Tag: Trump

  • Trump Proclamations Escalate International Student Attacks

    Trump Proclamations Escalate International Student Attacks

    President Trump issued two directives targeting international students just hours apart on Wednesday night. One is a ban on entering the U.S. for citizens from 12 countries and heightened visa restrictions for those from another seven. The other bans all international students, researchers and other “exchange visitors” from Harvard University.

    The orders represent another escalation of the Trump administration’s simultaneous, and sometimes overlapping, campaigns to both punish Harvard and curtail the number of foreign students studying in the U.S.

    Chris Glass, a professor of higher education at Boston College and a member of the college’s Center for International Education, said the combination of the travel ban and the Harvard order are part of the administration’s “flood the zone” strategy for its higher education agenda. He added that the timing of the dual orders, following on the heels of a “seemingly indefinite” pause on student visa interviews and a promise to “aggressively revoke” Chinese students’ visas, seems intended to cause the most chaos possible.

    “The timing couldn’t be worse … this is when 70 percent of international students are getting or renewing their visas,” he said. “It injects catastrophic uncertainty, and the uncertainty is the strategy from my perspective.”

    On Thursday evening, Harvard filed a legal challenge to the proclamation targeting the university and asked a judge to issue a temporary restraining order against the administration. Judge Allison Burroughs from the District of Massachusetts quickly granted that request and extended the current restraining order issued last month. She set a hearing for June 16.

    2017 Again

    The last time Trump instituted a travel ban, in his first term, it threw colleges into chaos and left students and researchers stranded for months in the middle of winter break, sending colleges scrambling to find ways to bring them back. Higher ed has been bracing for a repeat of that travel ban since Trump was elected in November; many institutions told their international students to return to campus before the inauguration to avoid the same fate.

    The new ban is not as drastic as many predicted; when the White House initially proposed another travel ban in March, officials rolled out a list of 43 potential target countries. But it is more expansive than the 2017 ban—it affects 19 countries instead of eight—and, combined with the administration’s barrage of attacks on international students over the past three months, could be even more damaging to international enrollment.

    The full ban applies to Afghanistan, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen—largely Middle Eastern and African countries with substantial Muslim populations. Trump also restricted visas from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

    The travel ban doesn’t immediately affect students currently in the U.S. or who have already been approved for visas. But with many admitted international students still languishing in a visa process that the State Department halted two weeks ago, it will likely prevent thousands of students from attending in the fall and upend institutions’ projected enrollments.

    The countries on the list send a relatively small number of students to U.S. colleges. Of the affected countries, Iran has by far the most students studying in the U.S. It is the 15th most common origin country for international students, with 12,430 studying at American colleges and universities as of fall 2024, according to the latest report from the Institute for International Education.

    Still, the order is likely to compound the uncertainty and fear that has grown among international student populations, leading to signs of a large decline in student visa applications. Glass’s research, along with more recent reports, shows a double-digit decline in student visas from March 2024 to this March alone; the latest moves could double that, he said.

    “[The] COVID [pandemic] was a disruption of 15 percent,” he said. “This looks like it could be more significant than COVID, if the pause is extended and the uncertainty continues.”

    In his proclamation announcing the travel ban, Trump wrote that the targeted countries had “deficient” vetting and screening processes for visa applicants, or had “taken advantage of the United States in their exploitation of our visa system and their historic failure to accept back their removable nationals.”

    Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff for government relations at the American Council on Education, said the rationale outlined in the travel ban—that students pose a unique national security threat and have been overstaying their visas—doesn’t align with reality.

    “If this is for national security concerns, our students are some of the most vetted visas out there,” she said. “And I don’t know if our students actually overstay their visas very often.”

    Fanta Aw, the president of NAFSA, an association of international educators, echoed Spreitzer and said that international students are already “among the most tracked individuals entering the United States.”

    “Actions such as halting student visa issuance and implementing nationality-based travel bans do not enhance national security,” she wrote in an email. “Instead, they weaken it—undermining our economy, diminishing our global competitiveness and eroding our country’s ability to effectively engage with the global population.”

    The 2017 travel ban was amended twice after being challenged in the courts and eventually exempted nonimmigrant visas, including student and exchange visas. Spreitzer said the administration’s outsize focus on student visa holders over the last few months makes that outcome less likely, but only time—and the courts—will tell.

    Havoc at Harvard

    The travel ban came on the heels of another White House proclamation Wednesday night, this one banning foreign students and scholars from attending Harvard.

    Trump restricted visa applicants from entering the country “solely or principally to participate in a course of study at Harvard University or in an exchange visitor program hosted by Harvard,” claiming that allowing foreign students on campus would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States because, in my judgment, Harvard’s conduct has rendered it an unsuitable destination for foreign students and researchers.”

    A Harvard spokesperson wrote that the proclamation is “another illegal retaliatory step taken by the administration in violation of Harvard’s first amendment rights” and that the university “will continue to protect its international students.”

    The proclamation is the latest jab in a weeks-long fight over international students on Harvard’s campus. Last month the Trump administration attempted to revoke Harvard’s Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification, which would have banned the university from enrolling international students altogether, affecting not just visa applicants but also foreign students and researchers currently on campus. Harvard challenged the effort in court, and a judge swiftly granted the university an injunction; on Monday, the Trump administration lost its appeal to overturn that decision.

    Harvard amended that lawsuit to include a challenge to the newest proclamation, calling it “an unlawful evasion of the Court’s order.”

    “When the Court enjoined the Secretary [of State’s] efforts to revoke Harvard’s certifications and force its students to transfer or depart the country, the President sought to achieve the same result by refusing to allow Harvard students to enter in the first place,” the amended suit reads.

    Unlike the SEVP decertification attempt, Trump’s executive proclamation doesn’t immediately affect international students currently enrolled at Harvard, only those who have yet to secure visas—though it does instruct the State Department to determine whether current students “should have their visas revoked.”

    The proclamation runs through a gamut of justifications for its international student ban. Trump cites data on increasing campus crime rates in the interest of student safety, alleges discrimination in the admissions process that he claims foreign students exacerbate and points to academic partnerships and financial contributions from countries like China that he says endanger U.S. national security interests.

    Notably, Trump also says Harvard has failed to cooperate with the administration’s demands for student misconduct records; the university has provided data on “only three students,” which Trump wrote was evidence that “it either is not fully reporting its disciplinary records for foreign students or is not seriously policing its foreign students.”

    Glass said the move is almost certainly an attempt to work around the court injunction using executive powers rather than the visa bureaucracy. And making the issue about constitutional authority in the national security realm—rather than whether the proper SEVP decertification process was followed—could change the legal calculus in court.

    “That’s what’s going to set a precedent for generations,” Glass said. “Will the precedent of autonomy and academic freedom at Harvard win in the courts? Or will the precedent of national security powers for the government win the day?”

    (This story has been updated to correct the list of banned countries to include Republic of the Congo.)

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  • Education researchers lose to Trump administration in first round of court challenge

    Education researchers lose to Trump administration in first round of court challenge

    The courts have pushed back against much of President Donald Trump’s agenda, but he did win a small victory this week in a dispute with education researchers.

    On June 3, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., denied a request by four education research trade associations for a preliminary injunction, which means that the Education Department doesn’t have to temporarily reinstate fired employees and canceled contracts within its research and data arm, the Institute of Education Sciences.

    Researchers had hoped to return the research division to its pre-Trump status while the court takes time to decide the overall issue in the case, which is whether the Trump administration exceeded its executive authority in these mass firings and contract terminations. Now, the cuts in the research arm of the department will remain while the case proceeds. 

    Four education research groups (the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP), the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), the National Academy of Education (NAEd) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME)) are suing the Education Department because their federally funded studies, evaluations and surveys have been slashed and their access to data is slated to be curtailed. They also contend that historical data archives are at risk, along with future data quality. Their legal argument is that the cuts were arbitrary and capricious and they say that the Trump administration eliminated many activities that Congress requires by law.

