lots of ways R&D benefits them and their family. When talking about R&D in public focus groups, universities were rarely front of mind and are primarily seen as education institutions where students or lecturers might do R&D as an ancillary activity.

    If the university sector is to sustain legitimacy – and by extension, the political and financial foundations of UK research – we must find new ways to make our work visible, relatable, and trusted. Focusing on the culture that shapes how research is done may be the most powerful way to do this.

    Why culture matters

    Public opinion is not background noise. Public awareness, appetite and trust all shape political choices about funding, regulation, and the role of universities in national life. While CaSE’s work shows that 72 per cent of people trust universities to be honest about how much the UK government should invest in R&D, the lack of awareness about what universities do and how they do it leaves legitimacy fragile.

    This fragility is starkly illustrated by recent polling from More in Common: when asked which government budgets they would most like to see cut, the public didn’t want funding cuts for R&D, yet placed universities third on the list for budgets that they would be happy to be cut (alongside foreign aid and funding for the arts).

    Current approaches to improving public opinions about research in our sector have had limited success. The sector’s instinct has been to showcase outputs – discoveries, patents, and impact case studies – to boost public awareness and build support for research in universities. But CaSE polling evidence suggests that this approach isn’t cutting through: 74 per cent of the public said they knew nothing or hardly anything about R&D in their area. This lack of connection does not indicate a lack of interest: a similar proportion (70 per cent) would like to hear more about local R&D.

    Transparency

    Evidence from other sectors shows that opening up processes builds trust. In healthcare, for example, the NHS has found that when patients are meaningfully involved in decisions about their care and how services are designed, trust and satisfaction increase – not just because of outcomes, but because people can see and influence how decisions are made.

    Research from business and engineering contexts shows that people are more likely to trust companies that are open about how they operate, not just what they deliver. Together, these lessons reinforce that we should not rely on showcasing outputs alone: legitimacy comes from making visible the processes, people and cultures that underpin research.

    Universities don’t just generate knowledge; they develop the individuals who carry skills and values into the wider economy. Researchers, technicians, professional services staff and others who enable research in higher education bring curiosity, collaboration and critical thinking into every sector, both through direct collaboration and when they move beyond academia. These skills fuel innovation and problem-solving across the economy and public services, but they can only develop and thrive in supportive, inclusive research cultures. Without attention to culture, the talent pipeline that government and industry rely on is put at risk.

    Research culture makes these processes and people visible. Culture is about how research is done: the integrity of methods, the openness of data, the inclusivity of teams, the collaborations – including with the public – that make discoveries possible. These are the very things the public are keen to understand better. By opening up the black box of research and showing the culture that underpins it, we can make university research more relatable, trustworthy, and visible in everyday life.

    The role of REF in shifting the conversation

    The expansion of the old Environment element of REF to encompass broader aspects of research culture offers an opportunity to help shift from an inward to a more outward looking narrative and public conversation. The visibility and accountability that REF submissions require matters beyond academia: it gives the sector a platform to showcase the values and processes that underpin research. In doing so, REF can help our sector build trust and legitimacy by making research culture part of the national conversation about R&D.

    Openness, integrity, inclusivity, and collaboration – core components of research culture – are values which the public already recognise and expect. By framing research culture as part of the story we tell – explaining not just what our universities produce but how they produce it – we can build a stronger connection with the public. Culture is the bridge between the abstract notion of investing in R&D and a lived understanding of what universities actually do in society.

    Public support for research is strong, but support for universities is increasingly fragile. Whatever the REF looks like when we unpause, we need to avoid retreating to ‘business as usual’ and closing down this opportunity to open up a more meaningful conversation about the role universities play in UK R&D and in the progress of society.

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  • Why Public Universities Need Their Own Accreditor (opinion)

    Why Public Universities Need Their Own Accreditor (opinion)

    Public universities need their own accreditor.

    These institutions are the backbone of American higher education. They serve the largest share of students by far, and state-supported colleges and universities play an outsize role in providing economic mobility for Americans of all backgrounds. I’ve spent my entire career working on behalf of public universities, most recently as president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. I know the enormous good they do for their students and for society at large. We have the best publicly supported system of higher education in the world. We can and must continue to improve it.

    I also understand why our public institutions will benefit from an accreditor that aligns with their mission and their public obligations. They need an accreditor that offers true peer review and a disciplined focus on improving student outcomes. They need an accreditor familiar with the mechanics of state oversight, able to promote academic quality while also being more efficient by eliminating redundant bureaucracy in the accreditation process.

