Tag: Jobs

Some people dream about retirement as heaven; I see it as hell. I do not wish to retire. I am only 80 and have been a college professor for a mere 56 years. I’m a workaholic and I have every reason to continue. My office is my Shangri-La. In a small space, it is a mini-museum of an entire career—2,000 books, plaques for well beyond a dozen teaching and scholarship awards, many photographs, travel mementos from around the world, and artifacts of every kind. All organized and I know where everything is. I look around and remember. And there is much to remember. Students from across the institution sometimes drop in just to marvel at what this office says about a career. I once wrote an article on one’s office as a teaching tool.

I’m a fairly ordinary guy. My degrees would not raise any eyebrows—undergraduate from a directional-named tertiary regional university, Ph.D. from my home-state Midwestern university. A tour in Vietnam and church-related travels all over the globe add some zest. I have had some successes in the academic world—books, lots of articles, some wider recognition and campus leadership roles. I’ve been department chair for 35 years; “it is a small place.” I’ve had some offers all the way up to a presidency inquiry. I’ve spurned them all. 

I am a teacher, the highest calling in this human existence and at a place best suited for my practice. A colleague called our role “a slice of heaven breaking into this earthly realm.” He was right. It isn’t what I do; it is who I am. Back when I began graduate school, jobs in my discipline were plentiful. My early predecessors scrambled for prestigious appointments and got them. I declared from day one that what I wanted was a small liberal arts college where I could affect students’ lives. Some accused me of low aspirations. My adviser proclaimed, “You can do better than that.” However, things changed for historians dramatically in the mid-1970s, and the opportunities, prestigious and other, dried up. But I was fortunate; my desires came about.

Teaching is about mentoring students. And I have had my share. Of the majors, at least, I remember almost all of them, now in the upper hundreds. They have done well. I’m committed to that. I remember from my first year, my first high-profile student received a prestigious national Ph.D. award. I was ecstatic. She retired many years ago as a prominent scholar and provost. And I am just as enthusiastic about the several graduates from this past spring who went on to top graduate and professional schools and good career opportunities.

I am proud to hope that I have played a role in their becoming. If it is my fortune, they will join the ranks who check in periodically, send cards and letters, get married (and divorced), have kids, and come by to see me occasionally. Maybe it is just to confirm if the old man is still alive. I have several second-generation majors and a couple of third-generation ones—again, “it is that kind of place.” I have stories about their parents and grandparents, a bit disconcerting to their elders. I’m a storyteller and I have an almost inexhaustive supply. I’ve lived a lot of life, and this is a tool to employ in speaking to new generations of students. We travel quite a bit, and every place we go, every book read, movie watched, indeed every experience, I approach didactically. How does this become part of my classroom and student learning?

I’ve heard the cliché that we should teach learning to think, not what to think. Yes, but we also have a greater responsibility. I’m not tolerant enough to accept that genocide is OK, rape is just fine or that the world is flat and John F. Kennedy is alive in a hospital in Dallas. That is the antithesis of intellect. I have little patience for conspiracy theorists or patent immorality, even if there is a lot of both going around. Our goals must be higher, our expectations more worthy.

But it isn’t just about the students. I’ve hired several department members, selected to perpetuate the purposes we want to achieve. My job is to model the norms and culture that have made us successful and for my colleagues to achieve their best selves. The greatest tribute that I have received in my career was from a now-deceased member of the department who proclaimed, “His greatest strength as a leader is that he is so deeply committed to our success that he is just as pleased to see our work succeed as he is to see his own work succeed.” I hope that I have lived up to that high accolade.

I do not enjoy summer, because my colleagues and our students are not around much. No hanging out in the office talking about everything from books, politics, philosophy, culture, teaching and maybe a little gossip. I find it hard to come to grips with what a full year would be as an extended summer. I can only read and write so many hours a day, especially if I can’t see it manifest itself in the classroom. I’ve been at this long enough to know that no matter your stature, when you are gone, your shelf life is short. In four years, or three, in many cases today, you are just a name that the ever-cycling group of current students may or may not have heard about, but in any case, you aren’t impacting them directly.

Everything about this academic life hasn’t been idyllic. Pay may have been less than ideal, frustrations exist, challenges are around every corner and today the very existence of my discipline, type of institution and indeed the liberal arts are under threat from forces internal and external.

I know that someday my portion of the quest will come to an end. Health is precarious, the mind fragile, life full of the unsuspected. I’ve witnessed that from 50-plus years of colleagues. I know my vulnerabilities—back surgeries, hearing and creeping infirmities. Things can change in the blink of an eye. But as long as mind and body cooperate, I remain a teacher, the highest calling with which we mortals are graced. It is my slice of heaven, and, as for my students and my sacred department office space, I do not want to give up either prematurely.

The economy is uncertain, but eight in 10 undergraduates somewhat or strongly agree that their college is preparing them with the skills, credentials and experiences they need to succeed in today’s job market. At the same time, most students are stressed about the future. Their biggest stressors vary but include not being to afford life after graduation, not having enough internship or work experience to get a job, and feeling a general pressure to succeed. That’s all according to new data from Inside Higher Ed’s annual Student Voice survey of more than 5,000 two- and four-year students with Generation Lab.

What can colleges do to help? The No. 1 thing Student Voice respondents want their institution to prioritize when it comes to career readiness is help finding and accessing paid internships. No. 2 is building stronger connections with potential employers. Colleges and universities could also help students better understand outcomes for past graduates of their programs: Just 14 percent of students say their college or university makes this kind of information readily available.