    Related: Education researchers sue Trump administration, testing executive power

    U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden acknowledged that the “upheaval” at the Institute of Education Sciences is “understandably jarring for those who rely on studies and data produced by the Institute.” However, McFadden explained in a written opinion that the law that the researchers are using to sue the executive branch, the Administrative Procedure Act, was “never meant to be a bureaucratic windbreak insulating agencies from political gales.”

    “It is not this Court’s place to breathe life back into wide swathes of the Institute’s cancelled programs and then monitor the agency’s day-to-day statutory compliance,” McFadden wrote.

    In the opinion, McFadden noted that some of the researchers’ complaints, such as losing remote access to student data for research purposes, may be “ripe for standalone challenges,” but bundling all of their grievances together is a “losing gambit.”

    The ruling not only denied researchers the short-term remedy they sought but also cast doubt on the prospects of their overall case. “We are disappointed with and disagree with the Court’s decision, and are evaluating our next steps,” said Adam Pulver, an attorney at Public Citizen, a nonprofit advocacy organization representing two of the research organizations.

    A federal judge in Maryland is still considering a similar request to temporarily restore research-related cuts at the Education Department by two other education research groups. That suit, which also accuses the Trump administration of exceeding its executive power, was brought by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE). 

    Educators fighting the cuts have had one victory so far, in a separate case filed in federal district court in Boston. On May 22, U.S. District Judge Myong Joun ordered the Trump administration to reinstate 1,300 Education Department employees terminated in March. The Trump administration is challenging the decision, but the court said on June 4 that the Education Department couldn’t postpone rehiring everyone while the appeal works its way through the courts. This case was brought by two Massachusetts school districts, a teachers union and 21 Democratic attorneys general. 

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about education researchers suing the Trump administration was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

    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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  • Cut, Coerce, Control: What Trump Is Doing to U.S. Universities

    Cut, Coerce, Control: What Trump Is Doing to U.S. Universities

    The single biggest story in higher education for the first six months of this year, without a doubt, has been the Trump administration’s remarkable assault on science and universities. Arguably it’s the largest state-led assault on higher education institutions anywhere in the world since Mao and the cultural revolution.

    Billions of dollars already legally allocated to institutions have been stripped from them mainly, but not exclusively through the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Billions more are going to be cut permanently through the budget process. Individual institutions in particular, Harvard, have been threatened with a variety of punishments if they do not obey the administration’s wishes on DEI and the curriculum. International students are being deported and the government has mooted a variety of policies that would see international numbers decline sharply. Low income students are looking at major cuts to both loans and grants. And we’re only, as of this recording, 134 days into this administration’s term, still 1,327 less to go.

    With me today is a returning guest, Brendan Cantwell, from Michigan State University. He joined our show last fall to talk about what, based on his reading of the now notorious Project 2025, a Trump administration might do to higher education. And he was mostly right. Certainly he was more perspicacious than most actual higher education leaders, and so we thought just before we break for the summer, we’d invite him back on, not just to say, I told you so, but to help us understand both the strategies and tactics that the Trump administration is using and where the conflict might be headed next.

    Just one note, we recorded this on Wednesday, the 28th of May. Some things such as the state of the Trump Harvard battle have changed since then, so keep that in mind as you listen.

    And now, over to Brendan.

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.34 | Cut, Coerce, Control: What Trump Is Doing to U.S. Universities

    Transcript

    Alex Usher (AU): Brendan, let’s start with the big picture. We’re four months—and a week—into Trump’s presidency, with just over three and a half years to go. Let me see if I’ve got this right.

    He’s attacked the major granting agencies—NIH and NSF—and reduced direct funding to individual investigators, often on DEI grounds. He’s also cut overhead payments to universities. On top of that, he’s gone after specific institutions—Columbia, Harvard, and others—trying to pull their funding in ways that, frankly, seem completely illegal. The justification has ranged from their support for EDI to questionable claims of antisemitism or collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party.

    We’ve now got a budget moving through Congress that, as I understand it, takes an axe to the student loan and grant system. And just this week, the government appears to be targeting international students—starting with Harvard, and more broadly by ordering embassies to conduct social media checks before issuing student visas. Am I missing anything?

    Brendan Cantwell (BC): I’m not sure—there’s just been so much. It’s hard to keep up. There have been several executive orders, including ones targeting what we call Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. Others have touched on accreditation and a range of other topics.

    The thing about this administration is that so much is happening so quickly, and these actions are in various stages of implementation. Some are being held up in court, and with others, it’s not even clear how they’re supposed to be implemented. The president makes a proclamation, but then there’s this uncertainty: what does it actually mean in practice?

    Even for someone who spends a lot of time tracking this, it’s really difficult to stay on top of everything. But the overall thrust seems clear: the administration is using every mechanism it believes it controls—and some it probably doesn’t, legally—to pressure universities to align with the president’s agenda.

    That’s not just my interpretation. It’s actually a common talking point from the administration: if universities want funding, they ought to support the president’s goals. More broadly, there’s a clear effort to weaken the sector—to undermine its role as an independent political and cultural force that could challenge the president or the party.

    AU: I think Linda McMahon actually said exactly that earlier today—that universities are fine as long as they’re aligned with the president and the administration. So, I think you’ve done a good job explaining the through line across these various actions. But how coherent are those actions, really?

    Is this a well-oiled plan, where they expected to be at this point by month three or four? Or is it more like the tariff policies, where the president just thinks of something new each day and rolls it out on a whim?

    BC: I almost want to push back on the either/or framing. It’s definitely true that the president—and to some extent his top policy people and enforcers—are just throwing things at the wall. A lot of it is reactionary: this university defied me, so now I’m mad and I’m going to do something outrageous to show how much authority I have over them.

    So yes, there’s an erratic, incoherent aspect to it. The rationale for their actions shifts constantly: one day it’s antisemitism, the next it’s about violating a Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action, then it’s about foreign collaboration. The justification just keeps changing.

    But if you take a step back and look at the cumulative effect of what the administration is doing—getting universities to be more compliant, weakening their financial position, causing faculty and staff to lose their jobs—that broader objective is being advanced. And that’s exactly the kind of outcome that people like Chris Rufo, who claim to speak for the administration’s education policy, seem to be aiming for.

    So no, it’s not tactically precise—it’s not some kind of meticulously calibrated battle plan. But the overall strategy of flooding the sector with challenges is definitely happening.

    AU: I’ll come back to the strategy in a second, but let’s talk tactics. Do you get the sense that the Trump team is getting smarter in how it’s operating? That maybe they’ve been caught off guard a few times and are starting to adapt?

    I’m just thinking about what’s happened in the last week. First, they attacked Harvard—saying, essentially, “we’re getting rid of all your international students.” Then the court pushes back. But right away, the administration has a response: the court says, “No, you can’t do that,” and they immediately pivot to pulling individual scholarships or research grants for international students—ones that hadn’t already been cut.

    Then they go a step further, announcing cuts that apply not just to Harvard, but to all international students. Are they getting smarter, or not? I never had the sense this group was particularly good at learning, but maybe that’s changing?

    BC: Are they getting smarter? I’m not sure. Are they more determined? Yes. And I think the voices inside the administration that might have constrained the president’s impulses back in 2016 to 2020—those are gone now. He’s unconstrained. He’s persistent. And he and his senior policy advisors genuinely believe in what they’re doing. They’re committed to the project and they’re looking for ways to push it forward.

    Take the example you just mentioned: there’s an injunction—you can’t bar Harvard from enrolling international students, at least not before the courts weigh in. And the administration responds, “Fine. We’ll just create a new process to vet all international student visas.” So suddenly, they’re grinding the whole system to a halt.

