Tag: Events

The apparent silencing of pro-Palestinian activism at New York University Abu Dhabi has “shattered the perception” that the institution can provide real academic freedom within its United Arab Emirates campus, according to critics.

Leaders of NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) have been accused of failing to protect students and staff, with reports that a number have been detained, interrogated and even deported for expressing solidarity with Palestine.

Ahead of a commencement ceremony in May, students were banned from wearing keffiyehs—a scarf perceived to be a symbol of solidarity—or any other decorations on their outfits, with many refusing to shake hands with outgoing NYUAD vice chancellor Mariet Westerman or NYU president Linda Mills as a result.

Speaking anonymously, one student told Times Higher Education that this showed “widespread student dissatisfaction with the censorship and excessive policing of the event” and was evidence of the administration’s “hostile” attitude toward expressions of solidarity with Palestine since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

“The atmosphere among students has been one of extreme frustration and fear, since students have been facing very harsh consequences from the administration for even small expressions of solidarity,” they added.

Paula Chakravartty, professor of media, culture and communications at NYU, said the U.S. campus has also been repressive toward its students, but at least they have access to lawyers and have rights outside the university—unlike in the UAE. As a result, she said, there was an “intense” level of fear at the branch campus, because the large international student body is at risk of deportation.

Chakravartty, who is also vice president of the NYU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said academics were most concerned that NYU leaders were using the threat of sanctions from the UAE government to “create a chill when it comes to any speech on Palestine and essentially intimidate and shut down” conversation.

“What worries us is that NYUAD is doing the dirty work for the UAE administration, claiming that this is because of them … when in fact they are doing it proactively. That’s worrisome because NYU is a university and is meant to foster academic freedom and its principles.”

NYUAD has also restricted pro-Palestine vigils and teach-ins and the hanging of banners and social media posts, and it has disciplined students who have expressed their discontent, according to the AAUP.

Mohamad Bazzi, associate professor of journalism at NYU, said the original promises that the Abu Dhabi campus would maintain the same level of academic freedom as NYU had been proved false—and now so too is the idea that NYUAD operates “in an academic bubble.”

“They actively tried to sell this idea of an academic bubble, and I think with the latest crackdown that’s been shattered as well,” he said.

“The idea that somehow they can keep the campus separate from UAE’s foreign policy and security policy is absurd.”

Bazzi, who was denied a visa by the UAE to teach at NYUAD in 2017, said a crackdown on academic speech and free speech will make it harder to convince academics to work there.

“This has shattered the perception that the administration can somehow manage to maintain this academic speech zone inside the campus,” he added.

Sarah McLaughlin, senior scholar on global expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said American universities such as NYU have “aggravated this repressive environment by misrepresenting the academic freedom and free speech protections available to students at satellite campuses.”

And in a letter, the Middle East Studies Association accused NYU of being “complicit in the repression practiced by the UAE authorities, and it makes a mockery” of the institution’s purported “core values.”

In response, NYU said it has been guaranteed academic authority in Abu Dhabi and that courses that include the Israel-Palestine conflict and other related issues continue to be taught without any interference.

A spokesman said no NYU students or staff were “immune from local laws” and that NYU has no authority over a nation’s immigration or law enforcement actions or decisions.

“This reality is why we undertake substantial efforts to make sure our community members understand the culture and laws in which they pursue their studies and scholarship and advise them clearly and repeatedly about expectations, obligations and boundaries, including the protocols for the NYU Abu Dhabi graduation,” he said.

This year’s rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid was, by almost all accounts, a fiasco. What was supposed to be a simpler form made the process more complicated for many. The new form was riddled with technical glitches and calculation errors, and delays left students and colleges in limbo, waiting for the need-based scholarship awards to come through. Experts warned that steep declines in college going could ensue.

But out of the overall mess has come an unexpected victory for college access advocates: increased momentum for state legislation on FAFSA completion.

Such bills, often known as universal FAFSA policies, require students to complete the federal aid form in order to graduate from high school. The National College Attainment Network (NCAN) and local nonprofits across the country have been pushing state lawmakers to mandate FAFSA completion for more than a decade, on the theory that it encourages more students to enroll and attain a postsecondary credential.

As of this spring, 15 states had passed some kind of universal FAFSA policy; eight were in effect this past academic year. Recent NCAN data, combined with case studies from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO), show that many of those states had the highest completion rates—and lowest year-over-year dips—despite this year’s bungled rollout.

Illinois and Texas, two of the earliest states to implement such a requirement, ranked third and fifth for completion rates as of June 21, at 54.7 percent and 53.1 percent, respectively. Students who did not complete the FAFSA likely either intentionally opted out with a parental signature or were automatically opted out under special provisions established for this year’s snafu. Indiana, which introduced a FAFSA completion requirement this past academic year, had the lowest percentage change; the share of high school graduates who completed the FAFSA dropped by just 1.1 percent from last year.

In a year when some have worried that FAFSA completion initiatives would lose steam, experts say universal FAFSA policies are actually more likely to gain support.

“I don’t think states would look at this and say things didn’t go well because of universal FAFSA. I think it would tend to be the opposite,” said Rachel Burns, a senior policy analyst at SHEEO and co-author of the case study report. “[States] are going to say, ‘I’m so glad we have universal FAFSA, because now we have the resources, staff capacity, state buy-in and everything to make sure that they could help students through all the challenges.’ For the foreseeable future, this is still going to be something that states are very interested in.”

A Shield in the Storm

Jim Purcell, executive director of the Alabama Commission on Higher Education, said that amid this year’s “horrific rollout,” his state’s long-running universal FAFSA program—and the culture of trust and collaboration it’s created—helped keep completion numbers relatively high. The state’s FAFSA requirement, which has been in place since the 2021–22 academic year, requires seniors graduating from a public high school to fill out the FAFSA in order to receive their diploma. Students who opt out by having their parents sign a waiver can still graduate.

Though Alabama’s FAFSA completion rate dropped 19.8 percentage points from last year, the state still ranked 16th in the country, with an above-average rate of 45.8 percent.

“The institutions that are seeing lower numbers are understanding how important an initiative like this [is],” Purcell said. “During the calamities of it, I’ve been out talking to many states. I’ve spoken at conferences about our efforts in Alabama, and there are some states that are interested in going that direction.”