Shawn VanDerziel, president and CEO of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), said there’s “no doubt that the college experience equips students with a lifelong foundation for the general job market,” so it’s “heartening to hear” they have confidence that their academic programs are setting them up to succeed.

The challenge, however, “often becomes putting that learning and experience into the job market context—translating and articulating the experience that is meaningful to employers,” he added.

Beyond helping students frame what they’ve learned as competencies they can clearly communicate to prospective employers (who are increasingly interested in skills-based hiring), colleges also need to scale experiential learning opportunities. NACE has found that paid internships, in particular, give students a measurable advantage on the job market, and that Gen Z graduates who took part in internships or other experiential learning opportunities had a more favorable view of their college experience than those who didn’t. These graduates also describe their degree as more relevant to their eventual job than peers who didn’t participate in experiential learning.

While paid internships remain the gold standard for experience, student demand for them vastly outstrips supply: According to one 2024 study, for every high-quality internship available, more than three students are seeking one. Other students can’t afford to leave the jobs that fund their educations in order to take a temporary internship, paid or unpaid; still others have caring or other responsibilities that preclude this kind of experience. VanDerziel said all of this is why some institutions are prioritizing more work-based learning opportunities—including those embedded in the classroom.

Many institutions are “working toward giving more of their students access to experiential learning and skill-building activities—providing stipends for unpaid experiential experiences and ensuring that work-study jobs incorporate career-readiness skills, for example,” he said. “There is positive movement.”

One note of caution: Colleges adding these experiences must ensure that they have “concrete skill-building and job-aligned responsibilities in order to maximize the benefits of them for the students,” VanDerziel added.

Here are the career readiness findings from the annual Student Voice survey, in five charts—plus more on the experience gap.

1. Program outcomes data is unclear to students.

Across institution types and student demographics, a fraction of respondents (12 percent over all) say they know detailed outcomes data for their program of study. A plurality of students say they know some general information. Just 14 percent indicate this information is readily available.

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View online

2. Students remain lukewarm on career services.

Similar to last year’s survey, students are more likely to describe career services at their institution as welcoming (31 percent) than effective (17 percent), knowledgeable about specific industries and job markets (15 percent), or forward-thinking (9 percent). Career centers across higher education are understaffed, which is part of the reason there’s a push to embed career-readiness initiatives into the curriculum. But those efforts may not be made plain enough, or come across as useful, to students: Just 8 percent of respondents this year indicate that career services are embedded in the curriculum at their institution. Double that, 16 percent, say that career services should be more embedded in the curriculum. Three in 10 indicate they haven’t interacted with career services, about the same as last year’s 30 percent.

3. Students still want more direct help finding work-based learning opportunities.

Also similar to last year, the top thing students want their institution to prioritize regarding career readiness is help finding and accessing paid internships. That’s followed by stronger connections with potential employers and courses that focus on job-relevant skills. A few differences emerge across the sample, however: Adult learners 25 and older are less likely to prioritize help finding internships (just 26 percent cite this as a top need versus 41 percent of those 18 to 24); their top want is stronger connections with potential employers. Two-year college students are also less likely to prioritize help finding internships than are their four-year peers (30 percent versus 41 percent).

4. Most students are worried about life after college, but specific stressors vary.

Just 11 percent of students say they’re not stressed about life postgraduation, though this increases to 22 percent for students 25 and older and to 17 percent among community college students. Top stressors vary, but a slight plurality of students (19 percent) are most concerned about affording life after college. Adult learners and community college students are less likely than their respective traditional-age and four-year counterparts to worry about not having enough internship or work experience.

5. Despite their anxiety, students have an underlying sense of preparation for what’s ahead.

Some 81 percent of all students agree, strongly or somewhat, that college is preparing them with the skills, credentials and experiences they need to succeed in today’s job market. This is relatively consistent across institution types and student groups, but the share decreases to 74 percent among students who have ever seriously considered stopping out of college (n=1,204).

The Widening Experience Gap

Students increasingly need all the help they can get preparing for the workforce. For the first time since 2021, the plurality of employers who contributed to NACE’s annual job outlook rated the hiring market “fair,” versus good or very good, on a five-point scale. Employers are projecting a 1.6 percent increase in hiring for the Class of 2026 when compared to the Class of 2025, comparable to the tight labor market employers reported at the end of the 2024–25 recruiting year, according to NACE.

Economic uncertainty is one factor. Artificial intelligence is another. VanDerziel said there isn’t meaningful evidence to date that early-talent, professional-level jobs are being replaced by AI, and that even adoption of AI as a tool to augment work remains slow. Yet the picture is still emerging. One August study found a 13 percent relative employment decline for young workers in the most AI-exposed occupations, such as software development and customer support. In NACE’s 2026 Job Outlook, employers focused on early-career hiring also reported that 13 percent of available entry-level jobs now require AI skills.

The August study, called “Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence,” frames experience as a differentiator in an AI-impacted job market. In this sense, AI may be widening what’s referred to as the experience gap, or when early-career candidates’ and employers’ expectations don’t align—a kind of catch-22 in which lack of experience can limit one from getting the entry-level job that would afford them such experience.

Ndeye Sarr, a 23-year-old engineering student at Perimeter College at Georgia State University who wants to study civil and environmental engineering at a four-year institution next fall, believes that her studies so far are setting her up for success. Earlier this year, she and several Perimeter peers made up one of just 12 teams in the country invited to the Community College Innovation Challenge Innovation Boot Camp, where they presented RoyaNest, the low-cost medical cooling device they designed to help babies born with birth asphyxia in low-resource areas. The team pitched the project to a panel of industry professionals and won second-place honors. They also recently initiated the patenting process for the device.