    The Commission for Public Higher Education was formed earlier this year to answer those needs. Established by a consortium of six public university systems—the State University System of Florida, the University System of Georgia, the University of North Carolina System, the University of South Carolina System, the University of Tennessee System and the Texas A&M University System—the aim of CPHE is to offer public universities across the country an alternative to the regional accreditors that have long dominated higher education, each claiming a geographical monopoly that lumped together for-profit schools, bespoke private colleges and open-access public institutions under the same set of rules and regulations.

    I agreed to serve as chair of the Board of Directors for CPHE because I believe there’s a need for innovation in accreditation. We are seizing the opportunity to improve institutional accreditation by focusing on outcomes, as well as streamlining the process by taking advantage of the considerable oversight that public institutions are subject to at the state level. An accreditor purpose-built by public institutions, for public institutions, can promote academic quality while driving innovation in student success and eliminating unnecessary costs in the legacy model of accreditation.

    There is clearly enthusiasm for the vision behind CPHE. Ten diverse institutions have already signed on to join CPHE’s initial cohort (full list below), and the commission is fielding additional inquiries from across the country. We’ve just issued a call for public university faculty and administrators to join our first group of peer-review teams, and we look forward to pioneering a new model of more straightforward and more transparent accreditation review.

    CPHE Initial Cohort

    • Appalachian State University
    • Chipola College
    • Columbus State University
    • Florida Atlantic University
    • Florida Polytechnic University
    • North Carolina Central University
    • Texas A&M–Kingsville
    • Texas A&M–Texarkana
    • University of North Carolina at Charlotte
    • University of South Georgia

    University leaders and state policymakers nationwide see the value in a streamlined approach to accreditation that shifts the focus from inputs and operational minutiae to meaningful outcomes for students and taxpayers.

    The legacy approach to accreditation is plagued by the need for each accreditor to serve the huge diversity of institutional missions and governing structures that underlie the American system of higher education. Trying to impose the same set of criteria and procedures on every institution, from small private colleges to huge public flagships, has led to decades of ineffective oversight and wasted effort. There is little or no evidence that institutional accreditation has driven quality improvements across the sector, while it is abundantly clear that it has imposed arbitrary and opaque regulatory demands on institutions that already are subjected to multiple layers of oversight as public agencies.

    Institutions like Georgia State University, where I served more than a decade as president, are closely scrutinized by their governing boards, by state regulators and legislative bodies, by auditors and bond ratings agencies. They have public disclosure and consumer protection requirements above and beyond what is demanded of private and for-profit colleges. I have firsthand experience with how costly and cumbersome accreditation reviews divert institutional resources that would be better spent supporting student success, and I am confident a public-focused accreditor can streamline reporting and compliance costs without compromising oversight.

    An accreditor attuned to the nuances of public oversight can add value by focusing on academic quality and student success, using a process of peer review to promote continuous improvement through the dissemination of best practices and innovations. That’s why CPHE’s accreditation standards are tailored toward public purpose and academic excellence, with provisions for measuring student learning, promoting academic freedom and intellectual diversity, and driving continuous improvement of student outcomes.

    At core, the purpose of accreditation is to reassure students and taxpayers that universities are delivering on their promise to provide a quality education that leaves students better off. An accreditor tightly focused on that public mission can go a long way in shoring up the trust that higher education needs to thrive.

    Mark Becker is the chair of the Board of Directors of the Commission for Public Higher Education. He formerly served as president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities from 2022 to 2025, and before that he was president of Georgia State University from 2009 to 2021.

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  • George Mason demands pro-Palestinian student group remove video from social media, but public universities can’t do that

    George Mason demands pro-Palestinian student group remove video from social media, but public universities can’t do that

    Late last month, the student chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine at George Mason University posted a video on a social media account that criticized U.S. foreign policy and Israel. The video (now removed), which apparently stylistically mimicked a Hamas video, included phrases such as “genocidal Zionist State,” “the belly of the beast,” and “from the river to the sea.” It also specifically addressed conditions in Gaza and GMU’s alleged oppression of pro-Palestinian protestors. 

    Regardless of one’s views on Israel and Gaza, all of this is protected speech. But rather than protecting student political discourse, GMU demanded the SJP chapter take down the video explicitly because its language ran afoul of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s vague definition of antisemitism, which has been incorporated into GMU’s anti-discrimination policy. The school warned that failure to comply could result in disciplinary action.  

    Student groups at public universities have the First Amendment right to post videos expressing their views on international conflicts, even if some members of the campus community are offended by the viewpoints expressed. We’ve seen no evidence the video constituted incitement, true threats, intimidation, or student-on-student harassment — narrow categories of speech unprotected by the First Amendment.