With graduations mostly over and counselors on summer vacation, it will be difficult for many states to boost FAFSA completion rates higher than they were on the last day of high school. But Purcell noted that Alabama’s universal FAFSA program—and the staffing and resources that come with it—allow the commission to continue outreach right up until the first day of college classes.

“We need to make sure that there’s someone helping these students complete a FAFSA,” he said. “It doesn’t happen just in a cavalier way; there is an effort that is required to make sure your numbers are up.”

In Indiana, Greg Harrell, director of legislation and program implementation for the state Commission for Higher Education, credited the new universal FAFSA program with minimizing the hit to the Hoosier state’s completion rate, which declined by just over one percentage point, to 44.7 percent.

“Despite some of the unprecedented challenges that we encountered … this policy was really a key lever here in Indiana,” he said. “We’re really excited about what our results have been for year one of this policy shift and really look forward to its continued impact across the state.”

Harrell said it took a while to gather support for the bill, but one of the components that helped get it across the finish line was the built-in off-ramp for students.

In Indiana, and nearly all states where a universal FAFSA policy is in place, students have ample opportunity to opt out. They can either get written permission from their parents or they are automatically dropped after a certain date or a set number of contact attempts from a counselor. That means that universal FAFSA policies rarely, if ever, prevent a student from getting a high school diploma. Instead of framing it as a graduation requirement, Harrell said, think of it as a default option.

But Is It Strong Enough to Last?

Officials in some states that are just rolling out a completion requirement seem less enthusiastic about its prospects.

Ritchie Morrow, financial aid officer of the Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education, said his agency, along with the local nonprofit EducationQuest, has been trying to get a FAFSA requirement in place for years. A bill was finally passed a year ago and will go into effect this fall for the graduating class of 2025.

Still, he worries that the program could lose support if the platform experiences more delays and technical glitches this year.

“We are not going to make any changes,” he said. “Nobody in policy has reached out to us on this. But we have heard from some of the high school folks, particularly the counselors, asking, ‘What if the 2025–26 FAFSA is delayed and there are problems with it like there were with the 2024–25?’”

In a conservative state where lawmakers tend to avoid any program that adds a layer of government bureaucracy, he said, the policy could come under attack if completion rates don’t increase as much as lobbyists have suggested they would.

“Our Legislature will be in session in the springtime, and if this is a graduation requirement and there are problems with getting FAFSA filed, there’s going to be a lot of phone calls to our legislators,” Morrow added.

He has cause for concern. In West Virginia, which traditionally required students to complete FAFSA to access state aid, Republican governor Jim Justice declared a state of emergency amid the chaos of the new FAFSA rollout and suspended the policy for the year.

But Katherine Meyer, a fellow for the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institute, said she hopes temporary rollbacks aren’t necessarily a sign of doom for FAFSA completion requirements long term.

“It was absolutely the right choice for states like West Virginia to be lenient with FAFSA graduation requirements this year—it’s not students’ fault that the FAFSA wasn’t functional for most of their senior year, and they certainly shouldn’t be penalized for not completing the form,” she wrote in an email. “However, while essential this year, states shouldn’t permanently drop FAFSA graduation requirements or stop using the FAFSA to allocate state aid. These are best practices that in a typical year increase FAFSA filing.”

Louisiana, which was the first state to implement a universal FAFSA policy, in 2018, also raised concerns by permanently rolling back its requirement legislation this spring. State lawmakers said it was not a direct response to this year’s FAFSA fiasco; rather, the program had become burdensome and promoted college-going over more vocational paths, they said. Meyer noted that although the reversal caused her to take a “slight pause,” she generally trusts that historically bipartisan support for such bills will continue.

In the end, Meyer believes this year’s circumstances only underscore why states should expand FAFSA mandates and supports rather than roll them back.

“Ultimately I think FAFSA completion mandates get passed because states realize it ensures students receive the federal financial aid they’re eligible for, and often that saves the state money in their scholarship and grant programs,” she said. “In that sense, I expect we’ll see states continue to adopt them in the years to come.”

The faculty and professional staff union at Greenfield Community College voted no confidence in the college’s president and provost last week after administrators neglected to share the results of a scathing diversity, equity and inclusion report by a consulting firm. The report was based on an unfinished assessment of the college’s DEI work after administrators of the small Massachusetts community college ended the firm’s work early without informing the campus community.

Greenfield administrators said they didn’t share the report when they received it because it contained inaccuracies and that students and employees weren’t informed of the severed partnership because they were still waiting on certain data from the firm. But the report was ultimately leaked to a number of employees, who were disturbed by its conclusions about the state of DEI on the campus and the administration’s lack of transparency, The Greenfield Recorder reported.

“Responses ranged largely from horror to disgust to outrage,” said Trevor Kearns, president of the Greenfield Community College Professional Association, a chapter of the Massachusetts Community College Council, which represents professors and staff members such as academic advisers, mental health counselors and student affairs staff.

College administrators hired the DEI-focused consulting firm, RE-Center Race & Equity in Education, last year with input from faculty and staff members to assess its campus climate and racial equity “blind spots,” Kearns said. Of the 1,544 students enrolled at Greenfield in fall 2023, 27 percent were students of color, according to college data.

Consultants started interviewing members of the president’s cabinet and others, including human resources staff, department chairs and campus police and security officers in spring 2023, according to the firm’s report. Student interviews were planned for the future. Then the fall semester rolled around, and employees heard nothing more about the process. A professor on the college’s DEI standing committee asked for an update on the progress of the partnership at a February meeting of the College Council, which includes faculty, staff and administrators.

The college president, Michelle K. Schutt, revealed then that the college had ended its relationship with the consulting firm because of “difficulty in scheduling and progress,” according to the minutes of the meeting. But the firm was still scheduled to share data it had gathered. Schutt later wrote in a letter to the campus community that the firm wasn’t “the right fit.” The report says administrators quashed the partnership in November of last year.

Kearns said the news was especially disappointing because there was a sense among employees that Greenfield administrators had neglected DEI on campus, and employees were eager to see Schutt prioritize bringing in consultants after she was hired in 2022.

