Greetings from a sunny, steaming mid-Atlantic in June. I write this quickly, before a trip further south, where I’m keynoting the University of Central Florida’s Teaching and Learning with AI conference. I hope to share that speech on my AI newsletter.
On this blog, there are a series of posts in the hopper, but today I wanted to quickly respond to a prominent column on higher education’s future. Jay Caspian Kang recently shared “Eight Predictions for the Future of Higher Education” and it’s a very good introduction to the topic. Because it’s behind a paywall, I’ll summarize it here, then add some reflections.
Interesting cartoon the New Yorker added.
Kang’s framing imagines how higher ed might turn out in 2035. He starts with demographics, emphasizing Nathan Grawe’s demographic cliff model (here’s my blog post on that book; here’s our Future Trends Forum conversation with the author). He sees this as having a drastic impact: “A winner-take-all dynamic will emerge quickly, as hundreds of campuses will either be shut down completely or absorbed into larger institutions.” (Hence the cartoon, I suspect.)
He then takes Grawe still further, arguing that not only will there be fewer high school graduates, but that fewer of them will apply to college. This is based on recent history: “In 2009, seventy per cent of high-school graduates—an all-time high—went on to pursue some form of higher education. Today, the number is sixty-one.”
Another challenge is AI, which Kang sees academia struggling to deal with. He anticipates some institutions striking deals with AI companies, but the bigger problem is that faculty will be unable to stop students from cheating with AI. He adds a dark sequel: “professors will have to dutifully pass [cheating students], because the university can’t afford to lose any more students.”
Additionally, the post-COVID decline of learning in K-12 will continue and have major depressive effects: “within a few years a course that used to be appropriate for tenth graders will become the standard 200-level course in many universities across the country.”
Kang sets aside Ivy League institutions from these pressures, seeing their reputations as protecting them. He then adds this delicious line about believing in a “fantasy [that] employers hire Ivy Leaguers because of merit and not because of network effects and cultural affinities.” He identifies other survivors over the next decade, starting with community colleges:
[C]ommunity colleges should be some of the biggest winners of the next several years. If A.I. and economic ruin eliminate the middle and lower middle classes of universities, more students might decide to get associate’s degrees and then transfer to four-year institutions.
Other institutions and regions may prosper:
Some flagship state universities might also expand, whether by absorbing struggling campuses in their network or by adding more spots for undergraduates. The schools that do this will almost certainly be in the South and the Southwest, the two regions that face the least amount of demographic decline, in large part owing to their growing Latino populations.
Losers will include administrators and staff at financially stressed colleges and universities. The reason: “when it’s cutting time, it’s easier to lay off student-success coördinators than it is to eliminate the handful of professors who teach chemistry to all of your undergrads.”
What do I make of this, as someone whose professional work is all about higher ed’s future?
Kang does a good job of selecting key points. Demographics, AI, K-12 learning loss – these are major forces indeed. I’m especially delighted that he discusses the varied institutional types within higher ed; most discussions usually focus on just one tranche. You might do well to hand this article out to audiences in order to get them quickly thinking about the subject.
I would quibble with some of the points. He’s right to mention Grawe’s cliff, but that’s a one time deal, a single event anchored in the historical break of 2008’s great recession. The broader and deeper population problem is that great demographic transition working its way through most of the world, whereby we have fewer children and enjoy longer lives. Nothing is slowing this down, meaning there’s no population rebound after Grawe’s cliff. To the extent campuses teach traditional age undergraduates, that audience will keep dwindling. (Here’s one of our Forum discussions on the topic.)
Kang sees the Ivies as triumphing, but I’m surprised he didn’t mention Republican attacks specifically on that kind of university, notably directed by the second Trump administration. We’ve seen those result in high financial costs, which have translated into cuts. (I’ve been documenting the Trump campaign against the academy in these dour videos.)
The article sees institutions preferring to cut staff instead of faculty, but academics will generally view both as targets in the present and recent past. We’ve seen adjunct and tenured faculty terminated, along with lower-ranked staff and senior administrators. Much depends on campus politics, of course. (For examples, consult my latest post on closures, mergers, and cuts, which also links to previous posts in that dark line.)
Any thoughtful piece of writing elicits in some of us the desire to read more from the author in that vein, and I found that with “Eight Predictions.” I’m curious what Kang makes of the fact that a good numbers of students are adults, not teenagers. Does he anticipate colleges and universities pivot to teach more of the former as the demographic transition does its work? Or, as I’ve been urging, pivots further to teach senior citizens?
Similarly, I would add all kinds of additional reasons for financial pressures on academic institutions. Deferred maintenance looms large for some, especially if they built heavily during the low interest rates period or received major gifts without maintenance budgets. Medical costs continue to soar. Generally, the labor market tends to reward people with advanced degrees, and colleges and universities alike have hired more such faculty and staff across the full range of positions.
On top of that there’s the long-term problem afflicting public institutions (roughly two-thirds of the American system), of state defunding. Put too simply, after a mid-twentieth century high, states cut back on a per-student basis, which drove state colleges and universities to charge more and stoked up the loans crisis. My favorite quote on this come from a former president of my alma mater, the University of Michigan:
Over the past 30 years we had seen our public support decline from 70% of our operating budget to less than 6% (more specifically, state support of $322 million/year compares to the total University of Michigan budget of $5.5 billion/year). As university president I used to explain that during this period we had evolved from a state-supported to a state-assisted to a state-related to a state-located university. In fact, with Michigan campuses now located in Europe and Asia, we remain only a state-molested institution.
Naturally I’m curious what Kang thinks of some of my specific foci in the future of higher education. Does he see climate change having any impact on the sector over the next decade? What does he think of how campuses grapple with this enormous problem through their physical plants, teaching missions, research enterprises, and community/public outreach?
Similarly, I’m fascinated by the credentials arms race, with the undergrad degree now serving as yesterday’s high school diploma. In Peak Higher Ed I wrote about some aspects of this, like the paper ceiling movement, the push for high school students to pursue non-academic work, and the social problems of “elite overproduction.” All of these issues can exert some influence over post-secondary education through the next decade.
The subject of higher ed’s future is, as you can see, a very large and complicated one. There are plenty of moving parts within the sector and a whole fleet of external pressures. Bravo to Jay Caspian Kang for taking a good run at it.
Overall, many of the topline findings are quite positive. Total postsecondary enrollment in American higher ed grew by 1%, reaching 18.6 million. But there are interesting differences across the sector.
1 Findings
We can break this down in several ways, starting with degree levels. Undergraduate education was where the growth took place, as grad schools actually saw numbers decline slightly (-.1%). Public and nonprofit grad schools experienced a decline, countered only by a rise within for-profits. Within the undergraduate world it was public institutions which experienced a rise; for-profit and private institutions did not.
Importantly, that undergraduate increase was largely driven by… high school students, taking dual enrollment classes. That number soared by 9.6% for a total of 1.3 million, or about 7% of the entire American student body.
In terms of degrees sought, there were slight increases in associates (1.3%)and bachelors (1%), but the big increase by far was in certificates (10.2%).
There was an important finding about online learning. The Clearinghouse identifies a category of schools as Predominantly Online Institutions, and their numbers sagged down by 3.6%. Grad students online were stable; it was undergrad students where the decline appeared.
International student enrollment was curiously split. The number of foreign students in grad programs declined significantly, by 4.3%, especially in public institutions. Yet international students actually rose by 3% in undergrad programs.
Demographic findings tracked recent history closely. The gender divide continued, as with roughly 55% of undergraduates being women versus 40% male.* While both genders rose, there was a higher growth rate among women in in both grad and undergrad levels.
Racial trends similarly continued. Hispanic, black, and multiracial student numbers rose while white numbers declined.
This is all undergraduate. Click through for more.
There was also a large increase for students who choose not to reveal their identities.
Georgraphically, colleges and universities in the west and especially south saw enrollment increases. In contrast midwest institutions saw a slight rise while the northeast saw a larger decline:
In terms of fields of study, some patterns persisted, such as business continuing to be *the* leading major. Yet computer science dropped sharply across all sectors, a clear reaction to the AI revolution. At the same time health care fields continued to grow. In our briefing discussion we estimated around 2 million students study in allied health. (My back of the envelope number was 2039507, or around 11% of all enrollment).
NB: this is only for 4-year institutions. Click through to the Clearinghouse site for more.
2 Reflections
I was struck by the huge scale of dual enrollment, which continues to grow and seems to be the primary driver of American post-secondary numbers. If my calculations are right, 7% of the entire student body is high school students. That’s a major shift.