    When campus administrators invoke the IHRA definition and its examples to investigate, discipline, or silence political expression, the distinction between conduct and speech becomes meaningless.

    This is not the first — nor will it be the last — instance of universities relying on vague, overbroad anti-harassment definitions to censor speech some members of the campus community find offensive. In fact, overbroad anti-harassment policies remain the most common form of speech codes on college campuses. But it does point to the clear and growing threat the use of the IHRA definition poses to campus discourse about the Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s a danger about which FIRE has warned of since 2016, a danger we’ve seen in application, and one that the IHRA definition’s supporters routinely brush aside. As more and more states adopt IHRA for the purpose of enforcing anti-discrimination law, we’re likely to see increasingly more instances of campus censorship in the future.

    IHRA defines antisemitism as:

    a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

    The document also provides a list of examples of antisemitism that include, among others:

    • Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
    • Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

    Language that does this (and that does not also fall into a specific category of unprotected speech) may offend some or many people. It nevertheless constitutes core political speech. Supporters of the use of the IHRA definition on campus insist that the definition does not restrict free speech, but rather helps identify antisemitic intent or motive when determining whether a student has created a hostile environment in violation of anti-discrimination laws. But this attempted distinction collapses in practice. 

    When “intent” is inferred from political expression — as it has at GMU and other campuses across the country — speech itself becomes evidence of a violation. Under this framework, students and faculty learn that certain viewpoints about Israel are per se suspect, and both institutional censorship and self-censorship follow. Despite its defenders’ claims, when campus administrators invoke the IHRA definition and its examples to investigate, discipline, or silence political expression, the distinction between conduct and speech becomes meaningless.

    Analysis: Harvard’s settlement adopting IHRA anti-Semitism definition a prescription to chill campus speech

    Harvard agreed to settle two lawsuits brought against it by Jewish students that alleged the university ignored “severe and pervasive antisemitism on campus.”


    Read More

    The problem is compounded by the Trump administration’s Title VI enforcement. Its unlawful defund-first, negotiate-second approach places universities’ federal funding — sometimes hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars — at the mercy of the administration’s Joint Antisemitism Task Force. That threat alone is enough to force campus administrators to make a choice: censor student speech critical of Israel, or risk losing access to federal funding. All too often, as we have seen repeatedly, institutions choose access to money over standing up for student rights.

    Instead of relying on IHRA’s vague definition for anti-discrimination purposes, FIRE has long supported efforts to constitutionally and effectively address antisemitic discrimination on college campuses by passing legislation to: 

    • Prohibit harassment based on religion.
    • Confirm that Title VI prohibits discrimination based on ethnic stereotypes.
    • Codify the Supreme Court’s definition of discriminatory harassment. 

    These options would better address antisemitic harassment and would do so without suppressing free speech.

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  • PhysicsWallah becomes first Indian edtech unicorn to go public

    PhysicsWallah becomes first Indian edtech unicorn to go public

    Run by founders Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari, PhysicsWallah, which became a unicorn after surpassing a USD$1bn valuation, opened its public offering for subscription on November 11, with the bidding closing on November 13.

    The IPO, comprising a Rs 3,100 crore (USD$350m) fresh issue and a Rs 380 crore (USD$42.9m) offer-for-sale (OFS) by Pandey and Maheshwari, raised Rs 1,563 crore (USD$176.4m) from anchor investors at Rs 109 per share, a day before the issue opened.

    PhysicsWallah, known for its digital courses, physical centres, and hybrid programs, with a strong focus on India’s national-level engineering and medical exams as well as government exam prep, views the IPO as a key milestone.

    We plan to open at least 70 centres annually over the next three years, with around Rs 400 crore allocated for this
    Alakh Pandey, PhysicsWallah

    The stock market listing makes PhysicsWallah India’s first pure-play edtech company to go public. Pandey said the IPO proceeds would be largely used to expand offline centres and boost branding.

    “The first major expense after the IPO will be setting up new offline centres. This is our primary focus, as we plan to open at least 70 centres annually over the next three years, with around Rs 400 crore allocated for this,” stated Pandey, during a media briefing with reporters.

    “Another Rs 400 crore will be spent on our existing centres, covering lease and rental expenses. Around Rs 700 crore will go toward branding and event marketing over the next three years, with at least Rs 250 crore each year. Additionally, Rs 200 crore will be allocated for technology upgrade and server costs, and the remaining funds will be used for general expenses.”

    Backed by venture capital firms WestBridge Capital, Hornbill, and GSV Ventures, the company, strong in India’s tier-2 and tier-3 cities, sees the IPO as paving the way for further expansion in Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Odisha, and Northeast India.