“Everybody who cares about these issues and who knows that we need to improve at the college and do a better job of supporting students with marginalized identities—everybody was really excited for this to happen.”

“We’re like, finally, we’ve got traction,” he said. “We got some professionals in here.”

Meanwhile, rumors had started circulating on campus that RE-Center had produced an unshared report about the state of the college’s DEI work. The union made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to find out more about the report this spring, which was denied.

Karen Phillips, vice president for administration and finance records access officer, said in her May response to the FOIA request that the “unsolicited” and “self-serving” materials RE-Center had produced were “merely opinions and are not factual or complete,” so releasing them “would taint the deliberative process that is ongoing as the College seeks to continue its important DEI work through alternative means.”

(The union also requested information about how much the college had spent on RE-Center’s services, and she answered that the institution prepaid the firm $60,000 out of the total anticipated cost of $112,900.)

College leaders, however, agreed to show union members a redacted copy of the report, but by that time, a full, unredacted copy had already been leaked to Kearns and others. He called an emergency meeting earlier this month and distributed the report to members.

They weren’t pleased. An online voting process that ended Tuesday yielded decisive votes of no confidence in Schutt and Provost Chet Jordan. Out of the 78 union members who voted, 73 voted no confidence in Jordan and 67 voted no confidence in Schutt, about 94 percent and 86 percent, respectively, Kearns said. (Jordan did not respond to a request for comment.)

Schutt said in a statement that she has “enormous respect for our faculty and staff.”

“My goal is a workplace environment that acknowledges contributions, works collaboratively to address challenges, and builds relationships,” she said. “I hope to continue working collaborative [sic] with our faculty and staff around the values we share.”

In a letter to the campus earlier this month, she also said the college is in the process of hiring a vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion, reporting directly to the president, and it is searching for “a partner who can support us in hosting facilitated campus-wide dialogues this fall” about racial equity and communication issues “that have come to the surface as we resolve this issue.”

The Board of Trustees also released a statement following the no-confidence votes stating that it “supports the College’s DEI efforts” and that board members will undergo DEI training.

“The Board has heard the President’s response to the concerns of the college community and her plan to address these concerns,” the statement read. “We support the President’s plan.”

Kearns said he’s unclear what that plan is, and the next steps that have been shared, such as hiring a DEI officer, don’t feel like enough “to address any of the deeper issues at the college.”

He noted that the full board was only made aware of the report at a June 10 board meeting, and “they did not look happy.” Further, some members raised concerns about not having seen the report earlier.

Some students are upset, as well, though most are no longer on campus, since the semester ended in May, Kearns said. He heard from a nursing faculty member that nursing students, some of whom remain on campus because their pinning ceremony is on Saturday, delivered a petition to the dean of nursing asking that the president not attend their ceremony. Kearns believes the nursing students’ action is connected to the issue.

The Report and the Response

The RE-Center report, obtained by Inside Higher Ed, detailed a number of concerns, including differing definitions of “race” and “equity” among members of the president’s cabinet, problems with campus leaders’ transparency and communication, and a lack of “shared vision” about plans for a DEI office and director.

The report also didn’t mince words about administrators’ decision to end the consultation process early.

“Beyond this partnership, if the work has been paused and does not progress through this moment in time, it is the sole accountability of the leadership team to answer to the community how a team can be so deeply committed to this work and be so unwilling to risk anything or redistribute any power,” the report read. “GCC students, faculty, administrators, and staff, particularly BIPOC and those from historically excluded identities, deserve better.”

The report also detailed several fraught exchanges between administrators and RE-Center consultants, including an incident in which a white cabinet member allegedly used “the n-word in its entirety” four times in an interview with two RE-Center employees while discussing the use of the word in a campus play and art show earlier that year. The report said one consultant, a Black woman, felt “stunned” by the encounter and that “racialized harm had occurred.” The cabinet member, when questioned later by consultants, allegedly acknowledged that using the word was “wrong.”

Schutt responded to the report, including this particular incident, and the accusations of burying it, in her June letter to students, faculty and staff members.

“In this instance, I want to acknowledge that I could have done a better job of communicating with our community earlier and with more details about the discontinuation of the relationship with the DEI consultant and next steps,” she wrote. “While I recognize that not all will agree with our decision not to release the document, I fully expect to be accountable to themes the College community shared about the challenges we face in this area.”

She wrote that campus leaders ended the partnership with RE-Center because its “consulting model and approach was not the right fit for GCC at this time.” She also said the report RE-Center produced wasn’t the information campus leaders requested.

“Our team hoped to benefit [from] the information collected by the DEI consultants and use the thoughtful reflections provided by the GCC community in our going forward work (either with another consultant or an incoming DEI leader),” she wrote. “Unfortunately, instead of sharing the information in the requested format, the DEI consultant offered a document that included incomplete and, in some places, inaccurate information.”

She defended the administrator who used a racial epithet as having used the term in reference to an on-campus art installation focused on perceptions of race in America, which included a piece of art with the full slur in its title.

The administrator “questioned how to address the use of this word in art and literature in a college setting where there are issues of academic freedom,” Schutt wrote. “In no instance was the word used as a slur or directed at any individual.” The administrator “expressed regret at using the full title of the artwork” and “subsequently proactively sought out coaching and additional resources regarding this topic.”

A National Issue

Shaun Harper, founder and executive director of the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center, said it’s a common problem that college and university leaders pay outside professionals to produce campus climate reports and subsequently ignore or hide unflattering results.

And too often, they don’t get called out on it. By the time these reports are finished, the student activists who demanded them have in most cases moved on to other issues, making the findings easy to sweep under the rug, he noted.

“I think that is terribly dishonest,” said Harper, who is also a professor of education, business and public policy at USC. “And it is offensive to the students, faculty and staff who very generously invested their time into the process, expecting that something’s going to be done with the feedback and the input that they offer.”

He added that he hasn’t heard of RE-Center, but it’s also not uncommon for administrators to quibble with negative reports’ phrasing or claim findings are inaccurate or have methodological flaws.

“In some instances, perhaps that is true … but I can tell you right now that even when we furnish incredibly credible reports with evidence to institutions, too many of them do the same thing,” he said.

