A new report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center and State Higher Education Executive Officers Association shows that students enrolled in a college or university that closes are significantly more likely to re-enroll within four months if the state where the college is located mandates the closing institution help students transition to another institution.
The report, which is the third in a three-part series about college closures, reviewed two types of policies related to transitioning to a new institution: teach-out plan policies, which require the college that is closing to have an agreement with a college that is willing to take on the former institution’s students, and student records policies, which dictate what student information colleges must retain and, sometimes, how those records should be stored and protected.
Students in a state that had one of those policies were 53.5 percent more likely to re-enroll following their colleges’ closure than those whose states did not have either policy. Having both policies in place led to a 94.5 percent increase in re-enrollment.
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The report also noted, however, that students in states that offer some kind of financial compensation to students enrolled in a university that shuts down were less likely to re-enroll. These types of compensation include tuition recovery funds, which repay students’ tuition upon an institutional closure, or surety bonds, which operate much like an insurance policy that distributes money to students if their institution closes or in the case of a similar loss. In states that require either tuition recovery or surety bonds, students were 80.9 percent less likely to re-enroll within four months, and they were 72.4 percent less likely to re-enroll in states that require both.
The report, which utilized NSCRC data related to 467 closures between 2004 and 2020, notes the negative correlation between compensation and re-enrollmentlikely exists because many policies require students to choose between utilizing the teach-out option or receiving payment.
In one of its policy recommendations, the report advises states to “consider removing the restriction that students cannot access surety bond or tuition recovery payouts if they accept the teach-out option. Rather than forcing students into making a difficult decision between reimbursement or a teachout, these policies could be redesigned to provide incentives for reenrollment.”
Separately, tuition recovery and surety bonds also have no consistent positive impact on whether students whose college closed eventually complete a credential, but a combination of both forms of compensation is correlated with a 339.5 percent increase in completion rates over students in states with neither policy. On the other hand, student records policies and teach-out policies are negatively correlated with credential completion, even in states where both policies are in place.
Being a queer student in Florida wasn’t easy on Cameron Driggers, who recently graduated high school in coastal Flagler County, a conservative stronghold about an hour north of Orlando.
Driggers, who identifies as gay, has faced vitriol for his LGBTQ+ advocacy, which has included working to oust right-wing members of his district’s school board and participating in a walkout in protest of the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill. Outside his political work, he also endured discrimination on the high school track and field team; one of his own coaches once called him the F slur as he was clearing chairs and bleachers after a meet.
The coach was disciplined, but Driggers still had to face him as a teacher after the incident.
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“I guess I’m just kind of used to the overt homophobia,” he said.
No one would fault Driggers if he, like many LGBTQ+ Floridians, decided to leave the state, which has passed a slew of anti-LGBTQ+ laws under governor and Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis. As a high school senior—and one with an impressive résumé of political action already under his belt—college in a blue state like Maryland or Colorado would’ve been a perfect out for Driggers.
Instead, he will attend the University of Florida in the fall.
Driggers said the idea of leaving the state certainly crossed his mind and the minds of all his politically oriented friends.
“That is something I’ve heard often—that it’s too much heartache, too much stress, too much grief to stay in Florida,” he said.
But ultimately, he decided to go to UF to save money. State scholarships will make his schooling there almost free, and while other universities offered him comparable funding, none can provide the same quality education as UF, he said. Plus, he will avoid the costs of moving out of state; Gainesville, where UF is located, is only about two hours from Driggers’s hometown.
Costs weren’t the only factor in Driggers’s decision, however. He also hopes that by staying in Florida, he can continue to fight against anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and sentiment.
“There [are] far more people who will be enthusiastic about [DeSantis’s] defeat than there are” who are enthusiastic about him winning, he said. “I’ve knocked on thousands of doors in my community … and these people, once you to talk to them, they just kind of regurgitate and are fearful of what they hear on the TV. Once they actually meet young people and LGBTQ students, they begin to realize that it is a phony culture war. And so all it takes is enough conversation, enough hard work—hard as it is. But that’s what it will take to defeat him.”
To Leave or Not to Leave
Florida’s hostile history regarding LGBTQ+ rights didn’t begin with DeSantis’s election in 2018. The state was home to the Johns Committee, which investigated and interrogated LGBTQ+ people—particularly university faculty and students—during the 1950s and ’60s. In the 1970s, pageant queen turned activist Anita Bryant famously crusaded against gay rights in the state. And the second most deadly mass shooting in American history took place in 2016 at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando.
Last year, the state passed the Parental Rights in Education Act—which critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill—limiting classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation topics. As a result, many LGBTQ+ Floridians have experienced an increase in day-to-day discrimination, said Brandon Wolf, press secretary for Equality Florida, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization where Driggers is working as a summer fellow. Wolf pointed to a study by the Human Rights Campaign showing that the language DeSantis’s office used to support the legislation—calling gay and transgender people and their allies “groomers” and “pedophiles”—surged 400 percent on social media after the bill passed, turning it into a rhetorical trope for conservatives.
Other anti-LGBTQ+ legislation the DeSantis administration ushered in include a bill requiring individuals to use the bathroom that aligns with their sex at birth, a ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender people and a bill that allows health-care providers to deny patients medical care based on religious or moral beliefs.
Research shows that growing numbers of LGBTQ+ Floridians and their allies are looking to leave the state. Over half the state’s LGBTQ+ parents report that they’ve considered moving their families to another state, according to one study. News outlets have also reported a growing number of fundraising campaigns aimed at helping LGBTQ+ people relocate.
For students, pursuing a college education is a common reason to leave; earlier this year, one in eight high school seniors said that they were not planning to attend a public in-state university due to DeSantis’s policies.
Jack Petocz, a high school classmate and close friend of Driggers, as well as a fellow activist, is one such student. He wrote in a text to Inside Higher Ed that his main motive for leaving the state was not fear about his safety on campus, but about the quality of a college education under DeSantis’s policies.
“Given that Florida has initiated a takeover of our university system, I know my schooling would be hyper-politicized and often censored,” he said. In the fall, he will attend Vanderbilt University in another red state—Tennessee—where he is excited to continue “fighting the good fight,” he said.
DeSantis’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The anecdotes and statistics about people leaving the state obscure an important caveat, Wolf said: not everyone has the means to move out of state.
“It’s expensive on your own, but it’s even more expensive if you’re trying to move a family. Parents, families—cost is often very prohibitive. The same can be said of students … out-of-state tuition is expensive. Not all families have the means to pick their student up and move them to a different state for college or university,” he said. “When I was a college student, I didn’t have all the support in the world from my parents, and the possibility of leaving the state would have been impossible for someone like me to do alone.”
For some students, moving out of state is less about cost than about what they would leave behind.
Faerie McCollum, a nonbinary 19-year-old who uses all pronouns but will be referred to as they/them in this article, describes themself as a homebody. A lifelong Floridian, they couldn’t image living in cooler climes or away from their hometown of Orlando.
But they also can’t picture leaving behind their family—especially a queer sibling, who they know would be unable to leave the state.
“My little sister came out to me a while ago as bisexual, because, obviously, of course, I am the biggest queer in the family,” McCollum said. “I’m always talking about it. Everybody comes to me when they’re considering it. They’re like, ‘Hey, I might be gay,’ and I’m like, ‘That’s great for you! I love you!’ To me, I have to stay and keep an eye on my sister to make sure that, you know, she understands that even though it’s scary, you don’t have to flee at the first sight of danger.”
Although it isn’t McCollum’s main motivation for staying in Florida, like Driggers, they too want to help push for change in the state. An aspiring pediatric nurse—they are hoping to earn an associate degree at Valencia College in Orlando and perhaps pursue a bachelor’s afterwards—they want to be an advocate for transgender and nonbinary youth facing the trauma of going to the hospital. McCollum was inspired by the excellent care they received when they were hospitalized for anxiety as a teenager.
Even now, McCollum hopes to have an impact on the kids they meet working in childcare at a local gym.
“I can kind of teach them compassion while they’re still young,” they said. “I have very brightly colored hair. So they remembered me and my brightly colored hair, and they remember to be kind to one another. And that’s really important in our current climate.”
Culture on Campus
What will students like Driggers and McCollum find once they arrive on campus this fall? Legislation that went into effect July 1, SB 266, bans the use of state funds for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and it is unclear what effect that will have on the day-to-day experiences of university students. Though student fees pay for most college clubs, LGBTQ+ advocates worry the legislation could result in the elimination of majors like gender, sexuality and women’s studies (which is offered at the University of Florida) or of cultural centers—including LGBTQ+ resource centers.
When McCollum visited Valencia’s campus in June—pride month—they were heartened to see a small LGBTQ+ pride gathering. But a spokesperson for the community college clarified to Inside Higher Ed that the event was not held by the institution itself.
