Tag: Events

I became an academic editor by accident. In 2015, an acquaintance asked if I was up for some last-minute proofreading. He was an adjunct professor and the sole author on a short article. His revisions were due the next day, and he was nervous about his grammar, but he’d heard I had an English degree. Could he hire me?

When I said yes, I thought I was agreeing to a one-off job. That it would turn into six years of us working together, and start my freelance editing career? The thought never crossed my mind.

But in the near-decade since, I’ve worked with scholars across disciplines—ranging from my start in computer science to engineering, nursing, social work and more. That happened despite the fact that I don’t have a background in any of those fields; instead, I have two English degrees and a professional background in administration and magazine writing.

That makes me a generalist, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a person capable of tackling a wide variety of tasks or subjects.” Although countless articles—including those in Indeed, Emeritus and Forbes—have debated the merits of generalists versus specialists, generalists can make particularly effective editors. Why? Because they’re not familiar with the content they edit and can easily see what’s missing. That could include a vague abstract, missing context in a literature review or methodology that needs further explanation (which are, according to the Western Journal of Nursing Research, common peer reviewer criticisms). A generalist can spot all of those things, in addition to checking grammar, syntax and citations.

In short, the closer a writer is to a subject, the easier it is to leave gaps in the content. This cognitive bias is called the “curse of knowledge.” Coined in a 1989 article in the Journal of Political Economy, it describes how an expert often forgets to account for their wide knowledge base and assumes that everyone has access to the same depth of information. That is one of the reasons that it can be difficult for a beginner to learn from an expert; a 2017 article on instructional design notes that without careful attention to pedagogy, “experts forget what is easy and what was difficult to learn.” That can create a disconnect between teacher and student.

The same bias can apply to researcher and peer reviewer. Working with a generalist editor can help you spot, and correct, your own curse of knowledge.

Editorial Resources You May Already Have

First and foremost: You do not need to hire an editor. Faculty members at all levels are under intense pressure, and feeling obligated to find and hire an editor, on top of everything else, can seem overwhelming. You can always edit your own work.

That said, if you want additional resources, consider swapping research with someone you trust. Check with current and former mentors, former classmates and/or colleagues to see if anyone is interested, looking for someone who has specialized in a different area than you have.

That is how I approached my first piece of academic research, an examination of war in the 1959 novel A Separate Peace. I’d originally written about it for a course and was struggling to rework it as a journal article, so I reached out to a former professor for guidance. Although he wasn’t familiar with the novel, he was able to critique my work using his background in English and writing.

If that option isn’t right for you, check with your place of employment to see what services they offer. In higher education, some institutions employ an academic editor or have writing centers or publication departments for this purpose. (In fact, I do just that—I’m currently contracted to edit for a college.)

If that doesn’t work out, you may need to hire an independent editor. Word of mouth is a great way to meet editors who’ve already been vetted by people you know and trust, so ask your colleagues, department chair or research partners if they’d recommend anyone. Be sure to consider factors such as cost, turnaround time and your deadline. This is a great option if your peer reviewers have requested an editing certificate, which proves that your article has been read by a professional editor.

Hiring an Editor on Your Own

Despite your best efforts, you may need to find an editor on your own. The internet is vast—and aside from outright scammers, there’s also the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby someone believes their skillset is better than it is. How can you find a qualified editor?

The answer to that depends on what kind of help you’re looking for. Generally speaking, you can hire an agency or an individual editor, but more specifically:

• Some publishers offer editorial services or partner with an agency to offer these services for a fee, including Taylor & Francis and Wiley, among others. You may have seen these advertised on your desired journal’s Guide for Authors or Author Instructions page. Keep in mind that using a publisher’s service does not guarantee that their journal will accept your paper.
• When hiring an individual, consider starting with a professional organization, such as the Editorial Freelancers Association. From their searchable member database, look for an academic editor. Ideally that person will have a website that lists their credentials, including relevant degrees, certifications, peer-reviewing experience, editing experience and publishing experience—either with their own research or in a formal role such as editor-in-chief. They may also share a portfolio of articles they’ve edited—bonus points if they’re named in the acknowledgments. Since researchers aren’t required to thank their editor publicly, it’s a good sign if they’ve chosen to do so.
• If you’re looking for ESL proofreading, look for an editor or agency that mentions this service by name. Qualified editors may have an advanced English or writing degree, and they may advertise their English language proficiency; many will note whether they’re a native speaker, for example. You can also look for credentials in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) or Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) to ensure that the editor or agency understands ESL-specific needs.
• If you’re seeking citation help, such as APA or AMA compliance, confirm that the editor is familiar with your desired style. Some editors list their preferred styles on their website, but if they don’t, ask. This is a place where you’ll want a specialist!
• If you want your editor to correct your formulas, or assess the rigor of your methodology, you’ll want to find a specialist in your field. These tasks may very well be outside the purview of a generalist.