I’m glad to see total enrollment continue to tick upwards. My readers know the two reasons already. First, most colleges and universities depend on enrollment to pay their bills, so this is – broadly – good news for financial sustainability. (However, those total numbers mask how much students actually pay. That’s for another post.). Second, continued enrollment growth, albeit slight, shows some results for the old “college for everyone” idea.
Does this put paid to my peak higher ed scenario? Well, it certainly troubles that story. Yes, we did see enrollment decline for more than a decade, which confirmed my initial projections. But the past two years of growth suggest a rebound. If they continue we will soon recover our peak class size. If that occurs, 2012 wasn’t a peak so much as the start of a dip or reverse, which American colleges and universities eventually recovered from. We might think of circa 2012-2024 as a limited dip or depression.
How and why did we rebound? Again I’m struck by the dual enrollment movement, which seems to be an underdiscussed story. It’s not so much that, say, liberal arts colleges and research universities won American hearts once more but that community colleges and high schools built up a partnership. In my scenario I advised campuses to innovate and better serve students to recover from a fall; to the extent dual enrollment represents such a move, it’s consistent and a good thing.
Could enrollment decline again? There are several ways, starting with international students. I was surprised by the Clearinghouse numbers there, where I expected a much bigger drop. We could see a similar or steeper decline this fall, depending on geopolitics and families’ perceptions of the United States. It’s also possible that the midterm elections target higher ed, notably Republicans slamming the academy for being too woke, anti-Trump, etc., which might have some impact.
The new Clearinghouse data does clearly support my Health Care Nation scenario, which I first posited in 2014 (more in this 2025 update). In that future allied health care (the full range of health services, from nursing and surgery to dentistry, mental health, hospital administration, etc) keeps growing until it’s the leading sector in the American economy. Higher education tracks this by expanding its offerings on that score. The swelling enrollment we learned about this week is certainly consistent with the scenario. 11% of all postsecondary study is health care now, or about 1 in 9 students across the board. I don’t think this gets nearly enough attention beyond the medical fields themselves.
Last note: the geographical findings are very exciting for southern campuses, but sobering for the northeast. Recall just how many colleges and universities are in that area. I asked Clearinghouse staff to speculate, and they confirmed my guess that the demographic transition was at work.
That’s all for now. I hope to host Clearinghouse leads this fall on the Future Trends Forum to discuss that semester’s findings. In the meantime, what do you make of their latest?
*The gender numbers don’t total a neat 100% because reports were missing some students’ gender data.
It looks like ShinyHunters got into Instructure in early May, possibly April. I think the attack blew up on May 7, when the hackers posted ransom demands across Canvas instance. Instructure posted a maintenance message:
By May 9th the system appears to be working again, although much is uncertain, like the possible theft of some data, who paid any ransoms, and more.
Recovery is in process across the world, but it’s important to note how much chaos this event strewed across impacted institutions and populations. It came right at semester’s end, meaning it threw final exams, final grades, final projects, and graduations into question. The hack hit thousands of colleges, universities, and schools. I’ve seen figures estimating 40% of American higher ed are Canvas users. One notice claimed 275 million people impacted. Ian Linkletter of the British Columbia Institute of Technology called it “the biggest student data privacy disaster in history.” LMS guru Phil Hill described it as “among the larger education-sector data exposures on record.”
This hit me personally. Georgetown University, where I teach in the Learning, Design, and Technology program, uses Canvas at its LMS. My seminar had a lot of documents and other materials in that instance: an updated syllabus, extra reading list, discussion board, a string of announcements, assignment descriptions, assignment grades and comments, and more. Last week I was grading my students’ final projects when I could no longer access those materials, much less anything else from the rest of the term.
One student caught onto this before anyone else and took the initiative to email me a note plus copies of their work as links and attachments. I turned that around to request the same from all other students, and they quickly complied. I emailed them back my evaluations of their work. Meanwhile, the university IT department sent us updated, warning us to not sign into Canvas for a while, then cautiously welcoming us back as things resolved.
One of the hackers’ declarations.
Not all of my class stuff was in Canvas. Students did writing in a class blog and several Google Docs. I was able to consult those. Campus and personal emails (usually Gmail) worked fine. And campus grades were supported by a separate service, from Ellucian, which was unaffected by the outage. Plus I keep extensive class notes in a Google Doc (5400 words or so). Georgetown IT was excellent, keeping us informed. The campus then shifted some deadlines ahead a few days to give everyone time for recovery.
Back to the big picture. Where does this leave us?
Instructure took a massive reputational hit. As a hosted solution (i.e., campus IT isn’t running each instance themselves) it’s a single point of failure. Campuses trusted Instructure to maintain services reliably. This outage, especially with its timing, is a major blow to the company’s reputation.
There’s also a communications problem. The aforementioned Phil Hill posted that Instructure handled things very badly from an outreach and community relations perspective. The company didn’t share much information, especially in a timely way. Instead, “[f]or most of the week, the clearest public evidence that the incident had escalated came not from Instructure’s own public channels, but from the customers and partners forced to explain the situation to their users.” Additionally, “A public FAQ on Day Five of a confirmed-data-exposure cyber incident is not the same as a public statement on Day One.”
Phil was referring to this page, “Security Incident Update & FAQs.” Since he posted that critique Instructure’s CEO, Steve Daly, added an apology in his name and voice. It remains to be seen how people respond.
I’ve seen critiques of the hack as a result of Instructure being owned by a private equity firm, KKR. Perhaps changes to staffing and operations led to the vulnerability Shiny exploited. More to the point, maybe academics will take up this view.
I’ve also seen a lot of schadenfreude from faculty who refused to use Canvas or any LMS, instead relying on other tools. I admit to some resonance with this view, personally, as for years I advocated using Web 2.0 applications (blogs, wikis, etc) instead of an LMS. Then I advocated for open source LMSes like Moodle and Sakai.
We might also see followup attacks as hackers use whatever data Shiny exfiltrated from all of these Canvas instances. I’ve seen reports that they got some or many Canvas direct messages, email addresses, personal names, student ID numbers.
But what might colleges, schools, and universities do?
In the short term, there’s a lot of scrambling to make sure all systems work. Some schools will move key deadlines forward. I expect a flurry of phishing attacks based on whatever data Shiny obtained, doing these quickly before targets get ready.
In the medium to longer term? In America, I expect legal action, as we do love filing lawsuits. We should expect colleges and universities to revv up counsel for combat.
Campus IT may well ramp up security measures across the board. I can imagine speeding up password refreshes, doing more pen testing, expanding two-factor authentication, and offering more user education at the very least. Some may use AI for red teaming. I can also imagine IT shops re-checking all of their operations for security, including checking with vendors. Think of the audits. Think, too, of campus IT producing reports for their communities over the summer. (Please allow me this caveat: I’m not an academic technology professional, so could easily be missing all kinds of things. Let us know in the comment box.)
Will institutions lo0k hard at other LMS providers? Switching between LMSes is a major ordeal (one IT leader compared it to moving a graveyard) and academic leaders might not see it as worth the effort, especially coming *fast*, without any advance planning. That said, I expect Blackboard (Anthology) and Brightspace to make plays for more customers now. Moodle may also get a new look.
How many instructors will move away from their institutional LMS? The shock of this hack will surely send many scrambling for personal backups. One professor pondered leaving the LMS and doing something different:
I wonder if this attack will push institutions towards computing decentralization. This is an old, old story, where organizations between between centralization and its opposite. Perhaps the Canvas hack marks another turn of that well-worn wheel.
Over to you all now. How did you experience the Instructure hack? How might we respond? I’m eager to learn from you.
*LMS: also VLE, for Virtual Learning Environment.
(thanks to Donna Kidwell and Phil Long; thanks also to the hard-working IT staff at Georgetown University)
Greetings from late spring in the Washington, DC area. It’s a lovely time here as temperatures rise high enough to be pleasant, and every plant is growing or blossoming.
I’ve been working on this post for months, as winter gave way to spring. I was actually tempted to use the “April is the cruelest month” line as an introduction, but things just kept building up and pushing the post into May. Heck, this one’s already too long.
Yes, today’s post is one of my semi-regular surveys of cuts to higher ed. I’ve been scanning for institutional closures, mergers, and staff/program cutbacks for several years. My goal is to collect evidence of such reductions, assembling them in one spot for public access and use.
My focus in these posts is American higher education, mostly due to reasons of time as well as the distinct features of this nation’s academy. Today I’m adding more examples from Canada, as that nation deals with fallout from deciding to cut international student enrollment, fallout which canny Americans might pay heed to.
I’ve divided what follows into the usual five parts: institutional closures, mergers, cuts, and potential cuts to come, with some reflections at the end.
1 Closures
In early April a report held that Anna Maria College (private, Catholic; Massachusetts) might be out of funds. One week later the college’s Twitter/X account announced it would shut down by semester’s end.
