Tag: rules

  • Texas Tech Puts Its Anti-Trans Rules In Writing

    Texas Tech Puts Its Anti-Trans Rules In Writing

    Months after beginning to enforce unwritten policies about how faculty members can and cannot teach topics related to gender, Texas Tech University system officials released a memo Monday that officially put those policies—and more—in writing.

    “Effective immediately, faculty must not include or advocate in any form course content that conflicts with the following standards,” Chancellor Brandon Creighton wrote in the memo to system presidents, which was passed along to faculty members. The standards include specific rules around race and sexuality that were not previously discussed, system faculty members told Inside Higher Ed. The memo also enshrines that the Texas Tech system recognizes only two sexes—male and female.

    The fuzzy anti-trans policies that were first introduced via a game of censorship telephone at Angelo State University in September have now been made clear and expanded upon across the entire five-university Texas Tech system. Course content related to race and sexuality is now also subject to heightened scrutiny. Although the memo doesn’t ban outright discussion of transgender topics or any topics that suggest there are more than two genders, policies across the country stating that there are only two sexes or genders have been used to restrict transgender rights.

    Texas Tech is far from alone in its efforts; public systems across Texas have taken on varying politically motivated course reviews, leaving faculty members in the state angry and confused. For example, the University of Texas system recently completed a review of all courses on gender identity, and the Texas A&M system board approved a new policy last month mandating presidential approval for classes that “advocate race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”

    According to Creighton’s memo, faculty members may not “promote” or instill the belief that one race or sex is superior to another; that an individual is, consciously or unconsciously, inherently racist, sexist or “oppressive”; that any person should be discriminated against because of their race or sex; that moral character is determined by race or sex; that individuals bear responsibility or guilt because of the actions by others of the same race or sex; or that meritocracy or a strong work ethic are racist, sexist or “constructs of oppression.”

    Creighton defined advocacy as “presenting these beliefs as correct or required and pressuring students to affirm them, rather than analyzing or critiquing them as one viewpoint among others. This also includes course content that promotes activism on issues related to race or sex, rather than academic instruction.”

    The memo also outlines a Board of Regents–controlled review process, complete with a flowchart, for courses that include content related to gender identity and sexuality. Although race is mentioned earlier in the memo, it’s unclear whether race-related course content will also be subject to this review.

    “We’ve been in this slow rollout process already. We had to go through all of the courses and essentially do the flowchart before the flowchart existed,” said a faculty member at Angelo State who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. “Anything that would cover transgender [people] was flagged.”

    Creighton, a former member of the Texas State Senate, justified the new rules using Senate Bill 37, a law he sponsored earlier this year that, among other things, gave the control of faculty senates to public institution governing boards and established a once-every-five-years review process for general education curricula. An earlier version of the bill that passed the Senate contained language that’s very similar to the restrictions in the Texas Tech memo, including censoring specific course topics that suggest any social, political or religious belief is superior to another and allowing administrators to unilaterally remove faculty senate members for their personal political advocacy. The existing law does not prohibit teaching about transgender identity, racial inequality, systemic racism, homosexuality or any other individual topic.

    “This directive is the first step of the Board of Regents’ ongoing implementation of its statutory responsibility to review and oversee curriculum under Senate Bill 37 and related provisions of the Education Code. This curriculum review under Senate Bill 37 will, in part, ensure each university is offering degrees of value,” Creighton wrote.

    Texas Tech University system spokespeople did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s questions about the memo, including what next steps might be.

    “The Board’s responsibility is to safeguard the integrity of our academic mission and maintain the trust of Texans,” Board of Regents chairman Cody Campbell said in a news release. “The Board welcomed the clarity provided by Senate Bill 37, which reaffirmed the Regents’ role in curriculum oversight. This new framework strengthens accountability, supports our faculty, and ensures that our universities remain focused on education, research, and innovation—core commitments that position the TTU System for continued national leadership.”

    Faculty across the system are largely upset about the changes but unsure about how to push back, a faculty member told Inside Higher Ed. One Texas Tech professor emeritus, Kelli Cargile Cook, told The Texas Tribune she began drafting a resignation letter.

    “I’ve been teaching since 1981 and this was going to be my last class. I was so looking forward to working with the seniors in our major, but I can’t stomach what’s going on at Texas Tech,” she told the Tribune. “I think the memo is cunning in that the beliefs that it lists are, at face value, something you could agree with. But when you think about how this would be put into practice, where a Board of Regents approves a curriculum—people who are politically appointed, not educated, not researchers—that move is a slippery slope.”

    Brian Evans, president of the Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors, criticized the memo Tuesday. 

    “Empowering administrators to censor faculty experts’ teaching decisions does a disservice to the university, its students and the state,” Evans said. “Such a system is inconsistent with long-standing principles of academic freedom, university policy and the First Amendment.”

    Graham Piro, faculty legal defense fund fellow for campus advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, decried the memo in a statement Tuesday.

    “The Texas Tech memo unconstitutionally singles out specific viewpoints on these topics, implying that faculty members must adhere to the state’s line on these issues—and that dissenters face punishment. The memo is also so broadly worded that an overzealous administration could easily punish a professor who seeks to provoke arguments in class or advocates outside the classroom for changes to curricula that reflect developments in teaching,” Piro said.

    “Decades ago, the Supreme Court recognized that the First Amendment ‘does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.’ It instead wrote that ‘truth’ is discovered not by ‘authoritative selection,’ but ‘out of a multitude of tongues.’ These principles are timeless, and Texas Tech should not compromise them, no matter the political winds of the day.”

    He also likened the memo to Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, currently blocked by a federal court, which severely limited how Florida faculty members could talk and teach about race, gender and sexuality.

