Tag: Events

With the spring semester halfway over, many institutions are preparing to make cuts before the next academic year. While multiple colleges and universities announced job cuts in March, others noted the need to tackle budget deficits but did not specify whether layoffs were coming. Some are conducting academic portfolio reviews that will likely result in at least some low enrollment programs being shuttered.

Click here for our recent coverage of other campus cutbacks.

Rockland Community College

Rockland Community College, part of the State University of New York system, will eliminate 19 positions as it navigates a structural deficit of $3.6 million, the local Journal News reported. Furloughs are also expected while the college seeks to cut $8 million from its budget.

This is the second round of cuts after layoffs and furloughs in December.

The Rockland Community College Faculty Senate responded to the cuts with a no-confidence resolution in President Lester Edgardo Sandres Rápalo and other senior administrators. Other campus constituent groups also signed onto the statement of no confidence in leadership.

Saint Martin’s University

Citing “dire” financial issues, St. Martin’s University in Washington plans to cut an unspecified number of jobs, local NBC affiliate King 5 News reported. Though the university did not identify the number, the network reported that 14 jobs are expected to be lost. Additionally, the university has frozen hiring for 25 vacant positions, according to its website.

Majors and minors in the humanities are also being considered for elimination.

The cuts come amid declining enrollment at St. Martin’s, which federal data shows slipped from about 1,800 a decade ago to 1,357 this spring, according to numbers on the university’s website.

St. Norbert College

Facing a $5 million budget deficit, St. Norbert College in Wisconsin laid off 12 faculty members earlier this month, the Green Bay Press Gazette reported. The move follows 45 layoffs last fall.

The layoffs, which were accompanied by cuts to retiree health benefits, prompted protests from students concerned about transparency in the process.

Officials have defended the cuts as necessary due to declining enrollment. Federal data shows the headcount at the private Catholic college fell from around 2,100 in fall 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, to 1,750, according to the latest figures reported by the newspaper.

Portland State University

Portland State University is eliminating its Intensive English Language Program by July 1, according to an announcement earlier this month by President Ann Cudd. She noted that the university is “rapidly spending down our reserves,” prompting budget cuts ahead. With only 30 students enrolled in the Intensive English Language Program for nonnative English speakers, typically international students, Cudd said it had become unsustainable.

As part of the program elimination, it appears 12 jobs will be cut. Though the announcement references 11 full-time, nontenure track professors in the program, the Portland State University chapter of the American Association of University Professors said in a newsletter that 12 employees will be terminated along with the program. The AAUP chapter also disputed Cudd’s claim that the decision was made in conjunction with faculty.

St. Joseph’s College

The Maine institution has laid off 10 employees as part of a restructuring, the Portland Press Herald reported. All 10 were in administrative positions, according to the newspaper.

Affected departments include information technology, marketing and athletics.

Additional layoffs are not expected, according to St. Joseph’s President Joseph Cassidy, who joined the college in August. He cited cost savings as part of the rationale for the layoff decision.

Drake University

Following a review, Drake University in Iowa is looking to discontinue 13 academic programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, the private institution announced earlier this month.

Targeted undergraduate majors include anthropology and sociology, astronomy, physics, religion, rhetoric and health care administration. At the graduate level, masters programs in accounting and public administration, and an evidence-based health care certificate, will be cut.

The Iowa Capital Dispatch reported nine faculty members will lose their jobs due to the cuts, which won’t be finalized until late April when the Board of Trustees is expected to vote on the plan.

State University of New York at Fredonia

Due to budget issues, SUNY Fredonia is moving forward with a plan to cut 13 majors, including various language and fine arts programs, according to the local Democrat & Chronicle. Beginning in June, students will no longer be admitted into those 13 majors as the programs begin to wind down.

University officials told the newspaper the number of teaching positions affected is unclear.

University of Houston-Victoria

The University of Houston-Victoria is looking to cut $3.7 million by August 31, the Victoria Advocate reported. The university has already enacted a hiring freeze and is now cutting jobs.

Just how many jobs will be affected remains unknown to the public. “We are not currently prepared to share the number of individuals or specific departments affected out of respect for the employees who are impacted by this decision,” President Bob Glenn told the newspaper, adding that the layoffs are the university’s “only anticipated reduction at this time.” Glenn is reportedly taking a 10 percent salary cut as part of the belt-tightening plan.

Officials cited declining enrollment and retention as the reasons for the layoffs.

University of Montana

Big changes may be coming to the University of Montana, where 67 programs are under evaluation as part of an academic portfolio review, NBC Montana reported. Reviewers are looking at enrollment and degree completion in those programs over the last seven years.

The review is expected to be completed by fall, with potential changes coming in the 2025–26 academic year, NBC Montana reported, adding that such program reviews are expected to become annual.

Valparaiso University

Cuts could also be on the horizon for Valparaiso University.

Currently, 28 academic programs are under review, the Chicago Tribune reported. Decisions on programmatic cuts are not expected to be made until August, when the fall semester begins. Any programs that end up on the chopping block will likely be phased out in the 2026–27 academic year to allow current students to complete their majors, the newspaper reported.

Marquette University

Marquette University plans to cut $31 million from its budget over seven years, including $11 million for the 2025–26 academic year, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Currently the university is facing a $9.5 million budget shortfall, which has caused it to tap contingency funds.

“Although we are in a strong financial position, Marquette—like other universities—is facing increasing economic and demographic pressures. Fewer traditional students are attending college, and those who do attend often need more financial and other support,” university officials said in a March 18 statement outlining the financial challenges and budget reductions.

While they did not reference possible layoffs, Marquette has made deep job cuts in recent years.

L. Song Richardson’s decision in February to step down from her position as president of Colorado College surprised many people both within and outside of higher education. It also has raised some interesting questions to interrogate especially for many of us who hold a similar office.

