Cornell University makes a deal, but not a compact, with the Trump administration

Posted on November 7, 2025 by Bryan Alexander

This will be a quick post, as it describes a just-happening current event:

T0day one of America’s great research universities struck a deal with the Trump administration. Cornell agreed to take certain actions in return for federal favor.  Here’s the official statement by president Michael I. Kotlikoff.

Those actions include presenting the government with a lot of student data:

Cornell shall provide the United States with anonymizcd undergraduate admissions data consistent with 34 C.F.R. § 100.6 and similar regulations broken down by Cornell’s individual colleges and schools, race, grade point average, and performance on standardized tests, on a quarterly basis, in a form permitting statistical analyses for each year of the Agreement.

Cornell Flickr by joeyz51

Cornell also pays out $60 million, one half to the government, plus the other half going to set up agricultural services:

Cornell shall invest the sum of Thirty Million Dollars ($30,000,000), payable in equal installments, over the three years following the Effective Date, in research programs that will directly benefit U.S. farmers through lower costs of production and enhanced efficiency, including but not limited to programs that incorporate A I and robotics, such as Digital Agriculture and Future Farming Technologies.*

The university promises to ask questions of Jewish students and about antisemitism in its campus climate surveys.  It also agrees to share information about foreign funding, clearly tied into geopolitical concerns:

Cornell will comply with reasonable and lawful requests from the United States for information related to foreign funding sources. Cornell understands that its foreign funding reports must be submitted in a timely manner, must accurately indicate the true country of origin of the foreign gift or contract, and must accurately identify whether the foreign source is a governmental or nongovernmental entity… Cornell will, as needed, engage experts on laws and regulations regarding sanctions enforcement, anti-money laundering, and prevention of terrorist financing (including laws and regulations applicable lo sanctioned countries and individuals) and will adopt, modify and enforce policies and procedures designed to ensure compliance with such laws and regulations applicable to Cornell.

Lastly, Cornell accepts the Trump administration’s thinking on civil rights: “Cornell affirms its commitment to complying with federal civil rights laws.” It’s not spelled out further, but I’d infer this includes opposition to DEI and transgender rights.

In return, the government agreed to cease investigations into the campus, to “[p]ermanently close any and all pending Investigations and compliance reviews by DOJ, HHS, and Ed. regarding Cornell’s compliance with anti-discrimination laws.”  It also restores funding: “to this Agreement, all Terminated Grants to Cornell from HHS, including the United States Public Health Service and its constituent agency, NIH, DOD, USDA, and other federal agencies, are hereby restored by the United States.”

President Kotlikoff describes the settlement as having advantages for his campus, such as not being found guilty of federal crimes, keeping academic freedom alive, and maintaining institutional autonomy.  His statement begins by celebrating the return of $250 million in frozen research funds.  In contrast, secretary of education McMahon reacted thusly:

The Trump Administration has secured another transformative commitment from an Ivy League institution to end divisive DEl policies. Thanks to this deal with Cornell and the ongoing work of DOJ, HHS, and the team at ED, U.S. universities are refocusing their attention on merit, rigor, and truth-seeking – not ideology.

These reforms are a huge win in the fight to restore excellence to American higher education and make our schools the greatest in the world.

Her colleague, attorney general Pam Bondi, offered similar comments to Fox News:

Recipients of federal funding must fully adhere to federal civil rights laws and ensure that harmful DEI policies do not discriminate against students… Today’s deal is a positive outcome that illustrates the value of universities working with this administration — we are grateful to Cornell for working towards this agreement.

What might we make of this?

It’s part of a pattern whereby the Trump administration pushes demands on campuses until they agree to terms.  It’s the fifth such, according to the New York Times, following treaties with by Brown University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia.

Some have described this as politicized extortion.  Perhaps the clearest statement along these lines comes from American Association of University Professors (AAUP) president Todd Wolfson, quoted in Inside Higher Ed:

The Trump administration’s corrupt extortion of higher ed institutions must end. Americans want an education system that serves the public good, not a dangerously narrow far right ideology that serves billionaires.