Kearns said the debacle with the report reflects a broader lack of transparency at the college. He said the point of the process was to uncover areas for growth, so why hide the findings? He also believes administrators would not be in such hot water if they’d been open about the partnership ending and shared alternate plans to continue the work RE-Center had started.

“My members are extremely upset about what’s in the report. And they should be. I am, too,” he said. “I’m also upset about the deception.”

Of all the prefixes I never expected to accompany my name, “doctor” was firmly ensconced on the list. So it was with a combination of elation and gratitude that I received the news this past February that my alma mater, La Salle University in Philadelphia, would grace me with an honorary doctorate during the university’s May 2024 commencement.

Along with the cap and gown and diploma, I was presented the great privilege of delivering a commencement address before the graduating seniors, faculty members and families exactly 53 years after I sat in those same seats.

Drawing on a lifetime in book publishing, I decided to talk to the graduates about something we publishers know as well as we know jacket copy, foreign rights and blown production schedules, and that we know better than most other professionals. We know about—and I spoke about—lunch.

Yes, lunch. To be clear, I expressly didn’t talk about eat-at-your-computer, grab-n-go, a hot dog, a Pop Tart or yogurt in your office. Rather, I highlighted lunch with a capital “L” in a sit-down restaurant where the graduating seniors, in their coming careers, would find themselves dining periodically with colleagues, clients, competitors and friends.

To the class of 2024, my message was simple: For all the lofty goals the graduates aspired to, they would achieve those goals more enjoyably and even more successfully if they found the time to meet often for lunch, and to reap its underappreciated social benefits.

The graduates will discover that navigating adult life is frustrating business. Amid the contending clutter of phones, stop-and-go traffic, remote work, appointment juggling, social media fixation, and various pandemic and algorithm-induced conditions, and against the divisions that strain our politics and culture, people need the enjoyment of sustained social engagement. Hidden in plain sight on the weekday calendar sits a singular source of such rejuvenation: the midday meal, lunch.

So, with a lifetime of publishing repasts under my belt, I proceeded to talk about the value of lunch. And with my new honorary doctorate firmly in hand, I did so in grand scientific style. Referencing Albert Einstein and his unified field theory of relativity, I called mine “Dougherty’s unified field theory of lunch.” I then set forth my theory of lunch, followed by a few stories intended to help graduates make the most of it in their professional lives—stories that also might resonate with people working in higher education.

Conversation Insurance

My theory addresses a critical question: Why, in the middle of the otherwise overstuffed professional day, do serious people drop everything to race to a restaurant to meet others for a mushroom omelet? Why does lunch exist at all, as a social practice?

Lunch, to my mind, exists as a platform for reviving the imagination, social as well as intellectual. By ensuring the opportunity for conversation, it enables people to enjoy each other personally, to exchange ideas spontaneously and to turn work briefly into play, the true province of creativity.

How does lunch facilitate these goals?

• It’s familiar. Everybody knows what lunch is, where to find it, and when, and that it ends with a return to work. And unlike breakfast or dinner, most everybody is available for it. We know what it looks like. It’s a party waiting to happen.
• It is tangible. Anyone who has lunched on a Power Bar over Zoom in a bedroom doubling as a home office understands just how much more enjoyable lunch is with real people. This tangibility matters greatly because it draws us out of our pandemic-induced digital igloos.
• <It is collegial. It ensures a modicum of interpersonal respect by mandating timely arrival, appropriate dress, good manners, and a certain decorum. Just try arriving at a proper lunch a half-hour late in flip-flops. These rules raise lunch from a mere meal to an event.

• Perhaps most important, it takes time. A real lunch lasts at least an hour. In publishing, an hour is just warming up. Point is, long lunches make rich conversation possible, stimulating insights free of the formality of the office. Nobody’s keeping score. The ideas flow easily.

So, as the game theorists would say, lunch exists as an “enforcement mechanism” for these important functions to take place. Lunch sandwiches fun into the workday culture, and makes such social encounters easy and repeatable. It’s there every day—same time, same station.

But what’s in it for us, personally?

Of Campus and Cuisine

Lunch nourishes our spirits and our stomachs, alike. Beyond my message to the graduates, some of whom may themselves pursue careers in higher education, I make five such references from my history among academics, on campus and off.

• Lunch helped me to define my academic self. When, in 1992, I left New York, and a career in commercial publishing, to join Princeton University Press as its economics editor, I quickly discovered that I had to adapt to the university culture, one different and distinct from business. Relying on the experience I had gained in Midtown Manhattan, the lunchtime capital of the world, I quickly realized that my main adaptational tool was to invite my new colleagues, faculty members and administrators alike, to lunch.

If a faculty member on our editorial board had doubts about the value of my editorial program, as happened several times, I would take that professor to lunch. If a university financial executive was mystified by the byzantine economics of publishing, I would schedule a lunch. If I ran afoul of a colleague either at the press or in the university (as happened, but very rarely), the best way to clear the air was over lunch.

Obviously, I wasn’t the first person in collegetown history to arrange a lunch, but I saw a certain strategic value in it, and I did it right: I was always quick to extend invitations, I chose pleasant venues, and I made the reservations. So my Manhattan publishing past prepared the path of my near 30-year Princeton future. By the same token, a little taste of New York (or London) publishing style would go a long way in helping young faculty members or administrators appreciate the value of arranging lunch as a way of learning the ropes and succeeding in academic culture.

• Lunch helped me to appreciate differences. Some years ago, while I was in Beijing representing Princeton University Press, I participated in a conference with colleagues from the Chinese university presses. As awkward as the formal business encounters were, it was at lunch, around a big table full of local dishes, that we began to toast each other and appreciate each other as fellow publishers.

One does not have to travel to China to feel separation from others. Literary scholar Paula Marantz Cohen, in her 2023 book Talking Cure: An Essay on the Civilizing Value of Conversation (which I had the privilege to edit), observes that, “Many people nowadays engage only with those whose views and life experiences mirror their own.”

Lunch looms as the simple yet subtle go-to resource for breaking these barriers, and thereby relaxing (if not eliminating) the contentious effects they have built into the culture. Consider what benefits might emerge if more people on campuses—administrators and faculty members alike—reached out and invited others to lunch, say, from different countries, of different ages, with different backgrounds and worldviews.