Once you’ve found someone who looks like a good match, reach out. Many editors offer a free sample, typically 500 to 1000 words, to ensure that you’re on the same page. It’s a good sign if the editor makes recommendations, catches errors, asks questions and doesn’t introduce new errors (such as mis-formatting a footnote citation as a parenthetical).

Publishing your research can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be impossible. An editor can help you polish your work so that it can find the right journal to call home.

At this year’s annual meeting of the American Conference of Academic Deans, or ACAD—a rich gathering of 300-plus administrators throughout higher education—I led two roundtable discussions devoted to equity in faculty service. Trying to distribute the service work of faculty members more fairly is a vexing topic, one that has become even more pressing following the COVID pandemic, which both highlighted and exacerbated inequities in the academy and across society.

Research shows that service slacking has the greatest negative impact on women faculty members and faculty of color: They do more, get rewarded less and have other opportunities limited because of those commitments. Yet it was clear from conversations and multiple presentations on the topic at other ACAD sessions that many colleges and universities are directly confronting the question of service inequity and engaging in innovative practices that seek to chip away at this destructive phenomenon. Further, most of these steps don’t cost money and are replicable across different institutional settings.

A common thread among many of these strategies is to bring hidden labor out of the shadows—inequity tends to thrive best when its causes operate covertly. Among many other tasks, advising, mentoring, committee service, faculty and student recruiting, and showing up at events sit at the core of university life and student success. Yet they are not treated as such in institutional reward systems like tenure, promotion, merit raises and reassigned time.

Service is rarely tied to such traditional material incentives of university life, and thus service labor ends up becoming invisible to those not engaged in it. Thus, approaches that take the following three steps have a better chance of rooting out service inequity: documenting service work across the faculty; making that documentation transparent; and creating consequences for those not doing their fair share. Developing systems along such lines gives institutional value to this labor.

For institutions looking to improve in this area, here are some starting points.

Document hidden labor, and share that documentation among members of the community so slackers can’t hide. Most members of academic communities have a vague idea of who is doing their fair share. Recording all the various service activities of a department’s or program’s faculty members on a spreadsheet, however, and then sharing out the results with members of the unit will bring into stark relief any inequities. My own honors college faculty agreed to this practice as a way of targeting a particular amount of annual service where each activity is tied to a set number of points. That also has had the advantage of showing faculty members the many ways they can contribute to the collective service mission. Everyone’s totals are shared at the end of the year.

Give faculty members a choice and something to aim for. Allowing faculty members some flexibility for how they will fulfill that service and for how their traditional areas of work will be evaluated gives them more ownership over the process—particularly those whose previous hidden labor has gone unrewarded. Some colleges even let faculty members write a “service philosophy” so they can put all this hidden labor into context and give leadership a clearer account of that work.

Have consequences for not stepping up. Without a clear expectation for what constitutes service and an established system for documenting that work, it becomes difficult to enforce equity and admonish the people who don’t step up. Creating a clear system of objectives and assessment creates accountability. For example, the consequences for not pulling your weight might have an impact on your teaching schedule: perhaps slackers get last crack at the department’s coveted afternoon classes. Departmental resources can also help shape behavior. Consider whether additional conference support is directed to those with high marks in service instead of the research stars.

Rethink the language you use to describe service. “Service” as a term comes from Latin roots that evoke both servitude and slavery—hardly productive connotations for work that moves colleges and universities forward. Several institutions are employing more positive terminology to try to highlight the institutional value of this work. Oberlin College increasingly uses the word stewardship, according to Elizabeth Hamilton, associate dean of the College of the Arts and Sciences. Colby College is referring more often to “community building and governance,” Russell Johnson, senior associate provost for faculty affairs, has told me. Likewise, other institutions have tried to shy away from phrases like “protecting” first-year faculty from service, as if it were a virus that new hires should avoid at all costs while they launch into the supposedly more valuable work of teaching and research. Rebranding service—when combined with some of these other changes—can change the culture around the work.

Experiment with how you constitute faculty committee rosters. We are all familiar with the typical distribution of personnel across faculty governance where the service leaders sit on multiple committees while the shirkers manage to avoid even a single committee responsibility or strategically latch onto the group that still hasn’t elected a chair by winter break. Johnson notes that Colby College addresses that challenge by allowing the faculty committee that oversees the governance process the chance to appoint unelected faculty to various committees once the elected positions have been filled.

Assign literal value to service by converting the work into actual currency. Time is the real currency in the modern-day academy, particularly after COVID when faculty and staff members are being asked to do so much more: in one survey 82 percent of women faculty noted their workloads had increased as a result of the pandemic. (The figure was 70 percent for men.) Departments often allow faculty members to bank credits that come from working with individual students on independent research projects or independent studies and then eventually convert a set number of credits into a stipend or reassigned course. So, too, could the voluminous amount of hidden labor be quantified and equated with reassigned time or other forms of compensation.