    They’re absolutely more willing now to use tactics that are difficult to block—tactics that escalate the situation every time someone pushes back. And they’re building out those tactics in a way that moves them closer to their goals.

    That said, I don’t think their objectives are ever really precise or coherent. It’s more of a generalized impulse: they don’t like foreigners, they don’t like foreign students, they don’t like Harvard, they don’t like universities. So, they hit where it hurts—and this is one way to do it.

    Now, is that smart? Maybe more effective, yes. I’m not sure it serves the country, or even the president’s long-term agenda, in any meaningful way. But it’s definitely happening.

    AU: So let me turn to the Trump administration’s broader strategy. Last time you were on, we talked about Project 2025 and its implications for higher education. How closely do you think the White House’s actions over the past four months align with what was outlined in Project 2025? And by the way, this is your chance to say “I told you so.”

    BC: Yeah, I love to say “I told you so”—it’s one of my character flaws.

    A lot of what was in Project 2025 has now been implemented—or at least, versions of it have. Take the cap on indirect costs, for example. They’ve implemented a 15% cap, rather than the negotiated rates that were often quite a bit higher for individual campuses. Those rates sometimes raised eyebrows, especially among people unfamiliar with how the U.S. system works.

    And even the rhetoric is the same. They’ve said, essentially, “Marxist foundations only pay 15%, so why should we subsidize Marxist stuff?” That language comes directly from Project 2025.

    There are other examples, too. Many of the student loan reforms currently working their way through Congress have Project 2025 fingerprints on them. The executive order on DEI? Same thing. So yes, there are a lot of specific elements from the plan that are now showing up in policy.

    And beyond the specifics, the overall spirit of Project 2025 is clearly visible in the administration’s posture toward higher education.

    That said, there’s one key difference: Project 2025 envisioned a more active role for Congress and a more deliberative policymaking process than what we’re actually seeing. It assumed, at least implicitly, more checks on presidential power than the president has been willing to accept.

    So, while many of Project 2025’s ideas have been implemented—some fully, some partially—how long they last is still an open question. And ironically, the actual execution by the administration is in many ways less constrained, and possibly less lawful, than what Project 2025 originally proposed. That’s my impression, at least—as a non-lawyer.

    AU: We’ve been talking about the Trump administration. I want to shift now to the higher education sector. For most of February and part of March, the sector seemed… bewildered. Almost unable to process what was happening. It was like, “This must be a mistake—they can’t possibly mean that.”

    And as a result, I think the response was pretty slow. When the administration went after Columbia, which was the first institutional target, many universities seemed to instinctively say, “Let’s stay quiet. Maybe we’ll be spared.”

    You, and a few others, were pretty clear-eyed from the beginning about how this would unfold. Why didn’t university leaders see it coming? This feels like a colossal failure of imagination. What happened?

    BC: Let me start by offering a partial defense of university leaders.

    There are people like me—and others—who are pretty knowledgeable but also pessimistic. We say bad things are going to happen a lot, and often they don’t. During Trump’s first term, there was concern that a lot of his anti-higher-ed rhetoric would turn into policy. And in some ways, it did. But in many ways, it didn’t. Congress constrained him. The courts constrained him. Even people inside his administration held him back. And he also lost focus on higher ed.

    So, I think university leaders had some reason to believe that the best strategy was to remain quiet, lobby Congress, and let the courts do their work. That approach worked last time, so it wasn’t irrational to assume it might work again. It just took them some time to adjust to the new reality.

    Some of that delay is about individual cognitive response, which I’m not really qualified to speak to. But some of it is structural—university bureaucracies and associations take time to pivot. Shifting strategies isn’t easy.

    So yes, it’s fair to say the sector was caught flat-footed. And yes, leaders should have had a better sense of what was coming. That’s a valid critique. But once they figured out what was happening, I think the sector showed a fair amount of agility. Associations started taking a more aggressive posture. ACE, for instance, became part of the resistance—which I wouldn’t have predicted would happen so quickly.

    Universities are still trying to find their footing. And then you have Red State universities, which are really hemmed in by state legislatures. They’re facing a whole different set of challenges, apart from what’s coming out of the federal administration. Those institutions are in a very tough spot.

    AU: What does it say about American higher education that Harvard has become ground zero for the resistance?

    BC: Full credit to Harvard—absolutely.

    Here’s my hedge: they had the benefit of seeing what happened to Columbia. That experience showed there was no good-faith negotiation to be had with this administration.

    In some ways, it makes strategic sense for Trump to pick on Harvard. It’s not the most lovable institution. It’s a big, juicy target.

    But at the same time, it’s also kind of foolish. Harvard has enormous resources—financial, social, institutional. They have more capacity to fight back than almost any other institution in the country.

    I think they recognized what Columbia’s experience revealed: if you give in to this administration, institutional autonomy is gone—possibly for a long time.

    If Harvard wants to preserve the American establishment—which it’s often accused of doing, by reproducing elite institutions and elite classes—then it has to resist Trump. That resistance is a condition of preserving the pre-Trump order.

    So yes, it’s good and necessary that Harvard is doing this. But I wouldn’t interpret this as Harvard becoming some scrappy underdog street fighter. It’s simply one of the few institutions with the resources and standing to try to defend the old order.

    AU: What about going forward, though? I mean, I hear more institutions—maybe not acting, but at least sounding like they understand they all have to hang together, or they’ll hang separately. But will they?

    I mean, take the University of Michigan on DEI—they folded like Superman on laundry day. Part of that was probably about Santa Ono’s personal ambitions. But there are a lot of institutions, both public and private, that have already bent the knee at least once.

    How do you come back from that? And can it really be done through the courts alone? Because right now, it’s all being held up by temporary restraining orders. And as you’ve said, that doesn’t provide clarity. Eventually, these cases are going to have to go up to the Supreme Court—where, incidentally, four or five justices are Harvard alums. Whatever else they believe, they might have some interest in preserving these institutions.

    How do you see the resistance evolving over the next few months?

    BC: I’d be disingenuous if I told you I know exactly how this is going to play out.

    AU: Best guess.

    BC: I think the strategy for the sector is to try to win where it can in the courts, and hope the administration abides by those rulings—which, honestly, is a real concern at this point.

    And then also to behave like a school of fish: move together, so it becomes difficult to single out and take down any one institution.

    The hope is that they can wait the president out—that the administration will shift its focus to something else, burn through its energy on attacks, and that most of the sector will remain intact enough to keep operating.

    And then, when that moment comes, institutions can manage the fallout: the indirect consequences like how states deal with a recession if healthcare or food assistance burdens shift onto them, or the winding down of research operations as the pool of available grant funding shrinks.

    I think the approach is: keep your head down, don’t explicitly cave, and hope the administration moves on. It’s probably the best available strategy right now.

    But I don’t know if it will work. If the administration manages to keep its attention fixed on higher education and maintains this pace of attacks and cuts, then it’s going to be very difficult for large parts of the sector to emerge unscathed.

    AU: You mentioned at the beginning of the interview an executive order related to accreditation. We haven’t talked about that yet, and I think some people see that as the sleeper issue—not necessarily for the big, wealthy private institutions, but for the vast majority of colleges and universities.

    Changes to the U.S. accreditation system could have huge implications. What’s been happening on that front so far? What’s actually in that executive order, and what could these changes mean for institutional autonomy and academic freedom?

    BC: Most of the executive orders from this administration, it’s not exactly clear what it does. It directs the Secretary of Education—who, by the way, has also been tasked with dismantling the Department of Education, so there’s that contradiction to hold in your mind.

    AU: But she’s still the Secretary. I saw her today.

    BC: Yes, she’s still there.