Richardson, a celebrated academic law professor and former dean of the School of Law at University of California, Irvine, was appointed as the chief executive at the small liberal arts college just a little less than three years ago. Although serving in that capacity was clearly an achievement and honor, holding the office created an audio shackle of sorts, according to Richardson. She came to feel that the desire to use her voice and perspective to weigh in on the most controversial issues of the day conflicted with the perceived roles and responsibilities of a university president.

While I respect and support my colleague’s decision, I’m not sure that I share all of the implied assumptions surrounding it. One such assumption is that a president must remain unbiased in their opinions and perspectives, even though every member of a university community holds some. It’s impossible for presidents to not hold their own views, even if they keep them to themselves.

Another assumption is that presidents are required to maintain an objective posture on issues so students can experience the full range of available perspectives free of any bias or contamination that a president may inject into a discussion. But I’m not sure I subscribe to the notion that students’ intellectual and emotional sensibilities are so tender and fragile that they are incapable of sifting through a chief executive’s opinions on certain issues and forming their own independent conclusions.

The fact is that the college and university campuses we presidents lead should be the places and spaces where the most important issues of our day become the topics of critical discourse and analysis. The vigorous exchange and weighing of ideas is a hallmark of the academy and a cherished value. A part of bold, dare I say progressive, leadership is framing narratives around a whole host of perspectives—indeed, it would seem to be an academic ideal.

That is particularly true in a changing national zeitgeist and media climate that is often void of authentic intellectual rigor, dominated by skewed political perspectives, anxious to forget or deny the historical wrongs of this country’s past, and prone to shield people from their emotional and intellectual discomfort. Moreover, especially of late, it’s all occurring in an atmosphere in which many people seem determined to suppress any signs of a “woke” agenda—that is to say, any efforts that seek to raise awareness and expand consciousness on ways to usher in a more compassionate and respectful appreciation of cultural differences.

Richardson’s case does raise a different line of inquiry, however: As presidents, how do we reconcile the choice between what we must do and what we feel is right to do? Unquestionably, the recent scrutiny placed on presidential opinions when it comes to domestic issues such as affirmative action or women’s reproductive rights, or more global issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the Russian aggression against Ukraine, is quite pronounced. And given the backlash presidents can endure for disappointing and even angering constituents when rendering opinions on controversial subjects, many chief executives have decided to mute their voices in hopes of enjoying a safer terrain free from, at best, unwanted public scrutiny or, at worst, severe critique.

Presidents, like executive managers in corporations, are expected to remain poised and objectively professional. In managing our college or university’s affairs in the midst of national trends, we must guard against antagonizing key stakeholders like boards, major donors and key legislators who have or seek to exercise authority and oversight over our positions. We are also expected to use our voice and position to articulate perspective on the challenges our institutions are facing, and yet we must do so in adherence to a set of institutional or corporate norms and values.

But the norms and values of our institutions may run very well contrary to our own, as the case of L. Song Richardson epitomizes. And while most presidents have faced scrutiny and felt the tensions I’ve described when it comes to speaking out, the issues she and others have confronted in their presidencies increase in complexity when we add in variables like race and gender.

By that I mean that when the norms about how a president should act or respond in a given situation are anchored in a framework that is decidedly white and male, there is a high degree of congruence between people’s expectations and how that individual responds. In contrast, women, people of color and others who are underrepresented in college presidencies can face greater expectations, as they are often the first woman or minority person holding the top position at their institution. At the same time, various constituents may perceive their perspectives and comments as deficient or inappropriate because they diverge from societal norms as a result of those leaders’ different cultural identities.

Moreover, what’s just as important—if not more so—but often not discussed, is that presidents who aren’t white and male must frequently grapple with distinct internal dilemmas. From my vantage point as a fellow African American president, and a culturally conscious one at that, I’m aware that presidents of color and other marginalized groups often hear a different voice. The President Richardsons of the world often hear the voice of the Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, who argued that, “Each generation, out of relative obscurity, must reach out, and seek to fulfill its legacy or betray it.”

How does President Richardson—or do I, for that matter—in recognizing the struggle and sacrifice our ancestors waged for us to occupy the seats that we do, fulfill a legacy by remaining silent? Socially and culturally conscious leaders often hear the vocal stylings of Martin Luther King Jr., who reminds us that “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter,” that “there comes a time when silence is betrayal,” and that “in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”

People both within and outside of higher education must understand the psychic dissonance that challenges culturally different and conscious leaders, who grapple with the discrepancy between what one must do or say and what that leader feels is right to express in oral opinion or written exposition. These personal, inner-voice discussions force many academic leaders to question what one is prepared to sacrifice: perhaps position, integrity, or the validation and valuation one receives from others they believe need to approve of the content and process dynamics of their speech.

We struggle with a quandary I have articulated in my own scholarship on racial identity development. I argue that the central question that presidents of color all must confront and navigate is how to maintain a sense of our own cultural integrity in a world that does not fully support or affirm our humanity.

L. Song Richardson’s decision to resign from her position and return to the law school at UC Irvine may be the best choice for her, as well as an unexpected windfall for her former institution. Yet, as I sit here at the close of Women’s History Month, I cannot help but be struck by how far academe still has to go when it comes to issues of leadership, especially those of nontraditional presidents who face distinct and sometimes even existential challenges. And I cannot help but grieve the loss of my colleague in that presidential seat and the void her presence will leave among the ranks of those of us who dare traverse the landscape of guiding colleges and universities forward in this day and time.

When Kyle Rittenhouse came to speak at the University of Memphis last week, protesters filled the venue, booing and shouting at him as he took the stage.

Rittenhouse, best known for killing two people during unrest concerning police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin, when he was 17, was sponsored by the conservative organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA); Memphis was the second stop on a four-campus circuit.

His talk, entitled “The Rittenhouse Recap,” centers on “themes related to individual rights, self-defense, and the importance of upholding the rule of law,” Turning Point spokesperson Aubrey Laitsch told Inside Higher Ed in an email.

One video of the March 20 event in Memphis shows an audience member asking Rittenhouse about racist statements made by Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA’s founder.