    “Physics Wallah is an impactful organisation – from Tier 3 towns to villages, students everywhere are learning through our platform,” said Pandey.

    PhysicsWallah hitting Dalal Street, India’s equivalent of Wall Street and home to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), comes at a time when some of the country’s biggest edtech competitors are seeing their businesses shrink.

    While Byju’s, once the world’s “most valued” edtech startup, is facing takeover bids amid bankruptcy proceedings and lawsuits over “alleged harm to its reputation”, Unacademy has seen a year-on-year decline in total revenue over the past two years, with Upgrad reportedly considering acquiring the company at roughly a tenth of its last valuation of USD$3.44bn.

    Though PhysicsWallah reported a 33% revenue jump to Rs 847 crore (USD$95.5m) in Q1FY26, its net losses widened to Rs 127 crore (USD$14.3m) due to a 39% rise in expenses.

    The company, however, has maintained that its revenue has grown 90% over the past two years and that it maintains a strong cash balance.

    “I want this company to be run with discipline, to grow responsibly, and to make it public in a way that benefits everyone. We are in a hyper-growth phase, and as we expand, we don’t want to slow down or fail to deliver. The IPO will also help us gain more trust and traction with parents.

    “Online education will continue to be our biggest focus – whether it’s a student in Grade 6 or a college or UPSC aspirant. We currently reach 42 lakh (over 4 million) students, mostly in test prep, but we are expanding into school education and board exams. Our aim is to make affordable education accessible across regions,” Pandey added.

    Despite initial optimism, reflected in domestic mutual funds taking up more than half of the allocation – indicating early institutional confidence – the demand in the public issue has remained lukewarm.

    The IPO got off to a slow start, with Day 1 subscription at just 7% and Day 2 improving slightly to 12%, falling well short of market expectations.

    By Day 3, the IPO reached 1.11x overall subscription, with the retail portion at 85%, non-institutional investors (NII) at 25%, qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) at 1.61x, and the employee portion subscribed 2.58x.

    The basis of allotment, which determines how many shares each investor will actually receive, is expected on November 14, with listing likely on November 18.

    Experts suggest that PhysicsWallah’s IPO, which saw muted subscription initially, signals broader caution for India’s edtech sector, which is facing declining market demand and revenue losses, with over 2,000 startups having shut down in the past five years.

    But it’s not just PhysicsWallah. More edtech companies are eyeing the IPO route, including Imarticus Learning, Upgrad, Eruditus, and other education-related firms like Simplilearn and Leverage Edu.

    Just recently, B2B education platform Crizac debuted on the Indian stock market, raising £74m in its IPO, with the listing expected to support the company’s expansion into new markets and services.

    With funding in the edtech space rising five-fold in H1 2025, as per reports, industry insiders expect the next 12-24 months to bring a handful of IPOs.

    “Edtech has gone through its ups and downs and has never been a very predictable sector. There are very few companies that can actually go public successfully,” Nikhil Barshikar, CEO and co-founder of Imarticus Learning, told The Entrepreneur in a recent interview.

    “But now, more companies are focusing on cutting unprofitable or unpredictable business segments. My gut feeling is that in the next 24 months, we will see at least five to 10 listings from the edtech vertical.”

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  • Indiana AG sues Indianapolis Public Schools for hindering ICE efforts

    Indiana AG sues Indianapolis Public Schools for hindering ICE efforts

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    Dive Brief:

    • Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita alleges Indianapolis Public Schools has multiple policies that violate state laws by prohibiting local government entities from limiting or restricting federal immigration enforcement.
    • In a lawsuit filed Thursday, Rokita claims the 30,000-student district has policies barring federal immigration officers from accessing nonpublic areas on school property without a judicial warrant, and that these policies are illegal under Indiana law and pose “grave risks to public safety.”
    • Rokita’s lawsuit also cited an incident on Jan. 8, 2025, in which IPS’ policies “directly contributed to the failure” of federal immigration officers attempting to deport an undocumented Honduran man.

    Dive Insight:

    The IPS Board of School Commissioners said in a Thursday statement that Rokita’s lawsuit is a “heavy burden” and “silly litigation and political posturing” that impacts students, families and taxpayers. 

    “Every dollar spent on defensive legal posture is a dollar not spent on instructional support, teacher development, student services, or enrichment,” the board said. “In this case, Mr. Rokita prefers those dollars go to fight gratuitous political battles, as has too often been the case.”

    The board emphasized that it has always upheld the law and will continue to do so while ensuring “safe, supportive, and welcoming learning environments for all students.”

