Following the George Floyd protests in 2020 and NIC’s ensuing support of the Black Lives Matter movement, a county Republican committee urgently endorsed the nomination of two Board of Trustees members that better champion conservative values. The two committee-backed nominees won, joining Todd Banducci to form an informal conservative majority among the five-member panel.

Since then, the college has ousted two presidents, introduced two interim leaders, and nullified a judge’s order to reinstate a president improperly placed on leave. Now, however, North Idaho College fights for its accreditation.

How did North Idaho College get here?

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), the accreditation agency responsible for NIC, issued a “show cause” letter in February for a slew of reasons, including declining enrollment, a “continued exodus” of faculty and a string of 13 no-confidence votes passed by students, faculty and staff in the last two years. However, the predominant factor leading to the accreditation’s skepticism was its ongoing leadership problem.

In 2021, North Idaho’s board fired then-president Rick MacLennan without cause and eventually instated the school’s wrestling coach as interim president, drawing community-wide backlash and a lawsuit from MacLennan against the school, according to the NWCCU letter.

“Staff and faculty have made it clear. They are the boots on the ground here on this campus,” Wood said, “and they find great value in the leadership of Dr. MacLennan, as do I,” said Christie Wood, a trustee who strongly opposed the firing, according to The Spokesman Review. “I think this is a train wreck for the rest of the trustees that we have personal liability that you’re bringing upon us with this motion. It doesn’t make any sense at all to remove this president.”

With the help of interim trustees nominated by NWCCU, the board approved the presidential hiring of Nick Swayne in June 2022. However, the board then decided to suspend Nick Swayne a few months later without cause and inject Greg South as interim president. Swayne waged a lawsuit against the school for the suspension. Then came NWCCU’s February threat to strip NIC’s accreditation.

Where the college is now

With pressure from NWCCU and a judge’s order to reinstate Swayne as president, the board decided to maintain Swayne as president. However, they simultaneously nullified his presidency after the conservative majority-backed attorney Art Macomber found Swayne’s initial hiring the year before illegal. This move again drew the ire of students and staff as such a nullification goes directly against NWCCU’s mandate that Swayne remains president as long as his lawsuit and the commission’s accreditation loom.

“If this motion is passed, I can guarantee you we will lose accreditation. Simple as that,” said Swayne, according to KREM.

Students, faculty, alumni and other community members have banded together to create SaveNIC.org to warn the community how the college’s loss of accreditation could impact the state’s northern counties. They posit that Banducci’s leadership has cost the school $5.2 million in cancelled gifts, lawsuits, hiring firms to replace NIC members and other values.

Swayne subsequently won his lawsuit and has been reinstated as president of NIC. However, NWCCU’s final judgment on the school’s accreditation will not occur until June 23. When that time comes, Swayne and Board Chair Greg McKenzie, who voted to first suspend and then nullify Swayne’s presidency, will have to work together to make their accreditation plea.

The post How this college’s conservative takeover has led to lawsuits and accreditation troubles appeared first on University Business.

Legislatures in Indiana and Texas are remodeling their financial allocation to colleges and universities based on an outcomes-based formula rather than blanket recommendations based on enrollment as each state grapples with higher education’s most prevailing trends: student workforce preparation and faltering enrollment.

“The current model is one that’s based upon contact hours, heavily influenced by enrollment and type of courses offered,” says Ray Martinez III, president and CEO of the Texas Association of Community Colleges (TACC), according to Diverse. “What do we need to do as a matter of state policy to ensure that students have the support they need, the scaffolding to ensure they can complete a post-secondary credential?”

More from UB: Ghosts of Mississippi: Since last June, 7 presidents have stepped down in the state

Texas tackles workforce demands at the community college level

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott approved legislation on Monday to increase its community college biennium funding by nearly 25% for $2.2 billion, according to Dallas Innovates. Aside from the increase in funding, the legislation also marks a bold new direction for which colleges will earn the lion’s share. Texas will now fund its community colleges based on upward student transfer rates, high school dual degree completion, and whether they’re awarding “credentials of value.” Credentials of value include badges, certificates and degrees that “position graduates for well-paying jobs” in high-demand fields.