“This has helped me have a bigger vision of all the problems that are happening in the world that I might be able to help with when it comes to medical devices and things like that,” Sarr said, adding that faculty mentorship played a big role in the team’s success. “I think that’s what we’re most grateful for. Perimeter College is a pretty small college, so you get to be in direct contact with most of your mentors, your professors, which is very rare in most settings. We always get the support we need it anytime we’re working on something, which is pretty great.”

RoyaNest was born out of a class assignment requiring students to design something that did not require electricity. Sarr said she wishes most courses would require such hands-on learning, since it makes class content immediately relevant and has already helped put her in touch with the broader world of engineering in meaningful ways. This view echoes another set of findings from the main 2025 Student Voice survey: The top two things students say would boost their immediate academic success are fewer high-stakes exams and more relevant course content. And, of course, there are implications for the experience gap.

Sometimes you can even be in your senior year, and you will be like, ‘I don’t think I have all these skills!’ Even for an entry-level job, right?”

—Student Ndeye Sarr

“Mostly it’s like you go to class, and they will give you a lecture because you have to learn, and then you go do a test,” Sarr said of college so far. “But my thinking is that you can also do those hands-on experiences in the classroom that you might have to do once we start getting into jobs. Because when you look at the job descriptions, they expect you to do a lot of things. Sometimes you can even be in your senior year, and you will be like, ‘I don’t think I have all these skills!’ Even for an entry-level job, right?”

This challenge also has implications for pedagogy, which is already under pressure to evolve—in part due to the rise of generative AI. Student success administrators surveyed earlier this year by Inside Higher Ed with Hanover Research described a gap between the extent to which high-impact teaching practices—such as those endorsed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities—are highly encouraged at their institution and widely adopted (65 percent versus 36 percent, respectively). And while 87 percent of administrators agreed that students graduate from their institution ready to succeed in today’s job market, half (51 percent) said their college or university should focus more on helping students find paid internships and other experiential learning opportunities.

In addition to the national innovation challenge, Sarr attended the Society of Women Engineers’ annual conference this year, where she said the interviewing and other skills she’s learned from Perimeter’s career services proved helpful. Still, Sarr said she—like most Student Voice respondents—worries about life postgraduation. Top concerns for her are financial in nature. She also feels a related pressure to succeed. Originally from Senegal, she said her family and friends back home have high expectations for her.

“You pay a lot of money to go to college, so imagine you graduate and then there’s no way you can find a job. It’s very stressful, and I am from a country where everybody’s like, ‘OK, we expect her to do good,’” Sarr said. But the immediate challenge is paying four-year college expenses starting next year, and financing graduate school after that.

“I want to go as far as I can when it comes to my education. I really value it, so that’s something I am very scared about,” she said. “There’s a lot of possibilities. There are scholarships, but it’s not like everybody can get them.”

VanDerziel of NACE said that, ultimately, “Today’s labor market is tough, and students know it. So it doesn’t surprise me that they are feeling anxiety about obtaining a job that will allow them to afford their postgraduation life. Many students have to pay back loans, are uncertain of the job market they are going to be graduating into and are concerned about whether their salary will be enough.”

A judge ordered federal agencies Friday to end their “blanket policy of denying any future grants” to the University of California, Los Angeles, and further ruled that the Trump administration can’t seek payouts from any UC campus “in connection with any civil rights investigation” under Titles VI or IX of federal law.

The ruling also prohibits the Department of Justice and federal funding agencies from withholding funds, “or threatening to do so, to coerce the UC in violation of the First Amendment or Tenth Amendment.” In all, the order, if not overturned on appeal, stops the administration’s attempt to pressure UCLA to pay $1.2 billion and make multiple other concessions, including to stop enrolling “foreign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment” and stop “performing hormonal interventions and ‘transgender’ surgeries” on anyone under 18 at its medical school and affiliated hospitals.

The administration’s targeting of the UC system came to the fore on July 29. That’s when the DOJ said its months-long investigations across the system had so far concluded that UCLA violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in its response to alleged antisemitism at a spring 2024 pro-Palestinian protest encampment.

Federal agencies—including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Department of Energy—quickly began freezing funding; UC estimated it lost $584 million. But UC researchers sued and, even before Friday’s ruling, U.S. District Court judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California ordered the restoration of almost all of the frozen funding.

Friday’s ruling came in a case filed this fall by the American Association of University Professors, the affiliated American Federation of Teachers and other unions. Lin again was the judge.

“Defendants did not engage in the required notice and hearing processes under Title VI for cutting off funds for alleged discrimination,” she wrote.

“With every day that passes, UCLA continues to be denied the chance to win new grants, ratchetting [sic] up Defendants’ pressure campaign,” she wrote. “And numerous UC faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how Defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the UC system. They describe how they have stopped teaching or researching topics they are afraid are too ‘left’ or ‘woke,’ in order to avoid triggering further funding cancellations by Defendants. They also give examples of projects the UC has stopped due to fear of the same reprisals. These are classic, predictable First Amendment harms, and exactly what Defendants publicly said that they intended.”

Former University of Virginia president Jim Ryan has broken his silence concerning his abrupt resignation, accusing the Board of Visitors of dishonesty and complicity in his ouster, which came amid federal government scrutiny over the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

In a 12-page letter to the UVA Faculty Senate on Friday, Ryan wrote that he was “stunned and angry” over the board’s lack of honesty as it faced pressure from the federal government to force him out due to an alleged failure to dismantle DEI initiatives. Ryan also wrote that recent letters by UVA rector Rachel Sheridan and Governor Glenn Youngkin do not “present an accurate accounting of my resignation,” which prompted him to release his own statement.