Take things off people’s plates. Higher ed is great at starting things but terrible at shutting down activities and programs, even those that no longer bring value. It’s time to look at the entire portfolio of service work in the same way that we examine the academic program portfolio during periods of scarcity. What service is no longer mission aligned, no longer adding value to the institution? Struggling to eliminate the faculty parking committee that hasn’t met in two years? You might want to follow the lead of institutions that have blown up their entire committee system—a kind of zero-based committee formation—and start from scratch by reinstituting only the crucial activities of faculty governance.

Cast a wide net instead when targeting volunteers. When asking for volunteers, make the opportunity available to all the personnel in a unit instead of repeatedly targeting your service stars or prejudging who might be interested in the work—which can reveal your own biases. A number of years ago, I emailed about a half dozen faculty in my unit in search of someone to interact with our campus’s first-generation scholars’ program. I directed that outreach to select faculty members who were interested in this student population and gifted in supporting them. But then a colleague in that group pointed out to me that I had unintentionally contacted only women and faculty of color. That was a wake-up call for me, one I appreciated very much.

Don’t place responsibility for addressing service inequity on the shoulders of individual faculty members. It’s crucial to not adopt the philosophy of simply, “You should just learn to say ‘no’”—an approach that exploits the people most often asked to give. Instead, we should address the root causes at the institutional level and create systems that better ensure equity. For example, Kevin Dettmar’s advice in a recent essay on service slackers focuses on personal, individual situations rather than unpacking some of the underlying systemic issues. He asks chairs to sympathize with the service-resistant faculty member’s personal history and their affection for students, while also making committee assignments based on the quality of a faculty member’s diplomacy skills. Yet we need to reorient our understanding of service away from just models that see the work as fundamentally depending on “a generosity of spirit,” as Dettmar put it, toward more systems tied to clear institutional expectations and rewards.

The work of rectifying service inequity in the academy is taking place within the context of staffing reductions, falling enrollments and budget deficits, which have created a climate of fear and exhaustion. If we don’t deal with that inequity, we will continue to lose some of our most valuable, high performing faculty members, especially in light of the multiple pressures now facing academic workers, many of whom are considering leaving the industry.

All the approaches that I’ve suggested have their imperfections and are works in progress, but that does not mean we shouldn’t lean into new practices. Many institutions have this front of mind, judging from the hallway conversations at ACAD and strong attendance at conference sessions devoted to the topic.

Progress can be made when administrators partner with faculty members to seek solutions rather than have senior leaders approach them with an already-baked plan. In my own unit, faculty members provided the impetus for our discussions and led a retreat conversation about service inequity. They then approved a pilot approach that documented their involvement in the vast quantity of invisible labor in the honors college, in the hopes of bringing this oft-hidden work into the light and recognize it appropriately. That’s a goal I hope all institutions share.

The University of the Arts, a private nonprofit institution in Philadelphia, announced late Friday that it would close on June 7.

The institution’s announcement came hours after the Middle States Commission on Higher Education withdrew its accreditation, saying UArts had “failed to inform the commission of closure in a timely manner or to properly plan for closure with prior approval through substantive change.”

“[T]he commission has determined that an immediate adverse action is necessary because the institution has not complied with the commission’s procedures, requests for written reports, teach-out plan, or other information,” Middle States said in its May 31 letter to President Kerry Walk. Accreditors have increasingly insisted that institutions facing significant financial turmoil keep their overseers informed and prepare plans for students to transfer to other institutions, among other things.

For their part, University of the Arts officials had relatively little to say.

“We know that the news of UArts’ closure comes as a shock,” Walk and the university’s board chair, Judson Aaron, said a letter to the campus Friday. “Like you, we are struggling to make sense of the present moment. But like many institutions of higher learning, UArts has been in a fragile financial state, with many years of declining enrollments, declining revenues, and increasing expenses.”

The officials said that the institution had “worked hard this year … to take steps that would secure the university’s sustainability,” but that “we could not overcome the ultimate challenge we faced: with a cash position that has steadily weakened, we could not cover significant, unanticipated expenses. The situation came to light very suddenly. Despite swift action, we were unable to bridge the necessary gaps.”

Sunday, the institution’s Board of Trustees released another statement affirming the closure, which they approved Saturday.

“Under extraordinary circumstances, we diligently assessed the urgent crisis presented and pathways to keep the institution open,” the statement read. “Despite our best efforts, we could not ultimately identify a viable path for the institution to remain open and in the service of its mission. With the priority of addressing the impact that our decision will have on the UArts community, as well as our home in the City of Philadelphia, we are committed to supporting our students, faculty, and staff through this heartbreaking transition.”

A spokesman did not respond to a reporter’s questions about the Middle States agency’s assertions about UArts’ failure to follow the accreditor’s policies.

Walk, who became the university’s president last year, was previously president of Marymount Manhattan College, which last week was absorbed by Northeastern University.

Several colleges in and around Philadelphia have ended independent operations in the last year. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts said in January that its art school would close, and Cabrini University closed and Salus University merged into Drexel University in the middle of 2023.

