Okay. I just came back to this and you aren’t calling these efforts resegregation yet, you absolutely should be
Professor of Higher Education. Mediocre poster (sorry for the bad spelling) who periodically deletes. Views and speech are mine alone.
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Okay. I just came back to this and you aren’t calling these efforts resegregation yet, you absolutely should be
Clampdown on student voter mobilisation by the Trump administration has been labelled “profoundly anti-democratic” #highered #AcademicSky
Is there any other kind? I was on the West Side
I was walking around Ann Arbor yesterday and my favorite yard sign motif was the “disobey the tyrant” & “don’t build apartment housing”pairing.
Gift link posted without comment b/c none is needed www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/w...
Thus any university that fails could claim itself to be a “major” university because of a co-equal status with other “major” universities. Different than say regional university without a research mission or much postgraduate education failing in the US. But I agree that the term major is unhelpful.
All independent. By unitary I just mean one institutional type (research university) rather than, eg, a university/polytechnic binary. (This schema also assumes further education colleges are “tertiary” rather than higher ed, which may not be the current thinking.)
Right. I supposed a question is if all universities were made “major” post ‘92? An unitary system with little mission variation but steep stratification seems like a poor design
“What I can say is that the Texas Tech University System is the tip of the spear for the future of higher education, both in academics and athletics. The nation will soon better understand the solutions and innovations that will come from these efforts as Texas Tech’s potential is truly unmatched.”
🎶 postliberal gov-er-nance 🎶 www.texastribune.org/2025/08/28/j...
I agree it would be a very big moment for governance. The different but overlapping crises in the US and UK I think mark the end of the Anglo-American model (this is a sloppy term) singular global stature
2/2 The favorable visa politices for students and the H1B cap exemption for universities had provided a pathway for skilled migration into the US via doctoral education and especially postdoctoral research employment. And it’s been a tremendous boon to US science and innovation.
1/2 The Trump administration wants to limit international student visas to 4-years. A move that would devastate doctoral training. The idas that the visa system crates “forever students” is bogus. But universities do/did operate a quasi-skilled immigration program.
Will a major UK university collapse? If it happens that will be a major moment in the way we think about the durability of higher education.
We’re getting into that time of year where I’m starting to miss snow.
Mia says I need it
Did you also forgot about some of the other colleges that had their funds frozen in the spring? I made some charts for you to recap what's happening with all the freezes. www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...
I have too much to do and too little time but a comparative project on the Anglo 5 US/UK/Australia/Canada/NZ would be useful
The higher education crises in the US and UK are not the same but they may have a common root. The global-competition market model of higher ed they lead was underwritten by the state. Now economic circumstances and especially domestic politics have resulted in the partial evacuation of that support
Today's university redundancies are at Edinburgh. It's obvious now that no-one will stop the madness, and it's probably too late for a big chunk of the sector anyway. news.stv.tv/east-central...
🚍🚌
Liberals should use the language of everyday people like “mitochondrial challenges”
cc: everyone in a position of power and responsibility
Jon I admire your willingness to take bold positions
October 2024 Brendan agreed to write a book chapter for September 2025 but past 11 months Brendan hasn’t it and it’s now Brendan’s problem.
Looking or graduating this yr? Ck out this Assistant Professor for Qualitative Research at UGA for Fall ‘26. www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/450...
Something surreal about seeing scientific consensus on vaccines and climate change being ignored, grants being rescinded, higher ed threatened, etc. Every post recently at NSF is about AI. No need to think and discover. The computer can do it for you. Where is the human aspect of innovation?
One way to put this is that my children can’t get birthday or Christmas gifts sent to them from their grandparents.
The fact that so few colleges are willing to publicly talk about student visa issues says a lot about the state of higher education as the new academic year gets underway. www.insidehighered.com/news/global/...
Usually, when enrolments go down in a country/province/state they stay up at the flagship institutions because of the "flight to quality". In Mexico - specifically UNAM - they are seeing a "flight FROM quality"; that is, a 30% drop in applications since 2020.