Also in Massachusetts, Hampshire College (private liberal arts) announced it would close, citing dwindling enrollment and resulting financial problems. This semester it enrolled “about 625 students, [Hampshire’s president, Jennifer] Chrisler said, about half the school’s enrollment in the early 2000s.” In March, a regional accreditor warned Hampshire it could be placed on probation:
In a joint statement with Hampshire, NECHE said it based its decision on four factors: Hampshire’s recent enrollment drop (from 842 in Fall 2024 to 747 in Fall 2025), a land sale recently falling through, the school’s inability to refinance its $21 million bond debt by next September, and its declining unrestricted endowment for operational support.
Hampshire, which is located on some 800 acres in the pastoral Pioneer Valley, missed its enrollment goal by nearly half this fall, enrolling just 168 new students instead of 300. The beloved and beleaguered liberal arts college was already facing scrutiny from creditors and had received a notation that institutional resources were not where they needed to be, a warning that NECHE has repeatedly continued and affirmed.
The administration is now rapidly seeking to sell its property to pay off more then $24 million in debt.
(This one hits me personally. I have several friends from graduated from Hampshire. I once gave their library a small grant. I have been in touch with faculty there for years. I’m very sad and worried about these people.)
Turning to the midwest, Lourdes University (Franciscan, Ohio) will close this month, according to its trustees: “Lourdes has faced significant and ongoing challenges related to declining enrollment, rising operational costs, and a funding model that is no longer sustainable… Continuing operations beyond this academic year is financially unsustainable.”
from the Lourdes University homepage
Also in the midwest, the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management (for-profit) will shut down this summer, citing declining enrollment. Excelsior University will help teach out students. They announced they would offer a leadership program, although it won’t count for credit, and I’m not sure how that will work.
In Canada, Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology will close. Its official announcement cited massive national cuts to international student enrollment as the main driver, with foreign student numbers plunging by more than 50%. According to Renée Cable, the provincial minster for Advanced Education and Training Minister, “[f]or this institution, their revenue has dropped more than half in the previous year and then this year again.” Red River College Polytechnic will take over all MITT college classes.
Back to the United States: I’ll add one echo of a 2024 closure. Albany County put up the College of Saint Rose’s library for auction.
2 Mergers
Curry College (private; Massachusetts) will acquire the medical programs of Labouré College of Healthcare (also private; Massachusetts). Labouré suffered from declining enrollment and financial issues.
In Canada, St. Lawrence College (applied arts; Ontario) and Fleming College (ditto) will merge. The avowed goal is to create a richer experience for students. Implicit is budget savings. The linked article reports faculty and staff surprised by the announcement. Analyst Alex Usher is skeptical of the announcement, pointing to its lack of specifics and the apparent financial imbalance between the two campuses.
Following up on one merger: as Kean University (public, New Jersey) starts absorbing New Jersey City University (public), NJCU seems to be terminating a lot of people. A local account cites “a source familiar with the layoffs,” who estimates 151 layoffs: “33 faculty members, including 24 tenured and nine non-tenured professors, received pink slips. The list of axed employees also includes two librarians, six non-tenure-track teachers and 110 professional staff members.” More details are consistent with the economic model of asymmetrical mergers:
In some cases, entire staff offices are being wiped out, such as registration, transfers, admissions and academic advisors,” the source said. Those functions will likely be performed by Kean employees after the merger is complete.
(I wrote about NJCU decline into acquisition last year.)
3 Campuses cutting programs and jobs
Let’s shift from closing and merging campuses to cuts within them.
Santa Monica College (public community college, California) laid off 60 staff while letting 10 vacant positions remain unfilled. Additionally, “the board [also] adopted amendments that open up all classified management and academic administrator positions — which number 49 and 46, respectively, according to a spokesperson — for potential elimination.” The reasons? A structural deficit, exacerbated by declining enrollment.
The University of New Haven (private, Connecticut) told some number of non-tenured faculty that the institution wouldn’t renew their contracts for fall semester. The reason is a massive enrollment crash, driven by one major cause: “the change in international student enrollment means the university has gone from a student body of over 9,000 students to now slightly above 6,000 students over the past two years.” As a result,
Jens Frederiksen, president of the University of New Haven, has said the change means that, despite actions to realign operational expenses, the university “must adjust to the new reality” and a “16-17% reduction in overall revenue.” Frederiksen said that in a memo to students and staff that was obtained by the Courant. The exact amount of revenue loss has not been named.
Rutgers University (public land-grant research; New Jersey) cut nearly 40 adjunct faculty who teach around 100 classes between them. The adjunct union said there was no good reason to do so.
The College of Wooster (private liberal arts; Ohio) reorganized its administrative operations, cutting 22 staff members and closing at least a dozen unfilled positions. The reasons given are enrollment declines and a persistent deficit. The college’s student newspaper interviewed the president, who said, among other things, that the administration was “trying to ramp down our staffing structure and our staffing expenses in line with our revenue and student body size.” More on enrollment from president McCall:
So then you look at the picture and you say, ‘okay, we used to have 2,200 students, right?’ We started this year — there are always fewer students in the spring than in the fall, but we started the fall with 1,700 students. And we’re at, for the spring, you know, under 1,500. That’s 700 fewer students, that’s a third less, practically, than five years ago. So it also, intuitively or logically would make sense, that you should need fewer people if you’re serving fewer students, right?
In Canada, George Brown Polytechnic (applied arts, Ontario) made cuts in March then more in April. 133 workers lost their jobs, as far as I can make out, due to drops in international student enrollment. “[Y]ear-over-year full-time enrolment fall 29 per cent to 15,889,”
In December Mohawk College* (applied arts, Ontario) cut 65 jobs, including 20% of administrative staff and shutting down several programs. In March it terminated 62 more workers, while ending open searches for 10 more positions. Voluntary separations have also occurred. The reason was, as with George Brown, a serious international enrollment decline and financial crunch.
Brock University (public, research; Ontario) laid off roughly 45 staff. According to a communications officer, “[t]he goal is to create clearer roles, improve workload balance and streamline the support provided within Faculties.”
Declining international enrollment is apparently the main reason for this action.
4 Impending or likely cuts
There were also news accounts which described what I view as potential cuts to come.
Pennsylvania State University (public, land-grant research) proposed ending 49 undergrad programs, due to low enrollment. There is no word yet on potential labor implications.
Portland State University (public, research; Oregon) is considering cutting back or ending a series of departments due to a structural deficit. Units on the block include Conflict Resolution department, the Portland Center (“a small study abroad department for students from Japan”), and University Studies.
Saint Augustine’s University (private, historically black, Christian; North Carolina) filed for bankruptcy after years of financial problems, dwindling enrollment, and losing accreditation. The university described this as a move towards greater sustainability – “a deliberate and strategic step to advance the University’s long-term sustainability while addressing current financial realities” – but will not contest losing accreditation in the short term, and seems to be transitioning to a different type of academic institution:
SAU will instead focus on supporting students through teach-out agreements, developing non-degree certificates and apprenticeship programs, and building a pathway toward reaccreditation.
Leaders of the University of Providence (Catholic, Montana), after declaring financial exigency in December, “expect to make recommendations for programs to close or pause” shortly.
Lane Community College (public; Oregon) is considering shutting two academic programs and terminating 20 jobs as it faces a substantial financial deficit.
Appalachian School of Law (private, Virginia) is seeking financial support from its county government, after a decade of low enrollments and running deficits.
In 2023, the university downsized employees due to a budget shortfall. In May 2024, the university missed a bond payment, signifying a cash flow crunch. A second round of layoffs took place in June 2024. In July 2024, the university closed its locations in Dubai and Panama.
However, Pennlive notes that after those cuts, HU “finished its 2025-2026 fiscal year in the black.”
Union College (private liberal arts; New York state) now faces a $12 million budget deficit, due to lower charitable giving as well as an enrollment decline: “Union’s first year class (the class of 2029) has 465 students enrolled, a 110 person decrease from three years ago.” Projected forward:
Iowa State University‘s (public, land grant) provost recommended closing ten degrees and consolidating thirteen others. They include undergrad programs in “Bioinformatics and computational biology, Environmental studies, Interdisciplinary design, Religious studies, Women’s and gender studies” as well as grad degrees in “Accounting analytics, Biophysics, Energy systems engineering, Interdisciplinary graduate studies, Toxicology.”
Around a dozen tenured faculty out of 200 at Kenyon College (private, liberal arts; Ohio) took an early retirement offer. The reason for the campus to make the offer? “Between 2019-20 and 2025-26, there was a 6.5% decline in enrolled Kenyon students, yet an 8% growth in total faculty.” Note the official projection of enrollment changes and resulting changes to personnel;
The University of North Texas (public, research) offered buyouts to 40 professors in an effort to cut a $45 million deficit. The savings from that move would mean “UNT does not expect to issue ‘university-wide layoffs.'” Reasons behind the financial pressure include a decrease in state funding and a decline in international enrollment.