Ryan accused Youngkin of playing a significant part in attracting scrutiny from the Department of Justice, first by handing down a resolution to the board drafted by his office that “was quite sweeping and filled with inflammatory rhetoric criticizing DEI.” Ryan wrote that the board passed a modified, “fairly mild” version of the resolution, which required UVA to dissolve its DEI office and “move all permissible programs to another institutional home.”

But after its passage, Youngkin declared on Fox News that “DEI is dead” at UVA. That statement, Ryan wrote, created confusion and overstated the reach of the resolution. As UVA began efforts to implement the resolution, Ryan wrote that Sheridan told him not to publicly announce any DEI changes, which he alleged created the perception of inaction and attracted the DOJ’s attention.

Ryan wrote that UVA soon received an inquiry about why it was slow to dismantle DEI.

“The letter asked us to explain why we hadn’t complied with the Board’s resolution, though it exaggerated the scope and nature of that resolution, suggesting—as had Governor Youngkin on television—that we were supposed to eliminate the entirety of DEI,” Ryan wrote. “It was unclear, and still is, why the United States Department of Justice would have the interest or authority to enforce a resolution of the Board of a state university as opposed to enforcing federal law.”

Ryan also questioned whether the board was truthful about the DOJ seeking his resignation or if it was a scheme concocted by members who wanted to remove him as their relationship soured.

In closing his letter, Ryan argued that he was committed to following the law and revising policies and practices that were flawed or “if there were persuasive, principled reasons to change course.” But he would not sacrifice UVA’s core values or his principles in doing so—especially if those changes were due to “prevailing political winds” or “the political ambitions of some,” he wrote. He added that both the board members and governor’s office had accused him of being stubborn, which was perhaps true and may have been the real reason for his exit.

“But stubborn and principled often look the same, especially to those who are unprincipled,” Ryan wrote.

Inside Higher Ed has uploaded Ryan’s full letter below.

Ryan’s letter follows a message Sheridan sent to the UVA Faculty Senate on Thursday. In that letter, Sheridan downplayed the pressure from the federal government to force Ryan out. While she acknowledged that the Department of Justice “lacked confidence in President Ryan to make the changes that the Trump Administration believed were necessary to ensure compliance,” she disputed the notion that his resignation was part of the agreement that the university recently reached with the federal government to pause investigations into DEI practices.

While Sheridan did not elaborate on specific threats from the Department of Justice, as Ryan alleged, she wrote that Trump administration officials “made clear that if the University did not chart a different course, the DOJ could and would expand its investigations into additional issues, subject other personnel to scrutiny, and pursue the cutoff of federal funding.”

The full text of that letter is available below.

Also on Thursday, Youngkin sent a letter related to Ryan’s departure to Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, who has called for UVA to halt its ongoing presidential search until her board picks are in place. The Republican governor pushed back on his Democratic successor’s claims that Ryan was ousted as a result of federal overreach and accused her of interfering in the search. Youngkin also accused Ryan of “not being committed to following federal law.”

That letter has been uploaded in full below.

Board Under Fire

Ryan’s letter prompted a flurry of criticism of the board from faculty, lawmakers and others.

The UVA Faculty Senate passed a resolution Friday calling for greater transparency, a pause in the presidential search until the board “is at full complement with members confirmed by the general assembly,” and the immediate resignation of Sheridan and Vice Rector Porter Wilkinson.

Faculty members accused the board of making UVA a target.

“The rector, the vice rector, and others on the board conspired to oust Jim Ryan, and they made the decision to leverage pressure from the Department of Justice in order to enact that ouster,” Matthew Hedstrom, a religious studies professor, said in Friday’s Faculty Senate meeting.

Democratic state lawmakers also blasted the board in the aftermath of Ryan’s letter.

“Former UVA President Jim Ryan’s letter details a shocking abuse of power by the UVA Board of Visitors and collaboration between a Governor & [attorney general] who betrayed the state and schools they swore to protect so they could curry favor with MAGA extremists—this is far from over,” Virginia state senator Scott Surovell, the Democratic majority leader, wrote on X.

Surovell is among a group of Democratic lawmakers who have recently amplified pressure on UVA over Ryan’s resignation and the subsequent agreement it reached with the DOJ. Democrats, who have blocked multiple Youngkin board appointments this year—many of them GOP donors and conservative political figures—have accused UVA of a lack of transparency around Ryan’s exit and of giving in to “extortionate tactics” in striking a deal with the DOJ.

Ross Mugler, interim president and CEO of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, released a statement in which he argued, “What happened at UVA shows how deeply damaging it is when governing boards become extensions of political actors rather than independent fiduciaries.” Mugler also warned of potential harms to academic freedom, community trust and the long-term health of the university due to external political pressures.

“President Ryan’s detailed account of the pressures leading to his resignation reveals an alarming example of political and ideological interference in university governance,” he wrote.

Neither UVA nor Youngkin’s office responded to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

Courses that “advocate race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity” now require presidential approval at Texas A&M system campuses, the system Board of Regents decided Thursday.

Faculty members and external advocacy groups say the new rules violate academic freedom, and for many professors, questions remain about how the policies will be implemented and enforced. Approved in a unanimous vote after a lengthy public comment period, the policy changes fit a pattern of censorship at Texas A&M that escalated after a video of a student challenging an instructor about a lesson on gender identity went viral, leading to the instructor’s firing and the resignation of then-president Mark Welsh.