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  • Feds cannot withhold funding from UC system amid lawsuit, judge rules

    Feds cannot withhold funding from UC system amid lawsuit, judge rules

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    Dive Brief:

    • A federal judge on Friday issued a preliminary injunction barring the Trump administration from freezing the University of California system’s research funding as part of civil rights investigations. 
    • In a scathing ruling, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin found the administration’s actions unconstitutional, describing “a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding,” with the aim of “forcing them to change their ideological tune.”
    • While a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s actions is ongoing, Lin barred the federal government from using civil rights investigations to freeze UC grant money, condition its grants on any measure that would violate recipients’ speech rights, or seek fines and other money from the system.

    Dive Insight:

     In her ruling, Lin described a “three-stage playbook” that the Trump administration uses to target universities. First, an agency involved with the administration’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announces civil rights investigations or planned enforcement actions. Then, the administration issues mass grants cancellations without following legally mandated administrative procedures, Lin wrote.

    In the third stage, Lin said, the U.S. Department of Justice demands payment of millions or billions of dollars in addition to other policy changes in return for restored funding. A DOJ spokesperson on Monday declined to comment on the lawsuit. 

    In the case of UC, the judge ruled that plaintiffs — a coalition of faculty groups and unions, including the American Association of University Professors — provided “overwhelming evidence” of the administration’s “concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left,’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities.”

    “It is undisputed that this precise playbook is now being executed at the University of California,” wrote Lin, citing public statements by Leo Terrell, senior counsel in the DOJ’s civil rights wing and the head of administration’s antisemitism task force. Terrell alleged that the UC system had been “hijacked by the left” and vowed to open investigations. 

    The Trump administration did just that. In August, it froze $584 million in research funding at the University of California, Los Angeles after concluding that the institution violated civil rights law. It primarily cited UCLA’s decision to allow a 2024 pro-Palestinian protest encampment to remain on campus for almost a week before calling in the police. 

    The administration has sought a $1.2 billion penalty from UCLA to release the funds and settle the allegations. “The costs associated with this demand, if left to stand, would have far-reaching consequences,” Chancellor Julio Frenk said in a public message in August. 

    Lin noted in her Friday ruling that the administration also sought settlement terms “that had nothing to do with antisemitism,” including policy changes to how UCLA handles student protests, an adoption of the administration’s views on gender, and a review of its diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

    The administration’s campaign resulted in a significant and ongoing chilling of faculty’s actions, both in and out of the classroom, Lin said.

    In addition to teaching and conducting research differently, members of the plaintiff groups have also changed how they engage in public discourse and limited their participation in protest, Lin said. Faculty have self-censored on topics such as structural racism and scrubbed their websites of references to DEI out of fear of reprisal. 

    “These are classic, predictable First Amendment harms, and exactly what Defendants publicly said that they intended,” Lin concluded.

    While acknowledging the importance of combating antisemitism, Lin said the government was “silent on what actions UCLA took to address” antisemitism issues on its campus between May of 2024, when pro-Palestinian protesters established an encampment, and July 2025, when the DOJ concluded UCLA had violated civil rights law by not doing enough to protect Jewish students from harassment.

    As part of a separate lawsuit, Lin in September ordered the National Institutes of Health and other agencies to restore suspended grants to UCLA. 

    UCLA and the UC system are just one of several prominent universities similarly targeted by the federal government. At least five institutions so far have signed deals with the Trump administration to resolve federal civil investigations. The agreements brokered by Columbia, Brown and Cornell universities require each to pay millions of dollars to the federal government, causes favored by the Trump administration or both.

    Harvard University, on the other hand, has fought back against the administration’s tactics. After repeated federal attacks, accompanied by unprecedented ultimatums, the university sued the administration and successfully had the government’s $2.2 billion funding freeze against it reversed. The Trump administration has previously stated its intent to appeal. 

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  • New Jersey Weighs Biggest Update of Charter School Rules in 30 Years – The 74

    New Jersey Weighs Biggest Update of Charter School Rules in 30 Years – The 74


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    Senate lawmakers on Monday advanced legislation that would launch the most comprehensive overhaul of New Jersey’s regulation of charter schools in 30 years.

    The bill advanced by the Senate Education Committee on Monday would outright ban for-profit charter schools, require them to post a range of documents online, and impose residency requirements for some charter school trustees.

    “We have not looked at charter schools as a whole legislatively in this committee since the 1990s, so this is an opportunity where we’re trying to do that,” said Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Monmouth), the panel’s chair and the bill’s prime sponsor.

    The bill comes as New Jersey charter schools have faced scrutiny after reporting revealed top officials were paid far more than their counterparts at traditional public schools, including, among others, a Newark charter school CEO who was paid nearly $800,000 in 2024.

    The proposal, which Gopal said was the product of a year of negotiations, would require charter schools to post user-friendly budgets that include the compensation paid to charter school leaders and school business administrators. They must also post existing contracts.

    Charters would be required to post meeting notices, annual reports, board members’ identities, and facility locations online. Some critics have charged that charter schools routinely fail to provide notice of their public meetings.

    The legislation would also require the state to create a dedicated charter school transparency website to host plain language budgets, 990 disclosure forms filed with the IRS, contracts with charter management organizations, and a list of charter schools on probation, among other things.

    It would also ban fully virtual charter schools.

    “We support the bills as a step forward in holding all public schools in our state accountable for fiscal and transparency requirements that will ultimately best serve our students,” said Debbie Bradley, director of government relations for the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association.

    The two sides remained at odds over the membership of charter school boards.

    Charter critics argued residency for those positions — which, unlike traditional public school boards, are largely appointed rather than elected — should mirror those imposed on regular public schools.

    In New Jersey, school board members must live in the district they serve. That’s not the case for charter schools, whose trustees face no residency or qualification limits under existing law.

    The bill would only impose a residency requirement on one-third of a charter school’s trustees, and rather than forcing them to live in the district, the bill would require charter trustees to live in the school’s county or within 30 miles of the school.

    That language was criticized by statewide teachers union the New Jersey Education Association, which has called existing law governing charter schools outdated and flawed.