Syracuse University (private, research; New York state) will shut down 93 of its 460 degree offerings. What kinds of programs? According to Higher Ed Dive, “41 are bachelor’s degrees, 33 are certificate programs and 19 are graduate degrees.” Which programs? According to the New York Times, “a spreadsheet provided by the university showed that the humanities and the fine arts represented the largest share.” The reason given: “program inventory clean-up… the goal of the restructuring was not to cut costs.” Few students are impacted: “only 258 students, of the more than 20,000 at Syracuse, were enrolled in the programs that are ending.” Officially, no job cuts will follow: “no positions had been identified for elimination, the message from the provost said.”
The New School (private research university; New York City) continues to discuss cuts. A March official blog post described declining enrollment (“approximately 20 percent”) contributing to financial problems, yielding a credit rating downgrade. That post announced reducing the number of internal colleges to two, reducing the campus physical footprint, voluntary retirements and separations (reducing headcount by 7%), and moving to cut more jobs, both unoccupied and currently staffed.
The Chronicle of Higher Ed then reported seeing an internal email calling for a 15% personnel cut. A provost and finance vice president wrote: “In certain areas, reductions will primarily affect staff roles; in others, the number of full-time faculty will be adjusted based on closures relating to program scale, demand, and long-term viability.”
The University of Texas-Austin (public research) is closing and moving multiple programs and positions. Programs to be closed and relocated include, according to the AAUP, “African and African Diaspora Studies (AADS); Mexican American and Latina/o Studies (MALS); Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS); and American Studies departments in the College of Liberal Arts.” They will appear together instead in “a Social and Cultural Analysis department,” according to the Texas Tribune. Additionally, “UT will separately consolidate Germanic Studies, Slavic and Eurasian Studies, and French and Italian into a new Department of European and Eurasian Studies.” One way cuts might unfold: “The university has begun a curricula review to determine which majors and minors to continue offering under the two consolidated departments.”
Ohio Dominican Universitymissed a bond payment in March. Bloomberg reports the campus suffered a 15% enrollment decline from 2021 to 2025. ODU leaders stated to a local newspaper that:
“There are no discussions about closing the university,” the university said. “Conversely, university trustees and administrators are working diligently to improve operational efficiency, streamline costs in a challenging market for universities nationwide, and assuring a strong path forward for ODU.”
A solid majority of core faculty at Lesley University (private; Massachusetts) voted to strike for better pay and working conditions. They also seek a particular point in a settlement: “a successorship clause that would retain their union contract in the event of an acquisition or shutdown. ” The desire for such a clause comes from faculty distrust of the administration, as that Cambridge Somerville Independent article recounts. We might also consider a turbulent recent history for the campus, as Wikipedia describes:
Janet L. Steinmayer became university president in July 2019. Since 2019, the faculty has passed three no-confidence votes against university leadership… In fall 2023, Lesley laid off 30 faculty members and 20 staff, largely from the undergraduate College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The university also eliminated some ostensibly low-enrolled academic programs, including all social science majors, and announced an overall restructuring of the university, branded as “Better Lesley.” As of 2024, enrollment had dropped to less than half its 2014 level.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln (public land grant) cut more than 50 staff and faculty, following the program closures I noted back in February. The Bugeater, a local AAUP publication, publishes many stories about the human and institutional costs.
Some public institutions are cutting programs because their state governments directed them to. Ohio, for example, issued orders to its public campuses to close programs by this principle: “Ohio colleges and universities are required to cut any undergraduate degree programs that produce on average less than five degrees annually over a three-year period.” (That local article has helpful lists of programs some institutions have drawn up for closure, far too numerous to repeat here.).
On a related note, Indiana’s governor signed a law requiring that state’s public institutions to close programs whose graduates become “low earners” in their careers. Higher Ed Dive cites two impacted people to give some examples of how this might play out:
An anthropology student at the University of Indiana Bloomington told the institution’s student newspaper that the bill could pave the way for lawmakers to eliminate his entire department. A lecturer with the university’s Parks, Recreation, and the Outdoors program also noted that state pay for seasonal workers at the Indiana Department of Natural Resources is “notoriously bad,” setting up his program to qualify as low earning.
5 Reflections
This round of cuts, closures, and mergers stems from the classical problems my readers are very familiar with. All but one are financial in nature, and so many of those occur because of enrollment issues, either flat headcount numbers declining or a reduction in net revenue. Once again I remind us that the supermajority of American colleges and universities depend on student enrollment to keep the doors open, far more than government funding or the vanishingly few who have the privilege of extreme endowments.
One major reason for those enrollment problems is the decline in the number of international students. So far I’ve found data on this to vary quite widely, but the direction is fairly clear: fewer foreign students taking classes in the United States, for evident political reasons (the Trump administration; fears of anti-foreigner bias and violence). We should expect a sequel to this dip in the oncoming fall term, as the politics have not changed.
One reason for those Canadian campus closures and mergers is financial strain caused by a massive decline in international enrollment in that nation, sharper than what the United States has experienced so far. This might be a salutary experience to monitor for the next few years in America, if the present trend continues. From the Globe and Mail account linked above: “In the past two years, there have been more than 8,000 job losses and more than 600 program suspensions across the college sectorin Ontario.”
Another reason for these cuts is politics. We’ve already noted the Canadian decision to cut international students. We’ve also noted the Trump administration’s various actions which have reduced that number for this country. I would ask readers to pay attention to Republics in states which they lead, as some are clearly active in trying to reshape their colleges and universities. I noted Ohio and Indiana up above as two important examples. In previous posts I’ve pointed to Florida. In last week’s Future Trends Forum PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman recommended we follow Texas closely:
I’ll add the Republican insistence that foreigners are taking spots which would otherwise have gone to American students doesn’t seem supported by this evidence.
The humanities are well represented among faculty and program cut, but not exclusively so.
Note that job cuts in this post hit all faculty apart from tenured professors. Note, too, that campuses cut staff across the board, including senior administration.
I can’t help but see these developments as examples of my grim Peak Higher Ed scenario. Ever since the book came out in January people have been sharing stories, as they see either the whole sector or their part of it in decline. I would caution readers that this post only touches on cuts etc., not stories of stability or growth.
Summer is nearly upon us, which means campus leaders will be following “melt” (students deciding not to accept their admission after all) closely. Fall enrollment data will be crucial to decision-making. With most students and many faculty stepping back from physical campuses, this is a classic time for administrative actions. And as the fall midterm elections draw nigh there is plenty of room for state and federal politicking over higher education.
I’ll close with three requests. First, remember that while I wrote about these stories with an emphasis on statistics and structures, these are all stories about human beings and damages to human lives, from students to staff and faculty.
Second, let me know if these reports are useful. They take quite a bit of effort to compile.
Third, please reach out to me with more stories and evidence of such developments. Many of you have done so openly (see acknowledgements below). Some prefer to contact me privately, which is understandable in our grim academic climate. Please DM me on various socials or email me directly right here.
Please take care everyone. My heart goes out to all students, faculty, and staff hit by these moves or anxious of what might come next. It’s a rough time. We should help each other.
Colleges and universities should close teaching and learning centers because they threaten good teaching, That’s the argument of a recent Chronicle of Higher Education column, and I wanted to address it here.
I’ll summarize the substance of “Why Pedagogy ‘Experts’ Are Wrong: In offloading pedagogical expertise to nonscholars, colleges degrade the classroom,” as it’s behind a paywall. Next I’ll share my negative reactions, followed my trying to take a more temperate stance. I’d really like to hear from readers.
Before beginning, I should put my cards on the table, as my professional background gives me a perhaps atypical take. On the one hand, I am a university professor and have taught in higher ed for many years: as a grad student; at a liberal arts college, like the author of the column under question; at a nonprofit, leading workshops; now at a research university. Throughout those positions and years I’ve been committed to improving my own teaching by a variety of means, from classroom experimentation, using emerging digital technologies, taking workshops, talking with colleagues, interviewing practitioners, and publishing on the results. All of this should make me a receptive reader to Paul Schofield’s call for a return to faculty teaching faculty how to teach better.
On the other hand, I have had many connections to teaching and learning centers. Among my many relationships with nearly all aspects of academic institutions I have done a lot of work with teaching and learning centers and related faculty and staff. To pick just one example, we hosted Mary Wright, a leader in that world, on the Future Trends Forum in 2024:
I mentioned my current teaching, which is in Georgetown University’s Learning, Design, and Technology MA program. Some of those graduates have gone, or will go on, to work in or adjacent to teaching and learning centers in multiple nations. And LDT is deeply intertwined with the Center for New Designs in Teaching and Learning (CNDLS) office.