Dan Braaten, an associate professor of political science at Texas A&M San Antonio and president of the campus American Association of University Professors chapter, said he was shocked “at the egregiousness” of the policies, but not surprised by them.

“Faculty are extremely worried,” Braaten said. “They’re wondering, can they teach the classes they’re scheduled to teach in the spring? Who’s going to be looking at their syllabi? … Is the president of each A&M university going to have to approve every syllabus? Are there penalties for any of this? It’s just a complete … serious violation of academic freedom.”

The board approved the new rules as revisions to existing system policies. A policy on “Civil Rights Protections and Compliance” will be amended to state that “no system academic course will advocate race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity unless the course is approved by the member CEO.” It will also define “gender ideology” as “a concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex.”

Similarly, “race ideology” is defined as “a concept that attempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity, accuse them of being oppressors in a racial hierarchy or conspiracy, ascribe to them less value as contributors to society and public discourse because of their race or ethnicity, or assign them intrinsic guilt based on the actions of their presumed ancestors or relatives in other areas of the world. This also includes course content that promotes activism on issues related to race or ethnicity, rather than academic instruction.”

Teaching Versus Advocacy

A previous version of the revision proposed that no system academic course will “teach” race or gender ideology, but the verb was changed to “advocate” before the policies were presented formally to the full board. It’s unclear how the system will differentiate between advocacy and regular instruction on these topics. Representatives for the board on Wednesday declined to comment on the policies ahead of the board vote. They did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s questions after the policies were approved.

A second policy on “Academic Freedom, Responsibility and Tenure” previously stated that “each faculty member is entitled to full freedom in the classroom in discussing the subject that the faculty member teaches, but a faculty member should not introduce a controversial matter that has no relation to the classroom subject.” The approved amendment adds that faculty members may not “teach material that is inconsistent with the approved syllabus for the course.”

In a partially redacted Nov. 10 email obtained by Inside Higher Ed, a Texas A&M faculty leader said that administrators at several universities were already discussing implementation plans ahead of the board vote. An administrator also told the faculty leader that the changes to the policy would not likely lead to a formal syllabus-approval process and instead are intended to keep course content aligned with learning outcomes.

The board received 142 written comments ahead of Thursday’s vote, and eight faculty members spoke out against the policy changes during the meeting’s public comment period. Several of them also called for Melissa McCoul, the professor fired in September, to be reinstated.

“This is not university-level education, it is cruelty and political indoctrination in wolf’s clothing,” said Leonard Bright, a professor of government and public service and president of the Texas A&M College Station AAUP chapter. “I would need to tell my students that ‘What you came here to learn, I’m unable to tell you, because I’m restricted to tell you that information, even though such knowledge is available at every major university in this world.’”

Sonia Hernandez, a liberal arts professor who teaches about Latin American history, shared a past example that highlighted the pitfalls of the new policies.

“I had a student once who took issue with my discussion of the importance of military history. He was against war and felt strongly about war’s damaging effects on society, yet it was full academic freedom—not cherry-picking of topics, not advocacy, not ideology—that allowed me to share research on the intersections of war and identity with my class,” Hernandez said.

Two faculty members—finance professor Adam Kolasinski and biomedical engineering professor John Criscione—spoke in favor of the policy changes.

“I don’t think somebody should be able to say that Germans born two generations after the Holocaust somehow bear guilt for the Holocaust, because that’s really what’s being prohibited here,” Kolasinski said. “My colleagues seem to think that the policy says something it doesn’t.” Kolasinski also suggested the board change the language back from “advocate” to “teach.”

AAUP president Todd Wolfson urged the board to reject the proposed policy changes in a statement Tuesday. So did Brian Evans, president of the Texas Conference of the AAUP, which includes faculty at Texas A&M campuses.

“By considering these policy changes, the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents is telling faculty, ‘Shut up and teach—and we’ll tell you what to teach,’” Evans said in the statement. “This language and the censorship it imposes will cause irreparable harm to the reputation of the university, and impede faculty and students from their main mission on campus: to teach, learn, think critically, and create and share new knowledge.”

In a Monday statement, FIRE officials wrote, “Hiring professors with PhDs is meaningless if administrators are the ones deciding what gets taught … Faculty would need permission to teach students about not just modern controversies, but also civil rights, the Civil War, or even ancient Greek comedies. This is not just bad policy. It invites unlawful censorship, chills academic freedom, and undermines the core purpose of a university. Faculty will start asking not ‘Is this accurate?’ but ‘Will this get me in trouble?’ That’s not education, it’s risk management.”

AI-Driven Course Review

Also on Thursday, the board discussed a detailed, systemwide review of all courses using an artificial intelligence–driven process. The system has already piloted the review process at its Tarleton State University campus, where most of the courses that were flagged are housed in the College of Education, which includes the sociology and psychology departments, the Nov. 10 email from a faculty leader stated. Board members said they intend to complete the course review regularly, as often as once per semester.

“The Texas A&M system is stepping up first, setting the model that others will follow,” Regent Sam Torn said about the course review at Thursday’s meeting.

The system will also use EthicsPoint, an online system that will allow students to report inaccurate, misleading or inappropriate course content that diverges from the course descriptions. System staff will be alerted when a student submits an EthicsPoint complaint, and if the complaint is determined to be valid, it will be passed along to the relevant university.

Amy Reid spent more than 30 years at New College of Florida, where she served as a professor of French and the founder and director of the gender studies program. Her relatively secure employment as a tenured professor emboldened her to become one of the most outspoken critics of the conservative effort to transform NCF into a “Hillsdale College of the South,” led by then-interim president Richard Corcoran, who was hired by a swath of conservative trustees installed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023.