    “School board representation should remain primarily local, and when we mean local, we don’t mean within a 30-mile radius. A 30-mile radius of Newark could include Maplewood, South Orange, communities that don’t necessarily represent what Newark looks like as a community,” said Deb Cornavaca, the union’s director of government relations.

    Charter school supporters said their boards need flexibility because their leadership has broader responsibilities than counterparts in traditional public schools.

    “Running a charter is a little different than running a traditional district. You need experience in school finance. You need to fundraise a bunch of money on the front end because you’re not getting paid on the front end,” said New Jersey Charter School Association President Harry Lee, adding they also needed familiarity with real estate and community experience.

    Amendments removed provisions that would have required charter school board members to be approved by the state commissioner of education, though the commissioner retains sole power over whether to allow the formation of a new charter, a power that gives the commissioner some veto power over a charter’s board.

    Gopal acknowledged the 30-mile residency rule was a sticking point and said legislators would discuss it before the measure comes before the Senate Budget Committee. Earlier, he warned the bill was likely to see more changes as it moved through the Legislature.

    Some argued enrollment in charter schools should be more limited by geography, arguing that out-of-district enrollments that are common at New Jersey charters could place financial strain on the students’ former district.

    Most per-pupil state and local funding follows students who enroll in charter schools, even if their departure does not actually decrease the original district’s expenses because, for example, those schools still require the same number of teachers and administrators.

    Charter operators said that would make New Jersey a national outlier and argued that a separate provision that would bar new charter schools when there are empty seats in existing area charters should come out of the bill.

    “It could be read as a moratorium on charters, so we want to revisit that provision,” Lee said.

    Such vacancies could exist for various reasons, they argued, including student age distributions.

    Alongside that measure, the panel approved separate legislation that would bar charter schools from setting criteria to enroll students, ban them from imposing other requirements on a student randomly selected to attend, and place new limits on how such schools can enroll children from outside their district.

    That bill would also bar charter schools from encouraging students to break with the district. Some opponents have charged that charter schools push out low-performing students to boost their metrics.

    The committee approved the bills in unanimous votes, though Sens. Owen Henry (R-Ocean) and Kristin Corrado (R-Passaic) abstained from votes on both bills, saying they are broadly supportive but need more time to review amendments.

    New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: [email protected].


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  • Is it time to change the rules on NSS publication?

    Is it time to change the rules on NSS publication?

    If we cast our minds back to 2005, the four UK higher education funding bodies ran the first ever compulsory survey of students’ views on the education they receive – the National Student Survey (NSS).

    Back then the very idea of a survey was controversial, we were worried about the impact on the sector reputation, the potential for response bias, and that students would be fearful of responding negatively in case their university downgraded their degree.

    Initial safeguards

    These fears led us to make three important decisions all of which are now well past their sell-by date. These were:

    • Setting a response rate threshold of 50 per cent
    • Restricting publication to subject areas with more than 22 respondents
    • Only providing aggregate data to universities.

    At the time all of these were very sensible decisions designed to build confidence in what was a controversial survey. Twenty years on, it’s time to look at these with fresh eyes to assure ourselves they remain appropriate – and to these eyes they need to change.

    Embarrassment of riches

    One of these rules has already changed: responses are now published where 10 or more students respond. Personally, I think this represents a very low bar, determined as it is by privacy more than statistical reasoning, but I can live with it especially as research has shown that “no data” can be viewed negatively.

    Of the other two, first let me turn to the response rate. Fifty per cent is a very high response rate for any survey, and the fact the NSS achieves a 70 per cent response rate is astonishing. While I don’t think we should be aiming to get fewer responses, drawing a hard line at 50 per cent creates a cliff edge in data that we don’t need.

    There is nothing magical about 50 per cent – it’s simply a number that sounds convincing because it means that at least half your students contributed. A 50 per cent response rate does not ensure that the results are not subject to bias for example, if propensity to respond was in some way correlated with a positive experience the results would still be flawed.

    I would note that the limited evidence that there is suggests that propensity to respond is not correlated with a positive experience, but it’s an under-researched area and one the Office for Students (OfS) should publish some work on.

    Panel beating

    This cliff edge is even more problematic when the data is used in regulation, as the OfS proposes to do a part of the new TEF. Under OfS proposals providers that don’t have NSS data either due to small cohorts or a “low” response rate would have NSS evidence replaced with focus groups or other types of student interaction. This makes sense when the reason is an absolute low number of responses but not when it’s due to not hitting an exceptionally high response rate as Oxford and Cambridge failed to do for many years.

    While focus groups can offer valuable insights, and usefully sit alongside large-scale survey work, it is utterly absurd to ignore evidence from a survey because an arbitrary and very high threshold is not met. Most universities will have several thousand final year students, so even if only 30 per cent of them respond you will have responses from hundreds if not thousands of individuals – which must provide a much stronger evidence base than some focus groups. Furthermore, that evidence base will be consistent with every other university creating one less headache for assessors in comparing diverse evidence.

    The 50 per cent response rate threshold also looks irrational when set against a 30 per cent threshold for the Graduate Outcomes survey. While any response rate threshold is arbitrary to apply, applying two different thresholds needs rather more justification than the fact that the surveys are able to achieve different response rates. Indeed, I might argue that the risk of response bias might be higher with GO for a variety of reasons.

    NSS to GO

    In the absence of evidence in support of any different threshold I would align the NSS and GO publication thresholds at 30 per cent and make the response rates more prominent. I would also share NSS and GO data with TEF panels irrespective of the response rate, and allow them to rely on their expert judgement supported by the excellent analytical team at the OfS. And the TEF panel may then choose to seek additional evidence if they consider it necessary.

    In terms of sharing data with providers, 2025 is really very different to 2005. Social media has arguably exploded and is now contracting, but in any case attitudes to sharing have changed and it is unlikely the concerns that existed in 2005 will be the same as the concerns of the current crop of students.