The following institutions have announced in 2024 that they will close or, if indicated, merge into another university such that it will no longer be considered an independent institution.

• Delaware College of Art and Design, Delaware
• Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, Oregon
• Eastern Gateway Community College, Ohio
• Wells College, New York
• University of Saint Katherine, California
• Goddard College, Vermont
• Oak Point University, Illinois
• Birmingham-Southern College, Alabama
• University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Waukesha campus
• Bluffton University (merging into University of Findlay), Ohio
• Cambridge College (merging into Bay Path University), Massachusetts
• Fontbonne University, Missouri
• Notre Dame College, Ohio
• Jamestown Business College, New York

The University of the Arts, a private nonprofit institution in Philadelphia, announced late Friday that it would close within a week.

The institution’s announcement came hours after the Middle States Commission on Higher Education withdrew its accreditation, saying UArts had “failed to inform the commission of closure in a timely manner or to properly plan for closure with prior approval through substantive change.”

“We know that the news of UArts’ closure comes as a shock,” the university’s board chair, Judson Aaron, and president, Kerry Walk, said in a letter to the campus. “Like you, we are struggling to make sense of the present moment. But like many institutions of higher learning, UArts has been in a fragile financial state, with many years of declining enrollments, declining revenues, and increasing expenses.”

The officials said that the institution had “worked hard this year… to take steps that would secure the university’s sustainability,” but that “we could not overcome the ultimate challenge we faced: with a cash position that has steadily weakened, we could not cover significant, unanticipated expenses. The situation came to light very suddenly. Despite swift action, we were unable to bridge the necessary gaps.”

 Walk, who became the university’s president last year, was previously president of Marymount Manhattan College, which earlier this week was absorbed by Northeastern University. 

Several colleges in and around Philadelphia have ended independent operations in the last year. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts said in January that its art school would close, and Cabrini University closed and Salus University merged into Drexel University in the middle of 2023.

The other day I had a friend, someone who knows my work, and who even works in education-adjacent spaces ask, “Have you written anything about that ChatGPT stuff?”

Have I? It seems like that’s all I’ve been writing about, to the point where I purposefully go looking for any other topic for this space these days. When I consider what I want to write about, I sometimes imagine a reader who literally reads everything I post and then try to judge if they will feel like I’ve been repeating myself. For sure, there’s areas that I return to over and over, but I want that hypothetical reader to feel like they stand a decent chance of encountering an idea they hadn’t heard from me before.

This also happens to be a good way to keep the work interesting for me. Writing is a tool for figuring out what I think and believe, and to endlessly go over old territory is fundamentally uninteresting.

But, in talking to this friend, and from a few other conversations I’ve had, it’s clear that even as ubiquitous as talk about the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on education may seem to me, I think the reality is that most folks are too pressed to attend to what seems to be a rapidly evolving space.

Going back through my archives, I have written a lot about the challenges of assigning, teaching and assessing writing in a world where ChatGPT (and other apps of that ilk) exist, but one of the things I realized in this archive review is that I think it is a mistake to see this as a rapidly evolving space.

Yes, on the one hand, OpenAI seems to be regularly rolling out new capabilities for its technology.

But the core problem people in education must grapple with hasn’t changed at all: How do we help students learn? In this case, I’m specifically focused on helping students learn to write. ChatGPT doesn’t alter the problem in the slightest. It may be part of the solution to this problem, but we are very very far from having sufficient evidence to make that determination.

Jane Rosenzweig, Director of the Harvard Writing Center, frames it clearly with her question, “To what problem is ChatGPT the solution?” When we look at the “problem” of learning to write—which is not the same thing as producing written artifacts—it becomes very difficult to see if ChatGPT has any utility, except at the margins.

But of course, the technology is here. Students are using it and instructors are getting hugely frustrated knowing that students are outsourcing the work to the technology, making the whole exercise seem kind of pointless. Just because I think there is a solid case that ChatGPT (and its ilk) have little to no productive role when it comes to learning to write doesn’t mean it can be ignored.

But if we’re going to think about it, we have to do it in the context of the problem we’re trying to engage. I’ll say it again: How do we help students learn?

For the sake of my friend and anyone else who thinks additional perspective might be helpful, I’ve compiled some of what I’ve been writing on this topic since the arrival of ChatGPT in November of 2022. There’s more where this came from. I guess I really have been writing about it a lot.

How to Think About Generative AI

My most important recommendation is to not get wrapped up in the hype that surrounds any new technology, particularly one as unproven at generative AI and large language models. To that goal, I’ve written a couple of pieces about not falling for the hype or falling prey to FOMO.

Remember that almost everyone who is productively using generative AI now had no experience with the technology prior to November, 2022. The notion that the sooner one trains to use the technology the better just doesn’t follow.

“Resisting the Hype Cycle in Education”

“Resist Generative AI FOMO”

“ChatGPT Both Is and Is Not Like a Calculator.”