“What racist things has Charlie Kirk said?” Rittenhouse asked, to cries of disbelief from the crowd. “We’re going to have a little bit of a dialogue. What racist things has Charlie Kirk said?”

“OK, I’ll answer the question,” the audience member said. “He’s said we shouldn’t celebrate Juneteenth, we shouldn’t celebrate Martin Luther King Day, we should be working those days. He’s called Ketanji Brown Jackson an affirmative action hire, he’s said all this nonsense about George Floyd, and he’s said he’d be scared if a Black pilot was on a plane. Does that not seem racist?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Rittenhouse said.

The questioner then asked if such comments constitute hate speech. Rittenhouse declined to answer, prompting more jeers from the crowd.

After the exchange, another person appears to start walking onto stage, but the video cuts off as he walks toward Rittenhouse. According to Richard Massey, a Memphis student who attended the talk to protest, the individual said something inaudible to Rittenhouse, who then walked off stage, ending the lecture.

“Once he was pressed by a student and asked about the vulgar remarks by Charlie Kirk … Rittenhouse abruptly left,” Massey said. “It’s clear he wasn’t prepared for the backlash.”

But Laitsch disputed that account, claiming that Rittenhouse was able to speak for his entire allotted 30-minute time, then held a private Q&A with members of Memphis’s TPUSA chapter.

Even before the talk, there was controversy over ticket distribution; Turning Point initially dispersed the tickets, but shortly before the event they were all invalidated and had to be reordered through the university’s ticketing service. Explanations for why vary by source; according to an article by the local news affiliate ABC24, a university spokesperson attributed the decision to concerns about Turning Point’s ticketing service.

The University of Memphis did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment.

“Definitely Provocation”

According to Turning Point, Rittenhouse’s talks do not comprise an official tour; rather, members of TPUSA chapters at four colleges reached out and invited him to campus in conjunction with the release of his book, Acquitted, which came out last fall.

Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of all five homicide and reckless endangerment charges on the grounds that he acted in self-defense, is a highly controversial figure. Many on the right see him as a hero who defended himself from a “violent mob,” while critics view him as emblematic of white vigilante violence against people of color and their allies. His campus appearances have inspired backlash from students who argue not only that he makes their campuses less safe for student of color, but also that he brings nothing valuable to an academic setting.

“There’s nothing scholarly … about him,” said Massey, who objected to Rittenhouse coming to speak in a majority-Black city that is still reckoning with the aftereffects of the 2023 death of Tyre Nichols, a Black FedEx employee, who was severely beaten by police.

Rittenhouse isn’t the only polarizing figure Turning Point has brought to college campuses. Listed among the speakers on the TPUSA website are conservative personalities such as Tomi Lahren, Ben Shapiro, Ann Coulter and Jordan Peterson—all of whom have held talks on college campuses that were disrupted by protesters.

Some believe the organization purposefully uses polarizing speakers—and the campus protests they inevitably incite—to further widen the divide between the left and the right.

“[TPUSA’s] space within the field of college activism is definitely provocation,” said Jeffrey Kidder, a professor of sociology at Northern Illinois University and the co-author of The Channels of Student Activism: How the Left and Right are Winning (and Losing) in Campus Politics Today (The University of Chicago Press, 2022). “This is a group that, several years ago, had stickers that said things like ‘socialism sucks’ that are meant to be catchy and in your face and at least a little bit offensive, if not very offensive … the cycle of outrage continues on both sides of the political spectrum.”

Turning Point USA argues that its aim is not to incite anger among liberal students but rather to inspire dialogue.

“Kyle’s experience and perspective offer valuable insights into issues related to self-defense and the justice system, which are relevant topics for college students to explore and discuss. By hosting speakers like him, TPUSA aims to encourage critical thinking and informed debate among students,” Laitsch wrote.

Other Appearances

His inaugural presentation of the “Rittenhouse Recap,” at East Tennessee State University, triggered a demonstration hours before the event, according to the Johnson City Press. Protesters held signs denouncing racism, fascism and violence.

But the event itself went off without interruption, according to TPUSA and local news articles. East Tennessee administrators had told news outlets prior to the talk that student organizations are permitted to invite to campus any guest speaker they want, and that the First Amendment prohibits the university from interfering—unless the event poses a safety risk.

Rittenhouse is slated to appear this Wednesday night at Western Kentucky University, and on April 16 at Kent State University. Neither university responded to requests for comment.

But some Kent State students said they consider it especially insensitive for their campus to host an individual who fatally shot protesters, given that the Ohio National Guard killed four students and injured nine during an anti-war rally there in 1970.

“The parallels to what happened on that August night [in Kenosha] and the fateful events that happened on our own campus are uncanny,” Leah Shepard, a reporter for the university’s newspaper, Kent Wired, wrote in an op-ed.

“This is a slap in the face of everything Kent State has done to memorialize that day. It desecrates the memories of those who gave their lives for peace and progress.”

Another Kent State student, Ally Greco, started a petition against Rittenhouse’s appearance, which now has over 3,300 signatures.

She said that TPUSA’s goal in inviting him is to cause controversy and raise the group’s own profile.

“They do benefit from having this conversation even though it’s negative,” she said. “There’s more eyes on their organization … they’re still getting more people to talk about them.”

Having worked in career development for graduate students and postdocs for more than 15 years, I’ve heard both wonderful and terrible career advice. Some of my least favorite quotes included: “Apply to everything” and “You have to go where the jobs are.” I dislike those the most, because they are based on the assumptions that you are at the mercy of the job market and that this career is the most important aspect of your life—that it’s so important that you would live wherever or do whatever to attain that job. Fortunately, folks are much more complex than this.

I’m also not fond of the advice to “follow your passion.” It’s a vague and toxic approach to thinking about your future. Sure, you can be passionate about certain aspects of your work but, in reality, a career is just one aspect of life. Having a passion now assumes that it won’t change over time, but change is something that we all know will occur. Instead, the best way to feel empowered in the job search is to identify what is most important to you and then design a life that includes work but also centers your values. Let’s walk through what a values-forward job search can look like, and how you can take some of your power back.

