Teaching and Learning
What Students Like Me Want from Gen Ed (Greyson Cox, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 8, 2025): Fewer options, more intellectual coherence.
Are You Ready for the AI University? (Scott Latham, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 8, 2025): Everything’s about to change.
Mid-Semester Course Corrections: Using the MSF Model to Engage Students and Improve Courses (Peter Ufland and Christian Aguiar, Faculty Focus, April 7, 2025): The Midterm Student Feedback mechanism asks students simple, direct questions focused on the teaching and learning process in their current course. Put more simply, it asks students to discuss what is and isn’t helping them learn.
Showing Up for the Future: Why Educators Can’t Sit Out the AI Conversation (Lew Ludwig, Marc Watkins-Substack, April 4, 2025): As faculty, we don’t have the luxury of moral distance or technical indifference. Whether we like it or not, generative AI is influencing higher education—and if we don’t step in, someone else will.
Should College Graduates Be AI Literate? (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 3, 2025): More institutions are saying yes. Persuading professors is only the first barrier they face.
How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI (Bonni Stachowiak, Teaching in Higher Ed, April 3, 2025): John Warner shares about his latest book, More than Words (48-minute podcast).
Why the Discussion About ‘Skills’ in Higher Ed Is So Complicated (Scott Carlson, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 2, 2025): Skills are increasingly billed as the new currency of the education-to-work pipeline. But what do they really mean?
The Online Overhaul (Taylor Swaak, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 7, 2025): Virtual courses used to be the exception. Now, they’re an expectation.
Higher Education and the Trump Administration: By no means a complete compilation of news on the Trump Administration’s impact on higher education, this curated list offers at least a selection of the many articles that have appeared, and continue to appear, every day.
Universities in the Crosshairs
Trump Administration Freezes $1Billion in Funding for Cornell University, $790 Million for Northwestern University (Samantha Waldenberg, TuAnh Dam, and Taylor Romine, CNN, April 9, 2025): The move adds to similar actions the administration has taken against several elite universities, either demanding changes to their diversity, equity and inclusion programs, or in connection with their handling of protests against the war in Gaza.
NIH Freezes Millions More in Funding for Columbia (Josh Moody and Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, April 9, 2025): The U.S. National Institutes of Health reportedly froze another $250 million in federal research funding for the university, on top of the $400 million already in limbo.
Trump vs. the Ivy League: ‘These Are Elite Institutions and Blue States’ (Lexi Lonas Cochran, The Hill, April 8, 2025): “He’s not going after every highly selective, well-resourced institution. He’s going after highly selective, well-resourced institutions that happen to be in Rhode Island and Massachusetts and New York. These are in blue states.
Trump Demands Harvard Eradicate DEI to Preserve Its Federal Funding (Maya Stahl, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 4, 2025): It’s a similar playbook to the letter of provisions that the government sent to Columbia University. This time, though, the asks were vaguer.
Brown Becomes Latest Institution to Have Federal Grants Frozen (Susan H. Greenberg, Inside Higher Ed, April 4, 2025): The Trump administration plans to block $510 million n federal contracts and grants.
International Scholars and Students
More than 300 Student Visas Revoked as the Government Expands Reasons for Deportation (Andy Rose and Caroll Avarado, CNN, April 9, 2025): An increasing number of student deportation threats involve the revocation of visas based on relatively minor offenses like years-old misdemeanors, according to immigration attorneys, or sometimes no reason at all.
The Bizarre Legal Theory Behind Mahmoud Khalil’s Detention (Graeme Blair, Fatma Marouf, Elora Mukherjee, and Amber Qureshi, Slate, April 9, 2025): 8 U.S.C. Section 1227(a)(4)(C)(i), makes deportable any “[noncitizen] whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” It provides one of the most sweeping grants of discretionary executive power in the 1990 Immigration and Nationality Act.
‘Citizenship Won’t Save You’: Free Speech Advocates Say Student Arrests Should Worry All (NPR, April 8, 2025): “If the government can get away with doing this to these students, it can do it to everybody in this country. Your citizenship won’t save you. … Your views will be next.”
Student Visa Dragnet Reaches Small Colleges (Liam Knox, Inside Higher Ed, April 8, 2025): Immigration officials are rapidly revoking hundreds of student visas. Administrators are struggling to keep up and advise their students, some of whom have fled the country.