How to Think About Assignments in a Generative AI World

One of my mantras about learning is that it is done through experiences. The chief threat of ChatGPT to the kind of writing students often do in school is that its output can be substituted for the experiences we’ve been asking students to do.

My view is that if this is the case, we should examine those assignments primarily from the point of view of what experiences we’re asking students to have, and whether or not those experiences prior to ChatGPT were truly associated with learning as opposed to what I call “academic cosplay” activities which allow us to hold on to an illusion of learning for the purposes of schooling. As I argue in the first piece linked below, we must make students write, but if we make them write, we have to provide experiences which are linked to learning.

“We Must Still Make Students Write”

“If ChatGPT Can Do It, It’s Not Worth Doing”

“How About We Put Learning at the Center?”

How to Think About Assessment in a Generative AI World

The problem of students turning to ChatGPT to complete work we would rather see them engage with without the intervention of the technology cannot and will not be solved by assignment design alone. For sure, authentic assignments that students want to engage with help, but they are not in any way sufficient.

This grouping tries to show that when it comes to meaningful assessment, the problem has not changed, and we should’ve been focused on a more meaningful array of criteria all along.

“ChatGPT and Writing Assessment, an Old Problem Made New”

“On AI and ‘Meaningful’ Feedback”

“You’ve Gotta Have Taste”

Why We Shouldn’t Let ChatGPT Teach

I’m a bit of a fanatic on this front, but it simply makes no sense to me to have something that cannot read, think, feel, observe or communicate with intention respond to student writing as though that response has meaning. To believe this is to embrace a delusion that is not rooted in genuine educational values and that privileges schooling over learning.

“Reject Automated Grading of Student Writing”

“ChatGPT Can’t Teach Writing”

Signs of Progress in Teaching Writing in a Generative AI World

While the frustration and despair some are experiencing is real and understandable, I think it’s also important to celebrate the way that adapting to this new reality has unlocked improved ways of thinking about and responding to student writing.

“The Writing Is What Matters”

“Making Progress Against ChatGPT”

“ChatGPT Can’t Kill Anything Worth Preserving”

I hope this helps. If anyone wants to talk about their own challenges and approaches, I’m easy to find. Don’t hesitate to reach out.

Academic employees at two more University of California campuses have joined the University of California, Santa Cruz in the strike supporting pro-Palestinian protesters, and their union says three more campuses could be called to join the walkout next week.

UAW Local 4811—which says it represents 48,000 graduate student workers, postdoctoral scholars and other academic employees across the UC System—said in a news release Tuesday that thousands of its workers at the Los Angeles and Davis campuses had answered its call to join the strike. The union says it represents 6,400 employees at UCLA, 5,700 at Davis and more than 2,000 at Santa Cruz, meaning over 14,000 employees may be participating, but it’s unclear how many are currently withholding their labor.

The UC System has called the strike illegal. The union says it’s a strike over alleged unfair labor practices by the UC system. Union members have been among those arrested and subjected to university discipline for their participation in pro-Palestinian protests, the union says, and it has accused the UC system of favoring anti-Palestinian over pro-Palestinian speech.

Police have arrested hundreds of people while clearing protest encampments from UC campuses. Counterprotesters attacked a UCLA encampment on April 30, and campus police didn’t immediately intervene. The next day, campus police and outside cops, armored in riot gear, cleared the encampment and arrested more than 200 people.

“The academic community across the state has been peacefully protesting,” Anny Viloria Winnett, the union’s academic student employee unit chair for UCLA, said in the union news release. “In response, we have been kicked, maced and attacked with gas canisters and fireworks, and riot police have pointed weapons … Many have been arrested, disciplined and are being banned from the campuses where they live and work.”

Emily Weintraut, the union’s academic student employee unit chair for Davis, said in the release that the union is asking UC System officials “to drop the charges against everyone who has been unfairly arrested or disciplined as a first step to resolve their unfair labor practices, and respect our rights to free speech and peaceful assembly that they had guaranteed us.”

In response to the strike, Mary Osako, UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for strategic communications, said: “[Our students] are paying tuition and fees to learn, and we’re dismayed by deliberate outside disruptions that get in the way of that. Students want to hear their professors teach, not the piercing sounds of trumpets, drums and slogans being shouted right outside their classroom windows.”

Earnings for people without a college degree have increased over the past decade. But because people with college degrees are also earning more, the historic wealth gap between the two groups hasn’t narrowed.

Despite that reality, the public perception that college isn’t worth the investment persists, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center entitled “Is College Worth It?”

Only 22 percent of those surveyed said the cost of getting a four-year college degree is worth it even if it requires taking out loans; 49 percent said getting the degree is worth it, but only if it doesn’t require getting loans.

“The public has a pretty sober view right now of the pursuit of bachelor’s degrees, and how they’re financed is weighing on them,” said Richard Fry, an economist and lead author of the report. “But this data shows that finishing a bachelor’s degree has pretty big payoffs.”