    Beyond denying access to immigration enforcement officers to school property without a judicial warrant, IPS also requires its employees to not assist immigration efforts unless legally required and authorized by the superintendent, according to Rokita’s lawsuit. The other IPS policy challenged in the complaint is that district staff are prohibited from collecting, maintaining or sharing information about the immigration status of a student, their parents or a school employee.  

    The IPS Board of School Commissioners said it has been “actively collaborating” with Rokita’s office to go over relevant policies of concern. The board said, however, that Rokita only gave the district five business days to review and respond to his opinion on the policies.

    “Yet, these important issues deserve thoughtful, deliberative weighing of important legal rights — not impulsive, superficial efforts for political gain,” the board said.

    The IPS policies being challenged, however, are a common practice in other school districts looking to protect students affected by the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration enforcement in communities nationwide this year.

    In fact, immigration lawyers have advised districts across the country to train their principals and teachers to know that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers cannot enter school property without a warrant signed by a judge.

    Immigration advocates have also pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Plyler v. Doe, which ruled that states cannot constitutionally deny students a free public education based on their immigration status. Additionally, other state and local guidance has reminded school administrators this year that districts must maintain the confidentiality of all personally identifiable information in education records related to students under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

    As ICE efforts go on near school communities, some district leaders — most recently at Chicago Public Schools — are calling for virtual schooling for students and families living in fear of federal immigration enforcement presence. Educators, advocates and child psychology experts are continuing to sound the alarm on the traumatic impacts immigration enforcement has on students, including school avoidance and stress.

    But in Indiana, Attorney General Rokita said in a Thursday statement that sanctuary policies like those in place at IPS “are bad in any context, but they are especially troubling in our schools.” He added that, “schools across the country are vulnerable to infiltration by criminal illegal aliens — it’s happened in many other states — and it is essential that ICE be able to take action when that occurs to help keep our kids safe.”

    Rokita’s lawsuit also alleged that in January, ICE’s efforts to deport an undocumented Honduran man living in Indiana were thwarted because IPS did not let the man’s son, who is an IPS student, reunite and leave the U.S. on a flight with his father, who volunteered to board. 

    “IPS took the position that it would not release the child to an ICE officer unless the officer had a judicial warrant or other court order,” the lawsuit said. “ICE responded that it simply was asking that the son be released to the father so that they could depart the country as the father had agreed to do and that such action did not require a court order.”

    Because the father was unable to get custody of his son to board the flight with him, the father missed his flight, and the voluntary departure order expired, according to the complaint. As a result, the lawsuit said that “an illegal alien who should have departed the United States — who had voluntarily agreed to depart the United States — therefore remained in the United States because of IPS’s actions.”

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  • Universal vouchers have public schools worried about market share

    Universal vouchers have public schools worried about market share

    by Laura Pappano, The Hechinger Report
    November 6, 2025

    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — As principal of Hartsfield Elementary School in the Leon County School District, John Olson is not just the lead educator, but in this era of fast-expanding school choice, also its chief salesperson.

    He works to drum up enrollment by speaking to parent and church groups, offering private tours and giving Hartsfield parents his cell phone number. He fields calls on nights, weekends and holidays. With the building at just 61 percent capacity, Olson is frank about the hustle required: “Customer service is key.”

    It’s no secret that many public schools are in a battle for students. As school started in Florida this August, large districts, including Hillsborough, Miami-Dade and Orange, reported thousands fewer students, representing drops of more than 3 percent year over year. In Leon County, enrollment was down 8 percent from the end of last year.

    Part of the issue is the decline in the number of school-age children, both here and across the country. But there’s also the growing popularity of school choice in Florida and elsewhere — and what that means for school budgets. Leon County’s leaders anticipate cutting about $6 million next year unless the state increases its budget, which could mean reduced services for students and even school closures. 

    Other Florida school districts are also trimming budgets, and some have closed schools. As districts scramble for students, some are hiring consulting firms to help recruit, and also trying to sell seats in existing classes to homeschoolers. There is also the instability of students frequently switching schools — and of new charter or voucher schools that open and then shut down, or never open at all as promised. 

    Two years after the Florida Legislature expanded eligibility for school vouchers to all students, regardless of family income, nearly 500,000 kids in the state now receive vouchers worth about $8,000 each to spend on private or home education, according to Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers the bulk of the scholarships. And Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship, created in 2001 to allow corporations to make contributions to private school tuition, is the model for the new federal school voucher program, passed this summer as part of Republicans’ “one big, beautiful bill.” The program, which will go into effect in 2027, lets individuals in participating states contribute up to $1,700 per year to help qualifying families pay for private school in exchange for a 1:1 tax credit.