Depending on how this plays out on campus, it’s another example of government-driven reduction of DEI and transgender efforts in higher education.

Meanwhile, the Trump team’s compact remains unsigned.

I welcome additions and thoughts by everyone, especially those at Cornell or with legal experience.

(campus photo by Jo Zimny)

*That part of the document also contains a long paragraph of university history, which I found interesting as well as an odd thing.

 

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What I’m doing with social media and related platforms in late 2025

Posted on November 6, 2025 by Bryan Alexander

Recently several people have asked me how I currently use social media.  It’s a good question, as it hits on politics, technology, and personal practices, so I thought I’d share my experience here in this post-Halloween week.  Writer Warren Ellis recommends we share our tools and practices, and perhaps that’s a good idea. I also want to aim this post at the Reclaim Open 2025 conference, with its focus on blogging.  Hello, Reclaimers!

Here I’m going to focus on what I do with the stuff, personally and practically.  I’m not going to get into media criticism or reflection on broader issues of technological analysis.

Generally, I use a good amount of social media for a range of purposes.  Professionally, I discover new ideas, have conversations, and learn from various folks.  From a futurist’s point of view the socials give me a quick way to scan for topics and languages of a given moment, helping me peer into emerging phenomena. Personally I keep in touch with a lot of friends from various times and parts of my life.

Social media users in millions. 2025, Statista.

To be fair, all of these reasons are firmly grounded in years of practice and were widely known back in the Web 2.0 days.  What changes for me is largely details of platforms and interactions with participants. I shift my behavior as a given system changes how it operates. For example, I learned not to share URLs in Facebook or Instagram posts, as those platforms stupidly dislike links. Instead, I add them to comments immediately after making a post.  As for people, every week sees me adding or cutting follows, depending on all kinds of details: if a person stops posting, or shifts their topics to ones I’m not interested in, I’ll drop them. I follow new people as I find them, sometimes based on recommendations.

Which platforms do I use now?  Blogging remains central to my work.  I try to post on my site twice a week, but my 2025 schedule has made that a challenge.  As usual, the record of posts reveals shifting interests. Over the past two years I’ve been writing more about politics as well as cuts to academic institutions, alas.  My book writing intertwines with my blogging.  The new book, Peak Higher Ed (due out this winter from Johns Hopkins) sprang from a 2013 blog post.  I shared research for my previous book, Universities on Fire (2023), on the blog, posting about climate change and the academy.  Notes for two new book projects, on webinars and on ideologies of the future, keep appearing here as I noodle on them.  This writing lets me test out ideas and research, eliciting feedback, and also pegging each item to the public web for later use.

Formally these blog posts keep getting longer, despite my best efforts.  I’ve always tried to add images to the walls of text; now I’ve been sharing more of my photography on the blog (for example).  Otherwise I hunt for images on Flickr, hoping for Creative Commons-licensed pictures to use. (for more on Flickr, see below)

I love comments and cherish each person who writes here, but their frequency has been declining, especially when I post about climate change or politics.  This is probably due to the blogosphere’s decline in favor of newer platforms.  Or it might be my recent interests have shifted away from my audiences’.   Alternatively, people do read the site (top posts get thousands of clicks) but don’t feel like commenting.

Beyond the blog, I carry its posts over to my Medium site, which tends to be a bit quieter. I haven’t found much Medium writing about academia, so I’m pleasantly surprised when my posts about that world get noticed.  Interestingly, my future oriented materials somedays win a lot more notice.  I should write more frequently on this.

As a reader, I consume many blogs, usually through an Inoreader RSS account. I subscribe to too many and usually fall behind, but love the ease of keeping up with so many thinkers.  I can also track ideas and stories as they move across multiple blogs.  I make a point of following people on opposite sides of issues where I can – for example, folders for political writers on the left and those on the right.