Fry and his team analyzed federal data on the labor force, earnings, hours, household income, poverty characteristics and net worth to compare earnings trends of Americans with and without four-year degrees. They also surveyed 5,203 Americans last fall to gain more insight into how the reality of a college’s economic value squares with public perception.

The data (adjusted to reflect 2022 dollars) revealed that in households headed by young high school graduates, the median net worth rose from $12,700 in 2013 to $30,700 in 2022; In households headed by young college graduates, the median net worth rose from $46,600 in 2013 to $120,200 in 2022.

‘Economic Headwinds’ for Men Without Degrees

Divided by gender, the data shows that men and women without degrees have had different experiences in the labor market over the past 50 years.

Earnings for young men with a high school degree had been on the decline since 1973, though their earnings have seen modest growth over the past decade, according to the report. For young men with full-time, full-year jobs, median earnings increased from $39,300 in 2014 to $45,000 in 2023. But even with the uptick, when adjusted for inflation, their earnings are still lower than they were prior to 1973.

Wages for women with no college degree, however, haven’t fallen since the 1970s, and they remained relatively stable even during the economic downturn of 2001 and the Great Recession. And over the past 10 years, their wages have risen, from $30,900 in 2014 to $36,000 in 2023.

“The economic headwinds less-educated young adults have faced are particularly apparent in the areas where young men tend to be concentrated,” Fry said, noting that historically, less-educated men have gravitated toward fields such as manufacturing, whereas less-educated women are more likely to enter low-wage service jobs in the health and education sectors. “For example, with the decline of unions—which have been good for bringing up wages—it’s the young men who traditionally were the union members.”

But for men and women alike, the data is clear that completing a four-year degree substantially increases earning potential.

In contrast to men without a degree, wages for college-educated men have increased since the 1970s, according to the report. In 1973, young men with a four-year degree earned 23 percent more than their peers with a high school diploma. In 2014, men with four-year degrees earned 72 percent more, and as of 2023 that gap was around 71 percent.

Women with four-year degrees have seen similar gains.

Between 2014 and 2023, median earnings of college-educated young women climbed from $55,200 to $65,000. And the wealth gap between those women and their less-educated peers keeps getting bigger, according to the report. In the mid-1980s, the average young woman with a college degree earned about 48 percent more than a woman with just a high school diploma. By 2014, that gap had widened to 79 percent, a figure that’s remained relatively unchanged since.

Despite clear evidence that a four-year degree generally boosts economic stability, the report suggests that a sizable portion of the American public isn’t convinced.

Four out of 10 Americans who responded to Pew’s survey said it’s “not too” or “not at all important” to have a four-year college degree to get a well-paying job in today’s economy; 35 percent said it’s “somewhat important” and 25 percent said it’s “extremely” or “very important.”

The survey also asked respondents about the importance of having a college degree to land a well-paying job now compared to 20 years ago. While 49 percent of survey respondents said it’s less important now than it was in the early 2000s, 32 percent said it’s more important now and 17 percent said the importance remains unchanged.

Degrees Offer More Protection

Divided by age, 44 percent of people between the ages of 18 to 29 said a college degree is more important today than it was 20 years ago, whereas 29 percent of people between the ages of 30 to 49, and 30 percent of people 50 and older agreed with that statement.

Nicole Smith, chief economist at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, said those perceptions may reflect young peoples’ understanding that technology has driven some job sectors, such as manufacturing and mechanics, to require more technical skills.

“Jobs have changed. With the advent of the personal computer you have to demonstrate your competency,” she said. “There are certain jobs that require credentials that you didn’t need before.”

And while 34 percent of Americans surveyed in the report believe it’s “extremely likely” a person without a college degree could get a well-paying job in today’s economy, Smith cautioned that the low unemployment rates workers are enjoying now likely won’t last forever.

“In general, people without college degrees are the first out during a recession,” she said. “It’s important to look at the value of a college degree in a recession, booms and slumps to really talk about what the true value is. It’s not only about if you can get a living wage, but whether you can get a sustainable, good job.”

Sean Tierney, director of research and policy at the Institute for Higher Education Policy, said that although public perceptions that college isn’t worth the price don’t align with the data, college administrators and education policymakers should take that view seriously nonetheless.

“We need better information for students around their investment, with clear information about what it’s going to cost and the expected earnings outcomes,” he said, noting that Congress passing the College Transparency Act, which proposes to track student outcome data across the country, could aid those efforts. “We also need to provide support to ensure that students can complete their degree and also make sure the programs we implement are done so to ensure equitable access.”

During Thursday’s Congressional hearing about campus antisemitism, the leaders of Northwestern University, Rutgers University, and the University of California, Los Angeles, emerged largely unscathed, despite contentious questions from lawmakers.

The three leaders—Michael Schill of Northwestern, Jonathan Holloway of Rutgers and Gene Block of UCLA—were called before Congress to discuss alleged antisemitic incidents on their campuses and their handling of the pro-Palestinian encampments that sprung up at all three universities.