    So, this order directs her to collaborate with new accreditors and to open up competition in accreditation. The stated goal is to “foster innovation” and “rein in the accreditation cartel”—that’s the language they use. They frame current accreditors as promoters of Marxist, DEI, anti-Semitic, or otherwise ideologically objectionable agendas. It’s a jumble of terms, but it signals their intent.

    There are really two key elements here. First, increasing competition among accreditors. That means recognizing accreditors that wouldn’t have been approved under a Democratic administration—and maybe not even under many Republican ones. These would be organizations willing to give the stamp of approval to short-term or for-profit programs that don’t meet U.S. or international best practices for educational quality. If I were being snarky, I’d call them scammer programs.

    Second, they could use accreditation as a way to impose standards that align with the president’s political agenda. For example, they might require changes to how campuses regulate student conduct, admissions policies, or even faculty hiring practices. They could try to use accreditation to reach into curriculum—mandating, say, a general education requirement focused on Western Civilization or other ideologically favored content.

    Accreditation is the clearest vehicle they have to influence what’s taught and how institutions operate. But these kinds of changes take time and require more methodical planning—something this administration has been less consistent about, as we’ve discussed.

    So, we’ll see what happens. But it’s definitely something to keep an eye on over the next couple of years. If universities are already weakened by all the other pressures—funding cuts, legal battles, political attacks—they may be less able to resist a fundamental restructuring of the accreditation system.

    AU: The sector’s had a lot thrown at it over the last four months. But looking ahead—have we seen the end of all this sabotage innovation, so to speak? Is there more coming? We talked about Project 2025 a little earlier. Is there anything in there that hasn’t been used against the sector yet? What should we be even more worried about?

    BC: I’m not sure there’s any one Project 2025 policy I’d point to and say, “watch out for that specifically.” But a couple of things are worth keeping an eye on.

    One would be if the administration attempts to block institutions—or even groups of institutions, or the entire country—from accessing federal student financial aid. That’s Title IV under the Higher Education Act. If they were to go after Title IV the same way they’ve unilaterally blocked access to research grants or are now targeting international students, that would be hugely disruptive. It’s a big, coercive lever. They could do a lot of damage with it.

    The other thing to watch is the relationship between federal and state policy. We’re already seeing red states passing legislation that mirrors or reinforces the Trump administration’s higher ed agenda. Utah, for example, just passed a bill where institutions face a big cut to their appropriations—unless they agree to evaluate and cut programs the state deems nonessential.

    And even individual boards of governors, particularly in Republican-dominated states, are taking it upon themselves to implement Trump-aligned policies. I think we might be seeing that at the University of North Carolina, for instance, where no one outside of the health sciences has received tenure in the past year. We don’t know exactly what’s going on, but it certainly looks like the board is using its technical authority to enact the administration’s broader political agenda. So those are the kinds of developments to watch.

    AU: Brendan, best of luck—and thanks for joining us.

    BC: Thanks very much, Alex. Always a pleasure to be here.

    AU: That just leaves me to thank our excellent producers—Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek—and you, our viewers, listeners, and readers, for joining us. If you have any questions or comments about today’s podcast, or suggestions for future episodes, don’t hesitate to reach out at [email protected]. Run—don’t walk—to our YouTube page and subscribe. That way, you’ll never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education Podcast. Join us next week for what will be our final episode before the summer break. Our special guest? Me. Tiffany will be turning the tables and peppering me with questions about higher education in Canada and internationally during the first half of 2025. I’ll do my best to make it all sound coherent. Bye for now.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.

    This episode is sponsored by KnowMeQ. ArchieCPL is the first AI-enabled tool that massively streamlines credit for prior learning evaluation. Toronto based KnowMeQ makes ethical AI tools that boost and bottom line, achieving new efficiencies in higher ed and workforce upskilling. 

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  • A Twilight Zone Warning for the Trump Era and the Age of AI

    A Twilight Zone Warning for the Trump Era and the Age of AI

    Rod Serling’s classic 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone, “The Obsolete Man,” offers a timeless meditation on authoritarianism, conformity, and the erasure of humanity. In it, a quiet librarian, Romney Wordsworth (played by Burgess Meredith), is deemed “obsolete” by a dystopian state for believing in books and God—symbols of individual thought and spiritual meaning. Condemned by a totalitarian chancellor and scheduled for execution, Wordsworth calmly exposes the cruelty and contradictions of the regime, ultimately reclaiming his dignity by refusing to bow to tyranny.

    Over 60 years later, “The Obsolete Man” feels less like fiction and more like a documentary. The Trump era, supercharged by the rise of artificial intelligence and a war on truth, has brought Serling’s chilling parable into sharper focus.

    The Authoritarian Impulse

    President Donald Trump’s presidency—and his ongoing influence—has been marked by a deep antagonism toward democratic institutions, intellectual life, and perceived “elites.” Journalists were labeled “enemies of the people.” Scientists and educators were dismissed or silenced. Books were banned in schools and libraries, and curricula were stripped of “controversial” topics like systemic racism or gender identity.

    Like the chancellor in The Obsolete Man, Trump and his allies seek not just to discredit dissenters but to erase their very legitimacy. In this worldview, librarians, teachers, and independent thinkers are expendable. What matters is loyalty to the regime, conformity to its ideology, and performance of power.

    Wordsworth’s crime—being a librarian and a believer—is mirrored in real-life purges of professionals deemed out of step with a hardline political agenda. Public educators and college faculty who challenge reactionary narratives have been targeted by state legislatures, right-wing activists, and billionaire-backed think tanks. In higher education, departments of the humanities are being defunded or eliminated entirely. Faculty governance is undermined. The university, once a space for critical inquiry, is increasingly treated as an instrument for ideological control—or as a business to be stripped for parts.

    The Age of AI and the Erasure of the Human

    While authoritarianism silences the human spirit, artificial intelligence threatens to replace it. AI tools, now embedded in everything from hiring algorithms to classroom assessments, are reshaping how knowledge is produced, disseminated, and controlled. In the rush to adopt these technologies, questions about ethics, bias, and human purpose are often sidelined.

    AI systems do not “believe” in anything. They do not feel awe, doubt, or moral anguish. They calculate, replicate, and optimize. In the hands of authoritarian regimes or profit-driven institutions, AI becomes a tool not of liberation, but of surveillance, censorship, and disposability. Workers are replaced. Students are reduced to data points. Librarians—like Wordsworth—are no longer needed in a world where books are digitized and curated by opaque algorithms.

    This is not merely a future problem. It’s here. Algorithms already determine who gets hired, who receives financial aid, and which students are flagged as “at risk.” Predictive policing, automated grading, and AI-generated textbooks are not the stuff of science fiction. They are reality. And those who question their fairness or legitimacy risk being labeled as backwards, inefficient—obsolete.

    A Culture of Disposability

    At the heart of “The Obsolete Man” is a question about value: Who decides what is worth keeping? In Trump’s America and in the AI-driven economy, people are judged by their utility to the system. If you’re not producing profit, performing loyalty, or conforming to power, you can be cast aside.

    This is especially true for the working class, contingent academics, and the so-called “educated underclass”—a growing population of debt-laden degree holders trapped in precarious jobs or no jobs at all. Their degrees are now questioned, their labor devalued, and their futures uncertain. They are told that if they can’t “pivot” or “reskill” for the next technological shift, they too may be obsolete.

    The echoes of The Twilight Zone are deafening.

    Resistance and Redemption

    Yet, as Wordsworth demonstrates in his final moments, resistance is possible. Dignity lies in refusing to surrender the soul to the machine—or the regime. In his quiet defiance, Wordsworth forces the chancellor to confront his own cowardice, exposing the hollow cruelty of the system.

    In our time, that resistance takes many forms: educators who continue to teach truth despite political pressure; librarians who fight book bans; whistleblowers who challenge surveillance technologies; and students who organize for justice. These acts of courage and conscience remind us that obsolescence is not a matter of utility—it’s a judgment imposed by those in power, and it can be rejected.