What other social media do I use?  Let’s pair up opposites.

I headed to Bluesky when it launched and it’s now my Twitter replacement.  It’s where I share quick thoughts and links and scroll through some accounts of interest.  The trending keywords/phrases are sometimes a neat snapshot of global news, albeit mostly through a left/liberal filter.   On the other hand, I still post and read at X/Twitter.  The number of people I follow had dropped greatly since Musk bought and renamed it, but there are still enough there that it’s worth my time.  As with Bluesky, X can be a useful snapshot tool, if tending to be through a filter which is partly (but not entirely) conservative, partly sports crazed, ditto bitcoin.

I returned to Mastodon and gradually got some joy out of it, although it took many efforts, switching from server to server, and recalibrating my expectations to a much lower setting.  It’s a good way to converse with some friends and colleagues, mostly in the educational technology/OER/progressive space.  It’s too idiosyncratic to serve as a trend tracker.  On the other hand, I’ve been trying to increase my LinkedIn time.  Conversations there also include ed tech but extend to other aspects of college and university operations.  It’s a decent way to connect with colleagues, as designed.

With a mixture of sadness, self-awareness, and some honest pleasure I report that Facebook is where I experience by far the greatest number of interactions with other people.  It’s a very flawed place, of course. The main page feed manages to block all kinds of things, including major life events and some but not all political posts.  I despite Facebook’s resistance to the humble URL. But some of the groups I’m in are genuinely rewarding. Some of my posts get dozens, then hundreds of comments from people, and I similarly enjoying comments on others’ posts.  At times it’s like the BBSes of old.

As with my RSS habit, I make a point of maintaining a broad Facebook church. Folks in my orbits there are from a staggering variety of political positions: sitting city mayors, anarchists, Greens, nationalists, antiracists, libertarians, feminists, Democrats, Republicans, gun owners, anti-gun activists, and I think a few monarchists, not to mention others.

Facebook does have issues with my professional work. It’s hard to share my research and whatever I make of it (videos, live events, articles) most of the time. The platform seems to think I’m a commentator about politics, food, technology, culture, and cats.

Facebook’s sibling Instagram isn’t one I have much success with, although I keep at it.  I enjoy some of my follows, between friends, some art accounts, and some comedy ones. I try to post every day or two, but there’s little traction unless I share photos of my hairy and disturbing self, so perhaps I should turn my Insta-work more towards the autobiographical.

Let’s push the social media boundary a bit.  Beyond these famous platforms, where else do we digitally socialize?

I would consider Goodreads to be such a place.  Mostly I use it to share notes on what I’m reading, jotting down impressions and quotes somewhat in the commonplace book style.  I enjoy some friends’ reviews.  Similarly, I’ve recently taken to posting movie reviews at Letterboxd, although I haven’t gotten fully into the habit of doing so just yet.

I continue to use some classic Web 2.0 tools.  I post photos to Flickr, which I find a fine place for displaying and organizing images, although I rarely hear from other users there.  Similarly I post URLs to social bookmarking sites Pinboard and Diigo, both of which are very useful.  I regularly turn to them for links I’ve stashed there.

Reddit strikes me as social media, and I use it somewhat.  There are a string of groups I follow for multiple interests, but I don’t post much.  I’m unusually consumer-oriented in that space.  Mostly Reddit falls behind for me as not as high a priority as the others.

Do we include email newsletters as social media, despite email predating Web 2.0 by a generation?  If so, that world has taken off and I’m along for the ride.  I follow a staggering amount of newsletters, mostly published via Substack, along with a series of others, all across a wide range of topics: academia, climate change, progressive politics, journalism, movie reviews, etc.  I write one now, AI, Academia, and the Future, which is where nearly all of my AI and robotics research goes. That’s become a valuable place for me, professionally.  I can share what I’m working on, get feedback, and make connections with a growing audience.  Some of subscribers actually pay for the privilege, for which I’m very grateful. As an independent academic, this helps keep me going.

