Tag: Events

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?