Nearly 150 Students Have Had Visas Revoked and Could Face Deportation (Vimal Patel, Miriam Jordan, and Halina Bennet, New York Times, April 7, 2025): Dozens of schools, including the University of California and Harvard, said the Trump administration ended the visas of their students in recent days. For many, the reasons are unclear.
Trump Administration Revokes Visas of Four International Students at University of Michigan (Matthew Miller, Michigan Live, April 7, 2025): The university learned of the revocations on Friday, the same day Central Michigan University announced that several current and former international students had their visas and their right to remain in the U.S. legally revoked.
Trump Administration Cancels Dozens of International Student Visas at University of California, Stanford (Jaweed Kaleem, Los Angeles Times, April 5, 2025): Dozens of international students attending several California universities have had their visas revoked by the Trump administration.
Colleges Say the Trump Administration Is Using New Tactics to Expel International Students (Collin Binkley, Annie Ma, and Makiya Seminera, AP, April 4, 2025): Officials from colleges around the country have discovered international students have had their entry visas revoked and, in many cases, their legal residency status terminated by authorities without notice — including students at Arizona State, Cornell, North Carolina State, the University of Oregon, the University of Texas and the University of Colorado.
The Deportation Dragnet (Tanvi Misra, Jewish Currents, April 2, 2025): With universities’ collaboration, the Trump administration is targeting noncitizens on campus – and paving the way for an expansive immigration crackdown.
Trump Administration and Higher Education: Academic Freedom, DEI, and Speech
Beyond the Headlines: The Reality of Free Speech on College Campuses (Lumina Foundation, April 9, 2025): 74% of bachelor’s degree students say their university does an “excellent” or “good” job of promoting free speech, including 73% of Republican students and 75% of Democratic students.
The Education Dept. Wants to End DEI (Jasper Smith, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 9, 2025): Does it have the staff?
Colleges Must Stand Together to Resist Trump (Joy Connolly, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 4, 2025): We’re used to competition, but what we need is coordination.
National Endowment for the Humanities Staff Put on Immediate Leave (Elizabeth Blair, NPR, April 4, 2025): The news comes two days after 56 state and jurisdiction humanities councils across the country received a letter that their NEH grants were being terminated.
Amid Immigration Crackdown, Student Newspapers Grapple with How to Cover Campus Without Making Targets of Their Peers (Aidan Ryan, Boston Globe, April 4, 2025): “I’ve been working here for over three decades, and these are times we have never seen before,” said Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center. “We’ve crossed a line with the situation at Tufts.”
Gutting DEI Won’t Save Us (Richard Thompson Ford, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 3, 2025): Only a coordinated defense can blunt the Trump administration’s illegitimate coercion.
A University President Makes a Case Against Cowardice (Molly Fischer, New Yorker, April 3, 2025): The Trump Administration wants to punish schools for student activism. Michael Roth, of Wesleyan, argues that colleges don’t have to roll over.
Extra Credit Reading
Conservatives Seize the Moment to Remake Higher Ed (Josh Moody, Inside Higher Ed, April 9, 2025): A Heritage Foundation event on Tuesday emphasized the need for reform in higher education. A Department of Education speaker touched on how Trump is forcing change.
The Last Days of Dialogue (Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed, April 4, 2025): Grief, trust and the future of the university.
Future Imperfect
National Park Service Removes References to Harriet Tubman from ‘Underground Railroad’ Webpage (Zoe Sottile, CNN, April 6, 2025): The webpage now starts with two paragraphs that emphasize the “American ideals of liberty and freedom” and do not specifically mention slavery.
After Senate Bill 1, Ohio Lawmakers Want to Give ‘Unilateral and Ultimate’ Power to Trustees (Jessie Balmert, The Columbus Dispatch, April 4, 2025): Changes added to the state’s two-year budget bill Tuesday would give university trustees “unilateral and ultimate authority” over new academic programs, schools, colleges, institutes, departments and centers.
These Are the 381 Books Removed From the Naval Academy Library (John Ismay, New York Times, April 4, 2025): Books include studies of the Ku Klux Klan and the history of lynching in America.
Have a short article or some news related to teaching and learning at your institution that you’d like to share with colleagues? Send your contribution along to us. Also, please email Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org) if you have colleagues who would like to receive this weekly report.
Steven Volk (steven.volk@oberlin.edu), Editor
GLCA/GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning
Co-Directors:
Lew Ludwig (ludwigl@denison.edu)
Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org)