Beyond emails, if we include video as social media, then YouTube is where I spend increasing amounts of time.  As a user this is where I get the lion’s share of my music, thanks to my eclectic tastes.  It’s also where I follow some creators, some professional and others connecting to different parts of my life (cooking, humor, politics, weirdness).  I archive tons of playlists for many reasons.  The Future Trends Forum archive just passed 457 recordings.  Since February I’ve been vlogging about the Trump administration’s campaign against higher ed.  I add other videos, too, trying to offer more about the future and some of my ideas.  YouTube finally monetized my channel, so this work is starting to pay off, literally.

This might seem like a lot, so for a desperate attempt at balance I’ll mention social media platform I’m not using.  I tried Threads (which always makes me think of this) for a few years but it never worked for any of my purposes.  I’ve never found Pinterest something I could do.  And Tiktok, well, my students ask me to make stuff there and I do admire the elegance of its video editor, but I dislike the feed structure and keep getting appalled by what I find therein.

Beyond social media, I’m also fairly active with several messaging platforms.  I have daily conversations on Signal and Telegram with various friends and groups, plus Discord, when I remember it.  As an American I keep forgetting to use Whatsapp, to the amusement of people who live everywhere else in the world.  As a bad American I’m not a Slack user – I keep forgetting to fire it up and get so little reinforcement for it elsewhere. These venues are good for various degrees and expectations of privacy, as well as for the traditional benefits of chat: quick and informal conversations.

Stepping back, what to make of all of this digital stuff?

Overall, what I’m currently doing has value for me. As you saw above, these various combinations of venues, following, and creating bring professional and personal benefits.  The connections, done right, work for me.  It’s worth the investment in time and thinking.

Generally, there’s a lot of segmentation. I see different people in each social media platform. There isn’t much overlap, although a few friends – hello George Station and Alan Levine – will sometimes greet me on a couple on the same day. Generally, each one is a different space: a separate audience, a different rhetorical situation.  I sometimes cross-post, but adjust each iteration to the individual context. I don’t often share what I’m doing in one venue with another, except with blogging and Substack; honestly, I don’t know if that connects with significantly more people.

That segmentation isn’t something I bridge with any application.  None suits me for that purpose now, so I have a socials tab cluster on each browser, and a socials screen on my phone.

As part of my practice I regularly adjust parts of these networks.  I add, delete, or adjust the position of follows, as mentioned earlier, as they and/or I change.  I reorganize how it all works: adding folders if possible, changing up playlists, altering the sequence of a list, and so on. I try to streamline each experience. This seems like an underappreciated part of social media life, but it’s essential, I think, especially when one’s feeds become unpleasant or stale.

I don’t follow celebrities, although some of the people I track have different degrees of fame.  This is a major use of social media and yet it’s never worked for me. I’ve never been bitten by the celebrity culture bug, nor do I feel myself having any parasocial relationships. I prefer to follow people I know or whose work I respect.

One more thought: it seems like I lean into some of these socials for interaction with other people, and others for noninteractive posting – storage, really.  I’m not sure if there’s a name for that second category, but it works for me for now.

What do you make of this account, readers?  Are there platforms I should dive into or give up on?  Any practices you’d suggest?

 

 

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More on Trump’s “Compact” with higher education: rejections and expansion

Posted on October 23, 2025 by Bryan Alexander

Earlier this month I wrote about the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” That post appeared fresh off the announcement. Since then some developments have occurred, lately with increasing speed.  I’ll summarize them here, adding links to analyses along with a bit of my own.

To recap: the Trump administration pitched an agreement to a select group of nine elite colleges and universities.  It asked Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Arizona, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, the University of Virginia, and Vanderbilt University to agree to certain internal changes in response for more favorable federal treatment.

Things have been happening since, especially over the past two weeks.