That same year, Reid was elected to serve as faculty representative on the Board of Trustees; she voted against Corcoran’s appointment to be the college’s permanent president and pushed back against numerous policies, including an effort by the administration to use the faculty to help enforce gendered bathroom laws.

Last month, Corcoran denied a recommendation from the New College provost that Reid be granted emerita status at the college, citing Reid’s advocacy for faculty and academic freedom, which he described as “hyperbolic alarmism and needless obstruction.” In response, the New College Alumni Association Board of Directors made Reid an honorary alum.

Since taking unpaid leave in August 2024 and then retiring a year later, Reid has brought her talents and penchant for advocacy to PEN America, a nonprofit focused on fighting education censorship and protecting press freedom.

Inside Higher Ed spoke with Reid over Zoom about her experience as the faculty representative on the New College Board of Trustees, the transformation of the public liberal arts college and expanding efforts by Florida conservatives to censor faculty speech.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Before you became faculty representative on the Board of Trustees at New College, the previous representative quit in protest. What motivated you to pursue the role and what were you hoping to do with it?

A: Things had been contentious on campus. Frankly, that’s an understatement. When the new board members were appointed that January [2023], they described their arrival on campus as a “siege”—using military language. So I began organizing with other faculty members and providing support to students so that they could respond to the rapid changes on campus, changes that included the immediate firing of our president [Patricia Okker], and then, over the coming weeks, a number of key leaders; the censoring of student speech and chalking on campus; the denial of tenure to a number of very qualified faculty.

I started holding weekly teas for students, providing them a place to ask questions and to be heard and also to have cookies. So working with my colleagues and providing support for students were the two things that I really wanted to do.

As a senior member of the faculty and as the leader of the gender studies program, I felt like I had a particular responsibility to speak up on campus. I knew that colleagues of mine who were not tenured couldn’t necessarily do that, so I tried to speak up for my community. And after Matt Lipinski resigned from the Board of Trustees and from his faculty position [after the board denied tenure to five professors], he actually reached out and asked me to stand for election as chair of the faculty, because I’d been both working in collaboration with others through the union and also because of my outspokenness as director of the gender studies program. So after talking with other colleagues, I agreed to stand for election in collaboration with two other colleagues.

Q: What was the initial reception from the board when you joined?

A: What I really remember, actually, was the real support that I had from colleagues and students and alums. So yes, there was a certain amount of tension with certain members of the Board of Trustees. There were people on the board who did reach out in friendly and professional ways—greeting me at meetings, things like that—but really I had strong support from faculty, alums and students, and that’s what mattered.

Q: Do you think you were successful in the faculty representative role?

A: That’s really a challenging question, and it depends on what metrics you want to use. I think I did a good job of raising serious questions and concerns in the trustee meetings, even if my votes were not often on the winning side. I always brought my integrity with me, and as an educator, that was really important to me. I think I was able to help rally faculty around various policy proposals that we put forth, because my job wasn’t just in the Board of Trustees, it was also in the management of the faculty, which meant multiple meetings every week about budgets and other administrative issues.

There was a lot of work there behind the scenes to support faculty, to support the curriculum and also to advocate for students in a number of ways. I know that students and faculty and alums felt that they could reach out to me about their concerns, that they knew I would listen and respond. When people spoke at Board of Trustees meetings, I paid attention and took notes on all of the people who came to speak. In that way, I think I was effective, but frankly, the votes on the board were stacked.

Q: When you resigned, you said that the “New College where you once taught no longer existed.” Was there a specific moment that tanked your faith in New College leadership?

A: It’s really not about a loss of faith in the new leadership. Richard Corcoran came in with a set of ideas about how he wanted to change the campus, to change what one trustee called the “hormonal and political balance on campus.” And Corcoran followed through on that. I can point first to the firing of valuable and dedicated campus leaders, including President Patricia Okker, the dean of diversity, the campus research librarian. [I can also point to] the denial of tenure to six very qualified and effective faculty, the chasing away of over 30 percent of the faculty and about 100 students—and that’s a real record for the first eight months of this administration.

Then you have the painting over of student art on campus, the replacement of grass with Astroturf and the plowing down of hundreds of trees along the bay front. You have the wasting of millions of dollars of state funds on bloated administrative salaries and portable dorms that were uninhabitable within three months due to mold. You have the abolishing of the gender studies program in the summer of 2023, the erasure of our budget, our eviction from our campus office in December of 2023. The imposition of a rigid and limited core curriculum in spring of 2024. The withholding of diplomas from a cohort of students in May 2024, the wholesale destruction of the student-led gender and diversity center in August 2024. That was a student-led space with a collection of books that had been curated by students for over 30 years, all thrown in the dumpster.

So not one moment, but a lot. But what I still have faith in, even today, is the determination of students and alums to pursue an education that embodies academic freedom, which I understand is the right of students to pursue an education free from government censorship. And also, I have great faith in those faculty who are remaining, who support the New College academic mission and who are doing their best day in and day out to support our students.

Q: Were you surprised when Corcoran denied the dean’s recommendation to grant you emerita status?

A: Not really. I’d say it’s par for the course, but I was surprised that he was so up front about his reasons. In his statement, he noted that despite my record of achievement as a teacher and a researcher, it was my advocacy for the college—my opposition to him—that was the problem. So now he’s on the record explicitly as punishing speech, and that is stunning.

What happened to me is just one small thing, but it reflects a pattern of censorship on the campus that needs to be called out. But more importantly at this moment, I really want to thank my colleagues who nominated me for emeritus status and the New College alums who adopted me as one of their own. That’s meaningful, and I am very grateful.