    Rod Serling ended his episode with a reminder: “Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man—that state is obsolete.”

    The question now is whether we will heed the warning. In an age where authoritarianism and AI threaten to render us all obsolete, will we remember what it means to be human?

    The Higher Education Inquirer welcomes responses and reflections on how pop culture can illuminate our present crises. Contact us with your thoughts or your own essay proposals.

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  • Week in review: Trump administration targets Chinese student visas

    Week in review: Trump administration targets Chinese student visas

    Most clicked-on story from last week: 

    House Republicans passed — by one vote — a massive spending bill backed by President Donald Trump with heavy implications for higher education. Among other proposals, it would raise and expand the endowment tax, introduce a risk-sharing program that would put colleges on the hook for unpaid student debt, nix subsidized loans and narrow eligibility for Pell Grants. Many expect the Senate to make changes to the bill.

    Number of the week

     

    7

    That’s how many regional branch campuses Pennsylvania State University is set to close after a 25-8 vote by its trustee board. The plan will pare down the university’s commonwealth campuses to 13 to cope with demographic declines and budget pressure. Detractors said the decision was made too hastily, ignored some campuses’ recent progress and could hurt the state’s rural areas.

    Trump administration updates:

    • The Trump administration aims to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students” while ramping up scrutiny and changing criteria for student visa applications from China and Hong Kong, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday. With nearly 278,000 students from China studying in the U.S. during the 2023-24 academic year, the move could have a steep impact on U.S. colleges.
    • Sixteen states sued the National Science Foundation over the agency’s 15% cap on indirect research costs and its mass termination of grants related to diversity, equity and other topics. The states’ colleges “will not be able to maintain essential research infrastructure and will be forced to significantly scale back or halt research, abandon numerous projects, and lay off staff,” plaintiffs said in their complaint. 
    • The Trump administration plans to cut Harvard University’s remaining federal contracts, amounting to about $100 million. An official with the U.S. General Services Administration cited what he alleged was “Harvard’s lack of commitment to nondiscrimination and our national values and priorities.” The salvo is the latest in the federal government’s escalating battle with the Ivy League institution. 

    Texas legislators look to tighten control of colleges:

    • The Texas House approved a bill that would give the state’s regents — who are appointed by the governor — the power to recommend required courses at public colleges and to reject courses deemed too biased or ideological. Regents would also gain approval authority over the hiring of administrators. 
    • Another bill approved by the House would limit where and how students can protest on campuses. The Texas House and Senate are working to resolve their differences over the bill, according to The Texas Tribune. 

    Quote of the week:

    “There’s a bit of anxiousness among accreditors and institutions and state legislators because of the uncertainty. Is it that they are intentionally being vague or general until they can work out all of the nuances of the policies that they want to implement? I can tell you, less is not more in this situation.”

    That’s Cynthia Jackson Hammond, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, on the effects of Trump’s executive order on college accreditation.

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  • A South Dakota museum takes students on flights to the stars, but future trips are in question because of cuts from the Trump administration cuts

    A South Dakota museum takes students on flights to the stars, but future trips are in question because of cuts from the Trump administration cuts

    HAYTI, S.D. — “Are we actually in space?”

    The kindergartners of South Dakota’s Hamlin County are, in fact, in space. To be specific, they are on planet Earth, near the geographic center of North America, sitting crisscross applesauce inside an 11-foot-high inflatable planetarium set up in their school gym.

    The darkness is velvety. Childish whispers skitter around the dome like mice. The kids are returning from a short mission to Jupiter, piloted by Kristine Heinen, a young museum educator with a ponytail who knows how to make her voice BIG AND EXCITED and then inviting and quiet to hold little ones’ attention. 

    “Now we’re over China!” Heinen says.

    “My friend went to China!” a girl calls out.

    “The other side is nighttime and this side’s bright,” expounds a boy with a crew cut. “The sun shines here so it can’t shine over there.“

    The school is in eastern South Dakota, 34 miles northeast of the settlement where Laura Ingalls Wilder grew up and attended a one-room schoolhouse. The sprawling Hamlin Education Center is a modern-day analogue, serving an entire district in one building, with just under 900 students, pre-K through 12. Notable graduates include U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the former governor of South Dakota.

    The center is roughly equidistant from four tiny towns, surrounded by open fields where cornstalks shine in the sun; 95 percent of students arrive by bus, from up to 20 miles away. Over a third of them qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, said Dustin Blaha, the elementary school’s principal.

    • Hamlin Elementary students line up for their turn visiting a traveling planetarium sponsored by the South Dakota Discovery Center. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report
    • During the planetarium’s daylong visit to the small community of Hayti, S.D., an educator from the South Dakota Discovery Center wowed 500 elementary school students with a presentation about the planets and stars. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report
    • Many Hamlin Elementary haven’t had a chance to visit the South Dakota Discovery Center in Pierre three hours away, so the museum brings traveling exhibits like a portable planetarium to them. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report

    Blaha said that most of these children have never been to the South Dakota Discovery Center, a hands-on science museum three hours west in the state capital. But thanks to a federal agency called the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a part of the museum can come to them.

    The IMLS was established in 1996, combining previously separate programs. The small agency became the largest source of federal funding for museums and libraries, last year awarding $266.7 million in program grants, research and policy development across all 50 states. IMLS awarded the South Dakota Discovery Center about $45,000 in 2023 to upgrade this traveling planetarium.

    But students around the state may be waiting a long time for the next upgrade.

    Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order in mid-March calling for the agency to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” Mass firings followed.

    On May 1, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., issued a temporary restraining order to block the agency’s dismantling, followed on May 6 by a second federal judge finding the dismantling of this and two other agencies unconstitutional. On May 20, the American Library Association reported that employees are returning to work and some grants have been restored.

    But the administration is continuing its legal battle to all but shutter the IMLS. The latest post on the agency’s Instagram account is captioned, “The era of using your taxpayer dollars to fund DEI grants is OVER,” holding up for criticism grants that were aimed at addressing systemic racism in museums, equitable library practices, and diverse staff development. The IMLS and the Department of Government Efficiency did not respond to requests for comment.

    A veteran of the agency who asked to remain anonymous because of fear of reprisal said they first saw DOGE staffers meeting with leadership on March 28. “On the 31st, we were put on administrative leave. We had about two hours to turn in your key cards, your ID, get everything off your laptop you’re ever going to need. We were locked out of our computer systems by 3:30 and told to get out of the building.” A skeleton crew was hastily rehired the next day.

    The ex-staffer points out that the Institute of Museum and Library Services spends, or spent, just 7 percent of its budget on its 70 staff, passing the rest along as grants. “We are not a bloated agency.” They have two kids at home, one with special needs and are married to another federal employee whose job is also at risk; but they are almost as worried about their grantees as themselves.

    “After 20 years, I didn’t even get to put an out-of-office response up. Is someone emailing me right now and getting nothing, because all of a sudden their grant just ended? I hate that,” the former IMLS employee said. 

    Almost all grants awarded required a one-to-one cost share out of the local institution’s budget, the staffer said. Plus, typically the grantees pay for activities first and then apply to get reimbursed. “We’re leaving these often small rural museums and libraries on the hook.”

    Related: Facing declines in reading proficiency, rural libraries step in

    Anne Lewis, executive director of the South Dakota Discovery Center, said that organizations like hers would be “wobbly” without federal funding and would have to scale back on ambitious programs like the planetarium upgrade.

    “The new system has much better interaction and control,” said Heinen, the museum educator. An earlier version had a static point of view, but upgraded visual effects means that “now we have spaceship mode,” she said. “We can travel to destinations including planets, and go in a full 360-degree mode around galaxies.”

    With a flick of the touchscreen menu, she can also display the constellations of a dozen different cultures including Lakota, a significant benefit especially when she visits tribal schools.