The latter experience drove me to fume at Schofield’s article. I’ll portray that rancor below, then try for a more balanced response.
1 Putting teaching and learning centers on the chopping block: the argument
Bates College Associate Professor of Philosophy Paul E. Schofield wants the reader to understand that teaching and learning centers are a bad mistake for higher education. They degrade rather than improve pedagogy, and as a result should be closed.
Schofield’s article begins by describing an institutional arc. Teaching and learning centers appeared on campuses through donor intervention, not by organic faculty demand, and grew in influence and power over time. Such centers eventually supplant, then replace the pedagogical development work faculty members previously did on their own. This yields two problems: first, the centers’ scholarship is often poor; second, faculty stop doing pedagogical work within their own departments. “[I]t is those who work and teach in these specific fields who are the real teaching experts.”
Schofield then expands his critique. Faculty using teaching and learning centers entails outsourcing a key function best done by professors themselves. It also involves too many metrics, crushing the full rich complexity of teaching into a few quantitative measures. This is a form of value capture:
when an institution’s attempts to quantify or measure something of significance cause a person’s rich, subtle values to become flattened and distorted — often so much so that those values transform into something alien or even hostile.
The results are poor, as faculty “are being acculturated by staff outside of their discipline to talk and teach in the same, insipid, homogenized ways that faculty in every other discipline do.” Centers crush the important differences between academic disciplines.
The article ends with two calls to action. Faculty can just skip teaching and learning centers:
Faculty members can simply reclaim the various roles they’ve outsourced. We can resist using pedagogical jargon to characterize what we do; we can ignore spurious advice based on spurious studies; we can spend less time attending workshops about how to teach students and more time actually teaching them.
Or campuses can just shut centers down: “teaching and learning centers should be considered good candidates for the chopping block.” (I think discussion of the article has largely missed this clear call to fire a lot of academics.)
2 Some critical reactions
So what’s wrong with “Why Pedagogy ‘Experts’ Are Wrong”?
My first response was that the article offers a weird caricature of the centers for teaching and learning world. Everything I’ve seen of the reality has been of thoughtful people, deeply committed to teaching and learning, embedded in scholarship, humble and caring. Unlike Schofield’s picture of a campus-capturing Goliath, they instead to be lightly funded and overstretched Davids, trying hard to scale up their work. Instead of being Powerpoint-wielding robots they are people devoted to listening and relationship-building. Centers staff are uniformly eager to learn and improve.
Indeed, the picture Schofield sketches offers a nearly cartoonish opposition. On the one hand there are malign, soulless, ill-informed and -educated staff who crush teaching and learning. On the other, good-hearted professors energetically focused on improving their teaching, housed on departments keen on student learning. It’s easy to pick out counterexamples from life which oppose either of these images, as I’m sure the reader can do. I can easily think of centers staff with advanced and terminal degrees as well as faculty members who are not interested in changing their teaching practice. Some of those centers staff are also faculty members, and some – many – faculty are not full time employees (see below). But this simple, fictional binary is what powers the article; questioning it undoes the edifice.
I mentioned my own experience and the reader’s because that’s the sole evidentiary basis for the article: the author’s account of his experience. That one person in a single department in one college apparently speaks for the immense diversity of roughly 4,000 American colleges and universities. There isn’t even a gesture towards national studies, nor any awareness of institutions other than an elite liberal arts college. We could consider research universities, for example, which place teaching firmly in second place. We could also consider the largest segment of the teaching professoriate, which is not, unlike Dr. Schofield, tenured faculty members. Instead, adjuncts teach more than anyone else and generally lack the deep or cozy departmental immersion the article celebrates.
Adjuncts are, sadly, utterly absent from the column, which offers an interesting picture of privilege. The author opposes tenured faculty to centers staff, who are usually staff, lacking the protections and power tenure can afford. To readers attuned to questions of positionality and power, it looks like a simple case of punching down. And punching down hard – don’t forget the author’s call to fire these people.
More, I simply don’t buy the argument that teaching and learning centers are somehow black holes on campus, dragging hapless faculty to their doom. (The gravitational metaphor is Schofield’s.) These centers lack the ability to prevent professors from having conversations with each other, from reading the scholarship of teaching (in Boyer’s famous phrase), from consulting with peers elsewhere. Indeed, they support and celebrate faculty doing such work beyond the center. Here’s what Trey Conatser, Assistant Provost for Teaching & Learning and Director of CELT at the University of Kentucky, has to say:
We don’t have anything close to that authority by many orders of magnitude. Like, none of us do, anywhere. And we will be cheering when we learn that faculty have started a teaching excellence committee, or a pedagogy reading group, or a course redesign initiative, or whatever, in their own department. The idea that a professor would feel so intimidated by a CTL that they would hesitate to discuss teaching with their colleague in the office next door is laughable.
Weirdly, Schofield ultimately agrees at the end, undoing his argument, when he recommends that faculty who can’t fire centers staff just ignore them. If not listening is so easily done, where’s the threat?
Further, the lite binary sketched out in “Why Pedagogy ‘Experts’ Are Wrong” manages to miss other campus other units. I was surprised to not see the library make an appearance, especially for a humanist author. Libraries play all kinds of teaching roles, from teaching information literacy and library use to supporting students in their research. Educational technology departments also go missing here, even though they perform so many key teaching and learning functions, from teaching faculty and staff to use software to supporting classroom tech, running multiple educational applications to researching the implications of new digital tools and issues, just to name a few. I’m not sure what Schofield would make of other centers, such as those dedicated to quantitative literacy (surely of some interest to a Liebniz scholar) or GIS. I can hazard some guesses about how the author might direct the ax, but that’s all I can do, given the material.
One more point. Making educational materials accessible (in terms of disabilities) is a major problem in terms of ethics, potential lawsuits, and federal policy. Right now teaching and learning centers, along with libraries and educational technologies, are often campus leaders in trying to get this important work done. Faculty alone have not done so, despite some good intentions. The problem is a hard one and clearly needs a collaborative approach to solve.
3 Listening further
Let me pause my critique here. When I read “Why Pedagogy ‘Experts’ Are Wrong” I was furious. I shared the thing across social media and vented various complaints in all directions. Quite a few folks agreed with my howls of outrage. Unsurprisingly I found many instances of people issuing their own takedowns, notably on LinkedIn.
Then I received a lot of pushback from faculty online. I disagreed with nearly all, but instead of arguing with them I wanted to listen hard and take their critiques seriously.
(I haven’t gotten permission to share quotes, so will paraphrase here.)
Many who shared Schofield’s views spoke not just of their respective centers (none referred to national studies) but instead saw those staff as part of larger university systems they disagreed with. Like Schofield they saw centers as pressing for pedagogies focused on metrics, rubrics, standards, and learning outcomes – which these faculty disliked – and that those came from on high, either the generic “administration” or from specific senior figures (a dean, a vice president) and policies (accreditation efforts). These discussants didn’t share my view of centers staff as lonely, politically unprotected workers, but as elements of institutional mechanisms imposed from the very top. (None added the outside influence Schofield mentioned.)
Along these lines, a few interlocutors disagreed with me flat out on the power of centers. These faculty members reported enormous pressure to take center programs, to collaborate with center staff, and administrative threats if they did not.
Others echoed the article’s emphasis on faculty supporting faculty members. Several referred to steeping themselves in decades of teaching experience and wanting to work with others in a similar position. In contrast, they preferred to not work with centers staff whom they saw as having little to no such experience.
Several focused on the metrics argument, telling me what they valued in teaching went beyond those measurements. They feared centers-style teaching gutted their pedagogy.
Overall this pushback seemed to me tp describe another, related version of Schofield’s binary. On the one hand they saw themselves committed to teaching and wanting to learn from similar folks. That teaching is largely qualitative and psychological, a powerful intervention in students’ lives. On the other hand they saw centers as tools of oppressive administrations, integrated attacks on the abilities, nature, and identities of professors. Schofield didn’t use this language, but it feels like a labor argument about who gets to do what work under what conditions, and how we define a given academic profession.
I’ll stop here, as this post is nearly as long at the column it addresses. I’d really like to hear from you all, especially faculty members and centers staff.
(thanks to many fine folks for talking with me about this, including David Ebenbach, Maggie Debelius, Kevin Gannon, Tom Tobin, and the Remaking the University group)
Greetings from Earth Day 2026. The holiday was first celebrated fifty-six years ago, back in 1970.
I wanted to share some general thoughts at the global level, then some reflections on what this might mean for the academy.