Asked how the college was continuing to support LGBTQ+ students in the wake of recent legislation, a spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed via email, “I can assure you that Valencia intends to comply with the new law (SB 266) that took effect July 1, and will be cognizant of its prohibitions and the exceptions it contains. Please also note that we’re currently awaiting the results of the Florida Department of Education’s rule development/adoption processes with respect to the implementation of these new provisions of Florida law.”
Lisa Lippitt, a longtime humanities professor at Valencia College who previously served as adviser for the west campus’s Queer Alliance, said there weren’t many places for Valencia’s LGBTQ+ students to turn even before the latest legislation. The Queer Alliance, which used to be a site where LGBTQ+ students would meet to play games or just chat about their lives, hasn’t been active in recent years due to low student interest, she said. Clubs must have at least 10 members to be recognized by the college and have access to campus space.
“I wanted to be a resource for the students. I think those students need someplace to go,” Lippitt said.
She said she knows of no specific resources for LGBTQ+ students other than the club. Some faculty advertise through placards on their doors that they have taken LGBTQ+ ally training.
McCollum said they felt comfortable attending Valencia because it is based in Orlando, one of the most gay-friendly locales in Florida and a queer cultural hub. But Lippitt considers the area more of a “mixed bag,” citing an incident in which an electric road sign in the city’s Lake Nona neighborhood was altered to read, “Kill All Gays.”
“The pride events that were scheduled in that area were canceled as a result of it. Unfortunately, things like that happen around town. But then again, we have Disney, [which] is a huge supporter,” she said.
Like Valencia, the University of Florida, which Driggers plans to attend, had little to say about how it will support LGBTQ+ students who choose to study there.
“The University of Florida is a diverse and inclusive community where every student can engage a wide range of ideas and viewpoints in a culture that is grounded in trust and respect,” said Steve Orlando, interim vice president of communications and marketing.
Wolf said he can understand why universities aren’t prepared to make bolder statements.
“The governor has made it clear he is ready to burn entire institutions to the ground,” he said, referring to the right-wing takeover of New College, a small liberal arts college where DeSantis handpicked conservative trustees who ousted the institution’s president.
Still, Wolf believes it’s the responsibility of Florida’s institutions to think “proactively about how they continue to support all students and faculty on campus and how they are going to set young people up to be successful in the world.”
Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ college students, said the lack of specific guidance on how to implement SB 266 was a function, rather than a bug, of the bill. It leads university administrators and employees to err on the side of caution; if an LGBTQ+ resource center is funded by student fees but the electricity that powers its building is not, a university may decide to do away with the center altogether, Windmeyer said.
“They want people to be fearful and confused,” Windmeyer said. “It’s what fascist governments, dictatorships are all about.”
For his part, Driggers is excited to be moving to Gainesville—which is significantly more liberal than his home region. Once on campus, he hopes to find a way to balance advocacy and academics; he plans to study business administration with the goal of one day running a nonprofit.
In addition to taking classes, “I intend to take on a new fellowship in Gainesville where I’ll be focused on getting the vote out among college students,” he said. “If all goes well, I’ll be able to manage that. But I guess that’s what college is about: finding your limits.”
A jury awarded over $39 million last week to a former University of California, San Diego, doctor who alleged that the university tried to redirect a $10 million gift for his research into a general gift to a cancer center and retaliated against him when he spoke up.
Dr. Kevin Murphy, a former department vice chair, “has persistently asserted for the past seven years” that the “University of California attempted to steal” the money, according to a news release from a Murphy spokesperson.
“When he decided to speak out against these irregularities, he claimed that top officials initiated a public smear campaign against him, which has escalated,” the release said.
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It says UC San Diego didn’t renew his contract in 2020. That year, Dr. Murphy sued the UC Board of Regents, alleging whistle-blower retaliation.
The release said the board countersued and the court consolidated the cases for an eight-week trial, after which the jury only awarded the system $67,000.
“This verdict reveals the truth behind UCSD’s attempts to retaliate and defame him for simply doing the right thing,” said Mark Quigley, Dr. Murphy’s lead trial lawyer, in the release.
Israeli universities have been left walking a political tightrope after a parliamentary vote to water down the power of Israel’s Supreme Court triggered mass civil unrest.
Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets after the Knesset voted to strip the Supreme Court of the ability to overrule some government decisions on the basis of the “reasonableness” standard, while opinion polls have found that only a quarter of voters support the change. The court is due to hear appeals against the law in September.
In a carefully worded statement on the day of the vote, Israel’s Association of University Heads called on academics to be “active citizens in any legal way they can, regardless of their position,” while also stating that the “constitutional revolution” under way “threatens the democratic character” of the country.
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University presidents’ opposition to the changes has irked some, with a petition to “keep academia out of the political game” gathering over 300 signatures from prominent professors at the time of writing, some of whom said in accompanying statements that they opposed the law itself.
But presidents who spoke with Times Higher Education said that, with the well-being of their institutions in the balance, they had no choice but to speak out.
“We’re not about politics, but we are about values, and one of our values means equality [and] lack of discrimination. All of those come with having a liberal democracy,” said Asher Cohen, president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI). “You see changes in the rules of the game without wide agreement only in dictatorships.”
Ron Robin, president of the University of Haifa, said it was “absolutely not possible” for heads to stay silent. “This is not an isolated discussion over a particular law, this is a struggle for the nature of society,” he said. “Universities can only thrive within democratic ecosystems.”
Both acknowledged some of their staff and faculty supported the new law, with Robin putting the figure at about 20 percent, but they said their universities’ senates had compelled them to oppose it.
Asher said HUJI’s senate had called for a strike, but he had held off. Aside from the limited impact such a move would have had over summer recess, the law would force him to dock pay from the minority who supported the change.
He said one development that would cross the threshold for a strike would be the government denying the court the right to challenge the new law. “We will stand by the law, and everyone should,” he said.
“If it will get there, then we are in a real, real serious constitutional crisis. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Haifa’s rector, Gur Elroy, was among the army reservists who publicly resigned their military positions in response to the vote, writing in a statement to local media that he could “no longer continue to serve a government that turns Israel into a non-democratic state.” Around 10,000 other part-time soldiers have promised to do the same.
“This is still a country where academics are on a pedestal of some kind, so even if we do something that has been done by thousands of others it has greater resonance,” said Robin.
The university presidents’ statement said that a neutering of the court would prevent them using legal means to oppose “harassment” of academia by the government. “We have a lot to lose if we lose our autonomy,” said Robin. “It’s going to be a long struggle.”
The NCES data shed new light on food insecurity at colleges. Some colleges and universities have hosted food drives to support food-insecure students, especially during the pandemic.
Photo by Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images
Over the past decade, universities and community organizations alike have increased their efforts to support students struggling to access basic needs like housing and food. But even as researchers tried to study how best to help those students, one significant hurdle stood in their way: no one knew exactly how many homeless or hungry students were out there.
From 2015 to 2021, Temple University’s Hope Center for College, Community and Justice, a student equity research center, published an annual #RealCollege Survey, which included rates of homelessness and food insecurity among college students. While it proved a useful window onto the issue, it was limited by the small number of colleges and universities that opted to participate—particularly in its early years.
That’s why some researchers began pushing the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics, a federal body dedicated to collecting data related to education, to track and publish information about student food insecurity and homelessness.
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Sara Goldrick-Rab, who founded and led the Hope Center until leaving it in 2022 amid questions about her leadership, now works as a senior fellow at Education Northwest and an independent consultant. She and her colleagues asked the NCES to collect these data first in 2015 and again in 2017. Goldrick-Rab requested that NCES include questions about food insecurity and homelessness as part of the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), which is conducted every three to four years and looks at how both undergraduate and graduate students finance their educations.
The request argued that nationally representative data about students’ access to basic needs—and how it connects to larger questions of college affordability—could open new doors for colleges trying to develop supports for their students and for researchers trying to dig into the causes and effects of housing and food insecurity.
“Scholars, practitioners and policy makers need additional data to confirm [the Hope Center’s] findings and create a clear national picture of the prevalence of food and housing insecurity among today’s undergraduates,” the letter said.
Goldrick-Rab also had her own goal—one that she didn’t spell out in the letter to NCES. She wanted critics—namely the university administrators, think-tank researchers and other skeptics who doubted that young people struggling with hunger and homelessness could even attend college—to finally believe there was a widespread problem of basic needs insecurity among the country’s higher ed institutions.
Now that wish has finally been granted. The latest NPSAS, which was publicly released in late July and features data from spring 2020—during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic—surveyed over 100,000 students on their experiences with food and housing insecurity.
Over all, the findings corroborate something that basic needs researchers have long asserted: college students face higher rates of food and housing insecurity than the general population.
