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International Student Arrivals Drop 19%
Some experts note that the entry data contradicts enrollment increases shown in SEVIS data—while others say the declines are even more extreme than the arrivals data indicates. August records of international visitors’ arrivals in the U.S. show 19 percent fewer international students arrived in the country as compared to the same month in 2024, according to a New York Times analysis of the data. That figure is in line with international enrollment predictions but appears to contradict Department of Homeland Security data released last month.
A Compact for Control (opinion)
No self-respecting institution of higher education should accept the Trump administration’s unconstitutional terms, Robert Post and Tom Ginsburg write. For more than 80 years, the system of higher education in the United States has partnered with the federal government to produce the best science, technology and scholarship in the world. Competing for federal research support on the basis of merit, universities have produced countless innovations and spurred enormous economic growth.
Federal Union Sues Trump Admin Over Political OOO
The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing federal workers, sued the Trump administration Friday, challenging the automated out-of-office email responses it placed on many employees’ email accounts when the government shut down. The message, which was placed on the email accounts of all furloughed staff members without their consent, blamed Democrats in the Senate for causing the shutdown.
Why Higher Ed Must Be Intentional With AI
Pilots and playtime won’t prepare you for the disruption already at your doorstep. Walk into almost any office on a campus right now and you’ll hear the same thing: “We’re experimenting with AI.” Someone is drafting social posts in ChatGPT. Someone else is piloting a chatbot for admissions FAQs. Another is tinkering with predictive models in the CRM. These efforts are well intentioned, but nearly three years into the ready availability of generative AI tools, higher ed needs to understand that dabbling isn’t enough anymore.
Teaching Climate Justice and Solutions
Faculty from the City University of New York system discuss ways to empower and educate students on climate, sustainability and green careers. Climate change is affecting the lives of college students and other young people in many ways, most directly in the form of eco-anxiety and concerns about the future.
3 Academics Share Nobel Prize in Physics
Three academics affiliated with U.S. universities have been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Tuesday morning.
Scholarship Providers Say Data-Sharing Confusion Delays Aid
Changes to the FAFSA complicated what data colleges can share and with whom. Scholarship providers say it’s made their jobs harder and delayed awards to students. The Native Forward Scholars Fund, a scholarship provider for Native American students, typically doles out aid to about 1,300 students per year through 40 different scholarship programs. But this year, those funds were delayed; students started fall classes without knowing how much scholarship money was coming their way.
Featured Gig: Digital Learning Project Manager at Notre Dame
Four questions for Sonia Howell, director of the Office of Digital Learning. I heard from my friend Sonia Howell, director of the Office of Digital Learning at the University of Notre Dame, that she is recruiting for a digital learning project manager.
Colleges Must Pursue All Legal Paths for Diversity (opinion)
They should continue to consider socioeconomic and geographic indicators in admissions, eight state attorneys general write. Two years ago, the Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to opportunity in America when it gutted access to higher education for underrepresented groups. That decision was not only legally misguided but also turned a blind eye to the deep inequities that have long shaped our education system. Our colleges and universities scrambled to find lawful tools to ensure that their student bodies still reflected the breadth of talent and promise in this country.
Higher Ed Sounds Off on Proposed Compact
The sector has overwhelmingly panned Trump’s plan to give preferential treatment to universities that commit to his policies. So have some conservative leaders. When the Trump administration proposed a compact with nine institutions last week, requesting sweeping reforms in exchange for preferential treatment, most leaders of the impacted campuses had little to say publicly beyond acknowledging they had received the proposal and were “reviewing” it.
Tapping Alumni to Be Career Mentors for Students
Colleges are orchestrating formal connections for students with alumni who can provide support as they approach graduation and prepare to launch their careers. 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.
Admissions Essays Written by AI Are Generic and Easy to Spot
In an analysis comparing college admission essays generated by artificial intelligence to 30,000 human-written essays from before ChatGPT was released, Cornell University researchers found that AI essays are highly generic and easy to distinguish from human writing.
Thoughts on ‘A Complete Guide to College Transfer’
The book is clearly written, logically organized and full of brief case studies to make the concepts concrete. For a process that seems like it should be straightforward, students transferring between colleges often run into an alarming number of hurdles. A new book offers a map around many of them.
Accreditors Encourage AI to Boost Credit Transfer Process
More than half of those who seek to transfer credit report losing credits, which is a major barrier to degree completion. But AI can help streamline the process and reduce credit loss. A group of college accreditors is backing the use of artificial intelligence to reduce credit loss during transfer, which is a major barrier to completion for many of the 43 million people across the nation with some college credit but no degree.
Banned Books Week in the Time of Repression
We need to build an alliance that crosses all boundaries and realize that unless we all stand together to defend everyone against censorship, we will all be vulnerable. 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.
ED Pushes Workforce Readiness as a Priority
Workforce development advocates are excited to see the Education Department name workforce readiness as a potential grant priority—but they have questions. The U.S. Department of Education is doubling down on its emphasis on workforce development. Education Secretary Linda McMahon recently proposed adding career pathways and workforce readiness to her list of priorities for discretionary grant funding, possibly guiding how the department spends billions of dollars.