    The South Dakota Discovery Center, based in Pierre, has used federal support from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to pay for a traveling planetarium exhibit. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report

    It’s a lean operation: Heinen drove solo nearly 200 miles from Pierre to Watertown the evening before and spent the night at an Econo Lodge. From there, it was another 20-some miles to Hayti, where she arrived at 7:30 in the morning, set up the dome herself, and ran 30-minute programs all day.

    The whole elementary school, about 500 kids in total, saw the planetarium, with each show customized to the children’s interest and grade level; and she also conducted a parent engagement program in the afternoon. Heinen said she never tires of being a “Santa Claus” for science. ”As soon as they see me, they know something fun is going to happen.”

    During this visit, the fan favorites were Jupiter, Mars and the sun. “It was cool when we went to Mars,” said Nash Christensen, 6. “And the volcano on that one moon, and the big hurricane on Jupiter. I think Jupiter is a dangerous place to live.”

    Grant recipients of the Institute of Museum and Library Services say the support from the federal government has been critical to running their programs. For example, the Boston Children’s Museum, the second-oldest children’s museum in the country, has used federal grant money to improve school readiness. One of the outcomes was a new exhibit in the museum, “Countdown to Kindergarten,” that mimics a kindergarten classroom, complete with a school bus you can sit in out front.

    “It’s helpful not only for the kids, but some of our caregivers who came from other countries and may not have gone to a school like this,” said Melissa Higgins, the museum’s vice president of programs and exhibits.

    Related: Tracking Trump: His actions to dismantle the Education Department, and more

    At the Madison Children’s Museum in Wisconsin, federal funds paid for a multistate partnership that provides climate education for young children and their families. In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a grant covered five “STEMobiles,” which offer hands-on science activities for children ages 3-5 in low-income parts of Broward County. The Philadelphia School District won a two-year planning grant to try to improve its pipeline of school librarians; they were down to only a handful for a district of 200,000 students.

    But the greatest impact may come in rural, often deep-red areas.

    “Rural communities have particularly unique challenges,” said Lewis at the South Dakota Discovery Center. “There’s 800,000 people in the state, and they’re dispersed. We don’t have a concentration of funders and donors who can help support these enrichment activities.”

    She said the teachers she serves are “passionate, committed and, like every other place in the world, underfunded.” If not for institutions like hers, students would probably go without this kind of hands-on science experience, she said.

    Blaha, the elementary school principal, concurred. “The planetarium brings excitement and expertise that we don’t typically have in a community like this,” he said.

    For now, the excitement is coming to an end. The class has “landed” on a green lawn, under a deep blue sky. Heinen announces “It’s time to leave.” She’s met with a chorus of, “Noo!”

    “You guys, we were in here for a full 30 minutes.”

    “It felt like 10!”

    “It felt like a second!”

    Tonight, many of them will be able to look up at the dark sky over the prairie and show their parents Jupiter, Ursa Major and Mars. 

    Contact the editor of this story, Christina Samuels, at 212-678-3635 via Signal at cas.37 or [email protected].

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

    Join us today.



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  • Australia poised to poach students, academics as Trump “aggressively revokes” Chinese visas – Campus Review

    Australia poised to poach students, academics as Trump “aggressively revokes” Chinese visas – Campus Review

    The future of Australians studying at American universities is in limbo after the Trump administration ordered a pause on new student visa approvals and is actively cancelling Chinese student visas.

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  • Another Casualty of Trump Research Cuts? California Students Who Want To Be Scientists – The 74

    Another Casualty of Trump Research Cuts? California Students Who Want To Be Scientists – The 74


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    This spring, the National Institutes of Health quietly began terminating programs at scores of colleges that prepared promising undergraduate and graduate students for doctoral degrees in the sciences.

    At least 24 University of California and California State University campuses lost training grants that provided their students with annual stipends of approximately $12,000 or more, as well as partial tuition waivers and travel funds to present research at science conferences. The number of affected programs is likely higher, as the NIH would not provide CalMatters a list of all the cancelled grants.

    Cal State San Marcos, a campus in north San Diego County with a high number of low-income learners, is losing four training grants worth about $1.8 million per year. One of the grants, now called U-RISE, had been awarded to San Marcos annually since 2001. San Marcos students with U-RISE stipends were often able to forgo part-time jobs, which allowed them to concentrate on research and building the skills needed for a doctoral degree.

    The cuts add to the hundreds of millions of dollars of grants the agency has cancelled since President Donald Trump took office for a second term.

    To find California campuses that lost training grants, CalMatters looked up known training grants in the NIH search tool to see if those grants were still active. If the grant’s award number leads to a broken link, that grant is dead, a notice on another NIH webpage says.

    The NIH web pages for the grants CalMatters looked up, including U-RISE, are no longer accessible. Some campuses, including San Marcos, Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Los Angeles and UC Davis, have updated their own websites to state that the NIH has ended doctoral pathway grants.

    “We’re losing an entire generation of scholars who wouldn’t have otherwise gone down these pathways without these types of programs,” said Richard Armenta, a professor of kinesiology at San Marcos and the associate director of the campus’s Center for Training, Research, and Educational Excellence that operates the training grants.

    At San Marcos, 60 students who were admitted into the center lost grants with stipends, partial tuition waivers and money to travel to scientific conferences to present their findings.

    From loving biology to wanting a doctoral degree

    Before the NIH terminations, Marisa Mendoza, a San Marcos undergraduate, received two training grants. As far back as middle school, Mendoza’s favorite subjects were biology and chemistry.

    To save money, she attended Palomar College, a nearby community college where she began to train as a nurse. She chose that major because it would allow her to focus on the science subjects she loved. But soon Mendoza realized she wanted to do research rather than treat patients.

    At Palomar, an anatomy professor introduced her to the NIH-funded Bridges to the Baccalaureate, a training grant for community college students to earn a bachelor’s and pursue advanced degrees in science and medicine.

    “I didn’t even know what grad school was at the time,” she said. Neither of her parents finished college.

    The Bridges program connected her to Cal State San Marcos, where she toured different labs to find the right fit. At the time she was in a microbiology course and found a lab focused on bacteria populations in the nearby coastal enclaves. The lab was putting into practice what she was learning in the abstract. She was hooked.

    “It just clicked, like me being able to do this, it came very easily to me, and it was just something that I came to be very passionate about as I was getting more responsibility in the lab,” Mendoza said.

    Marisa Mendoza, right, and Camila Valderrama-Martínez, left, get ready to demonstrate how they use lab equipment for their research work at Cal State San Marcos on May 6, 2025. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

    From Palomar she was admitted as a transfer student to San Marcos and more selective campuses, including UCLA and UC San Diego. She chose San Marcos, partly to live at home but also because she loved her lab and wanted to continue her research.

    She enrolled at San Marcos last fall and furthered her doctoral journey by receiving the U-RISE grant. It was supposed to fund her for two years. The NIH terminated the grant March 31, stripping funds from 20 students.

    For a school like San Marcos, where more than 40% of students are low-income enough to receive federal financial aid called Pell grants, the loss of the NIH training awards is a particular blow to the aspiring scientists.

    The current climate of doctoral admissions is “definitely at a point where one needs prior research experience to be able to be competitive for Ph.D. programs,” said Elinne Becket, a professor of biological sciences at Cal State San Marcos who runs the microbial ecology lab where Mendoza and other students hone their research for about 15 hours a week.

    San Marcos doesn’t have much money to replace its lost grants, which means current and future San Marcos students will “100%” have a harder time entering a doctoral program, Becket added. “It keeps me up at night.”

    Research is ‘a missing piece’

    In a typical week in Becket’s lab, Mendoza will drive to a nearby wetland or cove to retrieve water samples — part of an ongoing experiment to investigate how microbial changes in the ecosystem are indications of increased pollution in sea life and plants. Sometimes she’ll wear a wetsuit and wade into waters a meter deep.