Q: As a reporter, I spend a lot of time reading and writing bad news, but I’m seeing the same types of attacks on faculty speech and academic freedom that happened at New College occur at other institutions, in Florida and elsewhere. Would you say these current attacks on faculty speech are unprecedented?

A: A lot of people have talked about this as unprecedented, but what I see is the culmination of a pattern of censorship we’ve seen playing out at state levels across the country. In Florida, in 2022, they passed House Bill 233, which allows or encourages students to surreptitiously record faculty if they intend to file a complaint against them.

Since then, really, the state has been tightening a gag around faculty speech in myriad ways. Just in the past couple of months, we’ve seen a number of faculty sanctioned—even one emeritus professor at [University of Florida] lost his status based on complaints about his social media posts. So what’s happening now could be cast as unprecedented, but yet, it’s part of this pattern we see playing out now, not just in Florida, but across the country, where some 50 faculty members have been sanctioned or fired because of their speech or social media posts since the start of September.

Since 2021, PEN America has been actively tracking efforts to censor speech in college and university classrooms across the country, and we’ve seen a real rise in the number of bills introduced to censor speech … and in the numbers that are being passed; 2025 was really a banner year for censorship in higher education in this country. There were a record number of gag orders passed across the country—10 of them, 10 bills that explicitly limit what can be said in college and university classrooms.

And then there are other restrictions designed to chill faculty speech—restrictions on tenure or curricular control bills, and let’s also remember the bills that were introduced or passed to limit student protests on campus. All of those things are designed to make people afraid to speak up and to question things on campus. That’s not healthy for our education system, and it’s not healthy for our democracy. Currently, about 40 percent of the U.S. population lives in a state that has at least one state-level law restricting classroom speech at the college and university level. Is that something we’re OK with as a country? Do we really think that our First Amendment rights are that fungible?

Cornell University has reached a deal with the Trump administration to pay the government a $30 million settlement—and invest another $30 million in agricultural research—in exchange for having its frozen federal research funding restored.

The agreement, announced Friday, makes Cornell the latest institution to strike a deal with the federal government in an effort to settle investigations into alleged civil rights violations. The settlement follows similar arrangements at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Brown University and the University of Virginia. Concessions varied by university, with Columbia making the biggest payout at $221 million.

Collectively, those institutions were targeted for a range of alleged violations, including allowing transgender athletes to compete on women’s sports teams, failing to police campus antisemitism amid pro-Palestinian protests and operating supposedly illegal diversity, equity and inclusion practices as the Trump administration cracked down on DEI initiatives.

Now the university will see roughly $250 million in frozen federal research funding immediately restored. The federal government will also close ongoing civil rights investigations into Cornell.

While some institutions, including Columbia, have given tremendous deference to the federal government and agreed to sweeping changes across admissions, hiring and academic programs, the deal at Cornell appears to be relatively constrained, despite the $30 million payout.

Under the agreement, Cornell must share anonymized admissions data broken down by race, GPA and standardized test scores with the federal government through 2028; conduct annual campus climate surveys; and ensure compliance with various federal laws. Cornell also agreed to share as a training resource with faculty and staff a July memo from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi barring the use of race in hiring, admissions practices and scholarship programs. And in addition to paying the federal government $30 million over three years, Cornell will invest $30 million “in research programs that will directly benefit U.S. farmers through lower costs of production and enhanced efficiency, including but not limited to programs that incorporate [artificial intelligence] and robotics,” according to a copy of the agreement.

Cornell leaders cast the deal as a positive for the university.

“I am pleased that our good faith discussions with the White House, Department of Justice, and Department of Education have concluded with an agreement that acknowledges the government’s commitment to enforce existing anti-discrimination law, while protecting our academic freedom and institutional independence,” Cornell president Michael Kotlikoff said in a statement shared with Inside Higher Ed. “These discussions have now yielded a result that will enable us to return to our teaching and research in restored partnership with federal agencies.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon also celebrated the deal in a post on X.

“The Trump Administration has secured another transformative commitment from an Ivy League institution to end divisive DEI policies. Thanks to this deal with Cornell and the ongoing work of DOJ, HHS, and the team at ED, U.S. universities are refocusing their attention on merit, rigor, and truth-seeking—not ideology. These reforms are a huge win in the fight to restore excellence to American higher education and make our schools the greatest in the world,” she wrote.

Some outside observers, however, excoriated the settlement as capitulation to authoritarianism.

“The Trump administration’s corrupt extortion of higher ed institutions must end. Americans want an education system that serves the public good, not a dangerously narrow far right ideology that serves billionaires,” American Association of University Professors President Todd Wolfson said in a statement, which also urged colleges to fight intrusion by the federal government.

Over the past 18 months, I’ve been spending the majority of my time writing and speaking about how I think we can and should continue to teach writing even as we have this technology that is capable of generating synthetic text. While my values regarding this issue are unshakable, the world undeniably changes around me, which requires an ongoing vigilance regarding the capabilities of this technology.

But like most people, I don’t have unlimited time to stay on top of these things. One of my recommendations in More Than Words for navigating these challenges is to “find your guides,” the people who are keeping an eye on aspects of the issue that you can trust.

One of my guides for the entirety of this period is Marc Watkins, someone who is engaged with staying on top of the latest implications of how the technology and the way students are using it is evolving.

I thought it might be helpful to others to share the questions I wanted to ask Marc for my own edification.

Marc Watkins directs the AI Institute for Teachers and is an assistant director of academic innovation at the University of Mississippi, where he is a lecturer in writing and rhetoric. When training faculty in applied artificial intelligence, he believes educators should be equally supported if they choose to work with AI or include friction to curb AI’s influence on student learning. He regularly writes about AI and education on his Substack, Rhetorica.