First, a vision of the Earth from the Artemis II mission earlier this month:
From NASA: “Artemis II Captures the Terminator Line art002e000190 (April 2, 2026) – A view of Earth taken by NASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman from one of the Orion spacecraft’s four windows after completing the translunar injection burn on April 2, 2026.”
Right now, it seems that the state of the Earth system and humanity within it is, at best, mixed, or rather learning towards dangerously bad. Overall, we’ve crossed 7 of 9 of Rockström’s planetary boundaries. To pick one of the lot, ocean acidification is getting worse with no signs of slowing down.
Climate change is worsening via just about every measure. For example, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published its latest State of the Global Climate report. The findings are, sadly, unsurprising. Global warming continues. Oceans soak up a lot of the heat. The polar cryosphere is degrading and arctic rivers increasingly rusting.
We could examine recent temperatures and find that in the United States this past March was the second-highest on record (since the 1850s) and the fourth-highest worldwide. In India, Delhi is nearly 3 degrees warmer than it was in 2015. In the American west, winter was so dry and hot – “nine states had their hottest winter ever and five their second-hottest,” according to Scientific American – that spring, summer, and fall are under intensive drought conditions and fire warnings. Meanwhile, a big El Niño-Southern Oscillation looks increasingly likely, which would boost temperatures still further. The thing might mount up into a super El Niño.
And yet nearly nobody is talking about this. Mainstream news rarely touches on the Earth system’s crises. Many politicians around the world are silent. In America Earth Day as a holiday is getting just a little more attention than Arbor Day.
And that’s on the natural, Earth systems side. On the more human side, the Iran war continues to spasm along, dragging the global economy for a ride. Shortages of fossil fuels, fertilizer, helium, and more are starting to impact various parts of the world. The European Union is scrambling to avert fuel shortages. Other nations, like Myanmar, are bracing for a double whammy of fuel and food problems. Jet fuel prices are soaring, which might ground flights and aviation firms. Fuel hoarding is rising. Even if the US, Iran, and Israel agree to a real peace soon, which seems like a serious “if,” there’s a lot of damage working through the global economy. Not to mention the other wars grinding along in Sudan, Russia/Ukraine, Afghanistan/Pakistan, Gaza, Lebanon, etc.
Connecting the geopolitical and Earth system stresses yields some interesting dynamics. China continues to push for Xi’s model of ecological civilization. Its new Five Year Plan called for continued decarbonization. In contrast the American government is plunging rapidly into a fossil fuel mode, rendering us into being another petrostate. The Trump administration even paid a company one billion dollars to *not* build a wind farm.
Those who still take climate change seriously might view the Persian Gulf war as a goad to move to renewables, including nuclear, to get away from what increasingly appears as a complex, fragile, and chaotic fossil fuel system. In contrast, others might double down on fossil fuels and try to secure supplies, seeing themselves as not having built out sufficient solar, hydro, wind, and storage ecosystems.
The Berggruen Institute’s Nils Gilman argues that we’re seeing a new type of global war unfolding, one pitting petrostates (Russia, Iran, the US) against electrostates (China, the EU). Attitudes and policies about the climate crisis now drive alliances and inter-state competition in this view. Alternatively we might be wading more deeply into a more conventionally understood World War III:
we are now in an interconnected world that has a number of shooting wars going on (e.g., the Ukraine-Russia- Europe- U.S. war; the Israel-Gaza-Lebanon-Syria war; the Yemen-Sudan-Saudi Arabia-UAE war that also involves Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, and other related countries; and the U.S-Israel-GCC-Iran war). Most of these wars involve major nuclear powers, and there are also significant non-shooting wars (i.e., trade, economic, capital, technology, and geopolitical influence wars) that most countries are in. Together, these conflicts make up a very classic world war that is analogous to past “world wars.”
(I hope to post on these two models soon) Yet up above I had the temerity to refer to the situation as possibly “mixed.” The reader might wonder what I’m smoking, given what I’ve just said, but I can add some reasons for optimism.
On the climate front, consumer demand and commercial supply for solar power continues to build. Solar farms, home installations, balcony solar keep growing around the world. Battery and wind technologies and installations are growing. Electric vehicles are still a going concern, with some nations, notably China, producing and improving them. There are plans afoot for geoengineering (for example). While leaders like Trump try to haul nations back in time, popular and elite demand looks like it’s propelling us forward.
There might be a political opening here. As McKibben wrote today, building on the American Democratic party’s current focus on affordability:
All you have to say is: a quick move to clean energy drives down prices. If I were preparing ads for congresspeople, I’d definitely have one about how a solarized Australia will, in June, start providing electricity free for three hours every afternoon to all its citizens. Talk about affordability!
On the geopolitical side of things, there’s the possibility that both Washington and Tehran have strong incentives to each declare victory and settle this war soon. Each is being hit in terms of reputation, war making capacity, and, more importantly, finances. Allies are pressuring each nation as well, fearing chaos and economic damage. Both leaderships are also grimly determined, yes, but each has a lot to gain by settling.
So why does all of this matter for higher education?
Let’s focus on global warming for now. I’ve published a model outlining the ways climate change impacts the academy, and how academics might respond. Briefly, the intersections include the physical campus, teaching and learning, research, town/gown relations, and colleges and universities in the world.
For years I’ve been making the case for the importance of this relationship and the active role the academy can play in the civilizational, Earth system crisis, and still do. Consider how the worsening crisis increasingly impacts our campuses and populations, for starters.
Since the last Earth Day I’ve seen very little climate action and less discussion about it within the academic space. The reasons are fairly clear, and some are longstanding: faculty, staff, and students feeling overwhelmed; burnout; a sense of powerlessness; fear of political blowback; having other priorities. I think the Democratic party’s decision to soft pedal the topic also has some impact.
Yet there is work going on. Quietly, campuses which made presidential pledges to reduce carbon footprints continue to do so. Individual buildings designed for the climate era go up. Scholars do their global warming research across the curriculum, from the natural sciences to the humanities, social sciences, and arts. Faculty continue to teach the topic also across the disciplines.
There are examples, if we look. Here’s one report of a West Los Angeles College professor adding climate change to their English 101 class. (Hechinger has done solid climate reporting; I’m a big fan and they deserve your support.) Grand Valley State University faculty, staff, and students walked out to demand that institution take more climate action steps. In March a bunch of us taught and held events together in the Worldwide Climate and Justice Education Month:
On a personal level, I continue my climate research, teaching, and action. Climate change appears in all of the classes I teach at Georgetown University, from geoengineering in my technology seminar to global warming games in my gaming class. Climate appeared in a big chapter in my newest book, Peak Higher Ed (Johns Hopkins University Press: 2026). I continue to research the intersections between climate and AI.
The New American Colleges & Universities interviewed me on the subject for their podcast, then reran the show this very Earth Day:
In my life, progress has been uneven. I continue to eat a vegan diet, which is the most pro-planetary one available. I bike around town and take trains whenever possible. But America’s rail system is, to put it kindly, a mess, and I end up having to fly or drive far too often when Amtrak falls short. We still haven’t bought an EV because our fossil fuel burner is still running strong. We didn’t install solar yet because of tricky finances, but hope to set up balcony solar. Like I said: uneven but active.
I speak on climate change wherever I go professionally and politically. This rarely elicits pushback these days, but instead tends to quiet whichever room I’m in. I persist, though, and connect with person after person, networking and building for the future.
Persistence, epochal danger, hope, darkness, and networking – happy Earth Day, everyone. Let’s work for a better one in 2027.
This is a quick note on one aspect of the Iran war’s impact on academia. It’s a brief post because I’m traveling for work this weekend. The usual caveats about trying to understand a fast-moving situation obscured by layers of fog of war, censorship, bias, etc. apply:
It seems that an Israeli strike hit the Iran University of Science and Technology (دانشگاه علم و صنعت ایران,) in Tehran. It’s not clear if American forces played a role. It’s also not clear what damage or casualties resulted. Here’s one X/Twitter post claiming to show some impact:
An Iranian legal academic, Helyeh Doutaghi, posted photos and a written account of the attack on X/Twitter:
…parts of the campus lie in ruins, classrooms shattered, hallways choked with dust and shattered glass.
I saw the offices of professors burned. A newly renovated building, where students gathered for programs, for socializing, for life, destructed.
One student, tearfully, told me: “My professor’s office was still burning a little. That’s where I used to wait for office hours. To ask questions. To appeal my grade.”
One of Doutaghi’s photos; click through for more.