In a values-forward framework, values act as the parameters for your next work environment, helping you clearly articulate what you need in a job. You would never move to a new city and apply to every apartment building when looking for your next living situation. You would have specific requirements for how much you can pay for rent, what your commute tolerance is, and how many bedrooms you need. Similarly, when applying for jobs, the first step is not to figure out what you are qualified for or what you can do. It’s to figure out what is most important to you and how you can maximize your time and resources.

So, before applying to jobs, take stock of what you need from work and use those needs as filters for the kinds of positions that you decide to invest time in applying to. Several free and trustworthy resources can help you clarify your values, including ImaginePhD, the life values inventory and Stanford’s Meaningful Work Kit. The most important part of this exercise is narrowing down your values to five and ordering those from most to least important. That ordering can also set you up for good conversations in an interview process and clear negotiation levers in terms of needs and wants.

Next, define what those top five values mean to you. For example, location is often something that acts as a clear driver for job searches. But how each person defines what location specifically means varies widely. Where one individual might limit their search to three cities, another might care less about the exact city and instead need mountains or a body of water nearby.

Similarly, if creativity is something you need in a work environment, how do you define that? Is it about having access to creative tools and people, or do you need to have the freedom to pursue creative ideas or projects? What if stability is something you need in a work environment—what is it for you? Are you interested in working at an organization where the workload is relatively routine and evenly paced, or does stability mean that nobody has been laid off or fired in the last 20 years?

Balance is another value that people often list among their top five values, but what does that actually mean? Do you prefer to keep work and personal time separated, with a clear work schedule and no off-hour, work-related communication? Or is balance about being able to work at your own pace, time and location? One aspect that contributes to balance is having a clear understanding of what is expected from you at work. Ambiguity breeds environments where people take on more than they can, and that leads to overwork. It’s rampant in academia and often manifests through the ambiguity of degree progress or the tenure process.

So, when thinking through what is important to you, it’s important to understand the conditions that are necessary in a work environment that creates the culture you want. Because values can have so many different meanings, articulating your own definition will help you sort through and identify the opportunities that meet your conditions.

Now that you have defined your work values, you can set up your job search to align with those values. Location and compensation are some of the easier filter criteria you can set on any job alert. But filtering for more nuanced information such as stability, balance, or autonomy requires a bit more time and planning on the front end of the job search.

Values-forward job searches are most productive when your research on organizations is beyond a quick LinkedIn scan. You can dig into more depth by talking with people who actually work in those organizations about their projects, department, organizational culture, performance expectations and what they value at work. But before meeting with them, you need to identify questions that will provide you with as much information and connection to them as possible. When someone asks a good question, we come to understand who they are and what they are all about in a much more interesting way.

Here are some questions, aligned to values, that you can use in an interview. Good questions are specific, ask for examples, and make people think about their own work in reflective ways.

• What is important to you in a work environment, and how often do you realize those values at work? What is important to you that is not realized?
• When was the last time your leadership made a decision that was based on employee input? (collaboration)
• When was the last time someone was promoted, and how was that celebrated? (recognition, achievement)
• What does the balance between project work and communication with the team look like, and do either go beyond a typical 40-hour work week? (balance)
• Based on your experience, what other organizations do you think have similar work cultures? Are there organizations you would love to work with and why?

This last question is important, because it will help you flesh out a targeted list of organizations that may align with your values. The more people you talk to, the more you come to know the ins and outs of how certain entities function and what the range of work cultures looks like. A values-forward approach maximizes relationships, research and insight to navigate the job market.

Use this list to ground your job search with your top five values highlighted. And the next time someone tells you to “apply to everything,” you can feel self-assured you’re applying to everything that aligns with you.

The Education Department acknowledged Friday that a calculation error led to inaccurate aid estimates for a sizable portion of student aid forms processed in the past few months.

“The FAFSA Processing System (FPS) was not including all data fields needed to correctly calculate the Student Aid Index [SAI] for dependent students who reported assets,” department officials wrote in an announcement. “This issue resulted in inaccurate ISIRs [Institutional Student Information Records] for dependent students with assets delivered [to institutions] prior to March 21, 2024.”

The department said that of the 1.5 million FAFSAs currently processed, about 200,000 were affected by the miscalculation and will need to be reprocessed and re-sent to institutions. In the meantime, they recommended that colleges recalculate affected students’ SAIs manually in order to estimate aid packages sooner.

Colleges began receiving small batches of ISIRs last week, but the pace of the delivery—and technical issues with software built to receive the student aid data—has hampered progress. The latest mistake could further hamstring institutions racing to get students accurate financial aid offers before May.

Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, bemoaned the department’s latest miscalculation as “another unforced error that will likely cause more processing delays for students.”

“At this stage in the game and after so many delays, every error adds up and will be felt acutely by every student who is counting on need-based financial aid to make their postsecondary dreams a reality,” he wrote in a statement. “It is not feasible or realistic to send out incorrect FAFSA data and ask thousands of schools to make real-time calculations and adjustments to the federal formula on the school side.”

The hiccup is the latest in a long line of errors and delays that have vexed financial aid offices and disrupted college admissions timelines, forcing many institutions to push back their commitment deadlines. The department had previously made several calculation errors while rolling out the new form, including failing to account for historic inflation and introducing a formula error that would have mistakenly expanded PELL eligibility, which Congress intervened to fix.

Doug Berry, dean of liberal arts and sciences in the Maricopa County Community College District, in Arizona, has been selected as provost at Yavapai College, also in Arizona.

Jim Carlson, vice chancellor of strategic initiatives and external affairs at Northshore Technical Community College, in Louisiana, has been appointed as acting/interim chancellor there.

Kathy Franken, interim president and chief financial officer at Upper Iowa University, has been named president on a permanent basis.

Sarah Frey, vice provost and dean of undergraduate education at the University of California, Merced, has been appointed as provost and vice president of academic affairs at Nevada State University.