Q: One of the things I most appreciate about the work you’re doing in thinking about the intersection of education and generative AI is that you actively engage with the technology using a lens to ask what a particular tool may mean for students and classes. I appreciate it because my personal interest in using these things beyond keeping sufficiently, generally familiar is limited, and I know that we share similar values at the core of the work of reading and writing. So, my first question is for those of us who aren’t putting these things through their paces: What’s the state of things? What do you think instructors should, specifically, know about the capacities of gen AI tools?

A: Thanks, John! I think we’re of the same mind when it comes to values and AI. By that, I mean we both see human agency and will as key moving forward in education and in society. Part of my life right now is talking to lots of different groups about AI updates. I visit with faculty, administration, researchers, even quite a few folks outside of academia. It’s exhausting just to keep up and nearly impossible to take stock.

We now have agentic AI that completes tasks using your computer for you; multimodal AI that can see and interact with you using a computer voice; machine reasoning models that take simple prompts and run them in loops repeatedly to guess what a sophisticated response might look like; browser-based AI that can scan any webpage and perform tasks for you. I’m not sure students are aware of any of what AI can do beyond interfaces like ChatGPT. The best thing any instructor can do is have a conversation with students to ask them if they are using AI and gauge how it is impacting their learning.

Q: I want to dig into the AI “agents” a bit more. You had a recent post on this, as did Anna Mills, and I think it’s important for folks to know that these companies are purposefully developing and selling technology that can go into a Canvas course and start doing “work.” What are we to make of this in terms of how we think about designing courses?

A: I think online assessment is generally broken at this point and won’t be saved. But online learning still has a chance and is something we should fight for. For all of its many flaws, online education has given people a valid pathway to a version of college education that they might not have been able to afford otherwise. There’s too many issues with equity and access to completely remove online from higher education, but that doesn’t mean we cannot radically think what it means to learn in online spaces. For instance, you can assign your students a process notebook in an online course that involves them writing by hand with pen and paper, then take a photograph or scan it and upload it. The [optical character recognition] function within many of the foundation models will be able to transcribe most handwriting into legible text. We can and should look for ways to give our students embodied experiences within disembodied spaces.

Q: In her newsletter, Anna Mills calls on AI companies to collaborate on keeping students from deploying these agents in service of doing all their work for them. I’m skeptical that there’s any chance of this happening. I see an industry that seems happy to steamroll instructors, institutions and even students. Am I too cynical? Is there space for collaboration?

A: There’s space for collaboration for sure, and limiting some of the more egregious use cases, but we also have to be realistic about what’s happening here. AI developers are moving fast and breaking things with each deployment or update, and we should be deeply skeptical when they come around to offer to sweep up the pieces, lest we forget how they became broken in the first place.

Q: I’m curious if the development of the technology tracks what you would have figured a year or even longer, 18 months ago. How fast do you think this stuff is moving in terms of its capacities as they relate to school and learning? What do you see on the horizon?

A: The problem we’re seeing is one of uncritical adoption, hype and acceleration. AI labs create a new feature or use case and deploy it within a few days for free or low cost, and industry has suddenly adopted this technique to bring the latest up-to-date AI features to enterprise products. What this means is the none-AI applications we’ve used for years suddenly get AI integrated into it, or if it has an AI feature, sees it rapidly updated.

Most of these AI updates aren’t tested enough to be trusted outside of human in the loop assistance. Doing otherwise makes us all beta testers. It’s creating “work slop,” where companies are seeing employees using AI uncritically to often save time and produce error-laden work that then takes time and resources to address. Compounding things even more, it increasingly looks like the venture capital feeding AI development is one of the prime reasons our economy isn’t slipping into recession. Students and faculty find themselves at ground zero for most of this, as education looks like one of the major industries being impacted by AI.

Q: One of the questions I often get when I’m working with faculty on campuses is what I think AI “literacy” looks like, and while I have my share of thoughts, I tend to pivot back to my core message, which is that I’m more worried about helping students develop their human capacities than teaching them how to work with AI. But let me ask you, what does AI literacy look like?

A: I think AI literacy really isn’t about using AI. For me, I define AI literacy as learning how the technology works and understanding its impact on society. Using that definition, I think we can and should integrate aspects of AI literacy throughout our teaching. The working-with-AI-responsibly part, what I’d call AI fluency, has its place in certain classes and disciplines but needs to go hand in hand with AI literacy; otherwise, you risk uncritically adopting a technology with little understanding or demystifying AI and helping students understand its impact on our world.

Q: Whenever I make a campus visit, I try to have a chance to talk to students about their AI use, and for the most part I see a lot of critical thinking about it, where students recognize many of the risks of outsourcing all of their work, but also share that within the system they’re operating in, it sometimes makes sense to use it. This has made me think that ultimately, our only response can be to treat the demand side of the equation. We’re not going to be able to police this stuff. The tech companies aren’t going to help. It’s on the students to make the choices that are most beneficial to their own lives. Of course, this has always been the case with our growth and development. What do you think we should be focused on in managing these challenges?

A: My current thinking is we should teach students discernment when it comes to AI tools and likely ourselves, too. There’s no rule book or priors for us to call upon when we deal with a machine that mimics human intelligence. My approach is radical honesty with students and faculty. By that I mean the following: I cannot police your behavior here and no one else is going to do that, either. It is up to all of us to form a social contract and find common agreement about where this technology belongs in our lives and create clear boundaries where it does not.