    “We are in that next phase of public education,” said Keith Jacobs of Step Up For Students, who recruits public school districts to offer up their services and classes on its educational marketplace. “Gone are the days when a government institution or your zoned neighborhood school had the authority to assign a child to that school.”

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    That’s a problem for Leon County Schools, which boasts a solid “B” rating from the state and five high schools in the top 20 percent of U.S. News’ national rankings. The district, located in the Florida panhandle, serves a population of around 30,000 students, 44 percent of whom are Black, 43 percent white and 6 percent Hispanic.

    “There’s just not enough money to fund two parallel programs, one for public schools and one for private schools,” said Rocky Hanna, the Leon County Schools superintendent. 

    Over the past few years, the Legislature has increased state and local funding for charter schools and created new rules to encourage more to open. (Charter schools are public schools that are independently operated; the Trump administration recently announced a $60 million increase in charter school funding this year, along with additional competitive grants.)

    But vouchers are the big disrupter. The nonprofit Florida Policy Institute projects annual voucher spending in Florida will hit $5 billion this year. In Leon County, money redirected from district school budgets to vouchers has ballooned from $3.2 million in 2020-21 to nearly $38 million this academic year, according to state and district figures. Enrollment in local charter schools has also ticked up, as has state per-pupil money directed to them, from $12 million to $15 million over that time.

    As a mark of how the landscape is shifting, Step Up For Students is now helping districts market in-person classes to homeschoolers on the group’s Amazon-like marketplace to fill seats and capture some money. Jacobs said Osceola County put its entire K-12 course catalog on the site. A year of math at a Miami elementary school? It’s $1,028.16. And just $514.08 for science, writing or P.E.

    “A student can come take a class for nine weeks, for a semester, for a year,” said Jacobs, adding that 30 districts have signed on. They are thinking, he said, “if we can’t have them full-time, we have them part-time.”

    Leon County is considering signing on, said Hanna, “to basically offer our courses à la carte.” It could be a recruitment tool, said Marcus Nicolas, vice chair of the county’s school board. “If we give them an opportunity to sniff the culture of the school and they like it, it could potentially bring that kid back full-time.”

    Related: Federal school vouchers: 10 things to know 

    Because of his shrinking budget, Hanna is looking at cuts to IT, athletics, arts, counselors, social workers and special tutors for struggling students, along with exploring school closings or consolidations. 

    Another challenge: With more school options, a growing number of students are leaving charters or private schools and enrolling in the district mid-year. Yet state allocations are based on October and February enrollment counts.

    Last year, 2,513 students — about 8 percent of Leon County’s district enrollment — entered after February. “Those are 2,500 students we don’t receive any money for,” Hanna said at an August school board meeting.

    Public schools do a lot well, but have been slow to share that, said Nicolas. “We got lazy, and we got complacent, and we took for granted that people would choose us because we’re the neighborhood school,” he said.

    Even as more parents choose private voucher schools, it’s not necessarily easy for them to determine if those schools are performing well. Although Florida State University evaluates the state’s Tax Credit Scholarship program, its report lags by about two years. It includes an appendix with voucher schools’ test scores, but there is no consequence for low performance. And scores cannot be compared, because even though schools must test students in grades 3 to 10, the schools pick which test to give.

    The result, said Carolyn Herrington, director of the Education Policy Center at Florida State University, who has written some of the evaluation reports, is that “the only real metric here is parent satisfaction,” which she said “is not sufficient.” 

    Yet many parents like the idea of school choice. According to a poll released last month by EdChoice, a school choice advocacy group, just over half of all Americans and 62 percent of parents broadly favor school vouchers.

    Related: Florida just expanded school vouchers — again. What does that really mean? 

    Mother Carrie Gaudio, who attended the local charter school her parents helped to found, was surprised when her son Ross visited Hartsfield Elementary, a Title I school that serves a high percentage of low-income households — and loved it.

    Before enrolling him, however, she and her husband, Ben Boyter, studied the enrollment situation. The school was under capacity, but they noticed more students coming each year.

    “We felt like if they ended up having to close a school it wouldn’t be one that’s had continual increases in enrollment,” she said, and added, “it’s a real bummer that you have to consider that, that you can’t just consider, ‘Are these people kind? Is my kid comfortable here? Do we feel safe here?’”

    Indeed, a school that a parent chooses one year may close the next.

    That’s what happened last year to Kenia Martinez. Since fall 2022, her two sons had attended a charter school run by Charter Schools USA, among the largest for-profit charter operators in the state. Last spring, she learned from a teacher that the school, Renaissance Academy, was shutting down. 