“The really big reason this is so important is these are experiences that are affecting millions of students and have been, I firmly believe, for the whole time,” said Goldrick-Rab. “But because the federal government didn’t collect data on them, those experiences were not considered legitimate.”
Report Findings
The details differ slightly from what the Hope Center found. According to the Hope Center’s analysis of the NCES data, 22.6 percent of undergraduates and 12.2 percent of graduate students experience food insecurity, while 8 percent of undergraduates and 4.6 percent of graduate students experience homelessness—somewhat smaller percentages than what the Hope Center’s fall 2020 survey revealed.
The NCES data show that rates of food insecurity are higher at for-profit institutions (32.9 percent), historically Black colleges and universities (38.8 percent), and tribal colleges and universities (35.5 percent) than they are for the general student population.
The 2020 NPSAS provides the first insight into rates of food and housing insecurity at for-profit colleges, which had not been featured in the Hope Center’s studies, according to Bryce McKibben, senior director of policy and advocacy at the Hope Center.
The survey also shows that the rate of food insecurity among white students is 16.6 percentage points lower than it is for Black students and 6.9 percentage points lower than it is for Hispanic students. Students who are parents and Pell Grant recipients also experience higher rates of food insecurity.
Similar trends can be seen in the data for homeless students, although parents have lower rates of homelessness than nonparents, and Hispanic students experience only marginally higher rates of homelessness than white students. Over all, 8 percent of students reported being homeless.
Kevin Kruger, president and CEO of NASPA: Student Affairs Administrations in Higher Education, said he is hopeful that the new data will help university leaders realize that homelessness and hunger aren’t problems that only impact community colleges or rural institutions.
“I think it’s easy to assume where you think these problems are, what the issues are. But it’s really a national problem. There may be more depth to it at certain kinds of institutions … [but] this cuts across all institutions,” he said.
The data also point to another phenomenon that basic needs researchers have long emphasized: that the cost of college goes well beyond tuition, fees and materials. Colleges can better serve students by informing them of what Goldrick-Rab and fellow researchers call the “real” price of attending, which includes housing, transportation and food.
Advocates believe the report could lead to increased funding, resources and support for basic needs programs—both within the university and at the state and local level. Many colleges have begun offering supports like food pantries, homeless liaisons and basic needs offices. But those are often small-scale programs, operating with minuscule budgets and only a few—if any—full-time staffers.
McKibben added that he hopes the data influence policy makers to reconsider how they support college students. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is notoriously difficult for college students to access due to both eligibility requirements and the complexity of the application. He hopes the evidence that college students desperately need assistance could change that.
“The more we understand the depth, the more we can advocate for the resources necessary,” Kruger said.
One of the best parts about working in higher education is having the opportunity to be a part of college life—the athletic events, the student performances, the lectures. You have developed your own list, I am sure. Once in a while, those aspects do more than just entertain or enlighten—they offer a vivid and uncomfortable reminder of the hard work of fulfilling our institution’s educational mission.
The guidance from my new fitness coach right out of the starting gate was clear and expected: I needed to add some weight training to my cardio routine. She sent some short videos of beginning exercises and I headed to the fitness center, where my future would surely begin.
Within minutes, I knew in my bones what I had known only intellectually about what it felt like to be a new student at my college. Every barrier was suddenly real, not just a discussion item in a meeting. I mean, I’d been in gyms many times before—just as our students all have a long history in classrooms. But somehow this was very different. I was being charged with using equipment that was unfamiliar to me, trying to interpret jargon on the “how to” labels attached to each station. Is this what a syllabus looks like to a first-gen student, I wondered?
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The motto here at Cuyahoga Community College is “Where Futures Begin,” which is pithy and catchy, and it may have played a small role in inspiring me to register for a campus 5K run a few years back. I had never run more than absolutely necessary in my entire life, and it took me months to build my endurance to a point of respectability. Now, I run almost every day, and at 52, I’m more health-conscious than ever before. So when our sport and exercise science program manager recently asked for volunteers for our fitness coaching candidates to get some required hours, I immediately signed up.
Everyone else in the entire room seemed to know exactly what to do, and I was certain that they were all exchanging knowing looks about my sheer ineptitude. Before the end of my first workout, I asked myself whether I really belonged there. DevEd math, anyone?
Above all, though, I pondered the long road ahead. This wasn’t like training for a 5K; it was more like preparing for an ultramarathon. In the desert. But even worse than that, I had no confidence that these workouts would lead to the results that the fitness coach promised. How long will it take before I see improved muscle tone? I’d ask myself. How do I even know that I’m doing it right? Besides, would improving my strength really matter to my life in the long run?
Quite suddenly, I felt like a new student. I was eager for my future to begin, but what a long road to that future. We ask students to trust our judgment about the benefits on the investment of their time and work, freely acknowledging that it may not pay off for years. Even then, it is understandable that they struggle to see the value in learning to their own goals. My fitness coach surely believes that my triceps should be stronger, but does it really matter? And isn’t that basically the same question that students ask about gen ed requirements? I’m not sure we always answer it well.
Without doubt, most of our institutions are working hard in so many ways to meet the needs of new students, from first-year-experience classes to expanded advising and a million other practices to “meet students where they are.” No one can seriously question our indefatigable efforts to help new students find their way.
Yet so many students don’t. Is the road just too long and arduous? Isn’t that why most of us stop going to the gym? The payoff may be too distant to justify the very real, very immediate pain. How do we encourage students to stick with it, to do the hard work now—especially at a time when so many are increasingly skeptical of the value of that work?
Adjustments and Reassurance
My fitness coach approaches these same challenges with strategies that may be useful in the academic classroom. She celebrates the small victories, recognizing that each point on the journey is its own success. At the same time, she is patient with imperfection, pointing me back to the path when I fail to follow through.
But above all, she is receptive to changing course as needed. We regularly adjust the what in service of the why. Further, it is clear that we can always revisit the why. If building my core no longer serves my goals, we move to something else. Isn’t that what a student-centered education looks like?
Above all, I am convinced that she cares whether I am working out. Do our students know that we see their success as our goal?
Whether in the classroom or the gym, the work is hard—and it should be. I know that building my strength will require sustained, intense effort. Students know that about learning, and most are willing to put in the work—at least for a while. They need us to consistently reassure them that they are on the right path or to help them get them back on that path when they stray from it.
As you start the fall semester, take a moment to ponder the daunting distance between where they are and where they’re going, candidly acknowledge that challenge to the students, and then provide some timely encouragement and correction along the way. As a dean, I have seen the impact of frequent faculty communication to students. When an instructor can genuinely empathize with students, maintain conversation that respects their needs and keep students apprised of how well they are doing, students typically respond with respect and appreciation. Put differently, those students want to please these professors because they know their professors understand them. I have had students come to my office in tears about a single moment in a class discussion or one comment in the margin of a paper. Tears of joy. That’s how much you mean to them.
True confession: I genuinely hate lifting weights. It is much worse than running, and running is painful and awful. But I haven’t skipped a scheduled session all summer, and I will continue to go, at least partly—perhaps largely—because I value the opinion of my fitness coach.
I need her feedback to keep me going. Students need the same from us and for the very same reasons.
William Cunion is academic dean, eastern campus, at Cuyahoga Community College.
I recently led a faculty writing retreat. During a discussion about sustaining writing momentum, we talked about the power of writers asking readers for feedback if they are stuck. Yet most writers were not comfortable sharing their work before it was “submission ready.” In our discussion they shared some version of the following:
“I’m embarrassed to share work before it’s ready.”
“How do I know when it’s ready?”
“What if I left out an important source? I don’t want to get dinged for it.”
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“I like to anticipate every possible critique and respond to it in the paper before sending.”
“I didn’t get helpful comments the last time I shared my work.”
“Who would I ask to read it?”
I’ve been working with faculty writers for more than 12 years, in writing retreats, writing groups, consultations and coaching. Like those recent retreat participants, many don’t see readers as a resource in their writing process. They view them as a barrier or threat instead—a negative critique to anticipate, dreaded Reviewer No. 2 or that cruel reader who haunts us.
At best, it seems outside readers only invite ruminations about whether our work is good enough to show anyone. And so, we hold onto our writing longer, focusing on perfecting it and avoiding the sting of the negative review, rather than being open to what we might need to propel us forward.
But feedback can be an important and healthy part of the writing process. We don’t have to wait until we are at a late stage. And we don’t have to settle for just any feedback that’s offered.
Instead, we can cultivate readers for our work and build a network of readers that we can draw upon throughout our writing process. The goal: to find the right reader at the right time to move our work forward. We can ask for the feedback we need and prohibit what we don’t. If we think of feedback as a helpful network of readers we might tap into at different stages of our writing process, we increase our chances of getting feedback that keeps our writing moving—and that’s actually useful.
I’ve identified four steps for cultivating a network of readers for our work.