    For those who don’t follow the detail, NSS data is provided back to Universities via a bespoke portal that provides a number of pre-defined cuts of the data and comments, together with an ability to create your own cross-tabs. This data, while very rich, do not have the analytical power of individualised data and suffer from still being subject to suppression for small numbers.

    What this means is that if we want to understand the areas we want to improve we’re forced to deduce it from a partial picture rather than being laser focussed on exactly where the issues are, and this applies to both the Likert scale questions and the free text.

    It also means that providers cannot form a longitudinal view of the student experience by linking to other data and survey responses they hold at an individual level – something that could generate a much richer understanding of how to improve the student experience.

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  • Judge Rules Campaign Against Noncitizen Protesters Unlawful

    Judge Rules Campaign Against Noncitizen Protesters Unlawful

    In a scathing decision published Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that two federal agencies led a campaign to detain and deport international students and faculty for pro-Palestinian speech with the goal of chilling further protests, violating the First Amendment.

    “There was no ideological deportation policy,” wrote senior U.S. District Judge William G. Young, a Reagan appointee, in the 161-page ruling. “It was never the Secretaries’ [Marco Rubio, of the Department of State, and Kristi Noem, of the Department of Homeland Security] immediate intention to deport all pro-Palestinian non-citizens for that obvious First Amendment violation, that could have raised a major outcry. Rather, the intent of the Secretaries was more invidious—to target a few for speaking out and then use the full rigor of the Immigration and Nationality Act (in ways it had never been used before) to have them publicly deported with the goal of tamping down pro-Palestinian student protests and terrorizing similarly situated non-citizen (and other) pro-Palestinians into silence because their views were unwelcome.”

    He also stated unequivocally that noncitizens in the U.S. have the same First Amendment rights as citizens—despite the Trump administration’s argument to the contrary during the trial.

    The decision, which Young said may be the most important ever to fall within his district, comes about two months after the conclusion of a two-week trial in the case of American Association of University Professors v. Rubio, during which State Department and DHS employees explained that they had been tasked with identifying noncitizen pro-Palestinian activists to investigate and deport. Young wrote in his decision that the departments’ actions make it clear that they were working together to conduct targeted deportations with the goal of chilling speech—the repercussions of which are still being felt now.

    The plaintiffs, which include the AAUP, three of its chapters—at Rutgers University, Harvard University and New York University—and the Middle East Studies Association, celebrated the win in a remote press conference Tuesday afternoon.

    “That’s a really important victory and a really historic ruling that should have immediate implications for the Trump administration’s policies,” said Ramya Krishnan, the lead litigator on the case and a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “If the First Amendment means anything, it’s that the government cannot imprison you because it doesn’t like the speech that you have engaged in, and this decision is really welcome because it reaffirms that basic idea, which is foundational to our democracy.”

    Still, despite the victory, several of the plaintiffs emphasized just how worrying the federal government’s crusade against pro-Palestinian noncitizen students and faculty is. Todd Wolfson, the president of the AAUP, said he believes those actions, as well as the federal government’s other attacks against academic freedom, are an even greater threat to higher education than McCarthyism was.

    “The only equivalents might be the Red Scare and McCarthyism, but this is even worse, right? Because it’s not only attacking individual speech, it’s also attacking institutional independence and speech, right?” he said. “The Trump administration’s attacks on higher ed are the greatest assault on this sector that we have ever seen in the history of this country.”

    So, What Comes Next?

    Young previously separated this case into two phases, one focused on the government’s liability and the other on relief for the plaintiffs. According to Krishnan, the judge will schedule a later hearing to determine that relief. The plaintiffs hope Young will forbid the government from continuing to target noncitizens based on their political views, making permanent an injunction that the judge granted in March.

    But Young noted in his ruling Tuesday that he is unsure what a remedy for the plaintiffs might look like in an era when the president consistently seems able to avoid recourse for unconstitutional acts.

    “I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected,” he wrote, concluding the decision.

    “Is he correct?”

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  • Cosmetology schools and other certificate programs got exemption from rules on graduates’ earning levels

    Cosmetology schools and other certificate programs got exemption from rules on graduates’ earning levels

     

    Remiah Ward’s shift at the SmartStyle salon inside Walmart was almost over, and she’d barely made $30 in tips from the haircuts she’d done that day. It wasn’t unusual — a year after her graduation from beauty school, tips plus minimum wage weren’t enough to cover her rent.

    She scarcely had time to eat and sleep before she had to drive back to the same Walmart in central Florida to stock shelves on the night shift. That job paid $14 an hour, but it meant she sometimes spent 18 hours a day in the same building. She worked six days a week but still struggled to catch up on bills and sleep. 

    The admissions officer at the American Institute of Beauty, where she enrolled straight out of high school, had sold her on a different dream. She would easily earn enough to pay back the $10,000 she borrowed to attend, she said she was told. Ward had no way of knowing that stylists from her school earn $20,200 a year, on average, four years after graduating. Seven years later, her debt, plus interest, is still unpaid.

    In July, Republicans in Congress pushed through policies aimed at ensuring that what happened to Ward wouldn’t happen to other Americans on the government’s dime; colleges whose graduates don’t earn at least as much as someone with a high school diploma will now risk losing access to federal student loans. But one group managed to slip through the cracks — thousands of schools like the American Institute of Beauty were exempt. 

    Remiah Ward worked two jobs while trying to make it as a hair stylist but never made enough to pay her all her bills and has had to put her dream career on hold. Credit: Courtesy Remiah Ward

    Certificate schools succeeded in getting a carve-out. The industry breathed a collective sigh of relief, and with good reason. At least 1,280 certificate-granting programs, which enrolled more than 220,000 students, would have been at risk of losing federal student loan funding if they had been included in the bill, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of federal data. [See table.] About 80% of those are for-profit programs, and 45 percent are cosmetology schools.