Texas’ former community college state funding formula relied almost entirely on contact hours, according to the Texas Commission on Community College Finance (TxCCCF), which strongly recommended the outcomes-based changes to the state. TxCCCF found that 2021 was Texas’ worst year for community college enrollment, which is particularly damaging for the state considering that the sector makes up more than 40% of its post-secondary student enrollment.

By repositioning the state’s 50 community colleges to deliver credentials of values while promoting college affordability, TxCCCF and Texas legislatures believe they are in a prime placement to recoup state enrollment by churning out workforce-ready individuals.

“A highly educated and skilled workforce is critical for Texas to remain the most attractive state to do business, and community colleges are ground zero for students to access the necessary skills and training for in-demand careers,” said Sen. Brandon Creighton, according to the Austin American-Statesman. “This new funding framework will only encourage more successful programs for Texas to train the workforce of the future.”

Indiana wants to bring students back

With only 48% of Indiana’s citizens being credential or degree earners, Gov. Eric Holcomb wants to increase the rate of Hoosiers with postsecondary education to 60% by 2025. With public college tuition and fees decreasing 4% over the past five years and the state recuperating from one of its lowest enrollment rates in recent history, Indiana’s 2023 legislative session seeks to bump state college funding by $130 million in the next biennium budget.

With a revamped budget comes an updated budget strategy. On top of the base funding each college and university will receive, they will also be eligible for additional funding based on five metrics: quality and career relevance, completion, college-going rate, quantity of adult students and graduation retention rates.

For example, colleges that score 80% of their forecasted goal on one of those five metrics will receive 80% of the additional funding they were promised. That additional funding earned in the first year of the biennium would be guaranteed in year two. It then has the potential to build from there.

Equity concerns with outcomes-based funding

While more states become outcome-oriented when deciding which colleges and universities to fund, some professionals believe doing so can hurt minority-serving institutions.

Institutions that serve students and color and those from lower-income households are already under-resourced. If they can’t deliver on state metrics, their situation will never improve, creating a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” wrote Dr. Kalya C. Elliott, interim director of Education Trust and co-author of the report cautioning against outcomes-based funding.

The post Why these 2 states are changing their higher ed funding model appeared first on University Business.

Since June 2022, seven presidents have stepped down from a college or university in Mississippi, which comprises nearly half the Magnolia State’s total 4-year institutions. Five of those exits have come in the last three months. Among the seven to step down, the majority left on unfavorable terms.

Moreover, only two institutions have named a full-time successor since their president’s departure (Delta State and the University of Southern Mississippi), leaving a considerable chunk of Mississippi’s colleges and universities with vacant seats in executive leadership.

While the number of departing presidents has piled up all at once, several of them enjoyed a tenure of nine years or more, including Robert Pearigen (Millsaps College, 13 years), Rodney D. Bennet (University of Southern Mississippi, 9 years) and William LaForge (Delta State University, 9 years). The average tenure among the seven presidents who have exited is about six years, which is on par with today’s average president turnover nationally. However, the tenure for Mississippi’s HBCU presidents to have stepped down is only about three years.

More from UB: Despite regulation efforts and student complaints, this popular edtech platform marches on

Walter is stepping down from Tougaloo after four years following a faculty “mass exodus,” a 40-year enrollment low of fewer than 700 students in 2021 and pressure from both students and alumni. Students voted no-confidence in Walters in 2022 and one alumni group formed against her leadership amassed more than 1,500 signatures in a petition calling for her removal.

“There is discontentment among our ranks directly related to low student enrollment, a decrease in campus morale, horrid student living conditions, and questionable financial practices that have negatively impacted the college,” the petition said, according to Mississippi Today.