1. Assess what you need. To invite readers into our writing process, we first need to figure out what we need so we can ask for it. So before considering readers, ask yourself first: What do I need? Think not only about your writing but also about you, the writer. Begin by assessing the state of your writing. Ask yourself:
What am I working on and why?
What’s working in this draft so far?
Where am I stuck?
How might a reader help?
Think about what you need at this moment in your work. Do you need to sort out a messy draft? You might need a peer reader rather than a high-stakes reader who’s evaluating your work. Do you need to figure out if your methodology section makes sense? You might need a co-author who’s working on a separate section.
What you need now may not be the same as what you needed in graduate school or, say, before you were a principal investigator on a grant, became department chair or had to start caring for children or parents. So whenever you invite people to read your work, start by thinking about who might actually help you, not who “should.”
Sometimes the mentors for our research or those readers we most admire in our field actually stall us. In The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, Felicia Rose Chavez illustrates the harm and silencing effect the wrong readers and mentors can have, particularly for BIPOC writers, and the importance of readers (and writing spaces) that nourish and help writers claim their own voice, rather than reproduce their mentor’s.
Perhaps you have a good reader in mind, but they like to give advice or tell you who else you should read or cite. If that’s not what you need, save that reader for a later draft when you are synthesizing or trying to anticipate different points of view. Think of readers as resources during different phases of your writing. For example:
Cheerleader. Do you need them just to cheer you on? To remind you that you know things and that others want to hear what you have to say? Maybe you’re so used to critics that it’s hard to trust your gut as a writer. So you spin and spin and imagine every possible objection readers might have. You qualify so much that you have nothing left to say.
Late-stage editor. Do you need someone just to spot the typos, help you revise for clarity and conciseness, or try out some title possibilities? Are you too close to your work and need a reader with more distance?
2. Identify who might help. When trying to identify whom to ask, think back to when readers have been most helpful in your work. When you got useful feedback, what happened? Who gave it, and what were you working on? When has feedback been least helpful? What happened? Now, make a list of potential readers who might help you with your current project. Organize by reader strengths, in relation to your own work, to help you identify readers as resources when you might need them most:
Who are my early-stage readers? Who can help when I’m stuck in the muck?
Who are my midstage readers? Who can help me when I’m mostly there but need help synthesizing or organizing the muck?
Who are my late-stage readers? Who can help me clean up the muck?
Who are my cheerleaders? (You need them. It’s OK. Let them cheer you on.)
Who’s in my field that I trust to give informed, constructive feedback?
Who’s in my field I trust to ask, “Is this ready for release to _________?”
Who else (peers, family members, friends, professional coach or editor)? For what?
Over time, as you learn to identify what you need and to find who might help, you will develop a network of readers. Your list can help you assess not just who can give you valuable feedback but also how and when they can provide it. So for now, identify who that person might be for your current project.
3. Ask for the help you need. Instead of just hoping for helpful feedback (“Tell me what you think”), guide your readers. You’ll be more likely to get what you need. Here are the key elements to include when you request feedback:
Orient the reader to your work. Don’t share the draft without giving the person some context and a specific mission. To help them help you, provide a brief statement about the context and the purpose of the draft. For example: “This is an early draft of an article on X. I’m writing it because … I am hoping to submit it to a peer-reviewed journal by ____.” Or, “This is the methods section for a chapter in …” If relevant, include the parameters and criteria for the text, such as page limit, genre format and evaluation standards.
Name what you need from your reader. Be as specific as you can, so readers know how to be helpful to you. Tell them what you don’t need as well. Here are some examples of good approaches to asking for feedback.
Your request How it helps
My top three concerns are …
Focuses readers’ attention to what you most need.
Help me choose the strongest example in the discussion section.
Points readers to a specific place and gives them a task.
I’m trying to figure out the frame here. Could you suggest some possibilities?
Shows you are still in the generative phase and need a big picture reading.
Which of these claims is the strongest/most supported …?
Helps you see how readers are interpreting your argument and what they may need more/less of.
Is this idea a book or an article?
Asks readers to help you assess scope.
I need to cut half of this content. Could you tell me which parts are most and least engaging as you read?
Gives readers a clear purpose (cutting) and how they can help you make decisions.
In Sharing and Responding, Peter Elbow and Patricia Belanoff offer a range of strategies for getting useful reader feedback. Two strategies the writers I work with find helpful include asking readers to write a summary statement, which can help you see what main ideas are coming forward, or to tell you what’s missing: “What is almost said?”
Share the timeline. Let them know when you need it, and ask if that’s doable. Also, you don’t have to share a full draft. Sharing a few pages of a section that’s giving you trouble might allow for faster turnaround time than a full draft.
Offer to give feedback on their writing in the future. Reciprocity is key to establishing rapport.
Naming what you need positions you as an active participant in the feedback process. And when you receive that reader feedback, remember you get to decide what to do with it. (Sometimes you might want to ignore it.) Always remember to ask yourself, is my writing moving forward? Is this reader actually helping me with my work?
4. Develop your network. When you think of your list of potential readers as a network, you avoid burning out a select few (or one) go-to readers for everything you might need and, instead, get the right reader at the right time. One writer I work with exchanges drafts with a scholar who disagrees with her work. They decided to be resources for each other and in conversation during the writing process. This kind of reciprocity is key to developing a sustainable network of readers. Ask yourself, what kind of reader am I? When can I be most useful in the process? Put yourself in the reader network.
As writers, we are part of a scholarly ecosystem. We know the peer-review system is struggling. Many of us submit our work at a late stage and wait and wait. If we create networks of mutual support, we can empower each other as both readers and writers. Maybe we’ll get our work out sooner. Maybe we’ll stay more engaged with conversations in our fields. Maybe we’ll get better at quieting (or choosing when to ignore) Reviewer No. 2. Maybe when we serve as peer reviewers, we’ll give more efficient and effective feedback that writers can use. Maybe we’ll avoid becoming Reviewer No. 2.
Readers can be resources for writers, not just evaluators. They can be a part of the process by helping us stay engaged with our work, feel supported and make progress. As writers, we have a role to play in getting feedback that’s useful, not just affirming or critical. Writing does not have to be a solitary activity. If we are stuck, we can tap into a network. Let’s help each other write our way out.
The University of Dayton provides wraparound support and services for high-achieving low-income students with the Flyer Promise Scholars program.
Beverley Jenkins and Kathleen Henderson first stepped foot on the University of Dayton’s campus in 1977 and then never left. Henderson jokes they started working at the Ohio-based institution “back in the Stone Age.”
“It’s been home, and it’s been a place where I’ve just chosen to spend my career,” Jenkins says.
Jenkins and Henderson are UD alumnae and for the past 42 years have spent their time in student-facing services. Now, Henderson is the director of student engagement and associate director of the Office of Student Success, while Jenkins is director of student enrichment and academic outcomes.
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They also both serve as success professionals for 140 or so students in the Flyer Scholars Program, promoting success in academics, career ambitions and life goals for low-income scholars from the area.
Success pros are born: The Success Professionals initiative launched in 2016, alongside the Flyer Promise Scholars program, and Jenkins and Henderson have been the sole two professionals since the start.
Henderson compares their roles to a GPS. “We help provide guidance or help students to navigate. We’re not academic advisers—we don’t cross into that role. But we become experts or attempt to become experts in the individual to help them reach their full potential.”
The Flyer Promise Scholars program provides Pell-eligible students from partnering high schools or regional programs who show academic promise with scholarship funds and wraparound services. The program includes a summer experience, mentorship, workshops, a mini course and leadership opportunities.
The two professionals split up the scholar cohort almost evenly between themselves—Henderson advises students pursuing a bachelor of science and Jenkins advises those pursuing a bachelor of arts or education. Flyer Promise Scholars admits around 40 students per cohort, so there are around 160 enrolled during any given academic year.
How it works: Flyer Promise Scholars are required to meet with their success professional at least once per term, and for some students, those eight visits are the only interactions they need during their four years. “But there are others that are at our door every other day. It just depends,” Jenkins says.
During a scholar’s first year, success professionals are very involved in their life, helping map out a plan for the next four years and encouraging them. As students move through the grade levels, the support becomes more hands-off, with professionals checking in about how they’re doing and their goals.
“By that time, they recognize we’re always there for them, should they need it,” Henderson says. “Also, we recognize that they have grown in many ways that are pretty capable of achieving.”
Scholars can face a variety of barriers in navigating higher education, whether that’s learning hidden curricula or fighting impostor syndrome, but Henderson and Jenkins work alongside them to find the right resources or coach them through tough times.
“Being Pell-eligible students, [scholars] may come from families where college has not been a part of their experience, there may be some socioeconomic barriers that happen,” Henderson says. “So we not only work with the students, but we also try to educate the families so that they can understand how college works and provide support for their students.”