There are other social media descriptions of the attack, such as this X post by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
One reason given for the the Iran University of Science and Technology attack is that the Iranian military allegedly used the campus for nuclear weapons research, according to University World News. Another potential reason is that Iranian security forces may be staging on educational campuses, according to the Jerusalem Post. This is part of a new trend of hitting post-secondary institutions, as Israeli strikes hit two other Tehran campuses, Malek Ashtar University and Imam Hossein University, five days ago. The given reason there was “their military use by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as a space research centre.”
Iranian responses to the Iran University of Science and Technology strike came quickly. A Tasnim post quotes Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeperson Esmaeil Baqaei on the attack, offering an interpretation of it:
“In fact, the American-Israeli aggression against Iran continues to reveal its true objective: to cripple our country’s scientific foundation and cultural heritage by systematically targeting universities, research centers, historical monuments, and prominent scientists… Countering Iran’ ‘nuclear program’ and ‘imminent threat’ were nothing but vicious pretexts — mere fabrications designed to conceal their real intention.”
Then the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) stated that Israeli and American universities in the region are now legitimate targets for Iranian responses, as per another Tasnim post. I’ll quote the statement in full in case it gets taken down or altered:
Warning to the criminal rulers of the US!
The invading American-Zionist forces, by bombing Tehran University of Science and Technology, have once again targeted Iranian universities in their bombings.
The unwise rulers of the White House should know that from now on, all universities of the occupying regime and American universities in the West Asia region will be legitimate targets for us until two universities are struck in retaliation for the destroyed Iranian universities.
We advise all employees, professors, and students of American universities in the region, as well as residents in the surrounding areas, to stay at least one kilometer away from the mentioned universities to protect their lives.
If the US administration wants its universities in the region not be among the two targeted for retaliation in this stage, must by 12 noon on Monday, March 30, Tehran time, issue an official statement condemning the bombing of universities.
And if it wants its universities in the region to not be hit thereafter, it must prevent its savage allied forces from attacking universities and research centers; otherwise, the threat remains valid and will be carried out.
And there is no victory except from Allah, the Exalted in Might, the Wise. (Quran 3:126)
That’s a pretty clear threat to attack two universities in the region, unless the Trump administration apologizes, which seems unlikely.
Further, the Jerusalem Post reports that “[a]ccording to two Iranian civilians who talked with The Post, security forces have begun assembling in locations such as schools and universities in an apparent effort to deter attacks.”
That’s all for now. Like I said, I’m swamped today. For more discussion of the Iran war’s impact on academia, our Future Trends Forum discussion may be of use.
My heart goes out to impacted students, faculty, and staff. I welcome any amendments, reflections, or corrections, especially from people in the region.
How is the Iran war impacting higher education? What effects might unfold as the conflict continues?
That was the subject of Thursday’s Future Trends Forum video discussion. We hosted three internationally-based experts to guide us: University World News journalist and military historian Nathan M. Greenfield; University College London professor (on secondment from the Welsh government) Huw Morris; global post-secondary education analyst and consultant Alex Usher. We also read aloud an account of how the war is impacting Iran’s neighbor Armenia from American University of Armenia professor Brent Anders.
The conversation considered many concrete examples of the war’s impact across multiple nations. We also explored options of how things might change over the short and medium term future, from evacuating students under fire to switching instruction online, changing international enrollment patterns, rising prices for key operational commodities, teaching the war, supporting students, and more.
I was very pleased by the hour. It was an example of collective or collaborative intelligence, as many people from different vantage points put together pieces of the overarching story. We also thought together in a convivial, supportive way – no small feat, given how enormously contentious the war is. The results add up to an account of the conflict’s impact on higher ed in a way and to a depth I haven’t seen elsewhere.
I’d like to share the discussion here in two ways. First, here’s the full recording so you can just watch or listen:
Second, here is a summary of the key points, plus topics which surfaced in the typically lively chat conversation. I’ve added hyperlinks to resources, as well as a couple of questions at the end which we didn’t get to.
Much depends on how the war continues in time and space. The longer it persists, the greater the potential impact worldwide. Looking ahead, residents of attacked nations may attempt irregular actions against their attackers, such as cyberwar (one apparent attack already happened), guerrilla campaigns, or information operations. The Old Dominion University shooting is one potential example. As one participant put it, “universities (well out of “war” zones) have been seen (by some) as potential or actual targets for “terrorism” (or activities that get called such).” The longer and more destructive the war gets, the more likely we’ll see migration out of conflict zones, which impacts academia in two ways: impacted academics moving out and non-effected campuses having the chance to host migrants.
We’ve seen campuses being physically damaged and their populations injured or killed: in Lebanon, by Israeli strikes; in Bahrain, by Iran, among others. In one incident Qatar’s Education City evacuated residential students under threat of imminent missile/drone attack. This may impact the reputation of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) campuses which many held to be safer than others.
Some campuses have either paused operations or moved instruction online because of military threats or due to key institutional prices (energy, for example) spiking upwards given Iran’s blockading the Straits of Hormuz. Examples we mentioned institutions in Bangladesh and the Phillippines. Some students might not be able to access online education (for example, in Pakistan). As costs rise, university prices are likely to go up. A related financial impact is a potential reduction in the number of international students, as students are caught by travel restrictions or fear attending risky colleges and universities. Students and their families may redirect their academic ambitions away from key players in the conflict, such as the United States. Governments may encourage or discourage study along similar lines.
There are other political options available now. Governments fearing protests, dissent, and unrest may crack down on their populations, including academics, as we’ve seen in different ways in Iran and Britain. Iranian students may mobilize in demonstrations as they mourn those killed earlier this year. Fall elections in several nations (Israel and the United States, for example) may well change depending on how politicians position themselves concerning the war and how voters perceive them. On another political level, ratcheting stresses on the petroleum ecosystem worldwide might boost interest in renewables.
Governments and political actors might target academic institutions over war issues, such as members of war-fighting nations working in university positions or responding to pro- or anti-war protests (one example of an academic singling out another for their Iranian nationality). Further, the Iran war might encourage other nations to launch their own campaigns, which could (among other things) further depress international study. One participant suggested that the war could cost Trump domestic political capital, weakening his ability to carry out his academic agenda.
Other campus developments and possibilities: we discussed ways of teaching the war in its historical content and in full complexity, with some echoes of Vietnam-era teach-ins. Teaching in general may become more difficult as students deal with anxieties over the war; we cited an example of Israeli pupils. Conversely, some participants cited examples of students refusing to discuss the war. Academic meetings scheduled for endangered sites may move or shift online. (This one in Qatar came up, but I can’t get the link to load.) Academics (faculty, staff, students) will speak out on the conflict through various media; the Wall Street Journal posted a sample of student attitudes. Participants shared resources for holding difficult discussions on campus from U Conn and Georgetown.
Will the war impact academic use of certain technologies, as Iran announced it targeted a series of American digital businesses? Is the US tech stack a vulnerability?
I had two questions we didn’t get to. First, should we expect a price spike or shortage of research supplies, such as helium? Second, can we apply any lessons learned about academic populations and institutions in danger from the COVID-19 experience?
Thanks to our guests and the Future Trends Forum community for thinking together on this awful topic. Thanks, too, to people who couldn’t make the live session but offered ideas and reflections: Brent Anders, Doug Belshaw, and others.
Today’s post is a bit of a detour from my usual writing. I have a series of posts on enrollment, webinars, climate change, and more in the pipeline, but I really need to get this one off my chest.
This is a story of an awful air travel experience. American Airlines epically fouled up what should have been a simple trip. They did so at length, then utterly failed to make good.
On Monday, March 2nd, I was scheduled to fly from Reagan National Airport* (in Washington, DC: code named “DCA”) to Toronto Pearson International Airport (the delightfully coded “YYZ”). In Toronto I was to give a speech the following day to the University of Toronto’s Sustainability School, entitled “Universities on Fire: Academia Confronts the Climate Crisis in the Polycrisis.” It should have been a simple flight, around 90 minutes, giving me plenty of time to meet my hosts, have dinner, sleep, then prepare for more the next day.
Instead it took me about 26 hours to get there.
On Monday I arrived at DCA around 11:30 am for a 3 pm flight. I wanted to get there early since it was an international flight, meaning extra security to go through. There were also some external factors impinging, such as the US government shutdown which cut pay to TSA officers, and the Iran war was starting to hit global air travel.
I went through security smoothly and got some lunch before heading to the gate. Soon American Airlines started issuing delays: 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, another 15 minutes. Then they made a gate change, which to my travel-seasoned mind is often a bad omen. Finally we started boarding. Around 75% of the passengers walked down the jet bridge when the gate agents called for a stop. They had apparently made a security error and needed to deplane everyone, do some procedure, then re-board us all.