Weeks after Millsaps College President Robert Pearigen announced his resignation after over a decade of service, Ivy Taylor announced she was leaving Rust College after three years, though why has yet to be answered. Rust’s board even declined to specify whether her exit was a firing or resignation. The Board of Trustees governing Mississippi’s public universities, the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL), terminated Felecia Nave from Alcorn State University after the school’s community began calling for her resignation in 2021 after rapid enrollment decline and administrative resignations, similar to Walters.

Less than a month before that, Jackson State University’s Thomas K. Hudson resigned after being placed on administrative leave, making him the seventh president to leave the school since 2010. Jackson State’s faculty senate voted no confidence against Hudson in January for damaging the community’s trust in school leadership and for his frequent absences from key meetings.

The IHL replaced Rodney D. Bennett from the University of Southern Mississippi in July 2022, which was nearly a year sooner than the president had initially announced he’d be stepping down. At Delta State University, IHL gave then-President William LaForge notice of his leave “just prior” to making a public statement, leaving LaForge “very disappointed.”

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“This landmark change in hiring practices for our state workforce will improve hiring processes, expand possibilities and career paths for job seekers and enhance our ability to deliver quality services,” Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in a statement accompanying the announcement, according to AP News.

Virginia joins a growing list of states opting to evaluate job applicants’ holistic skillset rather than the black-and-white metric of having a higher education degree. It will affect the evaluation process of about 20,000 state jobs advertised annually by Virginia’s state agencies, according to the governor’s office.

“By giving equal consideration to applicants with an equivalent combination and level of training, knowledge, skills, certifications and experience we have opened a sea of opportunity at all levels of employment for industrious individuals who have the experience, training, knowledge, skills, abilities, and most importantly, the desire to serve the people of Virginia,” Secretary of Labor Bryan Slater said in a statement.

It’s “a landmark change” that the National Governors Association believes will create more hiring equity and diversify a state workforce’s perspectives and skill sets, according to a statement. This move is especially important because it welcomes more individuals to apply during a tight labor market and a reduced pool of talented applicants.

More from UB: Despite regulation efforts and student complaints, this popular edtech platform marches on

Other states have enacted similar measures

Pennsylvania

On his first day in office this year, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order removing four-year requirements for most state jobs, affecting 92% (or 65,000) of state jobs. His administration is also reviewing four-year degree requirements for the remaining 8%.

Maryland

Last year, former Gov. Larry Hogan announced a similar measure across most of Maryland’s state-related jobs. Partnering with OpportunityatWork, whose mission is to “tear the paper ceiling,” Maryland is seeking residents who are “skilled through alternative routes,” or STARs. OpportunityatWork estimates that there are more than 70 million STARs in the U.S.

Colorado, Utah, Alaska, North Carolina, New Jersey, South Dakota and Ohio have enacted similar labor measures.

The post Virginia joins 9 others eliminating state jobs requiring 4-year degrees appeared first on University Business.

2U recently announced two new degree programs with Cabrini University, extended its contract with Southern Methodist University and signed an agreement with Arcadia University to launch its online Doctor of Education program. Additionally, last year they acquired another popular edtech company edX, which one American business magazine listed as the third-most innovative education company of 2023.

However, 2U has gained notoriety recently for allegedly engaging in deceptive recruitment strategies and contributing to students’ high debt load. Students and the federal government have waged lawsuits and called for stronger oversight of the edtech company. Yet, 2U has managed to fight back on all fronts. Should higher education hold faith in 2U despite its recent spats?

More from UB: Ohio is the latest state to try making college costs, ROI clearer—is it worth it?

Student lawsuits

Online students at the University of Southern California have sued the private Los Angeles school in two separate lawsuits relating to its online programs’ deceptive recruitment, which 2U helps operate. In one case filed late last year, Student Defense and Tycko & Zavareei LLP filed a lawsuit against USC and 2U for luring students to enroll in the Rossier School of Education using manipulated U.S. News data. According to the suit, 2U “assumed responsibility for recruiting these online students and was paid a substantial percentage of tuition.”

Additionally, students sued USC again in a class-action lawsuit last month, alleging the university’s online Master of Social Work (MSW) program misrepresented its program’s quality. Specifically, the university advertised its online and on-campus programs were equal in value; however, students found that its online MSW offerings, provided by 2U, were outdated and inferior in quality.