In addition, the success professionals track students’ grades and credits to make sure they’re on the path to graduation, ensure students are in good standing with the university and encourage engagement.
The heart behind it all: Jenkins and Henderson were both first-generation college students at the University of Dayton, and it drives their work today, they share.
“When I look back at my experience as an undergrad here at UD, all those layers of support were not in place, and to be able to be a resource, to help remove barriers that may get in the way of a student’s success, it’s rewarding for me,” Jenkins says.
“We remember those pitfalls, those challenges,” Henderson says. “I frequently remember—they didn’t have a word for it back in 1977, when I started at UD—as a student, feeling like an impostor. And the impostor syndrome for many of our students is very real.”
Of the 230-plus scholars who have participated in the program at the University of Dayton, 92 percent have graduated in four years, thanks to the services and support from the university and their success professionals.
“We graduate right next to them, you know—we’re right by their side,” Jenkins says. “That’s what we’re here to do.”
Seeking stories from campus leaders, faculty members and staff for our Student Success focus. Share here.
My wife and I are traveling in Norway this week, so I don’t have time for a full-fledged post, but I offer this description of the Norwegian educational system without additional comment, other than to note what’s possible when a wealthy country makes investing in education for all without layering in competition among elites.
Before Schooling Starts
Birth to 1 year old: 18 months of full-pay parental leave where each parent must take at least six of those months, with the third six months used at the parents’ discretion.
Ages 1 to 6: Kindergarten
Access to kindergarten care is universal and free, and kindergartens are operated on six core values.
Children and childhood: “Kindergartens shall respect and safeguard the intrinsic value of childhood. Helping to ensure that all kindergarten children can enjoy a good childhood with well-being, friendships and play is essential.”
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Democracy: “Increasing diversity and individualization demands an understand of democracy, respect for our differences and positive attitudes in order to be able to live together.”
Diversity and mutual respect: “Kindergartens shall promote respect for human dignity by highlighting, valuing and promoting diversity and mutual respect.”
Equity and equality: “Kindergartens shall promote equity and equality irrespective of gender, functional ability, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, ethnicity, culture, social status, language, and world view.”
Sustainable development: “The children shall learn to look after themselves, each other and nature.”
Life skills and health: “Kindergartens shall promote good health, play a preventative role and help even out social inequalities.”
Norwegian children routinely spend 75 percent of their kindergarten days outside.
Primary and Secondary Education: Grades 1–13
In primary education, no grades are given. Grades are first received in mandatory subjects starting in the Norwegian version of middle school, but no earlier.
For upper secondary education (essentially our high school) students choose between general studies (college prep) or a vocational track. General studies includes subjects like art and design, media and communications, performing arts, and physical education as well as what we would consider a liberal arts degree.
Vocational programs include engineering, computer science, health care, construction, agriculture, tourism, food service, IT, hairdressing, interior design and tourism.
After high school, all Norwegians are required to do a year of service—this is primarily but not exclusively military service.
Postsecondary Education
A university bachelor’s degree is three years, after which you can start a master’s or Ph.D. program if you wish. There are programs for professional study in things like pharmacy, law, fisheries science and teaching, which take an additional two years after the bachelor’s.
All institutions are tuition-free and students are eligible for additional living subsidies, which start in the form of loans but include automatic provisions for partial (60 percent) forgiveness if criteria around course completion are met.
Lifelong Learning
Once working, all Norwegians have the right to full or partial leave from their jobs “up to three years” to pursue additional vocational training that does not come coupled with a degree.
When Michael Roth announced two weeks ago that Wesleyan University was doing away with legacy admissions preferences, he braced himself for a bombardment of criticism from alumni.
None came. The president of the highly selective institution in Middletown, Conn., said he’s received “uniformly positive” feedback from constituents. He thinks he’ll even be able to raise money off the decision.
“The response I’ve gotten from scores of alumni is heartwarming,” he said. “These are people who might have kids—some of them do—and are saying, ‘My kid is applying, but I’m still happy.’”
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The announcement went markedly better than his past attempts to put the kibosh on legacy preferences, a move he’s supported for years. In 2018, Roth, who has led Wesleyan since 2007, visited a group of young, diverse alumni he assumed would support his plan.
“I thought it was a no-brainer,” he said. Instead, they were “very strongly opposed” to the idea.
Then came the Supreme Court decision, and with it, Roth said, a sea change in alumni attitudes toward legacy.
“If we’re doing all these other things to increase diversity, especially in light of the court decision, and we still said, ‘Yes, we can give alumni a preference,’ that would make us hypocrites,” he said. “If I thought I couldn’t raise money because of this, I would have to find a different line of work, because this is the right thing to do. But I believe I can raise a lot of money from Wesleyan alums who are genuinely pleased to support an institution that’s aligned with their values.”
Other elite institutions have decided to disregard alumni connections over the years: Pomona College in 2017, Johns Hopkins University in 2020 and Amherst College in 2021, to name a few. But only Occidental College—a small liberal arts institution in Los Angeles, best known as Barack Obama’s first undergraduate destination—and the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, a public institution, have put a formal end to legacy preferences in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. And among highly selective institutions, Wesleyan still stands alone.
Harry Elam, Occidental’s president, told Inside Higher Ed that the college was essentially formalizing an end to a practice that had not existed in any real sense for years. California colleges have been required to report legacy admits to the state since the Varsity Blues scandal broke at the University of Southern California in 2019, and Elam said Occidental has reported none in the intervening years. Occidental is also fairly racially diverse for a private liberal arts institution—45 percent of the Class of 2026 are domestic students of color, according to data from the college.
Still, Elam felt it was important to come out with a public, official stance on the issue in light of the Supreme Court ruling.
“We felt that it was the right thing to do, and now was the time to do it,” he said. “I imagine that schools are doing a close scrutiny of what’s important to them both in terms of what they want to achieve in the admissions process and in terms of their mission and values … it will be interesting to see what happens, but I think more will happen.”
Richard Kahlenberg, a nonresident scholar at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce and a proponent of class-conscious admissions policies, said that with affirmative action out of the picture, the argument for legacy admissions is weaker than ever.
“There was this unhealthy, symbiotic relationship between legacy preferences and racial affirmative action,” he said. “Proponents of legacy preferences tended to like racial affirmative action, because it helps hide the larger inequalities built into the system, and affirmative action supporters liked legacy because they could say, correctly, that there are a lot of preferences, and clearly racial preferences are fairer than legacy preferences.”
A few hours after announcing his decision on July 19, Roth spoke to Inside Higher Ed about the long road to this moment, how the Supreme Court decision tempered alumni backlash and whether he thinks his peers will join him anytime soon. That conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows.
Q: How did you come to the decision to end legacy admissions at Wesleyan? Had you been entertaining the idea before the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, or did that tip the scales?
A: I have been thinking about this for a while. I thought it was a no-brainer to remove legacy preferences from the admissions process. And then, about five years ago, I went to a group of people who I thought would be very supportive of this, a younger group of alums, a more diverse group than the Board of Trustees. And they were pretty strongly—very strongly—opposed to this idea of mine, of getting rid of legacy. They said, essentially, “Oh, now that we’re going to have kids who could benefit from it, you’re going to take it away? We know it’s not a good thing, but now?” So at the time, I thought, well, it’s such a small thing—I mean, I spent a lot more time talking to disgruntled alums whose kids didn’t get in than happy alums who got their kids some kind of bump. I thought, it’s not worth a big argument about it.
But because of the way the Supreme Court made this decision—by not explicitly overturning previous decisions around affirmative action but gutting it from the inside, making it unconstitutional to judge an applicant by the racial group with which they identify and instead saying we have to look at them as individuals—I thought, well, that would go against what we do with legacy admission. So it just seemed to me that if we’re going to be saying that we want a very diverse campus in the future and we’re going to abide by the law—we’re going to work even harder to recruit Pell-eligible students [and students] from rural America—if while we’re doing all those things we also said, “Yeah, we can still give alumni children a preference,” we would be legitimately criticized for hypocrisy.
Also, we had announced a lot of these [diversity] initiatives already, but nobody really called me to talk about it. But by getting rid of legacy admissions, I was on CNN this morning, I had MSNBC this afternoon, I have The Wall Street Journal—which is great, because I think it’s important to talk about legacy admissions, which affects a tiny fraction of students, but what’s really important is to talk about educational equity.
Q: You’re saying that standing by legacy admissions would cast a pall over all these other efforts to promote diversity?