Matt Seimears, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Eastern Oregon University, has been selected as president of Lower Columbia College, in Washington.

Marcus L. Thompson, deputy commissioner and chief administrative officer of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning, has been chosen as president of Jackson State University, in Mississippi.

Mark A. Welsh III, interim president of Texas A&M University, has been named to the job on a permanent basis.

After a fraught and drawn-out appropriations cycle, Congress released its final $1.2 trillion package of spending bills early Thursday morning. The measures would provide little in the way of new funds for programs important to colleges, largely aligning with the Senate’s proposed budget and avoiding billions of dollars in cuts suggested by House Republicans.

If the legislation passes, the Education Department would receive $79.1 billion, a relatively small $500 million decrease from last year’s budget.

“It’s pretty much what we expected,” said Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations for the American Council on Education. “We figured it would be closer to the Senate’s proposal than the House’s.”

Total federal student aid assistance would be flat-funded at $24.6 billion, about $1.8 billion less than the Biden administration requested. The maximum yearly Pell Grant award per student will remain at $7,395, in line with the budget deal reached last January. The Biden administration had proposed doubling the maximum Pell Grant per student, a request that Congress summarily dismissed.

That the maximum Pell award will remain stagnant is a sore spot for many equity advocates, especially since the Biden administration requested a $750 increase just last week. Congress has approved modest elevations to that threshold for the past several years; it has risen $900 since president Biden took office.

“The failure to increase investments in those programs is particularly damaging for Black, Latino, and Native students and students from low-income backgrounds,” Augustus Mays, vice president for partnerships and engagement at the nonprofit advocacy group Education Trust, wrote in a statement.

The Office of Federal Student Aid would receive a little over $2 billion for administration of financial aid programs to support initiatives such as the rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid. That’s about $2.9 billion less than the Biden administration requested but a $25 million bump over what was agreed upon last January after Congress denied repeated calls for more FSA funding over the preceding year to support student debt relief and the FAFSA overhaul.

The spending bill would also require the department to provide “timely updates” on progress in implementing the long overdue, error-riddled new FAFSA, including how it plans to help institutions “mitigate the impacts of the … delay on students and families.”

Funding for the Federal Work-Study program would also remain level at $1.2 billion. The Republican-led House had proposed eliminating the program entirely in November.

Craig Lindwarm, senior vice president for governmental affairs at the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities, said while the lack of major cuts was a relief, the spending bill is nothing to celebrate, either.

“It is difficult to get excited about these funding levels,” he said. “It’s no surprise considering the budget challenges Congress has had. Still, we see a bill that does not provide the funding needed to address the affordability challenges higher ed faces.”

Funding to strengthen minority-serving institutions would see small increases, including a nearly $5 million boost in funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and a $1.1 million increase for Hispanic-serving institutions. But the Strengthening Institutions program, which provides grants to assist financially struggling colleges, would be cut by $10 million.

Lindwarm said that relatively flat funding is especially disappointing for under-resourced institutions that serve the most underprivileged college students.

“Although it’s good to see increases in a bill that has very few of them, we’re still nowhere near what we need to support the institutions that we ask to do so much with so little,” he said.

The plan would also allocate $65 million to community colleges for career and educational training programs. It would not fund a $500 million free community college initiative proposed by the Biden administration.

Research Funding Falls Flat

Under the proposed plan, research-oriented agencies would also see cuts, though much smaller than those proposed by the House last year. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) would receive $46.7 billion, $378 million less than the budget enacted last January.

That’s because while Congress appropriated an additional $300 million to the NIH in this spending bill, that’s less than half the amount the agency is losing, thanks to the expiration of funding mandated by the 2016 CURES Act.

“It’s certainly disappointing,” said Debbie Altenburg, APLU’s vice president for research policy and governmental affairs. “That level of funding is not going to allow for the continued investments we need to be making in biomedical research.”

Congress also continues to fall short of the funding levels authorized in the landmark CHIPS and Science Act, which passed in August 2023. In the fiscal year 2023 budget, the National Science Foundation received about $1 billion in supplemental money to implement that legislation, but Congress didn’t renew the commitment this time around: under the proposed spending bill, NSF would receive $9.06 billion, about $840 million less than in 2023.

The silver lining, Altenburg said, was that controversial policy riders proposed by House Republicans—such as a provision to eliminate climate change research and diversity, equity and inclusion spending at the NSF—never made it into the final bill. 

“We’re in a better place than we could have been,” she said. 

An End to a Chaotic Cycle

The federal budget for fiscal year 2024 was passed last January, consisting of 12 appropriations bills that were supposed to be passed by Oct. 1, the end of the last fiscal year.

Congress has not met that deadline since 1997, but this year’s timeline was especially delayed. Half the appropriations bills passed earlier this month; the final package of six spending bills brings to an end a long, fractious cycle defined by threats of default, deep cuts and shutdowns, as well as particularly bitter disagreement among the members of the House Republican caucus. Throughout the cycle, Congress passed multiple stop-gap measures to keep the government open, one of which led to the ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

The package of bills is likely to face a vote before the end of the week. If it doesn’t pass before the weekend, the government will be forced into a partial shutdown.

Congressional leaders ultimately agreed earlier this year to follow the deal they cut last summer to avert a default on the federal debt. That meant largely flat spending on domestic programs, though appropriators have flexibility in doling out the funds.

Still, higher education lobbyists and experts didn’t have high hopes for big investments in the Pell Grant program or other priorities. A slate of proposed cuts and general hostility toward the Department of Education from congressional Republicans—over its failed student debt relief agenda, the disastrous rollout of the new FAFSA and disagreements over the scope of the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling—put the higher education sector on the defensive. Much-anticipated reforms, like funding for free two-year college and Pell Grant expansion, will have to wait at least another year.

But it could have been worse, Guillory said.

“We’re happy we didn’t see any more cuts, but we’re advocating for the necessary increases, especially in areas where there’s no accounting for inflation,” he said. “Still, we’re seeing basically all level funding here. In a regulatory environment like this one, that’s a win.”