“They paid an unjustifiably high price for a program that was promised to be the same as the on-campus version when in reality, it was run by a for-profit education company. Students were lied to and now are standing up and fighting back,” said Eileen Connor, president and director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending, which is helping to represent the plaintiffs, in a statement, according to USA Today.

While 2U was not named a defendant in the MSW lawsuit, they quickly addressed it, claiming the allegations were “without merit” based on their call recordings and student feedback forms.

Pending federal regulation

Last year, several U.S. Senators voiced their concerns about the dangers of online program managers (OPMs), such as 2U. Aside from engaging in “aggressive marketing and recruitment practices,” the senators were also concerned about OPMs’ ability to burden students with high costs.

“We continue to have concerns about the impact of OPM partnerships on rising student debt loads,” wrote the senators. “OPMs often receive 50% or more of students’ tuition. These agreements may create a disincentive to lower costs.”

A year later, the Department of Education announced that it expanded its definition of third-party services to include OPMs, such as 2U. The department recognized that because the function of OPMs is interlinked with institutions’ Title IV administrative activities, companies like 2U must also comply with TPS requirements as well. Consequently, the edtech company would be forced to report their business dealings and be subjected to tighter regulation, oversight and potential audits.

However, 2U has since sued the Department of Education, claiming it exceeded its authority and did not collect enough input from outside stakeholders to make the decision. Additionally, several higher education leaders have asked the department to rescind the guidance, such as Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, who spoke for more than 80 higher education associations.

The department has since delayed implementing the ruling on OPMs. However, if the department eventually decides to rule against OPMs, 2U can find itself scrambling for a new revenue stream.

“Because revenue sharing with institutions is central to their business model, the Ed Dept’s expanded definition of a third-party service provider could pose significant challenges to 2U’s business model in the future,” said Matt Winn, Tambellini Group’s senior analyst covering academic technology in an email.

The post Despite regulation efforts and student complaints, this popular edtech platform marches on appeared first on University Business.

However, one member of Ohio’s American Association of University Professors chapter referred to quantifying students’ future earnings potential as “problematic,” according to the Dayton Daily News. The University of Cincinnati professor testified that he supports greater financial transparency, but his concerns do hearken back to the turbulence many proponents of greater cost transparency in higher education have faced.

Why are sweeping measures for transparency challenging to gain support for?

Unhelpful information

Data submitted by colleges is rarely strong enough to help parents and students make effective decisions. When former President Donald Trump called for similar initiatives to make higher education more transparent, many of the data colleges posted were found to be misleading or inaccurate. College Scorecard cannot track current student data and must rely on information from student loan borrowers due to a 2008 Congressional decision. Aside from being the partial truth, colleges’ self-submitted data is not usually refined for the average parent or student and often becomes too technical to use appropriately.

“The information we need to provide has to be accurate, has to be verifiable, has to be comparable. It has to be visible to students, and it has to be usable,” said Debbie Cochrane, executive vice president of the Institute for College Access & Success, according to The Hechinger Report. “Misleading information is not helpful. Perfectly valid information that can’t be found is also not helpful.”

Aside from the college information being impractical, some colleges have a track record of submitting bad information. Columbia and Temple University have been caught submitting erroneous data to U.S. News and World Report to pad their rankings.

Lack of use

Initiatives that do try to track critical measures for prospective students don’t seem to gain much traffic. One report in 2016 found that College Scorecard underperformed among users. Similarly, two state-driven initiatives have also achieved meek results. One partnership between the University of Texas and the U.S. Census Bureau to provide better earnings data did not gain popularity two years after its launch. And Virginia’s wide-ranging database is left mostly unused.

“I think some fraction of students use the data,” said Tod Massa, policy analytics director at the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, according to The Hechinger Report. But “how many high school students are actually going to think to go to a state agency website to research colleges and universities?”

How have recent bills similar to Ohio’s fared?