• Lunch made me more productive. Previously, I noted that lunch buys us an hour or so of time to talk. It taught me the “40-minute rule.” That is, after many years of taking my authors to lunch, it dawned on me that something special happens about 40 minutes into the meal.

It is then, after the pleasantries and small talk and gossip are exhausted, that the table’s imagination awakens, often enabling interesting insights and discoveries. Countless of my publishing projects were hatched over long lunches, including the book I’m proudest of publishing, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller’s classic, Irrational Exuberance.

In a dynamic multidisciplinary scholarly environment such as that which defines higher education today, the excitement of intellectual exchange across scholarly specialties could hardly be better catalyzed than through long talks, unimpeded by missteps or mistakes. So, I encourage those of you who work in academe to make a stand for useful knowledge, and take a nuclear chemist or forensic accountant or anyone else from a highly divergent discipline to lunch.

• Lunch can just be fun, and we all need that. Years ago, I had lunch with one of my heroes, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (not incidentally, also a great social scientist). When I suggested to him that he write a book about the architectural renaissance of Pennsylvania Avenue which he had helped to bring about, he liked the idea and we met for lunch at a restaurant on Capitol Hill. As we dined on club sandwiches at the bar, the senator regaled me with stories. Sadly, he died before completing the book, but it was a highly memorable and fun lunch for me.

Exercising a little imagination in choosing lunch guests, or favorite luncheon venues, can make the workday week more edifying and enjoyable. Returning to my hometown of Philadelphia last year to work at the American Philosophical Society Press, where I’m currently employed, has given me the chance to renew old academic connections throughout the city and make new ones. My friends can now trace my footsteps from my office in Benjamin Franklin’s Philosophical Hall on Fifth Street to Frieda’s Cafe at Third and Walnut Street. While I understand you may not think you have the time for what seems like a self-indulgent break, I highly recommend you take it for both your current and long-term well-being.

• Last, but not least, speaking of enrichment, lunch can be appetizing. One of the great benefits of having been a traveling academic editor has been sampling the local cuisine during lunches with authors. I could write the culinary history of my career around meals savored in celebrated luncheon spots across America’s campuses. From venerable local establishments (The Tombs at Georgetown, The Virginian at University of Virginia) to popular taverns (The West End Cafe at Columbia, the New Deck at the University of Pennsylvania) to faculty haunts (the University of Chicago’s Quad Club in Hyde Park, Mory’s at Yale in New Haven) to fine dining (Chez Panisse in Berkeley; Harvest in Cambridge, Massachusetts, close to Harvard), academia famously travels on its stomach.

The connection between campus and cuisine is hardly coincidental nor is it inconsequential. In fact, it is a time-honored tradition, and one worth rediscovering as a treasured resource in favor of a plastic bag of trail mix consumed alone in one’s office.

Town and Gown

I finished my talk to the La Salle graduates by telling them that I hoped that we would soon give up our infatuation with computer screens and return to the sidewalks and street corners of Philadelphia as citizens, neighbors, and friends to revive personal connection, breaking down isolation and rebuilding “the city invincible,” in Walt Whitman’s famous phrase.

What applies to town, goes for gown as well, if not more so. Umberto Eco once lamented the decline of the local bar in university towns because it eroded the chance for students to meet to discuss—and improve—their scholarly work. In recent generations, the proliferation of faculty groupings—The Center for This, The Institute for That, the Program in Something Else—and the hydra-like growth of divisions and units among administrators, have cumulatively diluted community in higher education, rendering campus a mere cluster of GPS locations, rather than a place. The ubiquity of travel and the technology of remote work have only made matters worse.

For all the admirable efforts on the part of university officials to devise programs and other schemes for restoring a sense of community, Dougherty’s Unified Field Theory would predict that the shortest distance toward a more reconciled and spirited campus might be the closest luncheonette. Bon appetit!

Educational Testing Services, the longtime administrator of the SAT, offered voluntary buyouts to every U.S. employee with more than two years of service on Tuesday morning. It’s the second major round of job cuts within the past year at the standardized testing pioneer, which has struggled to maintain its foothold in the shrinking assessment space.

In a video sent to employees and obtained by Inside Higher Ed, CEO Amit Sevak said that while the organization is “cash flow positive for the first time in five years,” a number of revenue challenges have put it under financial strain.

“ETS is at an inflection point, one that requires critical decisions to ensure our sustainability,” he said.

That inflection point comes after the organization inked a new contract with the College Board this month, under which ETS will no longer administer the SAT, a College Board spokesperson confirmed. A fiscal year 2023 audit of ETS showed that 30 percent of the organization’s revenue, or about $300 million, came from its College Board contract alone.

The move also follows years of steep test-taker declines for its marquee product, the Graduate Record Examination (GRE).

The news comes less than a year after ETS laid off 6 percent of its global workforce—about 150 people—in September, the second such downsizing in Sevak’s two-year tenure. The company also downsized in 2021; in fact, this is ETS’s fifth round of job cuts in five years.

Sevak said that by offering voluntary severance agreements, ETS was “putting this decision in [employees’] hands.” He encouraged anyone “on the fence” about staying at ETS to take the buyout, adding that the package is “above market practice” and that officials “do not plan to offer something similar again.” He also said that the pace of change at the organization would be “intense,” and that those who stay would be expected to give “110 percent.”

“The purpose is to reduce our staff in the most gracious way we can,” Sevak said. “This is an opportunity.”

A longtime ETS employee who received the buyout offer told Inside Higher Ed that judging from messages sent by colleagues following the announcement, that’s not how staff see it.

“This is affecting people who raised their families alongside their work at ETS, people who have spent lifetimes working on a single product,” said the employee, who requested anonymity to avoid backlash from the company. “It’s been an hour since the news broke and folks are earnestly sharing self-harm and suicide-prevention hotlines.”

An ETS spokesperson confirmed the news in an email to Inside Higher Ed, saying the buyouts would allow officials to “make necessary changes to our organization.”

“Today’s announcement is one of the many ways ETS will continue to adapt and build momentum so that we can best serve the learners and customers that rely on our solutions well into the future,” the spokesperson wrote.