A: It’s hypocritical. Absolutely. We really curate our classes very carefully. I mean, can you imagine saying, “We’re curating this show at a museum very carefully but we’re going to take a board member’s kid in the biennial because loyalty is important”? There was an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal today by somebody associated with the Claremont Institute at Harvard saying, loyalty is important. That’s like how the mafia approach things! And I think it’s actually obscene that the richest schools in the country are the ones that express the greatest concern about losing money. I’m a college president; I have to raise money. That’s my job. And I’ve raised more money in the last few years than any person in Wesleyan history. If I thought I couldn’t raise money because of this, I would have to find a different line of work, because I think this is the right thing to do. But I believe I can raise a lot of money from Wesleyan alums who are really pleased to support an institution that’s aligned with their values.
Q: Some highly selective private colleges have done away with legacy in the past, but not many. Do you think the trend is more likely to spread among Wesleyan’s peer institutions now?
A: I don’t know. I am really bad at predicting—I’m a historian, and I even have trouble with the 19th century—but I hope so. I think there will be pressure on schools to do this, but I hope we can keep turning the conversation to: Why aren’t more high school graduates prepared to be successful at places like Amherst and Wesleyan and the Ivies? Why are so many people deprived of a decent high school education so that they really can’t compete? Why don’t we support community colleges more than we do? These kinds of issues affect millions of people rather than dozens.
Q: How are you planning to address those more systemic issues? I’m particularly interested that you brought up community college, since transfer pipelines are something that elite colleges historically don’t do very well. Do you think that’s going to change in light of the Supreme Court decision?
A: It is for us. I think Princeton has also announced in the last few years that they’re trying to do more with community colleges, and I think it’s a great thing. I think some of those schools should just open community colleges rather than spend more money on their own students, but that’s another issue. I do think having more community college transfers who want to be in a place like Wesleyan and can thrive there would be great for us.
We also have a three-year program that has not proven very popular, despite everybody wanting to make college more affordable. One way is to compress it, and so we’re going to work harder at making it clear how people can save a year’s tuition by tweaking things a little bit. We also worked with the National Educational Equity Foundation to give free credit-bearing online classes in Title I [low-income-serving] high schools. That will give students both a taste of higher education at this level, and perhaps save a lot of money because they’ll have a year’s worth of college credit. I taught one of those classes myself, and I think there is real hunger for high-level college courses delivered in this hybrid mode.
Q: Do you think ending legacy admissions could help give a bit of a face-lift to private liberal arts colleges even as the country’s faith in their value decreases?
A: Absolutely. I think it’s really important for those of us in leadership positions in higher ed to work harder to restore confidence in our sector. I’m president of Wesleyan and I have plenty of people trying to get in and almost all of them are qualified. But what’s scary to me is that all across the country, Americans report declining confidence and trust in higher education. And I think removing some hypocrisy in the admissions process is a step in the right direction. The challenge is, two-thirds of the students who apply to Wesleyan or other schools like us are perfectly capable of doing the work. They ask, “Why didn’t I get to go there?” And the answer is they just can’t; we’re not big enough. But if the process seems unfair, then there’s going to be a real continued decline in trust. So this is kind of a symbolic step towards restoring some trust in what we’re doing in higher ed.
Q: What has been the general response from alumni?
A: I’m a little surprised, I have to say, because they really are uniformly positive —“Thank you for doing the right thing,” mostly. Some of them are from older alums, people who were at Wesleyan 50 or more years ago, and some of them were from very recent grads. And so I’m heartened by that, because I think a lot of college leaders, when they hesitate about doing this, I don’t think it’s because they disagree with the principle. It’s because they don’t want to annoy their constituency. But I have a lot of faith in Wesleyan constituents, and clearly they believe universities should stand up for certain values. So we tried to do that.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The 2023 calendar year is a little more than halfway done — but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to jump on one of these well-connected entrepreneurial events. This list is specifically for our subscribers, so if you are part of Entrepreneur+, then check out this exclusive list.
Startup conferences are an integral part of any entrepreneur in any industry. It’s one of the best ways to get you and your team surrounded by professionals; to help network and meet knowledgeable potential partners and investors.
Women who were assaulted by former doctor Larry Nassar announced a new suit against Michigan State University on Thursday, over closed-door discussions and votes by Michigan State’s board, The Detroit News reported.
The suit, which charges the board violated the Open Meetings Act and the Michigan Constitution, argues the Board of Trustees held a discussion and some sort of vote behind closed doors to keep thousands of documents secret.
“We contend that board members made a behind-closed-doors secret decision not to release the records in blatant violation of the Open Meetings Act,” said Azzam Elder, a lawyer for the women. “They followed that up with violations of the Freedom of Information Act when we requested emails that might show they discussed and made a closed-door decision on the matter in violation of law.”
Michigan State University declined to comment but noted it had not yet been served with the lawsuit.
This piece is the last blog post I will write for Inside Higher Ed that Scott Jaschik will edit. As was announced earlier this month, Scott’s last day at IHE is today.
I’ve been working with (and for) Scott for 14 years. He has been a near-daily constant in my professional life. I can honestly say that Scott is the best higher ed boss I’ve ever had.
If you know Scott—and everyone knows Scott—then I’m sure you can add to a list of things we’ve learned from him. A list of what I’ve learned from Scott, and what I think that every higher ed leader can learn from Scott, would include:
Be Patient With Your People
It has taken me years to find my blogging voice. Scott recruited me to IHE when I was midcareer (so I had something to say) but a newbie blogger (so I didn’t know how to say it). Over the years, Scott has been patient as my writing (slowly) improved.
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For university jobs, we put too little emphasis on long-term growth and too much focus on talent. Professional development budgets are uneven and almost always too small. We need to make the sort of long-term investments in our people that Scott was willing to make in me. We should also be ready to hire people early in their careers and stick with them as they develop their abilities.
Encourage Your People to Grow and Change
The focus of my writing for IHE has changed over the years. In the early years, I mainly wrote about educational technology. As my work began specializing in online education, my writing shifted to exploring university/company partnerships and organizational leadership issues. Along the way, Scott was supportive as I began to write book reviews from the lens of what books can teach us about universities. And Scott encouraged me to do more interviews (my “3 Questions” series) with nonfaculty educators.
If you invest in people for the long term, you also need to make room for them to grow and change. Interests will evolve, and careers need to accommodate growth. Universities often don’t know how to encourage career growth for alternative academics. There is no clear professional path. Too often, nonfaculty educators must move institutions to advance their careers.
Scott enabled me to stay with IHE as he encouraged and supported me in changing what I wrote about over the years. Every higher ed leader should be creating that sort of running room for the people at their schools.
Be Available
Scott has been consistently available, accessible and present. When I email Scott, I always get a (fast) answer.
Being this available to the people who work at a university is a hard thing for university leaders to pull off. University leaders are super busy. Their days are made up of endless meetings and other responsibilities.
I don’t know how Scott could be so present and accessible, given everything else his job entailed. But he prioritized being available to the people who worked for him. Maybe just making availability a leadership priority is what it takes.
Put Values First
Scott and his partner, IHE co-founder Doug Lederman, are both old-school. Old-school in the sense that journalism is a civic responsibility, with ethics at the heart of the news operation. This orientation to running IHE means keeping the organization’s editorial content and business concerns separate.
Every decision I ever saw Scott (and Doug) make about what goes in IHE has been based on journalistic, not business, concerns. The questions are always about if a story or opinion piece is accurate, fair and well supported.
IHE has always been the news and opinion source accessible to everyone in higher education. It is where those with the least power and the least money can get the same information and analysis as the most senior (and privileged) people in our industry.
In our digital age of social media and advertising-driven content, running an old-school, digital-first news operation must not be easy. Writing for IHE has always felt like being part of a way of thinking about news and opinion that has roots in journalism’s past. Scott, Doug and all the people they work with at IHE have been trying to bring these old-school journalism values into a digital-first future.
Like the news, the future of higher education will also be primarily digital. How can universities stay true to their values as everything about higher education changes? A values-based approach seems to have worked pretty well for IHE.
Take Risks
Scott and Doug took a considerable risk when they started IHE. Who in their right mind leaves established and secure positions to bring something entirely new into the world?
We tend to take IHE for granted. IHE has been part of our professional academic lives for so long that it is difficult to remember what things were like pre-IHE. A freely accessible source of professionally reported news and expert opinion covering the breadth of higher education was unavailable before IHE.
Starting IHE was a risk. How many big risks do established colleges and universities take? If we want to do something big—as big as what Scott and Doug have done — we must take some big swings.
Prioritize Relationships, Reputation and Trust
Scott’s most important asset has always been his reputation. That reputation has been built on decades of building trust with those in our higher ed ecosystem. Trust requires candor, transparency, modesty, listening, expertise, consistency, empathy and compassion.
What I’ve learned from Scott is that what matters most in our higher ed world is our long-term relationships. Meeting short-term goals is never worthwhile if they come at the expense of long-term relationships. One’s reputation in higher education is built over decades. There are no shortcuts. The only game that matters in higher ed is the long game.