    “There is this very strange donut hole in accountability where workforce programs are held accountable, two-year degree programs are held accountable, but everything in between gets off without any accountability,” said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.

    The schools spared are known as certificate programs and, with their promise of an affordable and relatively quick path to economic security, are the fastest growing part of higher education. They usually take about a year to complete and train people to be hair-stylists, welders, medical assistants and cooks, among other jobs.

    As with traditional colleges, there are big differences in quality among certificate programs. Some hair stylists can make a middle-class living if they work in a busy salon. But for people who have to pay back hefty student loans, the low wages for stylists in the early years can be an insurmountable obstacle.

    Ward found herself facing that dilemma. When she could no longer sustain the lack of sleep from her double shifts at Walmart, she pressed pause on her styling career and took a job with Amazon, loading and unloading planes. She wasn’t ready to give up her dream career, though, so in addition to her 10-hour days moving boxes, she took part-time gigs at local hair salons. She didn’t have family to help pay rent, not to mention loan payments, so she couldn’t afford to work fulltime at a salon, which is essential to build up a regular clientele — and bigger tips. Without that, she couldn’t get much beyond minimum wage. 

    A representative from the American Institute of Beauty denied that Ward was told she would easily repay her loan.

    “No admissions representative, not at AIB or elsewhere, would ever make such a statement,” Denise Herman, general counsel and assistant vice president of AIB, said in an email. 

    The high cost of many for-profit cosmetology schools — tuition can be upward of $20,000, usually for a one-year program  — can leave former students mired in debt. In May, the government released data showing 850 colleges where at least a third of borrowers haven’t made a loan payment for 90 days or more, putting them on track to default. About 42 percent of those were for-profit cosmetology and barbering schools (including AIB).

    Brittany Mcnew says she loves working as a stylist but that her income takes a hit when traffic is slow in her salon in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Credit: Meredith Kolodner/The Hechinger Report

    Herman blamed the Biden administration policy that after the pandemic let borrowers forgo payments without any penalty.

    “Debtors became ‘comfortable’ not making payments,” said Herman. “AIB provides the graduate with the information graduates need to make their payments. What that graduate decides to pay, or not pay, is not influenced by AIB.”

    Under the “big beautiful bill” passed in July, two- and four-year colleges must ensure that, after four years, graduates on average make at least as much as someone in their state who has only a high school diploma. The colleges must inform students if they fail that test, and if it happens for two out of three years, the college will be ineligible to receive federal loan funds.

    Some for-profit certificate schools lobbied hard for an exemption. The American Association of Career Schools, which represents proprietary cosmetology schools, spent $120,000 lobbying the Education Department and Congress, including on the “big beautiful bill,” in the first six months of this year. At the group’s major lobbying event in April, Sen. Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was the keynote speaker.

    Cassidy declined to answer questions about why certificate programs were excluded, but a fact sheet from his committee noted that they are already covered by something else, the gainful employment rule, which is also being challenged by the for-profit cosmetology industry.

    That federal gainful employment regulation, updated in 2023, requires in essence that graduates from career-oriented schools earn enough to be able to pay back their loans and earn more than a high school graduate. It also requires that consumers, like Ward, be given more information about how graduates from all colleges fare in the workplace.

    The rule posed an existential threat to a huge swath of cosmetology schools.

    In 2023, the American Association of Career Schools sued to block the gainful employment rule. 

    “AACS supports fair and reasonable accountability measures,” Cecil Kidd, the AACS’s executive director, said in an email. “However, we strongly object to arbitrary or discriminatory policies such as the US Department of Education’s Gainful Employment rule, which unfairly targets career schools while exempting many public and private non-profit institutions that fail to meet comparable outcomes.”

    He pointed to public comments in which AACS has argued that the rule imposes an unfair burden on cosmetology schools since stylists are predominantly women, who are more likely to have “personal commitments” that affect their earnings, and who rely on tips that are often pocketed as unreported income.

    Cameron Vandenboom is a successful hair stylist but says the high cost of her private beauty school wasn’t worth thousands of dollars in student debt: “I absolutely should have gone to community college.” Credit: Courtesy Shanna Kaye Photo

    In a twist that surprised advocates on both sides, the Education Department in May asked the court to effectively dismiss AACS’ lawsuit. 

    If the court rules in favor of the cosmetology schools, certificate programs will be free of all accountability requirements on their graduates’ earning levels, because they got the carveout in July. 

    Even if the court rules against cosmetology schools, advocates are pessimistic that the Trump administration will implement the gainful rules. The first Trump administration got rid of the original rules back in 2019 and Nicholas Kent, now the U.S. undersecretary of education, was previously the chief policy officer for Career Education Colleges and Universities, or CECU, the trade group that represents for-profit colleges, including certificate programs. He is a well-known critic of the rule.

    “I would be very surprised, if the unlikely scenario plays out that the Biden rule is upheld, that this Department of Education would just say, OK, the court has spoken,” said Jason Altmire, CECU’s executive director. “We are not opposed to accountability for certificate programs, so long as it’s fair to everybody and we have a voice in how you’re measuring programs.”  

    Altmire said CECU didn’t lobby for certificate programs to be carved out of Congress’ bill, but did argue against the earnings formula that Congress landed on. Altmire said it doesn’t take into account part-time work and the gender gap in wages.

    One objection from AACS, raised by CECU as well, is that the earnings measured don’t include tips, which are crucial to hair stylists’ income. Analyzed without including tips, 576 of 724 cosmetology schools in the Hechinger Report analysis would fail Congress’ earnings test. But even if tips were included and raised stylists’ income by 20 percent, 526 cosmetology schools would still fail.

    Earlier this year, Remiah Ward made the difficult decision to leave Florida and move to Kentucky, where the cost of living was more forgiving. She’s working from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. at an aluminum factory for $19.50 an hour. 