While several Congressional Republicans (and a small group of Democrats) raged, the campus leaders appeared unfazed, remaining calm and collected in the face of sometimes barbed questioning. They seemed to have absorbed the lessons of the presidents who occupied the hot seat before them, demonstrating care and concern for their students while providing guarded answers and refusing to be intimidated by their interrogators.

Campus Leaders in the Crosshairs

It was their varying responses to the encampments that first attracted Congressional attention. Both Northwestern and Rutgers struck deals with the protesters, agreeing to meet certain demands in exchange for voluntary removal of tents. The UCLA encampment, however, descended into violence after it was attacked by counterdemonstrators. But with limited exception, Congress had little to say about the violence at UCLA, focusing instead on the markedly more peaceful protests at Northwestern and Rutgers.

In particular, the committee took issue with what members described as capitulation to “pro-terror” protesters.

“Each of you should be ashamed of your decisions that allowed antisemitic encampments to endanger Jewish students. Mr. Schill and Dr. Holloway you should be doubly ashamed for capitulating to the antisemitic rule breakers,” said North Carolina representative Virginia Foxx, the Republican chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, which called the hearing.

Foxx also accused the presidents of not doing their jobs by refusing to “preserve campus safety, and protect Jewish students.”

Across the aisle, Virginia representative Bobby Scott, the senior Democrat on the committee, questioned the whole premise of the hearing, arguing that students have the right to voice “politically unpopular or morally abhorrent” opinions.

After opening remarks from Foxx, Scott and the three leaders, the attention turned to Schill—and remained there for much of the day as he fielded numerous questions focused on Northwestern.

A legal scholar and former president of the University of Oregon before making the leap to Northwestern in 2022, Schill kept his cool even as he clashed with Congress on a handful of questions.

Responding to Representative Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican who asked about Northwestern faculty support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, Schill pushed back.

“I will not be discussing individual faculty members,” Schill said calmly but firmly.

His response contrasted sharply with answers by Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, who spoke out against statements made by Columbia professors at April’s hearing. Shafik was later accused of throwing faculty members “under the bus” before Congress.

Schill showed less restraint when Representative Burgess Owens questioned him on Northwestern’s campus in Qatar. The Utah Republican sought to pin the president down on a question about Qatari ties to terrorist organizations, including Hamas. When Schill batted away hypotheticals, demurred and argued that the topic was not his “area of expertise,” Owens suggested the Northwestern president had no problem with operating in a country allegedly linked to terrorism.

“I’m offended by you telling me what my views are,” Schill said testily.

Representative Bob Good, a Virginia Republican, took similar aim at Holloway, asking about the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights, which he accused of trafficking antisemitic views. Specifically, he asked if Rutgers would close the “so-called think tank,” noting a recent social media post in which CSRR allegedly called the Israeli government “genocidal.” Good then asked Holloway multiple times if he considered Israel’s government to be genocidal.

“I don’t have an opinion on Israel in terms of that phrase,” Holloway said, responding that he believed Israel had a right to exist and defend itself, but without directly answering the genocide question.

Good also asked about a CSRR statement that “MAGA Republicans”—referring to supporters of former President Donald Trump—were a threat to the American Jewish community.

Holloway again sidestepped, noting that he often disagreed with CSRR positions but that as a public institution, Rutgers was required to abide by the First Amendment. Good appeared frustrated by Holloway’s calm, asking: “Are you in a position to answer any questions?”

When asked if he would close CSRR, Holloway said he had “no plans to close the center.”

All three leaders were later asked if they thought Israel was a genocidal state; all three answered with an unequivocal “no”—including Holloway.

The three leaders also avoided stumbling over the question that tripped up the first presidents to testify, in December: whether hypothetical calls for the genocide of Jewish people would violate their campus policies. The question turned out to be an unexpected bombshell last year, when the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania all equivocated in their answers; two—Liz Magill of Penn and Claudine Gay of Harvard—later lost their jobs. On Thursday, the question offered much less bang: All three leaders made clear that such calls would violate their codes of conduct. 

When Schill, Holloway and Block were asked about disciplinary actions taken against students and faculty who had harassed and intimidated Jewish students, the line of questioning yielded few answers. The three leaders offered similar statements about campus incidents being investigated, emphasizing the importance of due process as the disciplinary proceedings play out.

While the bulk of the committee’s wrath emanated from the GOP and was directed at Schill and to a lesser extent, Holloway, Block was targeted by Democrats—particularly Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar, who pressed the chancellor on why police didn’t respond sooner to violent counter protesters on campus.

“You, the UCLA leadership, and law enforcement stood by for hours as the mob of agitators gathered near the encampment with a clear intention to cause violence,” Omar said, accusing Block of failing to protect the students in his care and not intervening sooner to prevent chaos.

“I reject the premise,” Block told Omar, leading to a back-and-forth between the chancellor and the lawmaker in which Block emphasized that the police are still investigating the attacks.

Testimony Fallout

In the aftermath of the hearing, Republicans cast the three leaders as moral failures.