The anonymous ETS employee said that morale has been low across the company for a long time, an observation confirmed by internal employee satisfaction survey responses obtained by Inside Higher Ed in September. But the source said it’s gotten worse since the fall layoffs, and employees have been expecting more bad news for months.

“There are so many people who just want to do their jobs, for their work to improve, and that hasn’t happened,” the employee said. “We’ve all been kind of waiting for the bullet to hit the bone.”

Employees who received the offer have until July 11 to accept, and ETS will decide whether to approve those by July 25. The ETS spokesperson said there are over 2,000 U.S. employees but declined to answer questions from Inside Higher Ed about the number who received buyout offers or the company’s total expected layoffs.

“When this process of voluntary separation is over,” Sevak cautioned in the video, “it is likely that we may need to proceed with an involuntary layoff.”

‘A Perfect Storm’

ETS—the “largest private educational assessment organization in the world,” according to its website—owns and administers two of the largest exams in the U.S.: the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), commonly taken by international students looking to study in the U.S., and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), the standard post-baccalaureate exam.

But the organization has faced mounting market challenges for years, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Those include the declining popularity of the GRE, whose customer base had nosedived due to the normalization of test-optional policies for grad programs. The GRE suffered a dramatic drop in test-takers after the pandemic, falling from 541,750 in 2017 to 341,574 in 2021; last May, ETS cut the time it took to complete the test in half in an effort to attract more customers.

Sevak also cited a “significant reduction in work from the College Board,” with whom ETS has had a decades-long partnership in administering the popular standardized exam. ETS’s previous contract with the College Board ends this month, a College Board spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed in September, and Sevak said that though they signed a new agreement, it is less lucrative than the previous one.

“While the new contract maintains a relationship, it is a significant reduction in scope,” he said.

A College Board spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that although ETS is no longer the SAT administrator—a role it held for nearly two decades—their relationship will continue.

“We plan to continue working together to administer our AP and CLEP [College Level Examination] programs,” the spokesperson wrote in an email Tuesday afternoon. “With the SAT Suite’s full transition to digital on College Board’s Bluebook testing platform, we now develop and administer the SAT and PSAT-related assessments directly.”

In March, the College Board launched its new, digital-only SAT, a massive pivot for what remains the most popular standardized test in the country.

The testing industry is going through a period of turmoil and change. The ACT, the organization that runs its namesake test, was purchased by venture capital firm Nexus Capital Management in April. ACT, which struggled during the pandemic, laid off over 100 employees ahead of the acquisition.

Sevak said that as the assessment landscape continues to change, “inefficiencies” in ETS’s structure and business model have prevented them from adapting.

“If we do nothing, we will be left behind. In fact, we’ve been looking at backsliding into tens of millions of dollars in loss by 2025,” he continued. “It’s a perfect storm.”

A Skills-Based Pivot?

In April, ETS’s research institute released a report titled “Charting the Future of Assessment,” which concludes that opportunities for testing in traditional college admissions are limited and hamstrung by mounting challenges such as data security and the evolution of artificial intelligence.

The new frontier, the report declares, is skills assessment, certifications and credentials—and the biggest untapped consumer pool for assessment companies are adults interested in lifelong learning and continuous career development.

“Skills are the future currency,” the report says. Assessment companies, it goes on to assert, can be trusted just as much as an accredited university or employer to identify those skills and convert them into hard cash on the job market.

“A variety of certification sources, which will include universities, but also corporate training and testing organizations, will be approximately equally valued in producing certifications and credentials,” the report says.

In the video announcing employee buyouts, Sevak stressed the need for ETS to be nimble and to adapt to rapidly changing market demands for educational assessments.

“We see our competitors operating with a much lower and more flexible cost base, and with highly automated models,” he said. “The way we’re structured is inhibiting us from swiftly pivoting to mitigate external threats such as AI, geopolitics, future customer needs, and the disruptive, competitive context [of testing].”

A number of recent acquisitions point to ETS’s venture into the skills-assessment space. In September, the company acquired Wheebox, an “assessment platform and proctoring solutions company,” to the tune of $12.2 million, according to the audit. Wheebox’s LinkedIn describes it as a “global work skill assessment firm. And in January, ETS acquired PSI, a “global leader in workforce certification and licensure” which administers, among other professional tests, the Federal Aviation Administration exams.

When University of the Arts closed abruptly on June 7, it left students and employees in limbo. Officials had announced the shutdown just a week earlier, after The Philadelphia Inquirer broke the news. Students who hoped their questions would be addressed at a town hall scheduled for June 3 were bitterly disappointed when administrators inexplicably canceled the event just minutes before it was set to start.

On Friday, the community finally got some answers—not from UArts but from its accreditor, The Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE), which held an online information session Friday for students.

The unusual move—a first for MSCHE and perhaps for any institutional accreditor—aimed to fill the void left when UArts officials walked away and handed over closure responsibilities to a management firm, which is winding down the university’s operations.

What the session made clear is that the cause of the sudden closure remains a mystery to many involved, including MSCHE, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Education and apparently even the management firm carrying out the closure.

A Mysterious Financial Crisis

Like many small private institutions, University of the Arts had financial challenges. Its enrollment had slipped from more than 2,000 students in the early 2010s to 1,207 last fall, financial documents show. UArts also operated at a $6 million loss in fiscal year 2023.

But the sudden collapse of the university was as precipitous as it was unexpected.

To date, the reasons have not been fully revealed. The closest thing officials offered to an explanation in the May 31 closure announcement was that the university was hit with “significant, unanticipated expenses,” writing that “the situation came to light very suddenly.”

UArts President Kerry Walk resigned mere days after the announcement.

Many of the questions at the webinar came from students and parents unsure how to navigate their next steps. But several speakers wanted clear answers on the rationale for the closure.

In response to one student, MSCHE President Heather Perfetti said UArts officials first contacted the accreditor on May 28th or 29th with the news that they expected “imminent closure.” But she said they didn’t explain the specific financial reasons for that.

“I can simply say on behalf of our commission, we were not aware of whatever the issue is, or was at that time, and we remain unaware of what the issue is or was at this time,” Perfetti said.