Katherine Knott contributed reporting to this article.

A group of higher education researchers from across the country released a report Wednesday providing what they call “evidence-based expert responses” to critiques of diversity, equity and inclusion policies and practices aired at a Congressional hearing earlier this month.

The report lists eight “DEI Myths,” including that DEI is divisive, that all DEI initiatives place people in one of two categories, privileged and oppressed, that DEI and critical race theory are the same, and that “too-woke” professionals have taken over campuses.

It counters the myths with data, anecdotes and observations from 12 faculty members and administrators who say that DEI initiatives aim to bring students and employees together to learn from each other’s differences, that they account for “tiny fractions” of overall institutional budgets and that DEI professionals rarely have any jurisdiction over classroom curriculums.

According to the report, the House of Representatives’ two-hour hearing held March 7 “overflowed with misinformation, misunderstandings and reckless mischaracterizations.” Republicans described diversity, equity and inclusion offices as a “cancer” and attempted to blame the programs for a rise in antisemitism, but Democrats forcefully pushed back.

“Those of us who know better have too long deemed ridiculous, unsubstantiated claims that DEI obstructionists make unworthy of response. We have dismissed hearings like the one that occurred on Capitol Hill last week as political theatre,” wrote Shaun Harper, lead author of the report and executive director of the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center. “Meanwhile, the campaign to dismantle DEI is very much succeeding, as evidenced by the well-coordinated avalanche of more than 100 legislative bills in 44 states across the country over the past three years.”

On February 29, I spent the day participating in a 2U University Partner Advisory Council meeting. These conversations between 2U executives and university leaders are designed to encourage honest exchange and open dialogue. However, in sharing my thoughts on what I learned from the Council meeting, I speak only for myself, and the views expressed in this piece may not reflect the thinking of other members of the Council.

The big questions that I wanted to be answered at the meeting were about the company’s financial and operational resilience. Our Council meeting followed 2U’s February 12 fourth-quarter and full-year earnings call.

In that call, 2U’s CEO, Paul Lalljie, shared that if the company “does not amend or refinance its term loan, or raise capital to reduce its debt in the short term,” then there is “substantial doubt” about the company’s ability to continue as a “going concern.” (See my Q&A with Andrew Hermalyn, 2U’s president of the degree program segment, and Phil Hill’s Andrew Hermalyn From 2U Responds to Follow Up Questions for more context).

While the Advisory Council did not provide any new data to help us understand whether 2U will be able to successfully refinance its debt, the meeting left me with more confidence in the company’s leadership.

Lalljie, who was 2U’s CFO before becoming CEO in November, spent significant time speaking with and answering questions from Council members. While, again, Lalljie did not share any additional financial information that had not been previously publicly disclosed, I found this conversation to be somewhat reassuring. Lalljie struck me as calm, no-drama, and highly competent. He listened well to the Council’s concerns and refrained from trying to “sell” us on an overly rosy perspective on the company’s challenges.

From the Advisory Council meeting, it also became clear to me that 2U’s leadership structure has evolved to be more specialized and collaborative. As CEO, Lalljie is focused primarily on stabilizing 2U’s financial position while rebuilding the company’s internal culture. Lalljie acknowledged that 2U faces significant challenges on both fronts (finances and culture), and he is committed to moving swiftly to address both areas.

On the financial front, Lalljie believes that 2U will be in a strong position in the first half of 2024 to refinance its debt as the company narrows its focus to investing in its most profitable programs and partnerships while carefully controlling costs and maintaining a strong focus on learner outcomes. On the culture front, Lalljie acknowledged the need for 2U to motivate and retain its best people, a goal he put forth as a top priority as CEO.

The strategic leadership and operational accountabilities for online programs, university partnerships and technology platforms are divided between Hermalyn (President of the Degree Program Segment) and Aaron McCullough (President of the Alternative Credential Segment). 2U communicated this new structure in a January 3 press release, but it was not until spending time with all three leaders that I understood what this organizational change means for university partners.

In my judgment, having a single accountable leader that schools can work with for degree programs (Hermalyn) and alternative credentials (McCullough) will immediately improve communication and collaboration between 2U and its university partners.

Of course, arriving at some confidence in 2U’s leadership team is not the same as being persuaded that the company is in a strong long-term position to be a valuable and resilient university partner. Any school that decides to work with a for-profit company to develop, market and run degree or nondegree online programs must evaluate the financial, operational and reputational risks of such an arrangement.

Will 2U be able to refinance its debt? I don’t know.

What would it mean for university partners and the long-term resilience of the online programs (degree and nondegree) if 2U can’t refinance? Again, unknown. We can’t predict how refinancing negotiations will go—although I suspect that the operations of current programs will be maintained.

Might 2U get acquired? Doubtful, as anyone buying 2U would assume the approximately $900 million in debt as well as the company’s assets. But then again, I didn’t see it coming when Harvard and MIT sold edX to 2U for $800 million in 2021. So, nothing surprises me any longer in the world of online learning.

Given 2U’s financial challenges resulting from the debt it accumulated in part through the edX acquisition, current and prospective 2U university partners should be particularly cautious in conducting due diligence.

One data point in this analysis is how universities judge a company’s top leadership in credibility, trustworthiness and openness to listening, learning and authentic collaboration. At least for me, and again, not speaking for any of my university colleagues on the Partner Advisory Council, my judgment about the new leadership team of Lalljie, Hermalyn and McCullough is initially (and cautiously) positive. It’s a start.

The University of Maryland (UMD) lifted its suspension of 32 of the 37 Greek organizations it had initially suspended at the beginning of March, the university announced Friday. Five chapters, which the university did not name, remain suspended, with investigations ongoing.

In the announcement, officials revealed for the first time what had led them to suspend social and new member activities for all Interfraternity Council (IFC) and Panhellenic Association (PHA) fraternities and sororities.