    Previously named Governor’s Charter Academy, Renaissance recently received a “D” grade, and saw enrollment fall from 420 students in 2020-21 to 220 last year. It also ran deficits, with a negative net position of $1.9 million at the end of the 2023-24 school year, according to the most recent state audit report. It closed last May.

    The school building was to re-open as Tallahassee Preparatory Academy — a private school — which was advertised on its website as a STEM school for “advanced learners” that would charge a fee, ranging from $1,500 to $3,200, in addition to the money paid through a voucher. 

    The school was to be run not by Charter Schools USA but by Discovery Science Schools, which operates several STEM charter schools in the state. The deal revealed a possible exit strategy for faltering charters: conversion to a private voucher school that gets state money, but without the requirement of state tests, grades or certified teachers — in other words, without accountability. 

    Yet as this school year began, the building remained dark. The parking lot was vacant. There was no response to the doorbell, or to emails or phone calls made to the contact information on the new school’s website. Discovery Science Schools’ phone number and email were not in service, and emails to founder Yalcin Akin and board president David Fortna went unanswered. A Charter Schools USA spokesperson, Colleen Reynolds, wrote in an email that “CUSA is not involved with the building located where the former Renaissance Academy Building stands” and did not provide additional clarification on why state audit reports indicate otherwise. 

    The Leon County School Board fiercely debated whether to sue Charter Schools USA for access to the building and its contents, which had been funded with taxpayer dollars. But school board members dropped the idea after learning that the building had a large lien, the result of how financing was crafted through Red Apple Development, the real estate arm of Charter Schools USA. Hanna was frustrated that for-profit companies benefited from taxpayer dollars — but still owned the assets.

    Related: Inside Florida’s ‘underground lab’ for far-right education policies

    When Renaissance announced it was closing, a friend of Martinez’s suggested her family apply for vouchers, which covered the full cost of attendance for her two sons at the Avant Schools of Excellence, a private Christian school with campuses in Tallahassee and Florida City. 

    The school takes vouchers (along with a school scholarship) as full payment, although its website lists tuition and fees at $22,775 per year. Martinez liked that the school is Christian, and small. None of their friends from Renaissance Academy are there. Martinez drives them 30 minutes each way, every day.

    The Tallahassee building that houses Avant was previously home to at least two charter schools. (One lasted a month.) Since the campus opened three years ago, said Donald Ravenell, who co-founded Avant with his wife, enrollment has jumped from 55 to 175.

    Ravenell, who on a recent weekday wore a red and blue tie (school colors are red, white and blue), attributed the school’s success to a focus on faith (“We talk about God all the time”) and the aim of preparing each student to be “a successful citizen and person.” 

    Like Olson at Hartsfield, he well understands this is a competitive marketplace. He wants his school to be known for offering a quality product, which he underscored by drawing a comparison to fried chicken.

    “I have nothing against Chester’s Chicken,” said Ravenell, referring to the quick-service chain sold in gas stations and rest stops. But he expects Avant to reach for more: “We want to be Chick-fil-A.”

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected]. 

    This story about school vouchers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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  • When Was Higher Education Truly a Public Good? (Glen McGhee)

    When Was Higher Education Truly a Public Good? (Glen McGhee)

    Like staring at the Sun too long, that brief window in time, when higher ed was a public good, has left a permanent hole for nostalgia to leak in, becoming a massive black hole for trillions of dollars, and a blind-spot for misguided national policies and scholars alike. 

    The notion that American higher education was ever a true public good is largely a myth. From the colonial colleges to the neoliberal university of today, higher education has functioned primarily as a mechanism of class reproduction and elite consolidation—with one brief, historically anomalous exception during the Cold War.

    Colonial Roots: Elite Reproduction in the New World (1636–1787)

    The first American colleges—Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Princeton, and a handful of others—were founded not for the benefit of the public, but to serve narrow elite interests. Their stated missions were to train Protestant clergy and prepare the sons of wealthy white families for leadership. They operated under monopoly charters and drew funding from landowners, merchants, and slave traders.

    Elihu Yale, namesake of Yale University, derived wealth from his commercial ties to the East India Company and the slave trade. Harvard’s early trustees owned enslaved people. These institutions functioned as “old boys’ clubs,” perpetuating privilege rather than promoting equality. Their educational mission was to cultivate “gentlemen fit to govern,” not citizens of a democracy.

    Private Enterprise in the Republic (1790–1860)

    After independence, the number of colleges exploded—from 19 in 1790 to more than 800 by 1880—but not because of any commitment to the public good. Colleges became tools for two private interests: religious denominations seeking influence, and land speculators eager to raise property values.