“Complete moral cowardice will only encourage more antisemitism,” Walberg, who pressed Schill on student and faculty statements, wrote in a social media post before the hearing concluded.

“Either the ‘ongoing investigations’ we’ve heard so much about are turning up nothing of substance, or these claims of ignorance are disingenuous,” New York representative Brandon Williams wrote on X after Thursday’s hearing. “In either case, this failure to hold agitators accountable is a failure at the expense of Jewish students.”

Owens, who clashed with Schill, wrote on X: “Flat out refusing to answer yes or no questions is just the latest in a string of cowardly decisions from @NorthwesternU leadership.”

But the politicians’ outrage has not yet been matched by the public condemnation that followed when the presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn offered what many deemed to be overly legalistic answers in December. Instead, the furor appears contained.

After contentious hearings in December and April, it seems the three leaders came prepared, likely benefitting from the lessons learned from the presidents who preceded them. The first hearing was widely panned as a disaster, with the three presidents reduced to punchlines on a Saturday Night Live skit. Thursday’s proceedings seemed devoid of the same high drama.

Hollis Robbins, dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Utah, told Inside Higher Ed via text message that while she thought the leaders did well, the hearing revealed little new information. She noted “no new questions about the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism” and “no real breakthroughs on what has been driving the encampments.” She also said there was a lack of sustained discussion about the appropriate role of faculty members.

“The presidents today had the benefit of knowing the kinds of questions they’d get and were clearly prepared. But the questioning stayed in the same narrow channels, really,” she wrote. 

As the hearing concluded, Foxx warned the three leaders that it was “the beginning, not the end” of Congressional inquiries into their institutions. Now, as the academic year draws to a close, most encampments have been removed, either voluntarily or by force. While the summer may bring campuses a reprieve from the protests, Congress will still be in session until August—and watching closely in a contentious election year.

The California State University System recently indicated that it has no direct ownership of stocks or bonds in companies based in Israel but has minimal indirect holdings there through mutual funds, EdSource reported. System administrators do not plan to alter these investments, despite calls from pro-Palestinian faculty members and students to do so.

CSU officials presented a report on system investments at a Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, noting that CSU’s investments and investments by auxiliaries, nonprofits that provide supports and services on campuses, are legally distinct and not bound by CSU investment policies.

Trustees were told at the meeting that about 0.04 percent of CSU investments, $3.2 million, were invested by mutual funds in Israel. The system owns approximately $20.8 million in corporate bonds in aerospace and defense industries as well as $30.6 million of investment exposure through mutual funds, which together make up 0.62 percent of the system’s total investments.

This information was also included in a recent FAQ webpage on the system’s website, which also has a new financial transparency portal.

“It is not possible to determine what part of total aerospace and defense investments are related to Israel, although it is extremely minimal,” the FAQ reads.

The system’s leaders signaled no plans to change investment practices.

“California State University does not materially invest in Israel-related stocks; there is no need to divest from positions that we do not own,” the FAQ states. “The CSU does not intend to alter existing investment policies related to Israel.”

Individual CSU campuses have had to respond to calls for divestment, as well.

Sacramento State University established a “policy on socially responsible investments” earlier this month which included the university and its auxiliaries, such as the University Foundation at Sacramento State, committing to “not having direct investments in corporations and funds that profit from genocide, ethnic cleansing, and activities that violate fundamental human rights.”

Sonoma State University President Mike Lee recently retired following a controversial deal with pro-Palestinian protesters on campus, which included a review of university investments and plans “to determine a course of action leading to divestment strategies that include seeking ethical alternatives.” News of his retirement came after he was placed on administrative leave regarding a campus-wide email he sent about the concessions.  

The University of North Carolina System Board of Governors voted on Thursday morning to eliminate a policy requiring diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices, and to ask individual campus chancellors to cut positions and spending on DEI.

The vote, which passed 22 to 2, will institute a new “equality within the university” policy to replace DEI. Chancellors at the System’s 16 campuses must each submit a report outlining steps they’ve taken to comply with the DEI ban to System president Peter Hans by September.

“Our public universities must take a stance of principled neutrality on matters of political controversy … it is not the job of the university to decide all the complex and multi-dimensional questions of how to balance and interpret identity,” Hans said at the board meeting. “This policy will preserve the university’s role as a trusted venue for that vital debate.”

Board member Pearl Burris-Floyd, who is Black and voted yes on the policy change, stressed that the decision should not lead to the widespread disappearance of essential services for minority students, and that the board has not “turned their backs on them.”

“Even if it’s not called DEI, we have a way to help people and make that path clearer for all people,” she said.

DEI bans have been enshrined into law in Texas and Florida, where they’ve led to dozens of layoffs and the closure of student resource centers. Lawmakers in North Carolina had proposed a similar legislative mandate, but ultimately deferred to the UNC board.

The vote also comes shortly after the board of the System’s flagship, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, voted to divert $2.3 million in DEI funding to police and campus safety in the wake of pro-Palestinian student protests.