Have Good Partners
As wonderful as Scott is, he has not done it alone. While Scott has been my day-to-day boss at IHE, it has always been both Scott and Doug Lederman that I work for. Many people have helped raise IHE, but IHE is Scott and Doug’s baby.
Even the best higher ed leaders can’t do it alone. We all need partners.
Go Out on Top
Finally, Scott is showing all of us in higher ed how to say goodbye. For Scott, IHE is not a business but a legacy. Scott leaves IHE at a time of strength and stability. The fact that Doug is staying is vital. If IHE were not in good shape and in good hands, Scott would have never decided that now was the time to retire.
Too many higher ed leaders stay too long. They don’t take the time to cultivate other interests and passions beyond their academic leadership roles. They don’t know how to be useful and valuable outside their jobs. The time to leave is when things are at their best.
Thank you to Scott for giving me the professional opportunities you have provided. Thank you to Scott for the mentorship, guidance and friendship over the years. You will be missed.
Occidental College is the second private institution to end legacy preferences in admissions following the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling.
Occidental College will no longer give admissions preference to children of alumni, citing the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action.
“In the past, an applicant’s familial relationship to the College’s alumni could be considered as a factor in the admission decision if the student was otherwise a qualified applicant,” Occidental president Harry Elam wrote in a statement announcing the decision Wednesday. “To ensure we are removing any potential barriers to access and opportunity, Occidental will no longer ask applicants about alumni relationships as part of the application.”
The small liberal arts college in Los Angeles is just the second private institution to eliminate legacy preferences in the wake of the June 29 Supreme Court decision, following on the heels of Wesleyan University, which announced an end to its legacy policy on July 19. The University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, a public institution, also ended legacy preferences earlier this month.
Occidental made the announcement the same day that the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into Harvard University’s use of legacy preferences in admissions, and amid growing pressure on institutions to abandon the practice as part of a broad response to the affirmative action ban.
A man was arrested last week for second-degree threatening, second-degree breach of peace and second-degree failure to appear, and he had visited Brown University and the University of Connecticut to plan mass shootings there, authorities said, according to The Hartford Courant.
The failure to appear charge against Dennis “D.J.” Hernandez relates to a charge he faces stemming from a missed court appearance on July 7. He was scheduled to answer to a charge tied to an arrest in March after he took an Uber to ESPN’s headquarters on Middle Street in Bristol, Conn., and allegedly threw a brick onto its campus with a note attached that said it was about time the company realized the effect “media has on all family members,” police wrote in the incident report.
Instead of attending court earlier this month, a person close to Hernandez told police, he allegedly drove to UConn and Brown to “map out the schools,” according to Bristol police reports. The person who shared the texts “surmised” that he was planning to commit a shooting, police wrote.
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“UConn program is going to pay unless I have a package deal and I get my estate and every single thing I have worked for,” Hernandez allegedly wrote in text messages that were reportedly shared with police. “The coaches and university officials want to be selfish and selective about [expletive], well I am too. Very. They are going to get surprised. Love you, I would recommend remaining away from there because when I go I’m taking down everything And don’t give a [expletive] who gets caught in the cross fire [sic]. I’ve died for wears [sic] now and now it’s other peoples [sic] turn. I’m prepared to give my life.”
“Despite reports of an alleged visit to Providence, our investigation to date indicates that Hernandez has not been on Brown’s campus in recent weeks,” a spokesperson for Brown said Tuesday. “Given the nature of the alleged threats, we remain in contact with law enforcement partners in Connecticut taking the lead on the investigation.”
Hernandez was the quarterbacks coach at Brown for one season during the 2011–12 academic year, the spokesperson said, adding that police at the university “implemented protective measures immediately” upon being made aware of the alleged threats.
Michael Enright, a spokesperson for UConn, said the UConn Police Department was aware of initial information related to the subsequent arrest of Hernandez by the Bristol Police Department.
Hernandez is in custody. He is the the brother of former National Football League player Aaron Hernandez, who died by suicide while in prison for murder.
Colleges can support student parents’ education by accommodating their unique needs with space and facilities.
Student parents make up around 22 percent of all learners in higher education, and over half of them are single parents. As single parents, students often require additional support and resources to juggle both their academics and their responsibilities to their child or children.
Making spaces on campus for student parents to feel like they belong and can be connected to their peers is important, Rachel Kubczak, director of the Student Parent Success Program at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee told Inside Higher Ed.
“When we empower our parenting students to graduate and pursue not only their academic goals but also professional and career goals, they are improving the outcomes for not just themselves, but their whole family, as well as future generations,” Kubczak says.
Inside Higher Ed compiled three examples of campus spaces that prioritize and accommodate student parents.
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Lactation stations
For new parents, finding a space to feed their baby or pump can be a struggle, so some institutions have created lactation spaces throughout campus.
West Virginia University added a lactation space at the campus basketball stadium in February, the 12th lactation space on campus for community members to nurse in private. The space allows nursing students and other WVU fans to enjoy game day without worries about pumping.
The University of Nevada at Reno has a Lactation Advocacy Subcommittee, which maintains 10 lactation rooms on and off campus for students and employees, growing facilities on campus since 2011. Lactation spaces are available in the student union, the continuing education building and the university health center, among others.
Childcare facilities
The high cost of childcare can be a barrier to pursuing higher education and completing a degree. Colleges and universities can ease this strain by offering financial support for outside care or by supporting their own childcare facilities.
A March survey from Generation Hope found 71 percent of student parents in the Washington, D.C., region rely on informal or unpaid childcare, and 92 percent do not have access to or are unaware of on-campus childcare options.
The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee reserves over 100 spots in its Children’s Learning Center for student parents and uses grant funding to keep care costs low.
Utah Valley University houses its Wee Care Center within the Women’s Success Center, offering care for children from 6 weeks to 6 years old. The Wee Center also has two outdoor play areas and a mothers’ room for nursing.
Kid-friendly spaces
Creating a campus environment that is supportive and inclusive of family lifestyles can also improve retention and belonging among parents.
Howard Community College in Maryland opened a family-friendly study space in March, offering computers, whiteboards, comfortable seating, a TV, a DVD player, an interactive touch table, books, games and magazines for parents and their children.
Onondaga Community College, part of the State University of New York system, created a Parent and Adult Learner Suite in December 2022 in Mawhinney Hall, a central building on campus with a café and a collection of classrooms. Inside the room, parents can find a study space, lounge space, playroom, changing and nursing room, school supplies, and children’s clothing exchange.
Do you have a success tip that might help others encourage student success? Tell us about it.
Lasell University will eliminate majors in global studies, sociology, English and history, all in the liberal arts. The university will also eliminate its major in fitness management, The Boston Globe reported.
Four faculty members have been told their contracts will not be renewed for the 2024–25 academic year, and several open faculty positions will not be filled, former president Michael Alexander said in a June 28 email to the university community. An additional 12 staff positions have been eliminated. (Alexander left office July 1.)
“These decisions are the most difficult that the Board of Trustees and I ever have to make, because they affect our valued colleagues and friends,” wrote Alexander, who led the university for 16 years. “Yet, they are essential to prepare us for the demographic changes we know are coming, to position us for sustained growth, and to protect Lasell’s long-term financial future.”
The university, in Massachusetts, enrolled 1,236 undergraduates and 392 graduate students in fall 2022. Undergraduate enrollment fell 15.4 percent between fall 2011 and fall 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
This episode of the Pulse podcast features an interview with Cameron Stoker, founder and CEO of SpeechCloud, a teaching platform. In the interview with Rodney B. Murray, host of The Pulse, Stoker discusses how instructors can use the platform to keep students engage. Learn more about The Pulse here.
Nearly three-quarters of all college students, regardless of their political affiliation, believe professors who make comments the students find offensive should be reported to the university, according to a new report.
A similar rate of students would also report their peers for making insulting or hurtful remarks.
The report by the Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth at North Dakota State University is based on a survey of 2,250 students from 131 public and private four-year institutions across the country and was released Wednesday.
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Over all, the percentage of students who said they would report a professor was higher among self-identified liberal students (81 percent) than among self-identified conservative students (53 percent). Sixty-six percent of liberal students and 37 percent of conservative students said they would also report peers who made offensive comments.
John Bitzan, author of the report, said the survey findings are troubling and reflect continuing challenges on college campuses to encourage students to think critically and engage in healthy debates—with each other and with faculty members—over issues on which they disagree.
“Of any place, a university should be a place that is open to a variety of points of view, and traditionally the universities have been,” said Bitzan, who is also director of the institute and a professor of management. “To me, it’s alarming that students are saying, ‘You can’t have an opinion on something that differs from the correct or appropriate opinion without being reported to the university.’”