“This temporary and narrow pause was prompted by reports, over a relatively short period of time, of concerning hazing behaviors and harmful alcohol-related activities within the fraternity and sorority community,” Vice President for Student Affairs Patty Perillo wrote on Friday. “These behaviors and activities posed a potential threat to the safety and well-being of members of our community.”

The email also listed steps the university will take to improve “safety and well-being” among the campus’s sororities and fraternities, such as reviewing all existing IFC and PHA training related to recruitment and alcohol.

The announcement came after an outside firm was brought in to help conduct interviews all week with members of UMD’s IFC and PHA chapters. The Fraternity Forward Coalition, a fraternity advocacy organization, accused investigators of violating students’ due process and using questionable tactics—including looking through students’ cell phones—to glean information.

The Coalition, which filed for a temporary restraining order that would have halted UMD’s blanket suspension of the 32 Greek organizations, said in a Wednesday release that it would “continue to pursue litigation against representatives of the University of Maryland for their unlawful behavior in targeting members of fraternities and sororities.” The statement from Coalition spokesperson Wynn Smiley also said, “Administrators who participated in or were complicit in this egregious erosion of student liberties must be held accountable.”

A hearing is scheduled for Monday.

Neologisms are like tech startups: Many are launched, few keep moving. Consider “onlife,” a term coined by the philosopher Luciano Floridi in the early 2010s. The word sounds like it might be a contraction of “online life,” although that sort of thing is usually the product of common usage and does not require the involvement of a philosopher.

Rather, Floridi—the founding director of the Digital Ethics Center at Yale University—proposed it as a name for “the new experience of a hyperconnected reality within which it is no longer sensible to ask whether one may be online or offline.” He issued a manifesto on the concept’s behalf in early 2013. A conference was held to unpack its implications that same year, followed by a collection of papers in 2015.

The term had rather limited traction. A search of JSTOR returns fewer than 100 references, mostly in passing, while Google News yields just a couple of hits, not counting several company or product names of no relevance. And at the moment, spellcheck is trying its best to keep me from using “onlife” at all.

But its near disappearance may attest to the validity of Floridi’s insight. Today it would be nearly impossible, and not especially useful, to break down commerce, communication, education or personal relationships into their on- and offline components. “Onlife” has become, for all practical purposes, a clumsy and unnecessary synonym for ordinary experience—especially since the turn of this decade, when social space and digital communication merged for an agonizingly long time to a degree that became normal.

Yet “onlife” may still have its uses. It certainly proves an essential concept for Carl Öhman in The Afterlife of Data: What Happens to Your Information When You Die and Why You Should Care (University of Chicago Press). The author is an assistant professor of political science at Uppsala University, in Sweden, though the present work belongs to the interdisciplinary field of information and communications technology (ICT).

Everyone online generates enormous quantities of personal information and tracking data, much of which is stored and will continue to exist after the person creating it has died. “The corpus of information left behind upon death,” Öhman writes, “is not just etymologically, but also conceptually analogous to the corpse.” As the population of users grows, so does the number of “information bodies” left by the deceased.

At one level, this presents just another set of technological issues—one more challenge in storing and retrieving the unimaginably huge flux of data produced as our off- and online worlds merge. The author notes that in 2023, “humanity is estimated to have produced data at a pace of 120 zettabytes (120 × 2⁷⁰ bytes, i.e., 120 followed by twenty-­one zeros) per day.” But the very possibility of storing and retrieving “digital remains” (to use the author’s preferred expression) poses complex and interconnected questions about data ownership, expectations about privacy and the duties one generation may owe another.

Innumerable traditions and rituals define the proper treatment of physical remains. Nothing comparable exists for their digital equivalent. What concerns Öhman most about that omission is his sense that the established practices around physical remains serve to express, and to transmit, a sense of the dignity and individual personality of the deceased. Someone’s digital remains are a record of their life—for at least a generation now, an almost complete record—but we have no common understanding of who should control access to them, or what counts as morally appropriate “use” of the remains (by historians or psychologists, in commercial data mining, etc.)

Complicating the situation still more is the potential (already realized in part) to convert digital remains into functioning replicas of the deceased. An example recently in the news is the performance artist Laurie Anderson’s continuing collaboration with her late husband Lou Reed, via a chatbot that uses machine learning to extract a kind of doppelgänger from a large pool of the songwriter’s lyrics, interviews and writings.

The Guardian quotes her as saying, “I mean, I really do not think I’m talking to my dead husband and writing songs with him—I really don’t. But people have styles, and they can be replicated.” So can their voices now, with ever increasing accuracy. The chatbot could probably be upgraded to deliver its messages in an exact duplicate of Reed’s gravel tones.

Likely Anderson is aware of the possibility and has chosen not to pursue the option. But it serves to illustrate Öhman’s point that digital remains are not just a byproduct of digital technology but raw material for it as well. To Floridi’s point about the absolute entanglement of off- and online experience, Öhman adds his awareness of other complications now coming into view: new transactions between the living and the dead.

“What is at stake,” he writes, “is our very relationship to our collective past and its inhabitants and, ultimately, to ourselves as a species.” Onlife continues, and the dead inhabit it.

Now that the pandemic seems much more in our rear-view mirror, many observers assume that the low morale, disenchantment and burnout that fueled the “Great Resignation” among people who work on college campuses are pretty much in the past, as well. But the issues still persist, and faculty and staff members in the academy continue to struggle to find their footing. Several factors have been exacerbating those issues, including leadership turnover at the highest levels in the academy, the continued “ratcheting up” of performance expectations and consistent requests coming from the institutional administration to do more with less.

Meanwhile, most recommendations concerning what should be done about the problems still point to individual-level responses. We also hear many people blaming the employees who have low morale for not being suitably engaged in their work—for what’s been referred to as “quiet quitting.” But I agree with the observation of Jim Detert, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, that it’s a misnomer to characterize what’s in fact a rational response to poor working conditions, a lack of support and being overworked. Rather, what we are seeing is individuals trying to recalibrate so they can re-establish boundaries and focus on well-being in ways their colleges and universities are failing to foster on an institutional level.