We groaned and complied, Folks hauled their carry-ons back to the gate area, sat, and waited while some opaque procedure transpired. Then we boarded again. The plane rolled out into a holding position, because the boarding snafu cost us our position in line. We waited on the tarmac. Snow started falling. We waited long enough that the plane needed to be de-iced, so we then waited for that process to be arranged, occur, and finish up. Then at last the plane rolled forward.
That sense of progress rapidly fell apart when the captain announced a mechanical error was afoot. An exterior door was apparently opening on its own (!), so repairs were needed. Passengers groaned as the plane peeled away from the main lanes, then waited for a while until we could dock as a gate and deplane. For the second time.
Now tired and frustrated, we passengers filed into a gate area and waited. Gate agents had nothing to offer: no information, no sympathy, certainly no food or drink vouchers. Time passed. The sun set. 8, 9 pm came and went.
Finally came the announcement: the door was good to go. We boarded the plane for the third time, joking about deja vu, and the plane rolled away from the gate. Again we waited to get in line. Again the plane needed de-icing and waited thereby.
De-icing, round 2
Finally, de-iced and repaired, the plane rolled into position to wait again… only for the pilot to tell us that by the time we’d finally land in Toronto Canadian customs would have shut down for the night. Our much-delayed flight was, therefore, canceled.
We slowly rolled back to the gate. Here, amidst the cries of passengers, occurred the one positive development. I whipped out my phone and called American Airlines. The automated system claimed it’d be two hours to talk to a person. Not good. I switched to the American mobile app and in a minute was able to rebook myself a flight for 10 am the next morning. I double and triple checked, getting a digital boarding pass.
The tired passengers and plane finally reached the gate. We filed out to ask gate agents for succor. Out of around six workers only one showed sympathy. They all denied our requests for drink, food, and hotel vouchers, citing weather as the sole cause for problems. When we pointed out that, in fact, American staff had given us other, non-meteorological reasons, they shrugged and claimed that’s all they had. We asked why there was that customs scheduling problem – surely they flew to Toronto every day and should have known this when we departed? The responses were more shrugs.
It was late at this point, around 11 pm, and I needed sleep. I considered taking an airport hotel and rejected it for price reasons. I thought about going home, since I live about 90 minutes from DCA, so going back to my own bed for a little while was an option. But it would take time to get back home, and probably take at least three hours to fight through morning rush hour traffic to return to the airport, plus spending time in security, meaning I’d have gotten maybe 2 hours of sleep… I decided to just sleep in the terminal. So did dozens of other people, each of us setting up near a power outlet for our devices. National Airport believes in hostile architecture, meaning there were no benches and each chair was designed to keep you upright without relaxing. So we all tried various permutations, like sleeping on tables, before everyone settled on the terminal’s floor to fitfully doze.
I emailed my Canadian hosts to update them on the massive delay. Then I recorded a short video about events so far and posted it to YouTube. You can get a sense of the story and a glimpse of my haggardness here:
DAY 2
Thought the night I kept waking up in the intense glare of lights. Airport workers also made noises doing their rounds. Around 6 am I staggered up from the carpet for good and went to check on things. My 10 am flight was still scheduled, according to the overhead displays and the mobile app. I found its gate, settled down in a seat, fired up my laptop and returned to work. I was gleeful when I saw the right plane pull up to our gate. I estimated that the 90 minute flight would land me in Toronto with enough time to at least hit my hotel for a shower and change of clothes.
The American Airlines service desk nearest our gate, unstaffed for the duration of our troubles.
Then American announced a delay. Then a second one. And then they described a mechanical error – another door, the main one this time. Gate agents had no idea how long it would take. All of us from the previous flight groaned. We groaned again when we saw that a baggage handler had hauled our luggage to the plane and left it all on the tarmac. As the rain started coming down, I thought about my clothes, as well as the stack of books I had packed. Gate agents refused us food vouchers.
Our luggage, marinading in rain.
Finally gate agents announced that maintenance had fixed the door. We boarded the plane – our sad group’s fourth attempt. The plane pushed away from the gate and waited on the tarmac. I watched the time tick away and realized that when I reached Toronto I wouldn’t be able to make the hotel in time for my talk, but would instead have to go right from YYZ to the speech venue. I emailed this update to my hosts as the plane took off.
The flight was uneventful. We landed around 2:30 pm. My speech was due to start at 3:30. I raced through the airport, had good luck sliding through customs, found my luggage (soaked), then ran for a taxi (faster than Uber) by 3 pm. The driver said it would be hard to get to my destination in time, but he’d try.
After bustling through traffic we reached the library venue at 3:29. One professor was waiting for me. I paid the taxi – receipt timestamped 3:31 – and ran down a hallway to a lecture hall. There my hosts were waiting, as was a crowd. Wearing the clothes I’d slept in, minus a tie, hair fairly messed up, I took the stage and began the talk. Politely I began in French.
And so
The events I had actually traveled for were excellent. My presentation went over well. I met and talked with many students. It was inspiring to see so many students, faculty, and staff working on climate change. I learned a lot about the university and appreciated the powerful Fort Book library:
The astonishing rare books reading room at the Robarts Library.
Meanwhile I spent some time pleading with American Airlines for help. I reached out via email, phone, and Twitter/X to get satisfaction, explanations, refunds, anything. The airline stonewalled. At every turn American claimed weather beyond their control was entirely to blame, and so they owed me (and others) nothing. I repeated what their own workers had said, the two mechanical problems, the bad boarding, the customs problem, and the representatives denied all of it. It was very much a “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” encounter.
My return trip on Thursday wasn’t so horrendous. Yes, it was delayed several times. The boarding process stopped for a while without explanations. The plane was packed. The flight was turbulent enough to stop any service. I arrived at DCA much later than planned, but was able to take the Metro towards home.
I’m posting my story here out of sheer frustration. American Airlines screwed up royally and refuses to admit it. They won’t try to help the passengers whose days they trashed. For that incompetence and arrogance, this is a record.
*I am old and political enough to abhor saying “Reagan airport.”
A quick post today, as I juggle a vast pile of projects and horrendous travel (post to come): some friends asked me how I get news on the Iran war, so I thought I’d sketch out the practice.
Here’s my current system. Consider it an an hoc system of information/digital literacy practices.
One principle I follow in structuring all of this is that of the classic futures scanning method. I try to organize multiple, diverse perspectives. I also look into, or through, multiple schools of thought, disciplines, and methods. I’ve love to hear your suggestions in comments.
Websites
I regularly scan what I think of as top level news websites, including Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Al-Jazeera, the Guardian, and various continental European sources. These give me quick updates on events, while also serving as a useful glimpse into what various nations and organizations are thinking. Some of these are free and open, while others I access through my university or pay for by subscription.
There’s a good amount of useful and/or interesting content on X/Twitter (here’s me). Many official announcements from around the world occur there, plus people sharing open source intel to various degrees of bias and nerdery. In contrast, Bluesky is more useful for progressive, antiwar, anti-Trump commentary.
I also follow Trump’s Truth.social feed. It’s an import source, of course, both for tracking Trump’s various thoughts as well as the presidency’s information strategy, although reading it gives me a headache.
Podcasts
I regularly listen to the better news podcasts, like Reuters and BBC, along with NPR for a quick headline sketch. I also listen to deeper, more analytical programs from various perspectives, such as School of War, Monocle’s Foreign Desk, Foreign Affairs, China Talk, Alternate Shots, Ones and Tooze, Times of Israel, Munk Debates, and Doug Henwood’s show.
Messaging apps
I follow several Telegram channels, which can be a swirl of news and rumors. I also connect with some friends and scholars there.
Individuals sharing and reaching out
All kinds of people ping me individually across just about any platforms. Emails, Facebook DMs, YouTube comments, Signal notes, all cross my transom, as do in person conversations, sharing their thoughts and observations. I reach out to some individual experts for their views. I also try to stay in touch with friends, colleagues, and students in and near the war zones, again using whichever tech works for them.
What I’m not using
To keep up with the Iran war I’m not using anything in print (paper newspapers, magazines), as they either lag behind too much or are more easily accessed digitally. I don’t listen to the radio, although podcasts are close. I continue to shun tv news as it offers nothing to me except time wasting and shallowness, but I’m considering checking in on Fox News, in order to get a better handle on Trump. That will probably give me a migraine.
Some social media platforms aren’t very useful on this score. In my experience Mastodon doesn’t cover current news very much. LinkedIn tends to avoid politics. Some friends recommend YouTube commentaries and interviews but my schedule doesn’t let me watch them, especially one hour plus videos.
I haven’t looked into Tiktok for Iran war news because I don’t really use the app. As a good American I only use Whatsapp a little, and am not sure how to turn it to geopolitical information-gathering.
One possibility in my mind: we could do a Future Trends Forum session on the Iran war’s impact on higher ed. How does that sound?