    Ministers often doubled as land dealers, founding small, parochial colleges to anchor towns and boost prices. State governments played a minimal role, providing funding only in times of crisis. The Supreme Court’s 1819 Dartmouth College decision enshrined institutional autonomy, shielding private colleges from state interference. Even state universities were created mainly out of interstate competition—every state needed its own to “keep up with its neighbors.”

    Gilded Age and Progressive Era: Credential Capitalism (1880–1940)

    By the late 19th century, industrial capitalism had transformed higher education into a private good—something purchased for individual advancement. As family farms and small businesses disappeared, college credentials became the ticket to white-collar respectability.

    Sociologist Burton Bledstein called this the “culture of professionalism.” Families invested in degrees to secure middle-class futures for their children. By the 1920s, most students attended college not to seek enlightenment, but “to get ready for a particular job.”

    Elite universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton solidified their dominance through exclusive networks. C. Wright Mills later observed that America’s “power elite” circulated through these same institutions and their associated clubs. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital helps explain this continuity: elite universities convert inherited privilege into certified merit, preserving hierarchy under the guise of meritocracy.

    The Morrill Acts: Public Promise, Private Gains (1862–1890)

    The Morrill Act of 1862 established land-grant colleges to promote “practical education” in agriculture and engineering. While often cited as a triumph of public-minded policy, the act’s legacy is ambivalent.

    Land-grant universities were built on land expropriated from Indigenous peoples—often without compensation—and the 1890 Morrill Act entrenched segregation by mandating separate institutions for Black Americans in the Jim Crow South. Even as these colleges expanded access for white working-class men, they simultaneously reinforced racial and economic hierarchies.

    Cold War Universities: The Brief Public Good (1940–1970)

    For roughly thirty years, during World War II and the Cold War, American universities functioned as genuine public goods—but only because national survival seemed to depend on them.

    The GI Bill opened college to millions of veterans, stabilizing the economy and expanding the middle class. Massive federal investments in research transformed universities into engines of technological and scientific innovation. The university, for a moment, was understood as a public instrument for national progress.

    Yet this golden age was marred by exclusion. Black veterans were often denied GI Bill benefits, particularly in the South, where discriminatory admissions and housing policies blocked their participation. The “military-industrial-academic complex” that emerged from wartime funding created a new elite network centered on research universities like MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley.

    Neoliberal Regression: Education as a Private Commodity (1980–Present)

    After 1970, the system reverted to its long-standing norm: higher education as a private good. The Cold War’s end, the tax revolt, and the rise of neoliberal ideology dismantled the postwar consensus.

    Ronald Reagan led the charge—first as California governor, cutting higher education funding by 20%, then as president, slashing federal support. He argued that tuition should replace public subsidies, casting education as an individual investment rather than a social right.

    Since 1980, state funding per student has fallen sharply while tuition at public universities has tripled. Students are now treated as “customers,” and universities as corporations—complete with branding departments, executive pay packages, and relentless tuition hikes.

    The Circuit of Elite Network Capital

    Today, the benefits of higher education flow through a closed circuit of power that links elite universities, corporations, government agencies, and wealthy families.

    1. Elite Universities consolidate wealth and prestige through research funding, patents, and endowments.

    2. Corporations recruit talent and license discoveries, feeding the same institutions that produce their executives.

    3. Government and Military Agencies are staffed by alumni of elite universities, reinforcing a revolving door of privilege.

    4. Elite Professions—law, medicine, finance, consulting—use degrees as gatekeeping mechanisms, driving credential inflation.

    5. Wealthy Families invest in elite education as a means of preserving status across generations.

    What the public receives are only residual benefits—technologies and medical innovations that remain inaccessible without money or insurance.

    Elite Network Capital, Not Public Good

    The idea of higher education as a public good has always been more myth than reality. For most of American history, colleges and universities have functioned as institutions of elite reproduction, not engines of democratic uplift.

    Only during the extraordinary conditions of the mid-20th century—when global war and ideological conflict made mass education a national imperative—did higher education briefly align with the public interest.

    Today’s universities continue to speak the language of “public good,” but their actions reveal a different truth. They serve as factories of credentialism and as nodes in an elite network that translates privilege into prestige. What masquerades as a public good is, in practice, elite network capital—a system designed not to democratize opportunity, but to manage and legitimize inequality.

    Sources:

    Labaree (2017), Bledstein (1976), Bourdieu (1984, 1986), Mills (1956), Geiger (2015), Thelin (2019), and McGhee (2025).

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