The compact’s text wasn’t publicly available when the news first broke, but folks have published it since.  Here’s one copy.  Here’s another, posted to a Reddit. And here’s a third, hosted by a conservative outlet. There’s also a Wikipedia page, naturally, which looks useful. Higher Ed Dive now has a compact tracker.

Institutional responses started appearing in small numbers after the compact’s announcement. Two faculty senates voted measures opposing the compact, those of the University of Arizona on October 1 and of the University of Virginia on October 3rd.  Also on the 3rd came a short statement by Dartmouth College’s president, Sian Leah Beilock:

I am deeply committed to Dartmouth’s academic mission and values and will always defend our fierce independence.

You have often heard me say that higher education is not perfect and that we can do better. At the same time, we will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves.

I think Beilock is the first president to speak against the compact.  A week later MIT’s president Sally Kornbluth came out openly against it: “with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.” Several days later Brown University’s president, Christina H. Paxson, stated that her campus “is respectfully declining to join the Compact.”  Brown’s student paper also came out against the proposal. Recall that Brown signed a deal with Trump earlier this year.

At the same time some academic associations also expressed opposition to the proposal. The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) issued a deeply critical response including passages like this:

Universities and colleges have one mission: to advance knowledge. Faculty carry out the mission by conducting research and teaching students. The knowledge they produce and circulate is independently assessed by professional peers. Interfering with that process by forcing knowledge to pass through a political filter is a tactic adopted by the Soviet Union and other authoritarian states. The White House is dressing up its compact as a reasonable corrective to what it views as problems in campus culture. Let no one be deceived. This proposal imposes government censorship on academia. It is anti-American, and it weakens our democracy by devaluing academic expertise.

The head of the American Association of University Presidents (AAUP), Todd Wolfson, repeatedly expressed his opposition.  For example, one of Wolfson’s Bluesky posts reads: “Join Together and Reject Trump’s Loyalty Oath for Higher Ed-Penn, USC, Vanderbilt, University of Virginia, University of Arizona, UT-Austin, MIT, Brown & Dartmouth.”  It offers this graphic:

Trump AACP Join or Die 2025 October

The AAUP also launched a public petition calling on campuses to refuse the deal.  AAUP then joined several other academic groups (Campus Climate Network, College Democrats of America, Higher Education Labor United (HELU), Indivisible Project, Students Rise Up, Sunrise) in hosting another petition which frames the compact as an oath of loyalty to Trump.

In the political realm, California’s governor ordered that any state college or university which signed onto the compact would lose state funds.   Newsom seems to be the only state leader making such a move that I can find.

In the wake of such refusals, silences, and zero agreements, President Trump then broadened his proposal immensely.  On October 12th he offered it to all higher education institutions in a Truth.Social post worth quoting at length, to get a sense of the discourse and ideas he sees as part of the compact:

To those Universities that continue to illegally discriminate based on Race or Sex, we will continue our current efforts to swiftly and forcefully enforce Federal Law. But for those Institutions that want to quickly return to the pursuit of Truth and Achievement, they are invited to enter into a forward looking Agreement with the Federal Government to help bring about the Golden Age of Academic Excellence in Higher Education. They will agree to follow Federal Law, and protect the Civil Rights of ALL Students, Faculty, and Employees on Campuses. They will stop racist Admission Policies, and put an end to unjust and illegal discrimination in Faculty Hiring. These Institutions will commit to High Quality Standards, an Intellectually Open Campus Environment (including the protection of Free Speech and Debate), Institutional Neutrality, major steps toward Affordability for Students, and an end to the entanglement of Foreign Money in the Finances of American Universities. Americans deserve to be treated in accordance with their demonstrated achievements and potential, and upon regaining this fundamentally American Value, our Nation will be unstoppable. We will once again have Universities that develop the talents of our amazing young people to lead lives of Success and Fulfillment, cultivate a Love of Country and a Culture of Achievement, and help make all Americans proud, safe, prosperous, and free! [all caps in original]