    The next day she’ll extract the DNA from bacteria in her samples and load those into a sequencing machine. The sequencer, which resembles a small dishwasher, packs millions or billions of pieces of DNA onto a single chip that’s then run through a supercomputer a former graduate student built.

    “Once I found research, it was like a missing piece,” Mendoza, a Pell grant recipient, said through tears during an interview at Cal State Marcos. Research brought her joy and consumed her life “in the best way,” she added. “It’s really unfortunate that people who are so deserving of these opportunities don’t get to have these opportunities.”

    A side-view of a person looking down at a piece of tissue as tears stream down their face.
    Student Marisa Mendoza gets emotional while she speaks about her research at Cal State San Marcos on May 6, 2025. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

    The origins of the San Marcos training center date back to 2002. Through it, more than 160 students have either earned or are currently pursuing doctoral degrees at a U.S. university.

    The grant terminations have been emotionally wrenching. “There had been so many tears in my household that my husband got me a puppy,” said Denise Garcia, the director of the center and a professor of biological sciences.

    Garcia recalls that in March she was checking a digital chat group on Slack with many other directors of U-RISE grants when suddenly the message board lit up with updates that their grants were gone. At least 63 schools across the country lost their grants, NIH data show.

    In the past four years of its U-RISE grant the center has reported to the NIH that 83% of its students entered a doctoral program. That exceeds the campus’s grant goal, which was 65% entering doctoral programs.

    Mendoza is grateful: She was one of two students to win a campus scholarship that’ll defray much, but not all, of the costs of attending school after losing her NIH award. That, plus a job at a pharmacy on weekends, may provide enough money to complete her bachelor’s next year.

    Others are unsure how they’ll afford college while maintaining a focus on research in the next school year.

    Student Camila Valderrama-Martínez in a lab at Cal State San Marcos on May 6, 2025. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

    “You work so hard to put yourself in a position where you don’t have to worry, and then that’s taken away from you,” said Camila Valderrama-Martínez, a first-year graduate student at San Marcos who also earned her bachelor’s there and works in the same lab as Mendoza. She was in her first year of receiving the Bridges to the Doctorate grant meant for students in master’s programs who want to pursue a biomedical-focused doctoral degree. The grant came with a stipend of $26,000 annually for two years plus a tuition waiver of 60% and money to attend conferences.

    She can get a job, but that “takes away time from my research and my time in lab and focusing on my studies and my thesis.” She relies solely on federal financial aid to pay for school and a place to live. Getting loans, often anathema for students, seems like her only recourse. “It’s either that or not finish my degree,” she said.

    Terminated NIH grants in detail

    These grant cancellations are separate from other cuts at the NIH since Trump took office in January, including multi-million-dollar grants for vaccine and disease research. They’re also on top of an NIH plan to dramatically reduce how much universities receive from the agency to pay for maintaining labs, other infrastructure and labor costs that are essential for campus research. California’s attorney general has joined other states led by Democrats in suing the Trump administration to halt and reverse those cuts.

    In San Marcos’ case, the latest U-RISE grant lasted all five years, but it wasn’t renewed for funding, even though the application received a high score from an NIH grant committee.

    Armenta, the associate director at the Cal State San Marcos training center, recalled that his NIH program officer said that though nothing is certain, he and his team should be “cautiously optimistic that you would be funded again given your score.” That was in January. Weeks later, NIH discontinued the program.

    He and Garcia shared the cancellation letters they received from NIH. Most made vague references to changes in NIH’s priorities. However, one letter for a specific grant program cited a common reason why the agency has been cancelling funding: “It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize research programs related to Diversity (sic), equity, and inclusion.”

    That’s a departure from the agency’s emphasis on developing a diverse national cadre of scientists. As recently as February, the application page for that grant said “there are many benefits that flow from a diverse scientific workforce.”

    Future of doctoral programs unclear

    Josue Navarrete graduated this spring from Cal State San Marcos with a degree in computer science. Unlike the other students interviewed for this story, Navarrete, who uses they/them pronouns, was able to complete both years of their NIH training grant and worked in Becket’s lab.

    But because of the uncertain climate as the Trump administration attempts to slash funding, Vanderbilt University, which placed Navarrete on a waitlist for a doctoral program, ultimately denied them admission because the university program had to shrink its incoming class, they said. Later, Navarrete met a professor from Vanderbilt at a conference who agreed to review their application. The professor said in any other year, Navarrete would have been admitted.

    The setback was heartbreaking.

    A person -- with short black hair and wearing a black jacket and green shirt, leans against a light brown concrete column while looking straight into the camera.
    Josue Navarrete at the Cal State San Marcos campus on May 6, 2025. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

    “I’m gripping so hard to stay in research,” Navarrete said. With doctoral plans delayed, they received a job offer from Epic, a large medical software company, but turned it down. “They wanted me to be handling website design and mobile applications, and that’s cool. It’s not for me.”

    Valderrama-Martinez cited Navarrete’s story as she wondered whether doctoral programs at universities will have space for her next year. “I doubt in a year things are going to be better,” she said.

    She still looks forward to submitting her applications.

    So does Mendoza. She wants to study microbiology — the research bug that bit her initially and brought her to San Marcos. Eventually she hopes to land at a private biotech firm and work in drug development.

    “Of course I’m gonna get a Ph.D., because that just means I get to do research,” she said.

    This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.


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  • Trump cuts could expose student data to cyber threats

    Trump cuts could expose student data to cyber threats

    When hackers hit a school district, they can expose Social Security numbers, home addresses, and even disability and disciplinary records. Now, cybersecurity advocates warn that the Trump administration’s budget and personnel cuts, along with rule changes, are stripping away key defenses that schools need.

    “Cyberattacks on schools are escalating and just when we need federal support the most, it’s being pulled away,” said Keith Krueger, chief executive officer of the Consortium for School Networking, an association of technology officials in K-12 schools. 

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    The stakes are high. Schools are a top target in ransomware attacks, and cyber criminals have sometimes succeeded in shutting down whole school districts. The largest such incident occurred in December, when hackers stole personal student and teacher data from PowerSchool, a company that runs student information systems and stores report cards. The theft included data from more than 60 million students and almost 10 million teachers. PowerSchool paid an undisclosed ransom, but the criminals didn’t stop. Now, in a second round of extortion, the same cyber criminals are demanding ransoms from school districts.  

    The federal government has been stepping up efforts to help schools, particularly since a 2022 cyberattack on the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest. Now this urgently needed assistance is under threat. 

    Warning service

    Of chief concern is a cybersecurity service known as MS-ISAC, which stands for Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. It warns more than 5,700 schools around the country that have signed up for the service about malware and other threats and recommends security patches. This technical service is free to schools, but is funded by an annual congressional appropriation of $27 million through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security.

    On March 6, the Trump administration announced a $10 million funding cut as part of broader budget and staffing cuts throughout CISA. That was ultimately negotiated down to $8.3 million, but the service still lost more than half of its remaining $15.7 budget for the year. The non-profit organization that runs it, the Center for Internet Services, is digging into its reserves to keep it operating. But those funds are expected to run out in the coming weeks, and it is unclear how the service will continue operating without charging user fees to schools. 

    “Many districts don’t have the budget or resources to do this themselves, so not having access to the no cost services we offer is a big issue,” said Kelly Lynch Wyland, a spokeswoman for the Center for Internet Services.  

    Sharing threat information

    Another concern is the effective disbanding of the Government Coordinating Council, which helps schools address ransomware attacks and other threats through policy advice, including how to respond to ransom requests, whom to inform when an attack happens and good practices for preventing attacks. This coordinating council was formed only a year ago by the Department of Education and CISA. It brings together 13 nonprofit school organizations representing superintendents, state education leaders, technology officers and others. The council met frequently after the PowerSchool data breach to share information. 