    One day, she might go back to styling after her debt is paid off. Like many former beauty school students, she wishes she’d had more information when she decided to enroll.

    “They really sugar-coated it. I was 18 years old, and I needed a trade that I was already pretty good at,” said Ward, who is now 26. “Everybody thinks they’re going to make a high return, and it’s just not the reality.”

    Marina Villeneuve contributed data analysis to this story. 

    This story about cosmetology schools produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger higher-education newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Generic AI cannot capture higher education’s unwritten rules

    Generic AI cannot capture higher education’s unwritten rules

    Some years ago, I came across Walter Moberley’s The Crisis in the University. In the years after the Second World War, universities faced a perfect storm: financial strain, shifting student demographics, and a society wrestling with lost values. Every generation has its reckoning. Universities don’t just mirror the societies they serve – they help define what those societies might become.

    Today’s crisis looks very different. It isn’t about reconstruction or mass expansion. It’s about knowledge itself – how it is mediated and shaped in a world of artificial intelligence. The question is whether universities can hold on to their cultural distinctiveness once LLM-enabled workflows start to drive their daily operations.

    The unwritten rules

    Let’s be clear: universities are complicated beasts. Policies, frameworks and benchmarks provide a skeleton. But the flesh and blood of higher education live elsewhere – in the unwritten rules of culture.

    Anyone who has sat through a validation panel, squinted at the spreadsheets for a TEF submission, or tried to navigate an approval workflow knows what I mean. Institutions don’t just run on paperwork; they run on tacit understandings, corridor conversations and half-spoken agreements.

    These practices rarely make it into a handbook – nor should they – but they shape everything from governance to the student experience. And here’s the rub: large language models, however clever, can’t see what isn’t codified. Which means they can’t capture the very rules that make one university distinctive from another.

    The limits of generic AI

    AI is already embedded in the sector. We see it in student support chatbots, plagiarism detection, learning platforms, and back-office systems. But these tools are built on vast, generic datasets. They flatten nuance, reproduce bias and assume a one-size-fits-all worldview.

    Drop them straight into higher education and the risk is obvious: universities start to look interchangeable. An algorithm might churn out a compliant REF impact statement. But it won’t explain why Institution A counts one case study as transformative while Institution B insists on another, or why quality assurance at one university winds its way through a labyrinth of committees while at another it barely leaves the Dean’s desk. This isn’t just a technical glitch. It’s a governance risk. Allow external platforms to hard-code the rules of engagement and higher education loses more than efficiency – it loses identity, and with it agency.

    The temptation to automate is real. Universities are drowning in compliance. Office for Students returns, REF, KEF and TEF submissions, equality reporting, Freedom of Information requests, the Race Equality Charter, endless templates – the bureaucracy multiplies every year.

    Staff are exhausted. Worse, these demands eat into time meant for teaching, research and supporting students. Ministers talk about “cutting red tape,” but in practice the load only increases. Automation looks like salvation. Drafting policies, preparing reports, filling forms – AI can do all this faster and more cheaply.

    But higher education isn’t just about efficiency. It’s also about identity and purpose. If efficiency is pursued at the expense of culture, universities risk hollowing out the very things that make them distinctive.

    Institutional memory matters

    Universities are among the UK’s most enduring civic institutions, each with a long memory shaped by place. A faculty’s interpretation of QAA benchmarks, the way a board debates grade boundaries, the precedents that guide how policies are applied – all of this is institutional knowledge.

    Very little of it is codified. Sit in a Senate meeting or a Council away-day and you quickly see how much depends on inherited understanding. When senior staff leave or processes shift, that memory can vanish – which is why universities so often feel like they are reinventing the wheel.

    Here, human-assistive AI could play a role. Not by replacing people, but by capturing and transmitting tacit practices alongside the formal rulebook. Done well, that kind of LLM could preserve memory without erasing culture.

    So, what does “different” look like? The Turing Institute recently urged the academy to think about AI in relation to the humanities, not just engineering. My own experiments – from the Bernie Grant Archive LLM to a Business Case LLM and a Curriculum Innovation LLM – point in the same direction.

    The principles are clear. Systems should be co-designed with staff, reflecting how people actually work rather than imposing abstract process maps. They must be assistive, not directive – capable of producing drafts and suggestions but always requiring human oversight.

    They need to embed cultural nuance: keeping tone, tradition and tacit practice alive alongside compliance. That way outputs reflect the character of the institution, reinforcing its USP rather than erasing it. They should preserve institutional knowledge by drawing on archives and precedents to create a living record of decision-making. And they must build in error prevention, using human feedback loops to catch hallucinations and conceptual drift.

    Done this way, AI lightens the bureaucratic load without stripping out the culture and identity that make universities what they are.

    The sector’s inflection point

    So back to the existential question. It’s not whether to adopt AI – that ship has already sailed. The real issue is whether universities will let generic platforms reshape them in their image, or whether the sector can design tools that reflect its own values.

    And the timing matters. We’re heading into a decade of constrained funding, student number caps, and rising ministerial scrutiny. Decisions about AI won’t just be about efficiency – they will go to the heart of what kind of universities survive and thrive in this environment.

    If institutions want to preserve their distinctiveness, they cannot outsource AI wholesale. They must build and shape models that reflect their own ways of working – and collaborate across the sector to do so. Otherwise, the invisible knowledge that makes one university different from another will be drained away by automation.

    That means getting specific. Is AI in higher education infrastructure, pedagogy, or governance? How do we balance efficiency with the preservation of tacit knowledge? Who owns institutional memory once it’s embedded in AI – the supplier, or the university? Caveat emptor matters here. And what happens if we automate quality assurance without accounting for cultural nuance?

    These aren’t questions that can be answered in a single policy cycle. But they can’t be ducked either. The design choices being made now will shape not just efficiency, but the very fabric of universities for decades to come.