Lynette Kuhn, Division Chief of Higher Education, Access, and Equity at the Pennsylvania Department of Education, said state officials “were also made aware of the abrupt closure and imminent situation on May 29.” The Pennsylvania Department of Education has not received an answer yet on how long UArts “was aware of this financial crisis and what led to the abrupt closure,” she said.

A U.S. Department of Education official added that their department was similarly unaware of the cause.

Jenelle Beavers, a representative from Alvarez & Marsal, the consulting firm tasked with carrying out closure duties, also seemed unaware of the specifics. She noted the firm was retained on June 7 after MSCHE stripped UArts of its accreditation and administrators announced the closure.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education is now investigating the closure.

“I do want to let everybody know that the agency is looking into the situation that occurred with the University of the Arts and is taking this seriously to get to the bottom of what had occurred and how the events have unfolded,” Kuhn said in the webinar. “And at the conclusion of those investigations, I believe each agency will have more answers in regards to the timeline of events.”

Outside Authorities Step In

The fact that MSCHE and others—rather than University of the Arts officials—fielded questions from students on Friday underscores the unusual retreat by administrators amid the sudden closure.

In an emailed statement to Inside Higher Ed, an MSCHE spokesperson said the webinar was “the first of its kind for the Commission, and as far as we are aware, it is an unprecedented event for institutional accreditors.” The need for the session was apparent after UArts canceled its town hall, the spokesperson said, adding that the university “was failing to provide students with critical information” needed in the moment to complete their education.

The Alvarez & Marsal consulting firm will also lead information sessions in the coming days, though Beavers did not respond to an Inside Higher Ed inquiry seeking details on those sessions.

Barbara Brittingham, former president of the New England Commission of Higher Education, told Inside Higher Ed, “the accreditor-run information session is, as far as I know, a first.” She credited MSCHE for leading it, noting that “when institutions close, particularly suddenly, the community and particularly the students need multiple opportunities to talk and ask questions.”

Paul Gaston III, an emeritus professor at Kent State University who frequently writes about accreditation, said by email that “the situation seems anomalous in many ways” but “MSCHE’s webinar strikes me as a reasonable response under the circumstances.”

In UArts’s waning days, administrators clashed with MSCHE, especially after the organization stripped its accreditation on May 31. MSCHE noted that the “imminent closure” violated its standards given “the institution failed to inform the Commission of closure in a timely manner or to properly plan for closure with prior approval through substantive change.” That announcement, made public, seemed to prompt local news coverage before UArts released its own statement.

In the initial closure announcement, UArts blamed MSCHE for breaking the news.

“Today is a heartbreaking day. University of the Arts will close as of Friday June 7, 2024. We would have shared this news with you directly, but the Middle States Commission on Higher Education elected to withdraw UArts’ accreditation and announce before we could communicate with you. We know that this makes hearing the news of UArts’ abrupt closure even worse,” wrote Judson Aaron, chair of the UArts Board of Trustees, and then-president Walk.

The swipe at MSCHE was later removed from the closure statement currently online. In addition, the accrediting body released a statement disputing the notion that it hastened the closure of UArts.

The abrupt end for University of the Arts was followed by other closures in the state. For-profit Triangle Tech announced on June 5 it plans to close six campuses across the state. Pittsburgh Technical College, a nonprofit, two-year institution, announced on June 10 that it will close in August. And in January, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts announced plans to end degree programs.

But it’s the sudden implosion of UArts that has garnered the most attention from lawmakers.

On Monday, Democratic representative Ben Waxman will host a policy hearing with the House Democratic Policy Committee and members of the Philadelphia House Delegation on the abrupt shutdown of UArts. Waxman and fellow Democrat representative Bob Merski, announced Thursday that they plan to introduce legislation to help avert sudden college closures.

The legislation would call for colleges receiving funds from the state or federal government to provide financial information annually. Though the lawmakers’ statement did not specify what financial information they would ask universities to provide, they argued such legislation would boost transparency for students, employees and taxpayers. They added it would allow the legislature to intervene to prevent other closures or at least to ensure a more orderly process if such a move became necessary.

“When I heard about UArts’ closure, I immediately shared feelings of anger and disappointment with the students who won’t have the same school to attend and faculty who will be losing their jobs,” Waxman said in the news release. “I want to ensure no student or school faculty member in Pennsylvania has to go through what those at UArts are going through right now. By requiring these schools to regularly notify us of their financial information, we can create greater accountability and transparency across the board.”

The Education Department has tapped College Board president Jeremy Singer to serve in a new role overseeing the rollout of next year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

The news, provided first to Inside Higher Ed, comes as higher education groups have grown increasingly concerned that the agency won’t launch a working FAFSA on time—by Oct. 1—after this year’s application faced a number of delays and technical glitches. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has repeatedly assured Congress, colleges and families that the form will be ready—and that the application will be better.

Bringing on Singer, a technology solutions expert who oversaw the development and launch of the new digital SAT, is the clearest signal yet that the department is shaking up its FAFSA approach as part of other “transformational changes” at the Office for Federal Student Aid (FSA). The form is key to unlocking billions in federal, state and institutional aid for millions of students.

“I’m honored to join a team whose work is vital to families across the country,” Singer said in a statement Friday. “It is impossible to overstate the importance of FAFSA in making college possible for millions of students. I’m eager to listen to students, families and educators who rely on FAFSA. We will do everything we can to deliver an improved experience to better serve students.”

Singer, who has been president of the College Board since 2013, is a familiar face for colleges and universities, some of whom have grown skeptical of the Education Department over its handling of the FAFSA. Singer will be taking temporary leave from the College Board to be the FAFSA executive adviser. In that role, he’ll lead FSA’s strategy on the 2025–26 FAFSA as well as work with the department “to strengthen internal systems and processes, bolster technical capabilities, and drive innovation to help ensure optimal performance” of the application’s launch.

“Jeremy brings deep experience having successfully led the development and introduction of major technology innovations in education, which will be integral to improving the FAFSA experience and ensuring millions of students and families can easily access the federal financial aid they are entitled to,” Cardona said in a statement.

In interviews Friday, College Board trustees praised Singer and his leadership style, expressing confidence in his ability to right the FAFSA ship. Derek Kindle, who’s vice provost for enrollment management at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that Singer will bring candor and a solutions-oriented approach to Federal Student Aid as well as experience with complex technological systems and issues.