In an attempt to identify exactly what kind of statements by professors students would report—be they opinions with which students disagree, or strictly racial slurs, sexual harassment or personal attacks—the survey provided 10 examples of comments the students would report as offensive. The options included “It is clear that affirmative action is doing more harm than good and should be eliminated” and “A civilized society doesn’t need guns.” Sean Stevens, director of polling and analytics at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a campus civil liberties watchdog group, said in his view most of the statements prompted would be “very reasonable statements to make.”
He said several of the example statements, while potentially controversial, are supported by data, have been published in peer-reviewed literature or have been debated and ruled upon in court. Others may reflect more of a professor’s personal opinion but are opinions held by “plenty of people.”
“I don’t think any of those are necessarily that unreasonable, albeit they may be offensive to some people,” Stevens said.
The likelihood of reporting instructors was higher among conservative students when the statements provided were liberal-leaning and higher among liberal students when the statements were conservative-leaning.
The findings on students’ likelihood to report offensive comments were part of a larger annual survey assessing student perceptions about campus culture and viewpoint diversity. About 60 percent of the students surveyed identified as liberal and 20 percent conservative, according to the report. These demographics are similar to those represented in a national analysis of free speech on college campuses by FIRE.
Stevens, director of polling at FIRE, said the survey findings on students’ level of comfort speaking on campus about controversial subjects are similar to results FIRE has seen in its student polls since 2020. He noted that FIRE has seen even lower rates of comfort, likely because its polls specifically asked students about their comfort discussing “controversial political topics.”
Although the survey questions were written and analyzed by Bitzan and the Challey Institute—a conservative-leaning interdisciplinary institute housed in North Dakota State’s College of Business—the poll was conducted by an independent survey group, College Pulse, in May and June. Its margin of error was plus or minus 2.4 percentage points. (College Pulse also conducts polling for Inside Higher Ed, but Inside Higher Ed was not involved in the Challey Institute polls.)
“I’m very confident that the results are accurate,” Bitzan said. “I do think that there are definitely differences between the way liberal students and conservative students view the campus climate in terms of openness to different points of view.”
Some of the poll answers suggest that a majority of students perceive their campuses as being generally open to the sharing of controversial or unpopular ideas. About 70 percent say they feel at least somewhat comfortable sharing their opinions on a sensitive topic.
But of the students who felt at least somewhat comfortable with the campus climate, about half said it was because they believe their views align with most other students’ and professors’.
“They say the campus climate is open to a variety of points of view,” Bitzan said of students surveyed. “But it could be a signal of, ‘I think that the campus climate agrees with my point of view. If there’s something that I view as unacceptable, or not aligning with my point of view, then I’m not tolerant of that.’”
“Students are saying you can’t have an opinion on something that differs from the correct or appropriate opinion without being reported to the university.”
Stevens, director of polling at FIRE, said the survey findings on students’ level of comfort speaking on campus about controversial subjects are similar to results FIRE has found in its student polls since 2020. He noted that the reported rates of comfort were likely even lower because students were specifically asked about discussing “controversial political topics.”
Jonathan Friedman, director of the free expression and education programs at PEN America, a free speech advocacy group, said the survey results align with what he’s heard is happening on many campuses across the country. The frequency with which students are reporting professors “is scaling up in a way that universities haven’t really dealt with before.”
Institutions lack “good, clear processes or apparatuses” to receive, process and investigate the reports, Friedman said, and as a result many faculty often feel like they’re “teaching on eggshells.”
“You do have to do some work to explain to students what might meet the bar for being reported, teaching some of the distinctions between speech that offends versus speech that harms, or the difference between disagreement and discrimination,” he added.
A few months ago, I published an op-ed titled “Who Can Really Teach Ethnic Studies?” After its publication, I received numerous emails from scholars asking me to reconsider my position, since my main criterion for teaching ethnics studies was training in the field. I realized then that I hadn’t really explained what I meant by “training.” Ironically, the question of needing “training” or not isn’t often asked when dealing with disciplines like English, philosophy, math, chemistry and others.
I am using this opportunity, then, to expand on what I meant by “training” in ethnic studies. In my view, it can mainly be gained in one of two ways: 1) by getting a degree in ethnic studies and 2) by being hired to teach in an ethnic studies program or department (regardless of degree).
But exactly why is training important? What makes ethnic studies different from other disciplines that teach (about) race?
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To begin to answer those questions, we must turn to the discipline’s genealogy, which I divide into three parts.
History. The main difference between ethnic studies and other disciplines is that it wasn’t born out of abstract thinking, literary criticism or science. Rather, it sprang from the activism of students, which yielded results at the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State College in 1969. It emerged when Ronald Reagan was governor of California and sent the National Guard to deal with students of color asking for courses that reflected their histories and their and their parents’ living conditions. But the students fought back, and because of this activism and in spite of state efforts to repress it, a department of ethnic studies was created at Berkeley and a whole college at San Francisco State.
Thus, the circumstances that lead to the creation of ethnic studies, along with the relatively recent time in which it was created, makes it both a contested discipline and a relatively new one. It also makes ethnic studies a discipline born out of systematic and historical exclusions.
Institutionalization. After 50 years of institutionalization and academic practices, ethnic studies has acquired different tones, angles, foci and subjects of study. The first scholars appointed to positions in ethnic studies were trained in other disciplines, so the field learned early on to “borrow” from those discipline—most notably history, sociology, psychology and philosophy, among others. But major tweaks were needed. Sometimes the “borrowing” was to point out where the discipline had failed communities of color by not addressing racism, discrimination and inequity and inequality in meaningful ways. Also, the emergence of group-specific fields that also stand as separate disciplines—Black studies, Latinx studies, API studies, South Asian studies and so forth—has created a healthy number of specialties and subspecialties, all under the umbrella of ethnic studies. Still, after decades of ethnic studies in all its forms being taught in academe, a few general principles have emerged.
Principles and purpose. Going back to the discipline’s contested origins, in the beginning, those who studied and taught ethnic studies spent the majority of their time calling out specific disciplines like anthropology (for taking advantage of and making careers—thus profiting—from Indigenous communities without giving back), criminal justice (for perpetuating the mess the criminal justice system is in), political science (for pandering to a political system that was built on and perpetuates inequities), and so on. That calling out took most of the effort.
Then, as ethnic studies developed, scholars began to finally envision ways of building it in ways that extended beyond critiquing what others were doing. As such, ethnic studies now focuses on:
Racism. Although we do talk a great deal about race as a social construction, the main point is to talk about how the meanings we attach to racial groups and the individuals who belong to those groups are tied to racism as both a historical legacy and a contemporary social practice. That is, for ethnic studies scholars, documenting racism in the workplace, politics, the educational system and the like is only the first step—whereas for other disciplines such documentation of an issue, trend or phenomenon is usually the be-all and end-all of their research. With ethnic studies, there has to be room for envisioning alternatives and calling for them within institutions, even if the call remains unanswered and goes into the ether.
Systems of inequity inextricably tied to racism. Although we acknowledge that all systems of inequities are interconnected, we also presume that most (if not all) are closely connected to and complicated by racism. This, as you can see from the way I worded it, is different from the intersectional theory that women’s and gender studies uses (and which white women in that field particularly love after appropriating it from Black feminist Kimberlé Crenshaw, who developed it, and the other women of color who worked on it). Ethnic studies is a way of looking at systems of inequality that places race at the front and the center of any analysis.
A history of racism still with us in this country. This history has had a massive impact on the construction of race, the positioning of racial groups within social systems and structures, and race relations today. Chattel slavery, Indian wars and Indian reservations, exclusion acts of all sorts targeting different Asian groups, and legislation managing Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans and other Latin American groups have all created a reality that influenced their trajectory and affect us all today—regardless of race and/or ethnicity.
Ending social inequities by any means necessary. It is this that sets ethnic studies apart from other disciplines, as it scares the people who want to hide behind the veil of objectivity within the walls of academe. The point is that ethnic studies extends beyond the mere presentation of facts into advocacy and social change—and not a theoretical social change, but an actual one—with the aim of addressing social injustice.
The bottom line is that those of us who teach ethnic studies do not just teach about race—which is why folks who teach about race in other disciplines are not necessarily ethnic studies scholars and why being trained in the discipline matters. Anyone in an ethnic studies classroom should know the disciplinary genesis and history that I’ve outlined above— know where the discipline comes from and where it’s been—and understand their impacts, including the fact that that ethnic studies has continued to grow and expand.
A person teaching ethnic studies should also be able to embrace and maneuver through the interdisciplinary aspects that have been a staple of the discipline since its tumultuous beginnings. In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision and the increasing attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion, disciplines like ethnic studies increasingly become a bastion against these assaults, and appropriately training scholars to teach within the discipline becomes more urgent than ever before.
Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo is professor of comparative ethnic studies and American studies and culture in the School of Languages, Cultures and Race at Washington State University–Vancouver.
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