    The zeitgeist of responsibility

    Every wave of technology promises efficiency. Few pay attention to culture. Unless the sector intervenes, large language models will be no different.

    This is, in short, a moment of responsibility. Universities can co-design AI that reflects their values, reduces bureaucracy and preserves identity. Or they can sit back and watch as generic platforms erode the lifeblood of the sector, automating away the subtle rules that make higher education what it is.

    In 1989, at the start of my BBC career, I stood on the Berlin Wall and watched the world change before my eyes. Today, higher education faces a moment of similar magnitude. The choice is stark: be shapers and leaders, or followers and losers.

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  • The New COVID Vaccine Rules Leave Parents with More Questions than Answers – The 74

    The New COVID Vaccine Rules Leave Parents with More Questions than Answers – The 74


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    The federal government’s latest guidelines for COVID-19 vaccines make it difficult to know who, exactly, will be able to access shots this fall. While Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and some of his staff claim anyone will be able to access a shot in consultation with their doctor, medical groups are warning that the new guidance will impact a broad swath of people, including postpartum people and healthy children.

    “For children and young adults that I see, there are constraints, and they are significant,” said Dr. Molly O’Shea, a pediatrician in Michigan and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

    It might also take several more weeks to know who will be able to receive no-cost COVID-19 vaccines covered by health insurance. That decision partly depends on formal recommendations from a vaccine panel that isn’t scheduled to meet until mid-September. 

    Actions by the Food and Drug Administration last week mean that none of the COVID-19 vaccines that are slated to be on the U.S. market this fall will have an emergency use authorization that had allowed their quick (yet still rigorously tested) approval at the height of the pandemic. The removal of this designation means the drug company Pfizer will no longer offer COVID-19 vaccines to very young children, limiting parents’ brand options and potentially impacting supply.

    Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax, the three main COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, have all shared news releases about what they’ve been approved to offer:

    • Moderna, Pfizer or Novavax will offer shots to anyone who is 65 and older, irrespective of medical history.
    • Pfizer will offer shots to anyone between the ages of five and 64 if they have at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.
    • Moderna will offer shots to anyone between six months and 64 if they have at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.
    • Novavax, the only company providing a non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, will offer shots to anyone between 12 and 64 if they have at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.

    The vaccine panel known as the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) is expected to make formal recommendations on these FDA-approved vaccines, and those recommendations have historically determined whether insurance providers will cover a vaccine at no cost under insurance.

    An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for information and comment from The 19th, but in a post on X, Kennedy said: “These vaccines are available for all patients who choose them after consulting with their doctors.” Separately, USA Today reported on a document from HHS stating the FDA’s actions do “not affect access to these vaccines for healthy individuals. These vaccines remain available to those who choose them in consultation with their healthcare provider.”

    Dr. Marty Makary, FDA commissioner, added in a separate X post: “100% of adults in this country can still get the vaccine if they choose. We are not limiting availability to anyone.”

    But what that means practically for everyday people who want to access a COVID-19 shot — everything from whether their doctor will prescribe it, or if a pharmacy will be able to administer it, and whether there will be an out-of-pocket cost — is unclear for now. 

    How will it impact postpartum people?

    Pregnant people are expected to still have access to the vaccine because the CDC continues to list pregnancy as an underlying condition that puts an individual at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19. (The list of at least two dozen conditions also includes chronic health conditions and immunocompromised conditions.)

    But Kennedy, who has repeatedly questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines despite research that shows their effectiveness, announced in May that the CDC would no longer formally recommend such vaccines to pregnant people and healthy children, a move that seemed to contradict his own department. 

    Lactating and postpartum individuals must have an underlying medical condition to be eligible for one of the FDA’s approved vaccines, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)’s understanding of the announcement. ACOG continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccination to people who are contemplating pregnancy, are pregnant, were recently pregnant or are now lactating.

    “We recognize that now, disappointingly, only lactating and postpartum individuals with an underlying condition will be eligible for vaccination. Still, it remains critical that pregnant patients receive the vaccines so that they are able to provide passive immunity from COVID-19 to their infants in those first few months of life before they can be vaccinated,” said ACOG President Steven J. Fleischman in an email.

    How will it impact healthy children?

    Healthy children will likely still be able to access the COVID vaccine, but the cost for a parent or guardian, as well as availability, will be impacted by these decisions.

    Charlotte A. Moser, co-director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said parents who want to get their kids the COVID-19 vaccine should still be able to do so through what is called shared clinical decision-making in consultation with their child’s health care provider, according to the CDC’s current vaccine schedule. But it’s unclear whether this will change when ACIP meets again.

    But physicians who prescribe a COVID-19 vaccine outside of the parameters of how the FDA approved them would be OKing use of the shot “off-label” — a designation that means a medical product is being used outside of how the FDA approved it. That raises questions about access and cost. Physicians might not be willing to prescribe off-label because of concerns about liability.

    “I think that there will be a substantially smaller number of pediatricians, pharmacies, etc., who will be comfortable taking that risk,” O’Shea said.

    Dr. Dial Hewlett, medical director of tuberculosis services at Westchester County Department of Health in New York and a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said an off-label prescription might also not be covered by insurance.

    “A mother or father can go in with their child and say, ‘I’d like for them to have the vaccine,’ but they may be told, ‘Well we’ll give it, but you’re going to have to pay $200,’” he said.

    The science on COVID vaccines has consistently indicated they are safe for children to receive.
    (Joseph Prezioso / AFP / Getty Images)

    Depending on the circumstances, pharmacists may also not be able to provide off-label vaccines. Some states tie pharmacist immunization authority to FDA approval,which has the potential to create a hodgepodge of access. The New York Times reported that CVS and Walgreens, the country’s largest pharmacy chains, have begun restricting COVID-19 shots in some states to people with a prescription. 

    “There may be some variability from state to state, but it’s a big barrier if FDA approval is not there, and the FDA approvals have been pulled back from where they were previously,” Hewlett said.