“I think it’s a smart and savvy move to choose Jeremy because of his skillset,” he said. “I know Jeremy is the type of person who can get in a room, get people together and get them on the same page towards the mission.”

Gail Holt, dean of financial aid at Amherst College and a College Board trustee, said that Singer is well-versed in what families and institutions need and understands the financial aid timeline.

“So I’m excited about it,” she said. “It gives me hope and promise at a period that for a financial aid community has really been dwindling these many months.”

Following the various FAFSA delays and challenges, Holt said that her team at Amherst is “managing and pivoting as well as could be expected.” They’re about halfway through getting returning students their aid information.

Having Singer at the helm gives her more trust in the process for next year. “I can’t stress enough, if he’s got the right people with him, which I believe he will, he can set a course that will get us back on track,” she said. “… The College Board as a whole is very well familiar with how tools and resources can create a bridge for students to get from secondary school to higher ed to their future.”

Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said in a statement that the department needs to ensure the FAFSA mistakes are not repeated in the upcoming cycle.

“It’s encouraging to see the department is committing additional resources and manpower to course correct for next year, and reassuring to hear they remain committed to an October 1 launch,” Draeger said. “It’s imperative that the entire system, from application submission to processing, is operative on October 1, and that the Department clearly articulates that functionality to all stakeholders along the way.”

In addition to hiring Singer, the department announced a series of listening sessions over the coming weeks to inform how the agency can better support students, families, colleges, states and other partners during the 2025–26 FAFSA cycle. Additionally, the department said Friday that the application for 2025–26 will “remain consistent” with this year’s form in order to minimize disruptions.

At the direction of Congress, the department overhauled the form for the 2024–25 academic year in order to make it simpler to use. Congress also dictated a number of changes to the underlying methodology that determines how much financial aid a student is eligible for, which opened up the Pell Grant to thousands of more students. The changes took longer than the department initially planned, and proved more challenging. The department’s news release said that the agency has made “significant progress” in addressing and resolving “major known issues” with the 2024–25 application.

Still, officials acknowledged the toll of the rocky rollout.

“The expansive scope and timeline of the changes for 24–25 has been challenging for students, families, institutions, states, and organizations that support them,” officials said in the release.

The department has received and processed more than 11.1 million aid applications. The pace of applications has concerned colleges who worried that the FAFSA issues would deter some students from pursuing postsecondary education. In March, the department had received 40 percent fewer applications than usual, though that gap has since closed to 8 percent, according to Friday’s news release.

To further close that gap, the department announced a $50 million FAFSA Student Support Strategy to fund efforts to boost FAFSA completion rates. So far, more than $30 million has been awarded to more than 180 organizations.

This article has been updated.

Stanford University will once again require applicants to submit standardized test scores, ending four years of a test-optional policy put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. The new policy will go into effect in fall 2025, and will not apply to the upcoming cycle’s applicants.

The university will require students to submit either SAT or ACT scores. According to a statement announcing the reversal, the decision was based on an internal review by the Faculty Committee on Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid which determined that test scores are “an important predictor of academic performance at Stanford.”

That finding is in line with the internal research held up by a wave of selective universities to justify a return to test requirements—including Dartmouth, Yale and the California Institute of Technology—following on the heels of an Opportunity Insights study that has reignited a heated debate over the benefits of testing requirements. 

Notably, unlike Dartmouth, Yale and other institutions—including Brown and the University of Texas at Austin—Stanford’s decision and review did not argue that returning to test mandates would boost class diversity.

New details have been revealed about the fate of academics who have not been seen or heard from since visiting China, leaving scholars “extremely concerned” about repression.

Yuan Keqin, a former professor at Japan’s Hokkaido University and a Chinese national, was detained in 2019 on a visit to China. At the time it was unclear what had happened to him, with news of his arrest only being shared the following year. Now anonymous sources have told Japanese media that the professor has been sentenced to six years in prison on espionage charges.

Similarly, the Chinese government announced in April that Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin, who previously worked at a university in the Czech Republic, had been sentenced to seven years in prison, also on espionage charges, after being arrested when entering the country in 2019.

China’s approach of drip-feeding information about the arrest of academics it deems to have violated national security laws is a source of apprehension among scholars linked to the country.

Among those who have gone missing while in China whose detentions have not yet been confirmed are two other Chinese scholars employed by Japanese universities: Hu Shiyun, a professor of Chinese language at Kobe Gakuin University, who returned to China in 2023 and has not been heard from since; and Fan Yuntao, a professor at Asia University, who failed to return from a year-long trip to China in time for the new academic year and has since been unreachable.

“The academic community is extremely concerned about colleagues and collaborators who are victims of such repression for their scholarly activity,” said Astrid Nordin, Lau chair of Chinese international relations at King’s College London.

“Many of us worry about causing problems for people in China who may speak to us, work with us, or engage with us in our research. Many are also disappointed by the lack of comment on these developments from our own institutions.”

China continues to expand its national security laws, with rules coming into force in July set to grant border forces the power to inspect and search content on mobile phones and laptops.

This has further worried the academic community, according to Marina Zhang, an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney’s Australia-China Relations Institute.

“Scholars collecting research data or participating in international conferences could be subject to suspicion and investigation,” she said. “Even short visits to China might result in entry inspections and searches of electronic devices. This high-pressure enforcement environment undoubtedly hinders academic freedom and international exchange.”

Professor Nordin added that Chinese scholars abroad were “doubly victimized by simultaneously punitive and discriminatory action in states outside China,” such as the “China initiative” in the U.S., launched under former president Donald Trump to combat espionage.

Benjamin Mulvey, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow whose research focuses on international higher education in China, added that academics were becoming “more wary” of doing fieldwork in China.

“I think those of us with foreign passports still feel relatively safe, but we obviously worry about our colleagues that are Chinese nationals,” he said.

“The recent incidents will further contribute to an atmosphere of apprehension among researchers based overseas, and particularly those who hold Chinese nationality. This is likely, in my opinion, to make these scholars less likely to conduct research on the wide range of topics the state deems ‘sensitive,’ and less likely to visit China to conduct fieldwork on these topics.”