    Now, amid the second round of extortions, school leaders have not been able to meet because of a change in rules governing open meetings. The group was originally exempt from meeting publicly because it was discussing critical infrastructure threats. But the Department of Homeland Security, under the Trump administration, reinstated open meeting rules for certain advisory committees, including this one. That makes it difficult to speak frankly about efforts to thwart criminal activity.

    Non-governmental organizations are working to resurrect the council, but it would be in a diminished form without government participation.

    “The FBI really comes in when there’s been an incident to find out who did it, and they have advice on whether you should pay or not pay your ransom,” said Krueger of the school network consortium. 

    A federal role

    A third concern is the elimination in March of the education Department’s Office of Educational Technology. This seven-person office dealt with education technology policies — including cybersecurity. It issued cybersecurity guidance to schools and held webinars and meetings to explain how schools could improve and shore up their defenses. It also ran a biweekly meeting to talk about K-12 cybersecurity across the Education Department, including offices that serve students with disabilities and English learners. 

    Eliminating this office has hampered efforts to decide which security controls, such as encryption or multi-factor authentication, should be in educational software and student information systems. 

    Many educators worry that without this federal coordination, student privacy is at risk. “My biggest concern is all the data that’s up in the cloud,” said Steve Smith, the founder of the Student Data Privacy Consortium and the former chief information officer for Cambridge Public Schools in Massachusetts. “Probably 80 to 90 percent of student data isn’t on school-district controlled services. It’s being shared with ed tech providers and hosted on their information systems.”

    Security controls

    “How do we ensure that those third-party providers are providing adequate security against breaches and cyber attacks?” said Smith. “The office of ed tech was trying to bring people together to move toward an agreed upon national standard. They weren’t going to mandate a data standard, but there were efforts to bring people together and start having conversations about the expected minimum controls.”

    That federal effort ended, Smith said, with the new administration. But his consortium is still working on it. 

    In an era when policymakers are seeking to decrease the federal government’s involvement in education, arguing for a centralized, federal role may not be popular. But there’s long been a federal role for student data privacy, including making sure that school employees don’t mishandle and accidentally expose students’ personal information. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, commonly known as FERPA, protects student data. The Education Department continues to provide technical assistance to schools to comply with this law. Advocates for school cybersecurity say that the same assistance is needed to help schools prevent and defend against cyber crimes.

    “We don’t expect every town to stand up their own army to protect themselves against China or Russia,” said Michael Klein, senior director for preparedness and response at the Institute for Security and Technology, a nonpartisan think tank. Klein was a senior advisor for cybersecurity in the Education Department during the previous administration. “In the same way, I don’t think we should expect every school district to stand up their own cyber-defense army to protect themselves against ransomware attacks from major criminal groups.” 

    And it’s not financially practical. According to the school network consortium only a third of school districts have a full-time employee or the equivalent dedicated to cybersecurity. 

    Budget storms ahead

    Some federal programs to help schools with cybersecurity are still running. The Federal Communications Commission launched a $200 million pilot program to support cybersecurity efforts by schools and libraries. FEMA funds cybersecurity for state and local governments, which includes public schools. Through these funds, schools can obtain phishing training and malware detection. But with budget battles ahead, many educators fear these programs could also be cut. 

    Perhaps the biggest risk is the end to the entire E-Rate program that helps schools pay for the internet access. The Supreme Court is slated to decide this term on whether the funding structure is an unconstitutional tax.

    “If that money goes away, they’re going to have to pull money from somewhere,” said Smith of the Student Data Privacy Consortium. “They’re going to try to preserve teaching and learning, as they should.  Cybersecurity budgets are things that are probably more likely to get cut.

    “It’s taken a long time to get to the point where we see privacy and cybersecurity as critical pieces,” Smith said. “I would hate for us to go back a few years and not be giving them the attention they should.”

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about student cybersecurity was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

    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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  • courts intensify effort to block Trump’s int’l enrolment ban

    courts intensify effort to block Trump’s int’l enrolment ban

    • District judge moves to take out an injunction on Trump administration’s Harvard international enrolment ban while the case moves through the legal system.
    • University’s international students report “emotional distress” as many cancel travel plans over fears they will not be allowed back into the US.
    • US Department of Homeland Security boss accuses Harvard of “disdain” for American people and spreading hate.

    Following on from her decision last week to temporarily block the move, district judge Allison Burroughs told a packed court that she wanted to “maintain the status quo” while Harvard’s case works its way through the legal system.

    It’s the latest twist in the university’s ongoing battle with the Trump administration, which has accused it of anti-semitism and stripped it of billions of dollars in funding. For its part, Harvard is coming out swinging against the directive, swiftly mounting a legal challenge – the latest step of which culminated in Burroughs’ judgement in a hearing yesterday.

    In court documents filed ahead of the hearing, Harvard’s director of immigration services at the institution’s international office, Maureen Martin, detailed the toll that the administration’s announcement is taking on the campus’s international students.

    She wrote that the revocation notice has caused both students and faculty to express “profound fear, concern, and confusion” – with the university “inundated” with queries from worried international students.

    “Many international students and scholars are reporting significant emotional distress that is affecting their mental health and making it difficult to focus on their studies,” said Martin, adding that some are too afraid to attend their own graduation ceremonies this week in case immigration-related action is taken against them.

    Meanwhile, others are cancelling international travel plans over concerns they will not be able to re-enter the US. “Some fear being compelled to return
    abruptly to home countries where they might not be safe due to ongoing conflicts or where they could face persecution based on their identity or background,” Martin wrote.

    Many international students and scholars are reporting significant emotional distress that is affecting their mental health and making it difficult to focus on their studies
    Maureen Martin, Harvard University

    While US stakeholders may be breathing a sigh of relief at Harvard’s temporary reprieve, Donald Trump’s government is showing no signs of backing down.

    In a letter sent to Harvard before Thursday’s hearing, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed that it wanted to move ahead with revoking the university’s SEVP certification, which would mean it could no longer host international students. Notably, though, the letter did not repeat last week’s assertion that Harvard would have 30 days to challenge the decision and suggested the government would not look to immediately enact the directive.

    In a statement released yesterday, US secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, doubled down on accusations that Harvard has not complied with SEVP regulations, has “encouraged and allowed anti-semitic and anti-American violence to rage on its campus” and has been working with the Chinese Communist Party.

    “Harvard’s refusal to comply with SEVP oversight was the latest evidence that it disdains the American people and takes for granted US taxpayer benefits,” she said. “Following our letter to Harvard, the school attempted to claim it now wishes to comply with SEVP standards. We continue to reject Harvard’s repeated pattern of endangering its students and spreading American hate – it must change its ways in order to participate in American programs.”

    Harvard’s row with the Trump administration stems from the stand it took against a raft of government demands, including that it reform its admissions and hiring practices to combat antisemitism on campus, end DEI initiatives and hand over reports on international students.

    When the institution refused to comply with the demands, the government – seemingly in retaliation – froze $2.2 billion in the university’s funding, threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status, and demanded that international students’ records be handed over. If Harvard didn’t play ball, it was warned, it risked losing its SEVP certification. 

    Although Harvard did send over some student information on April 30, and maintained that it had provided the information it was legally bound to supply, this seems to have been insufficient for the Trump administration, which then moved to black the institution from hosting international students.

    In yet another blow to the US international education sector, the US government announced this week that it would pause all new study visa interviews at American consulates around the world – sparking dismay from stakeholders.

    And Chinese students studying in the US were plunged into uncertainty yesterday after – amid a trade war with Beijing – the government announced plans to “aggressively revoke” their visas. As yet, it remains unclear whether all Chinese students will be affected or just those with links to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in so-called key areas.

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