At the federal level, three U.S. Senators are reviving the College Transparency Act after it stalled out last year. If approved, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) would be responsible for securing student data and generating postgraduation outcomes reports with the help of federal agencies. Creating a user-friendly website that parents and students can easily navigate is also top of mind. Additionally, the College Transparency Act would lift the 2008 Congress ban that hindered College Scorecard’s data accuracy.

At the state level, the Colorado General Assembly has recently passed a bill appropriating $3 million to the department of higher education to create a public-facing data system that allows prospective students to compare and contrast “postsecondary success measures and workforce success measures” among different institutions. Another eight states have enacted some form of collection and distribution of college data, according to The Hechinger Report. Among them are Arkansas, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

However, one proposed bill in New York stalled out last year and has yet to be reintroduced.

The post Ohio is the latest state to try making college costs, ROI clearer—is it worth it? appeared first on University Business.

Despite recent efforts to raise state funding for higher education and consolidate public universities, its public university system and state-related institutions are desperate for more financing to curb Pennsylvania’s rapidly declining student enrollment and intimidating college costs.

Since fall 2017, enrollment at Pennsylvania’s four-year public institutions has declined by 12.4%, which is dramatically worse than the nation’s overall 3% decrease in that sector, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. While the Northeast region has experienced a dramatic decline in enrollment across every sector in that same period, Pennsylvania’s decline still outpaced the region’s average, 12.3% compared to 11.3%.

Aside from the demographic changes affecting the entire country, Pennsylvania’s public college system is catching fewer students per year due to its burdensome college costs. State funding per student ranks second worst nationwide, averaging $6,100 compared to the national average of $10,200, according to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Among the American Association of Universities’ public institution members, Pennsylvania State University and Pittsburgh University claimed the top spots for the costliest colleges to attend.

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Two state systems, both in need

Allocating state funding for Pennsylvania’s public institutions is split among two different public college systems: the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) and the Commonwealth System of Higher Education. The latter comprises the state’s most revered state-related colleges: Lincoln University, the Pennsylvania State University, Temple University, and the University of Pittsburgh.

While the governor’s proposed $40 million, 7.1% increase across all four institutions in the Commonwealth System exceeds Pitt’s request (6%), it’s far below what Temple (16%), Lincoln (25%), and Penn State (48%) asked for, according to Spotlight PA. Lincoln specified their requested funds would be used for tuition and fee support, while Penn State stated it’d be used for student aid. Consequently, no state-related university leader committed to a tuition freeze if allotted Shapiro’s budget. The biggest losers among Pennsylvania’s state-related institutions are families from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.

“And if you don’t have that kind of financial aid, particularly in a state with relatively high public college tuition like Pennsylvania, low- and moderate-income families just get priced out,” said Will Doyle said, a professor of public policy and higher education at Vanderbilt University, according to Spotlight PA. He also co-authored a report that ranked Pennsylvania among the country’s least affordable states for higher education in 2016.

PASSHE seems also to have gotten the short end of the stick, despite having consolidated six universities into two last year to cut costs. Chancellor of PASSHE Daniel Greenstein asked for a 3.8% increase in state funding to help freeze tuition for a fifth year; however, the governor proposed only a 2% bump in funding. If the state cannot meet Greenstein’s requests, the system looks at hiking tuition up 4.5%, which will barely cover PASSHE’s existing costs. And as faculty are currently negotiating new contracts, that percentage may need to rise. If allocation for PASSHE doesn’t increase whatsoever, universities could be looking at a 7.5% tuition increase, which would be “horrific” for future enrollment trends in the state, according to one PASSHE university president.

Consequently, university officials and state leaders are tangled on what to do. “We firmly believe PASSHE universities cannot raise tuition and then expect to also receive increased state support,” Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward, Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, and Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Scott Martin said in a statement, according to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We are committed to working together to adequately address the financial concerns of our higher education institutions.”

Long-term problems

The state of Pennsylvania has long been a culprit in reducing funding to its higher education system. Since 1980, public funding for the state’s institutions has decreased by 42%. So, despite last year’s 15% budget increase for PASSHE, the state university system still needs more funding to protect students from shouldering extra costs.