Sure does
I made a joke recently and our 8yo child looked me straight in the eye and said in a flat tone: “Dad, you know that puns are not funny, don’t you?”
Maybe the charges can be re-filed as a ham-and-swiss-demeanor?
Respect Ontario, respect
I’m neither endorsing this framework nor trying to defend Democrats. But if you look around, there are no high income democracies where immigration isn’t a political problem for the center and left. Some kind of comprehensive reform is absolutely the best pathway, in my opinion.
People on Bluesky are comparing this to Trump’s approach or calling it “Gestapo light” and I simply don’t understand how you get there from this reporting? Yes it seems to include more border enforcement, but it also includes a path to legal residency or citizenship for a long-time residents.
We’re now governed by AI slop
Going after drunk boaters is going attacking the base
My department is searching for two tenure-line positions to start in August 2026. Come join our growing team and make a difference in building the future! Assistant professor of higher education: apply.interfolio.com/172680 Associate/full professor of education policy: apply.interfolio.com/172632
This is what we have been saying. And it has to do with existing risk management and fiduciary frameworks, and with admin career ambitions, and with the demand placed on admins by their faculty (save my grant!), boards, and state politicians.
The share of official congressional e-newsletters that mention "China", over time, by party
I try but often fail to write sentences that are this good. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o...
Yeah that’s a lower one. Several of the aggregators have him higher this time
Cutting funding for MSIs - with the partial exception of HBCUs and TCUs - was part of project 2025. The author of the education chapter for P2025 is now a policy advisor on the Department of Education.
In my house we only sing Huntrix songs
Whether your’r a Supreme Court Justice or chair of a university board the one thing that’s true is that you can’t do a deal with the President. He will not honor it.
Details of the proposal to gather college admissions information by race and sex is now available in the Federal Register. Notably, they plan to collect information on graduate students by field (lumping arts and humanities into one category): bit.ly/3JOiram
The thing that makes me more pessimistic than any of the awful things the administration does is that Trump is more popular now than in 2017.
An analyst on CNN just said the Democrat should send Trump a request for the federal support. They need to fight crime and their cities!!!!!!
I’m a cracking jerk who’s too grumpy about everything (this is true) but there is something nice about seeing students walk around campus.
www.chronicle.com/article/gmu-...
Soporific - the sound of ran splashing off my office windows.
ah that makes sense
The campus board at UF is desperate to find an accomplished academic who the state board will accept as sufficiently correct for poltical purposes. The campus board cares about academic status. The state board cares about right-wing activists. It’s fascinating but also worrying.
Also the “you” in the headline is a NYT reporter, not anyone who works in higher education!
3/3 With more community college is offering baccalaureate degrees some are now classified as four year institutions, which could explain this partially. Maybe they used IPEDS? Just curious where the 43% figure comes from.
2/3 The Digest of Education Statistics 20024 Table 303.10 gets you the 19 million number for 2023 fall enrollment, but doesn’t break down by level. Table 303.70 does show 2 and 4 year enrollments but 2-year is lower than 40%.
1/3 This is a very good explainer …. but any idea how they got the 43% number for community colleges - I think it’s might be a bit lower?
My lab's been attacked by an anti-wind group and their lawyers. They threatened the science funding of my whole university, to shut me and my undergraduate research assistants up. NYT just covered it. 1/n www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/c...
4. Science of Science, with its data-intensive descriptive approach is useful, but insufficient. Metascience, with its laser focus on a replication crisis in psychology, likewise. We need broader humanistic thinking about the social processes involved in the construction and valuation of knowledge.