    The FDA announcement is “concerning,” added Moser, who noted that limiting Pfizer’s vaccine will make it more difficult for all children to get a COVID-19 vaccine this year because of anticipated supply limitations.

    O’Shea, the pediatrician in Michigan, said her office is currently deciding how many COVID-19 shots to stock, and it’s proving tricky as they weigh the cost vs. demand — the percentage of children under 18 getting the shot is under 15 percent.

    “Figuring out how much we want to have at any one time, and how we are going to give it to people — this really makes it a lot more complicated,” she said.

    What happens next?

    Moser said the announcement adds confusion for providers and families, and noted that the unilateral approach by Kennedy so far when it comes to vaccine policy “removes hundreds of voices of clinicians and scientists that were part of the process.” Moser recently served on ACIP and is among the members that Kennedy removed. He has replaced the panel with people who do not have relevant experience.

    “That army of voices ensured a process informed by clinical experience and scientific expertise to which the small group making these decisions now cannot possibly compare,” she said in an email.

    The revamped ACIP panel is scheduled to meet over two days beginning on September 18. Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor who is chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, is now questioning whether that panel has enough legitimacy to meet, especially amid a leadership shakeup at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

    “Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed for the now announced September ACIP meeting,” he said in a statement. “These decisions directly impact children’s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted. If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership.”

    AAP called Kennedy’s latest COVID guidelines “deeply troubling” and urged COVID vaccine decision-making to remain between medical experts and families. 

    Dr. Susan J. Kressly, president of AAP, said in a statement that any barrier to COVID-19 vaccination as the nation enters the respiratory virus season creates “a dangerous vulnerability for children and their families.”

    “Any parent who wants their child vaccinated should have access to this vaccine,” she said, adding that HHS’ action “not only prevents this option for many families, but adds further confusion and stress for parents trying to make the best choices for their children.”

    This story was originally reported by Barbara Rodriguez of The 19th. Meet Barbara and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.


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  • Judge rules White House unlawfully blocked Harvard’s research grants (PBS News Hour)

    Judge rules White House unlawfully blocked Harvard’s research grants (PBS News Hour)







    Higher Education Inquirer : Judge rules White House unlawfully blocked Harvard’s research grants (PBS News Hour)




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  • Judge Rules Harvard Funding Freeze Illegal

    Judge Rules Harvard Funding Freeze Illegal

    A federal judge in Boston ruled in favor of Harvard University Wednesday.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Mandel Ngan and Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images

    A judge ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration illegally froze more than $2 billion in research funding at Harvard University over how officials handled alleged campus antisemitism.

    Judge Allison Burroughs of the U.S. District Court in Boston found that the federal government violated Harvard’s First Amendment rights and the U.S. Civil Rights Act in her 84-page opinion, writing, “We must fight against antisemitism, but we equally need to protect our rights, including our right to free speech, and neither goal should nor needs to be sacrificed on the altar of the other.” She added that Harvard is “currently, even if belatedly” taking action against antisemitism.

    Harvard sued the Trump administration in April after the federal government froze $2.2 billion in funding when the Ivy League university rejected demands to enact a far-reaching slate of changes that would have overhauled admissions, governance, hiring and much more.

    Burroughs, an Obama appointee, appeared skeptical of the Trump administration’s claims in a July hearing, telling government lawyers that they failed to back up claims Harvard did not appropriately address antisemitism. She also ruled against the administration in another case in June, temporarily blocking the government from halting Harvard’s ability to host international students.

    Burroughs wrote Wednesday that “Harvard was wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did,” but “the record … does not reflect that fighting antisemitism” was the “true aim” of the defendants and such efforts “cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment.”

    The ruling comes as rumors of a Harvard settlement with the federal government continue to swirl. The Trump administration has demanded a $500 million settlement that would force other changes to admissions and discipline policies, similar to agreements made by its Ivy League peers Columbia University and Brown University.

    Harvard President Alan Garber said in a statement Wednesday that “the ruling affirms Harvard’s First Amendment and procedural rights, and validates our arguments in defense of the University’s academic freedom, critical scientific research, and the core principles of American higher education.”

    Wednesday’s legal ruling also prompted celebration from free speech groups and others.

    “Today, a federal court echoed what [the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression] has said all along: The Trump administration trampled Harvard University’s First Amendment rights and broke civil rights law when it yanked billions in federal grants and contracts over alleged Title VI violations,” FIRE wrote in a statement.

    “This is a huge win for all of American higher education, for science, and for free and critical thought in this country,” said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors. “Time and again, Trump has tried to restrict speech and cripple lifesaving university research. As today’s victory shows, Trump’s war on higher education is unconstitutional. We will continue to stand up and fight back against these attempts to dismantle our universities, terrify students and faculty, and punish hospitals and scientists for not bowing to authoritarianism. And we will win.”

    The American Council on Education praised Burroughs’s ruling.

    “We are pleased to see a federal court affirm what we always knew to be true: The Trump administration has ignored the law in pursuing politically motivated attacks on Harvard and other institutions,” said Peter McDonough, general counsel for ACE. “We urge the administration to abandon these harmful attacks and instead work to restore the partnership that has made colleges and universities the engine of American innovation for decades.”

    Judging from the Department of Education’s response to the ruling, that seems unlikely.

    “In an unsurprising turn of events, the same Obama-appointed judge that ruled in favor of Harvard’s illegal race-based admissions practices—which was ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court—just ruled against the Trump Administration’s efforts to hold Harvard accountable for rampant discrimination on campus,” spokesperson Madi Biedermann wrote in an emailed statement. “Cleaning up our nation’s universities will be a long road, but worth it.”

    In a post on X, Education Secretary Linda McMahon added, “The Trump Administration is fully committed to appealing this erroneous decision and will ensure that new taxpayer funding is not invested at any university that steadfastly refuses to uphold civil rights for all students.”

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