University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Patrick Gallagher also blames the state’s lack of cohesion in addressing the state’s higher education.

“Pennsylvania’s approach can hardly be called a system. Some residents live near a wealth of state-supported schools, all with a different funding relationship to the commonwealth and all competing for the same, limited number of students, said Gallagher, according to The University of Pittsburgh. “Other residents live in areas where their window into a state-supported college campus is limited to a 60-second commercial break during football season.”

The post Can higher education in Pennsylvania be saved? appeared first on University Business.

A new report by the Women’s Power Gap has discovered that more than half of all presidents appointed to an R1 research university since May 2021 were female (53%). Now, the percentage of women presidents serving the nation’s most elite universities has increased by 8% in the last two years, totaling 30%.

Ten of the 20 schools to have appointed a female president are doing so for the first time in school history. These schools include Columbia, Dartmouth, George Washington, New York University, Ohio University, Oregon State, Penn State, University of Maryland Baltimore County, University of Pittsburgh and University of Texas at Arlington.

Among the cream of the crop of R1 universities, 75% of the Ivy Leagues are now led by a woman. Dartmouth, Harvard, UPenn appointed a female president in 2022. Minouche Shafik of Columbia is the most recent selection in January of this year. Consequently, Princeton and Yale are the only two Ivy League schools currently led by a man, the latter now being the only Ivy school to have never elected a female president.

More from UB: Why these school leaders are clashing with students’ free speech judgment

Areas of improvement

Despite leadership gains for women, 57 schools have never had a woman in charge, which is about 40% of all R1 universities. At the state level, four out of six of Florida’s R1 universities have ever been led by a woman (67%), three out of four in Georgia (75%) and five out of eight in Massachusetts (62%). On the other hand, seven out of 11 R1 universities in Texas have been led by a woman. Interim presidents are not included in these figures.

Women of color and different ethnicities have made the least gains in school leadership. Despite female leadership increasing by 8% in two years, those of color only gained a 1% foothold. Moreover, of the 30% of women currently president, 3% are Asian, 2% are black and 1% are Hispanic. Similarly, men of color or various ethnicities aren’t adequately represented compared to their proportion of the U.S. population. While Hispanics make up roughly 19% of the nation, only 4% of Hispanic men currently serve as a president of R1 universities.

If we look at higher areas of leadership above the presidency of a single institution, fewer than 30% of board chairs are women. Even worse, no woman currently leads an independent university system.

To view recommendations on how to boost leadership equity, download the report Women’s Power Gap’s recommendations and matrix template here.

The post More than half of all elite president appointments in last 2 years were women appeared first on University Business.

The protests at Boston University erupted due to the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, which the union waged against Warners Bros. Discovery and several other Hollywood studios for poor wages and other mistreatment. Zaslav, the president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, faced chants, signs and protestors picketing in front of the entrance to the event.

While Brown defended the right to protest and asserted its function to sustain a liberal democracy, Brown repelled the behavior he believes is an offspring of “cancel culture.” Instead of vigorous debate and discussion, he sees this new trend as a mutation to “gain power, not reason.” And BU’s president is not alone in being fed up with students’ interpretation of free speech.

Around the country, several college leaders have spoken up to defend free speech against a student body that they believe steps on free expression. In leaders’ views, these actions form a hostility toward open dialogue and counter the mission of their respective universities. Their opinion isn’t unfounded either; Undergraduate students are by far the most likely demographic to attempt imposing sanctions on college professors.

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Dean Jenny Martinez – Stanford Law School

In March, students stormed a conservative campus event that Trump-appointed U.S. Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was attending. Facing hundreds of heckling protestors led by the law school’s associate DEI dean, Duncan’s planned talk devolved into a fiasco filled with “idiots,” “hypocrites” and “bullies,” according to Duncan.

Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Law School Dean Jenny Martinez quickly issued an apology, and Martinez was quick to defend why. In a 10-page open letter to the law school’s community, the dean wrote that some protestors “crossed the line” from protest to disruption. “There is temptation to a system in which people holding views perceived by some as harmful or offensive are not allowed to speak,” Martinez wrote. “History teaches us that this is a temptation to be avoided.”

Martinez believes the DEI associate dean and the students worked counter to what diversity, equity, and inclusion stand for. “I believe that the commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion actually means that we must protect free expression of all views,” Martinez wrote.

In the fallout, the DEI associate dean is on leave. Because Martinez found it impossible to differentiate between the students practicing protected forms of speech and those abusing it, she found it best not to reprimand anyone. Instead, she had law school students undergo a mandatory half-day session this past spring semester on free speech and its place in the legal world.

President Martha E. Pollack & Provost Michael I. Kotlikoff – Cornell

While Brown and Martinez defended the First Amendment by calling out attempts to disrupt speech, two Cornell leaders in April denied one student resolution they believed suppresses it.

The resolution, which Cornell’s Student Assembly approved, urged instructors to provide a heads-up in class syllabi for potential “traumatic content,” such as sexual assault, hate crimes and self-harm. However, President Martha E. Pollack vetoed the resolution, writing in a statement alongside Provost Michael I. Kotlikoff that, “Such a policy would violate our faculty’s fundamental right to determine what and how to teach.” The leaders wrote that allowing students to step away from such sensitive content would be detrimental to their intellectual growth and restrict professors’ academic freedom.

The post Why these school leaders are clashing with students’ free speech judgment appeared first on University Business.

Enabling new forms of interaction between educators and students and more effectively personalizing learning are among the potential benefits of AI, the agency says in its recent report, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning: Insights and Recommendations.” But the risks include a range of safety and privacy concerns and algorithmic bias. To mitigate them, the department strongly emphasizes keeping humans in the driver’s seat.

“We envision a technology-enhanced future more like an electric bike and less like robot vacuums,” reads the report. “On an electric bike, the human is fully aware and fully in control, but their burden is less, and their effort is multiplied by a complementary technological enhancement.”

Educators and policymakers should collaborate on the following principles:

1. Emphasize humans-in-the-loop: As students and teachers begin interacting with chatbots to help with coursework and plan personalized instruction, teachers must stay abreast of safety precautions if things begin to fall astray. Keeping other teachers involved in loops is a vital way to remain vigilant. Additionally, teachers must stave off becoming so reliant on AI that it depletes their judgment. AI is known to commit errors and make up “facts,” so teachers must analyze AI prompts to flag errors.
2. Align AI models to a shared vision for education: The educational needs of students should be at the forefront of AI policies. “We especially call upon leaders to avoid romancing the magic of AI or only focusing on promising applications or outcomes, but instead to interrogate with a critical eye how AI-enabled systems and tools function in the educational environment,” the Department of Education says.
3. Design AI using modern learning principles: The first wave of adaptive edtech incorporated important principles such as sequencing instruction and giving students feedback. However, these systems were often deficit-based, focusing on the student’s weakest areas. “We must harness AI’s ability to sense and build upon learner strengths,” the Department of Education asserts.
4. Prioritize strengthening trust: There are concerns that AI will replace—rather than assist—teachers. Educators, students and their families need to be supported as they build trust in edtech. Otherwise, lingering distrust of AI could distract from innovation in tech-enabled teaching and learning.
5. Inform and involve educators: Another concern is that AI will lead to a loss of respect for educators and their skills just as the nation is experiencing teacher shortages and declining interest in the profession. To convince teachers they are valued, they must be involved in designing, developing, testing, improving, adopting, and managing AI-enabled edtech.
6. Focus R&D on addressing context and enhancing trust and safety: Edtech developers should focus design efforts on “the long tail of learning variability” to ensure large populations of students will benefit from AI’s ability to customize learning.
7. Develop education-specific guidelines and guardrails: Data privacy laws should be reviewed and updated in the context of advancing educational technology. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a potential candidate facing reevaluation as new accessibility technologies emerge.

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