This is correct
My kids complain because it’s not Dominoes
You’re not supposed to use it for MSU work …. Enforcing that …
Ok I’ve figured it out: MA Copilot chat interface: everyone has access Copilot that integrates with Office: fee ChatGPT: fee
Let’s hope so
* FERPA
I think that if you want the copilot that’s IRB compliant or which can take for a data there’s an extra charge
Let me clarify - I think we do have access to some free version of Microsoft copilot. A better grain do copilot or ChatGPT requires a per person fee from the department
Doesn’t CoPilot also cost for individual users? That was my understanding from Ed
That is my impression, yes (i’m probably gonna get in trouble for this thread)
yes. They want you to use the enterprise version for all MSU work. That’s what I understand at least
I saw it. We also had the Vice Provost give a talk to the college. Acknowledged the “spectrum” but also said that retirement was an option for people who didn’t want to deal with AI.
I mean in a sense many are opting out because nobody’s paying for a license. The argument a made was that if you want to keep up individually and we want to keep up as a university we need to get on board. So a generalized rather than specific imperative. The user fee was is specific tho
My college said that it was exploring options to allow us to pay for it out-of-pocket, but as of now that was not possible
We had a college meeting this week, and that was the message were delivered by both by the college and by a central administrator who visited the meeting.
I don’t know
Yes
My employer’s position is that you should use AI for your job or else you’re going to be obsolete. You must only use university licensed tools. To use those tools your department must pay over $200 a year per user. All departments are cutting budgets and most are refusing to pay. 🤷🏻♂️
If our biggest problems as a species are collective actor problems, does generative AI make them better or worse? That’s the question I’m asking after reading this Ezra Klein essay. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/o...
Are you being sarcastic? I kinda hope so
This is exactly what I mean. We have a structural problem.
I should be clear: my concern isn’t that athletes are compensated for their labor. It’s about the way new big time sports finance further complicates university power relations and priorities.
Also their QBs ain't unpaid anymore
I get this. But it’s simply not true that athletics are subsidizing the academic side. It’s usually the other way around
That’s def possible. People don’t have a good understanding how everything is funded where the money comes from and goes but everyone “knows” that tuition is too high.
We don’t know enough about the way donors influence decision making. At the places with big time sports, the biggest donors tend to be in athletics and gifts overall are a small share total revenue. Donors matter for academic funding at major private universities with more modest athletics programs
But we also have to think of the white system - most athletics programs require a subsidy, including lots D1. These places are not doing the say NIL payments but they are doing some and to compete for players they may have to increase the academic subsidy.
On day to day matters big time sports and the academic mission are operationally separated. And at the biggest programs they are largely financially separated. But that doesn’t mean conflicts over priorities don’t come up.
Good Q. I don’t have direct evidence. Pubic universities are filled with speculation; hard to observe directly. Former presidents have said that they couldn’t cross donors and survive. We do have evidence that “sole finalist” phenomenon is growing; presidents are pre-selected by board and donors.
I have survey data in which fewer than 30% of respondents say they have a strong attachment to an athletics program in their state. College football is clearly enormously popular but I’ve not seen any convincing evidence that it binds citizens and voters to universities.
The issue isn’t what players are payed. It’s what it does the the university. A donor who shapes NIL money has enormous control over the university. Can easily get a president fired.
Presidents will tell you otherwise; say that the academic enterprise and big time sports are fire walled from each other. They might even say that sports protects the academic enterprise by building good will. The evidence is thin.
This isn’t to say that tue English instructor is good and the football player is bad, just that the power relations are such that the academic core of our major public research universities is often an afterthought.
And if the football player - reasonably - decides they don’t need pay much attention to their instructors, then why should the other students think otherwise? They too can see what matters and what doesn’t. If the true students see that, so does the board and the public. And here we are.
How can you get a quarterback who’s making $100,000 a game to respect in English faculty member who is making $4000 to teach the semester long class?
The annual salary for a starting player in a big-time college football program is roughly equivalent to what the university's president or provost makes (although much less than what the head football coach makes).
Could easily see this sort of demand extended to private universities with no perpetuating boards: “You want grants? The administration gets board seats.”
At those places, every student takes away a place from every other qualified student
Several years ago when writing about higher ed I called this dilemma the “institutional trap” open.substack.com/pub/brendanc...