The big takeaway is that this is not an individual-level problem, one for which faculty and staff members simply need to manage their calendar and work responsibilities more effectively to solve. Institutions must also ask themselves hard questions, such as: In what ways are our institutional infrastructures compounding the problem? What can we as institutional administrators do to ensure more equitable workloads for faculty and staff? What policies, practices and action steps must be created, implemented and assessed to establish boundary-setting and people’s well-being as core institutional values?

In this essay, I highlight the importance of institutional actions to support and encourage boundary-setting and well-being, starting with the need to create a much-improved institutional culture and corresponding infrastructures.

Needed: An Institutional Response

Higher educational institutions and their leaders are facing varied challenges, including dwindling resources and the need to re-envision enrollment and retention strategies. They also must meet the needs and expectations of critical stakeholders, such as representatives of accrediting bodies, prospective students and their guardians, and members of the public, whose continued mistrust of higher education continues to rise. No doubt these realities place immense pressure on campus administrators and put many in a defensive position rather than a proactive one focused on advancing strategic priorities and aims. Institutions thus frequently respond to the challenges by introducing new policies and practices that require faculty and staff to continually adapt, often with little to no clarity about why the change was needed or how it advances the institution’s strategic imperatives. Working in an environment characterized by a constant state of chaos wreaks havoc on well-being and boundary setting. I propose a few actions that institutional leaders should consider to avoid such a situation.

Action #1. Clarify the purpose of the “Ask.” As someone who coaches faculty and administrators across the academy and as a department chair myself, I know the very real angst of being constantly inundated with institutional requests for reports and departmental data—often seemingly repetitive—or of being informed about new institutional platforms being adopted that require immediate changes to how work is to be done. Most of those requests come from the administration building without any accompanying explanation about what prompted the change, why this change (or information) is important, how it will be used and will support more efficient workflows, and how the outcomes from this change will advance institutional strategic priorities. Even more problematic, such changes are often made with little, if any, input from the very individuals who now must adopt or adapt to these changes in their everyday work—and are also charged with training others how to do so.

Communication is a necessary building block to boundary-setting and cultivating a culture of well-being. I urge all campus leaders to take a step back before implementing a change that impacts workflows. Ask yourself: Why is this change necessary? How will this change improve efficiency and effectiveness? What supports—such as training—will we provide to enable individuals to navigate this change? How will we assess the success of this change and report those findings back to everyone at the institution?

If you do not have answers to such questions before rolling out a change that’s perceived to be needed, you should stop and reconsider that change and/or the planned strategy to enact it.

Action #2. Conduct pulse surveys. Faculty and staff members are struggling to manage all their work responsibilities. They need help. Sometimes that help is as simple as providing a venue in which grievances and concerns about workload can be aired, heard, and acted upon. As a management professor, I believe the only thing worse than not asking for feedback is asking for it and doing nothing with it.

Creating opportunities for more regular feedback helps to promote an institutional culture in which faculty and staff members feel empowered to speak up, with boundary-setting and well-being at the core of their concerns. Realizing that cultivating a new culture takes time, and that time is also a challenge for administrators, I recommend the use of pulse surveys. A pulse survey is just that: a targeted feedback gathering tool that helps one take the pulse of the institution on a given issue or need.

For example, a provost seeking to understand the time it takes for faculty and staff members to manage a new expense tracking and submission system might conduct a pulse survey to ask questions such as: “What is the most time-consuming aspect of the new expense report submission system?” and “What changes do you recommend that would help lessen the time required?”

The outcomes of implementing more regular but targeted feedback-gathering tools allow campus leaders to foster communication channels. Additionally, the approach above models the importance of creating structures that help institutional leaders identify the key issues and obtain actionable feedback to address effectively people’s most important needs.

I say this with the caveat that some workload responsibilities are necessary for the stability of an institution. Assessment data and related reports, for example, are nonnegotiable given the impact that data and reporting have on student learning and institutional accreditation. All higher education institutions have some degree of challenges, and it is important that they encourage faculty and staff members to offer possible solutions to those challenges, fostering a more collaborative approach to advance needed change.

Action #3. Avoid performance punishment. A prior provost once told me that they were well aware that 30 percent of the faculty members at their institution did about 80 percent of the work. I was appreciative that they had verbally acknowledged that reality. Yet, I was also deeply disturbed that they had taken little, if any, action to change the inequitable workload; a workload that greatly impacted the well-being and boundaries of close to a third of the faculty who were being overworked and under-supported.

I urge all campus administrators to be cognizant of performance punishment: of “rewarding” excellent work and institutional contribution by placing even more work tasks on the individuals who are effective at their jobs. Doing so comes at a cost to the physical and emotional well-being of strong institutional contributors. Building in more explicit accountability measures for those who are underperforming and appropriately compensating those who are consistently contributing at a high level—with, for example, financial and human resources—are crucial steps toward supporting boundary-setting and well-being.

In sum, higher education as an industry, and those employed within it, feel the very real tension of working in a challenging environment. Individuals have all but lost any sense of personal-work boundaries due to the demands of 24-hour accessibility and the need to manage multiple roles in understaffed and under-resourced departments and units. As individuals attempt to re-establish those boundaries and make well-being a priority, their actions are often received negatively and deemed as quiet quitting or disengagement. However, if employee well-being and boundary-setting were viewed as an institutional responsibility—as they, in fact, are—the academy would be better positioned to attract, retain and engage diverse talent who work collaboratively to effectively address current and future challenges.

I met Bill Rieders at the recent Noodle Advisory Board meeting. Bill, chief of partner solutions, joined Noodle in 2023 after Noodle acquired Meteor Learning, a company that Bill co-founded. In speaking with Bill, I found his insights on where higher education is going to be valuable. I’m grateful to Bill for taking the time to participate in this Q&A.

Q: You’ve devoted a significant portion of your career to improving higher education. What are the reasons behind that?