#higher-education

#higher-education

The California Faculty Association has sued the California State University after the university system handed over the personal phone numbers and email addresses of 2,600 Los Angeles campus employees to the federal government in response to an antisemitism investigation. The lawsuit filed last week seeks a court order prohibiting CSU administrators from disclosing any faculty members' personal information in response to federal subpoenas without first providing notice to the impacted employees and giving them the opportunity to object.

President Donald Trump insists that top universities must pay dearly for not protecting Jewish students. This includes cutting $790 million in medical and scientific research previously led by Northwestern University scholars. Michael Schill, then president of Northwestern, was berated by congressional Republicans for brokering a compromise with pro-Palestinian protesters last year, disbanding their tent cities while preserving free speech. He was too timid in stamping out campus antisemitism, Trump disciples argued. Shill stepped down last month.

"We exist to serve our region by providing an excellent, accessible education that equips students to succeed in college, career, and life," Teniente-Matson said in a statement.

Under the Department of Education's proposed Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement, institutions would have to submit applied, admitted and enrolled student data broken down by test score quintiles, grade point average quintiles, income ranges, Pell Grant eligibility and parental education levels, as well as data regarding aid and student outcomes. Institutions would also be required to send historical data going back to 2020.

It's enormously disruptive to the students who are reliant on these services to answer questions and get the information they need about college enrollment and financial aid as they apply and student supports once they enroll,

When Stephanie Burt decided to carry a pink and blue Taylor Swift tote bag to class one day in fall 2023, she just thought it would be a fun way to transport her books and laptop, and let her students know she was a Swiftie. The Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English had no idea that just one semester later she would be teaching a Taylor Swift lecture course to 200 undergraduates

Tell Us We want to hear from job seekers in Massachusetts about how long you've been looking - and what your experience has been like in today's market. Recent layoffs, tough competition, and slow job growth rates have made this one of the most challenging job markets in years for Massachusetts residents. If you're actively looking for a job right now, we'd like to hear from you. How long have you been on the hunt - weeks, months, a year or more?

The global challenges of today, from climate-fuelled floods, droughts and heatwaves to food insecurity and health disparities, are felt intensely in Africa. To tackle those, universities on the continent must strengthen their research and innovation capacity. On average, African countries spend around 0.5% of their gross domestic product on research and development. That's less than one-quarter of the global average of 2.7%.

Academic Integrity Concern,

In a blog post, Redmond said a cybercrime crew it tracks as Storm-2657 has been targeting university employees since March 2025, hijacking salaries by breaking into HR software such as Workday. The attack is as audacious as it is simple: compromise HR and email accounts, quietly change payroll settings, and redirect pay packets into attacker-controlled bank accounts. Microsoft has dubbed the operation "payroll pirate," a nod to the way crooks plunder staff wages without touching the employer's systems directly.

"However, it's important to note that any SaaS systems storing HR or payment and bank account information could be easily targeted with the same technique," Microsoft researchers said. "These attacks don't represent any vulnerability in the Workday platform or products, but rather financially motivated threat actors using sophisticated social engineering tactics and taking advantage of the complete lack of multifactor authentication (MFA) or lack of phishing-resistant MFA to compromise accounts."

As the Supreme Court begins its new term this week, legal experts predict that higher education will be a frequent subject for the justices. Yet only two college-related cases-both of which center on transgender rights-are currently listed on the main docket. That's in large part because of a less formal but increasingly popular second list of cases known as the shadow docket. Historically, the shadow docket, also called the emergency docket, was used on rare occasions for just that-emergencies.

"Phoenix Education Partners, parent company of the for-profit University of Phoenix, which announced its IPO plans one day before the shutdown began, said on Wednesday that it has priced its shares at $32. That's the midpoint of its earlier targeted range of between $31 and $33 a share. The company intends to list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the "PXED" ticker symbol. Selling shareholders will offer roughly 4.3 million shares of its common stock,"

The impetus is clear: Texas A&M University fired a professor, demoted two administrators and pushed out its president after conservative politicians lambasted the institution for a lesson on gender identity in a children's literature class. Their criticism hinged on the fact that the topic was not reflected in the brief course catalog description for the class. Before he resigned, Texas A&M president Mark Welsh ordered an audit of all courses at the flagship campus,

Doctors predicted Wayne Frederick, the president of Howard University, wouldn't live past 8. Now he's 54. Frederick came to the U.S. from Trinidad and Tobago with a dream of finding a cure for his disease, sickle cell anemia, but detoured into higher ed administration. At an event hosted by the American Council on Education at Howard University this week, Frederick said CRISPR gene editing, a technology developed in academia, made his dream a reality.

The fee, the complaint states, "will result in significant and potentially catastrophic setbacks to research that benefits the American public and ensures the United States remains a leading source of innovation and expertise. For example, the fee will likely result in sharp cutbacks in the employment of highly talented foreign workers and severe setbacks for university research, graduate programs, and clinical care, compounding an anticipated shortfall of 5.3 million skilled workers over the next decade."

"Everything seemed to be going according to plan," Herrmann said.

WashU chancellor Andrew Martin announced last month that the private university had cut 316 staff positions and closed another 198 vacant roles as part of an effort to restructure or reduce budgets. He wrote that the cuts, which extend to WashU's Medical Campus, total "more than $52 million in annual savings." The chancellor cited both external and internal pressures.

This year's Banned Books Week (Oct. 5-11) comes at a moment when the threat of censorship is reaching alarming heights. According to a new report issued last week by PEN America, " Banned in the USA, 2024-2025," there were 22,810 instances of book banning in U.S. public schools from 2021 to 2025. As the coordinator of Chicago Banned Books Week, I can see a growing climate of fear where even some librarians are wary of promoting banned books.

For students at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, alumni mentors are becoming embedded in their experience. A recently launched mentorship program pairs each rising junior with a graduate from the college to provide advice and encouragement as they finish their last two years of college. The initiative, part of Gettysburg's reimagining of career development, helps students build a professional network before they leave college and hopefully eases the transition into life after graduation, said Billy Ferrell, director of external relations in Gettysburg's Center for Career Engagement.

Keir Starmer has joined a long line of ministers and prime ministers who have called time on Tony Blair's ambition for half of the nation's young people to go on to higher education. Rishi Sunak, Gavin Williamson and now Starmer have all declared an end to Blair's famous 1999 pledge as a policy priority, and done so on the grounds that the focus on universities has come at the expense of vocational education and training such as apprenticeships.

Officials at San Jacinto College, a community college in greater Houston, asked faculty to review student learning outcomes for their courses and ensure they adhere to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's Academic Course Guide Manual and Workforce Education Course Manual, said Amanda Fenwick, a spokesperson for the college.

The Trump administration may be moving away from using individual investigations to try to force colleges into compliance with the president's agenda and instead encourage compliance by giving institutions that demonstrate adherence to his policies a competitive advantage in obtaining research funding. The new plan, which Post reporters heard about from two anonymous White House officials, would change the grant-application process and give a leg up to institutions that conform to President Donald Trump's agenda regarding admissions, hiring and other campus policies. If the plan takes effect, the Trump administration will no longer have to go after universities one by one through investigations and corresponding penalties, but rather can induce compliance from hundreds of institutions at once.