ED Opens Door to Student Loan Cap Negotiations
The department made some progress toward its student loan overhaul in negotiated rule making, but big questions remain about borrower limitations and repayment plans. Higher ed leaders, advocates and officials appeared to walk away from the Education Department’s first round of talks on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its time-sensitive overhaul to the student loan system with cautious optimism.
A Defining Choice for Higher Ed (opinion)
Colleges should say no to Trump administration plans to condition access to federal funding on pledges of fealty to the president’s priorities. Ask people at Columbia, Harvard or UCLA how things are going for higher education, and they might rightly say that things are quite dismal. Those places have been early targets in the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to bring colleges and universities to heel.
Texas Tech Clarified Anti-Trans Policies in FAQ—Then Removed It
The short-lived frequently asked questions page only applied to the flagship campus, not to Angelo State University or the three other system campuses. After a confusing week, Texas Tech University officials offered the first written clarification on new university policies that prohibit faculty members from speaking or teaching about transgender identity.
Report: Tuition Discounts Fuel Higher Ed Skepticism
Tuition discounting is a tactic private colleges have long used to control a primary revenue stream. But over the past decade, an increasingly precarious financial picture—driven in part by stagnating state funding and tuition caps—has pushed public institutions to adopt tuition-discounting policies, too.
Duration-of-Status Rule Prompts Opposition From Commenters
Commenters from across numerous sectors say they fear that the new rule, which would require international students to get extensions to stay in the U.S. more than four years, would be a barrier for the vast majority of students. A slew of public commenters derided the Department of Homeland Security’s proposal that would restrict how long international students can stay in the country.
Indian Students Look Elsewhere After H-1B Visa Price Shock
The new six-figure fee for the visa long relied on by Indian nationals changes the conversation about study destinations, say experts. The new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas could prove to be the final straw for Indian students’ plans to study in the U.S., with other destinations set to benefit as a result.
Mike Gavin Resigns to Lead DEI Defense Coalition
Mike Gavin, the founder of Education for All, a grassroots group of community college administrators fighting legislative attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion, will step down as president of Delta College in January. He has been in the post since 2021. Gavin informed the Delta College Board of Trustees last week that he would resign to lead a national coalition focused on defending equity in higher ed.
UNC Professor Accused of Advocating Political Violence Reinstated
Dwayne Dixon, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was reinstated Friday after the university performed a “thorough threat assessment,” Dean Stoyer, vice chancellor for communications and marketing, said in a statement. Dixon was placed on leave Monday following allegations that he was an advocate for political violence.
ED Put Political Out-of-Office Reply on Staff Emails
One legal group is preparing to challenge the Trump administration’s action in court, staffers say. Wednesday morning, as the government shutdown began, chief officers at the Department of Education distributed a standard out-of-the-office statement to all furloughed staff members and instructed them to copy and paste it into their email. So that’s what they did. But just hours later, those same nonpartisan staffers began to hear that the message they’d pasted into their email account was not the message being received by the public.
UNC Professor on Leave After Alleged Advocacy of Political Violence
Dwayne Dixon’s name surfaced after fliers for a leftist gun rights group circulated on Georgetown University’s campus. Officials at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill placed Professor Dwayne Dixon on leave Monday while the university investigates his “alleged advocacy of politically motivated violence,” said Dean Stoyer, UNC Chapel Hill’s vice chancellor for communications and marketing.
Scientific Publishing Industry Faces Federal Scrutiny
Federal officials are raising long-standing concerns with research journals and the academic incentive structures propping them up. But experts say the government alone can’t overhaul the industry. Long-standing criticisms of academic publishing are helping to fuel the Trump administration’s attacks on the nation’s scientific enterprise.
Viewpoint Diversity Could Soon Be One-Sided
Giving a competitive advantage for federal funding to politically aligned colleges is not the way to improve intellectual diversity on campus. Higher ed critics say colleges lack viewpoint diversity. And to some extent that’s true. For decades faculty have skewed left politically. But there’s a problem with how we are—or are not—defining viewpoint diversity that could lead to less, not more, plurality on campuses.
White House Floats Compact for Preferential Treatment
Advocates condemned the proposal, which asked nine universities to overhaul admissions, hiring and speech policies and to suppress criticism of conservatives in exchange for more federal money. The Trump administration has asked nine universities to sign on to a proposed compact, mandating certain changes in exchange for preferential treatment on federal funding.
Whitworth Resets Tuition Amid Pleas for Cost Transparency
One Washington university is addressing families’ growing desire for cost transparency by slashing tuition in half. Such resets haven’t always worked, but some think they may become the new normal. It’s no secret that students are concerned about the cost of higher education; in a recent Inside Higher Ed/Generation Lab survey, the plurality of students (37 percent) said trust in higher education was declining because of a lack of affordability, followed closely by worries a
Contextualizing Completion Gaps for First-Gen Students
First-generation students’ enrollment rates match their peers’, but a new report found these students face stubborn graduation rate gaps—regardless of their levels of income or academic preparation. First-generation students are twice as likely to leave college without completing a bachelor’s degree than their peers, even if they come from higher-income backgrounds and come to college academically prepared, according to a new report from the Common App. The findings suggest these factors do make a difference for student success outcomes but don’t erase other barriers first-generation students might face.