Several days later Northwestern University’s interim president offered an ambiguous statement: “I want to do a deal with the federal government… I don’t want to get into suits with the federal government.”  In contrast, the University of Pennsylvania rejected the compact on October 16th.  At the same time the University of Southern California’s interim president also refused it.  On the next day the White House hosted a group of academic leaders, presumably to encourage them to sign up, but to no avail.  Education secretary Linda McMahon posted this to X/Twitter afterwards:

McMahon on White House meeting 2025 Oct

Right after that the University of Virginia refused the offer as did Dartmouth.  Then the University of Arizona also demurred, posting additionally “a Statement of Principles to the Department of Education.” As best I can tell two of the original nine have not yet responded, at least publicly: the University of Texas-Austin and Vanderbilt University.

How are other campuses responding?  The New York Times reports on a quiet, ill-defined meeting of academic executives who discussed the question:

when the leaders of 10 schools not included in the White House’s solicitation — including Arizona State, Baruch, Cornell, Virginia Tech and William & Mary — were asked, at a gathering in New York this week, who among them would sign the compact if asked, no one lifted a hand.

Meanwhile, there has been a steady flow of commentary on the compact campaign, most of it skeptical or simply opposed. Marc Rowan (CEO of Apollo Global Management) wrote a New York Times editorial justifying and defending the compact.

Critics include Henry Farrell (political science, Johns Hopkins) who argues that the Trump administration’s plan was based on hoping for public pressure on universities and colleges to agree to the deal. In turn he, like the AAUP, calls for unity among academic institutions.  Tim Snyder (history, now University of Toronto) pleads with us to sign the AAUP petition. Jan-Werner Müller (politics, Princeton University) also supports sectoral unity, being concerned about campus fragility, and concluding with this moving paragraph:

Precisely because they have been losing court cases over free speech and visas for foreign students, Trumpists now seek to entrap universities in a deal that effectively removes the protections of federal law and gives the administration arbitrary power over them. The carrots serve to lure institutions of higher learning into a dark alley where, rather than just waiting with a big stick, the government can put a gun to their heads at any time.

Institutional leaders also spoke out, offering their analyses. Erwin Chemerinsky (dean of law, University of California- Berkeley) interprets the compact as extortion. Michael Roth (president, Wesleyan University and great Future Trends Forum guest) cites Chemerinsky and views Trump’s pitch as part of a broader campaign against civil society, aimed at arrogating power and attention to the president.  Joseph Fishkin (law, UCLA) in a powerful analysis finds that the compact gives exceptional powers over participating universities to the Department of Justice.  Michael Ignatieff (rector and president,  Central European University, 2016 to 2021) describes the effort in terms of a Trump who “decided that the way to secure power as a group is to take charge of the commanding institutions of intellectual life.”

I also want to praise a thoughtful analysis by sibyledu on my last post on this subject:

It’s preposterous, but also par for the course for this administration. It gives us an explicit statement of the administration’s goals, but characteristically in vague ways that allow it to interpret it however it wishes. It defines “academic freedom” as the right to say conservative things, rather than the right to say anything in pursuit of learning. It tends to assume that all of higher education is like its most selective, highly rejective four-year institutions. (Imagine how a public two-year institution, which by law and/or practice admit all applicants, must change to comply.) It interferes with pricing practices in a way that would be unlawful if applied to any other business. It ignores the role of peer pressure in chilling student speech. It assumes that institutions can and will exercise authoritarian control over their students in ways that businesses exercise control over their employees. It can’t be enforced and is illegal and/or unconstitutional in spots. It doesn’t show a commitment to learning or even to addressing the forces that have made higher education something anathematical to the far right. It just says, if you are nice to us we will give you taxpayer dollars.

Where does this leave us know?  How might the situation unfold?

There’s now a trend of institutions falling into line by refusing the compact. to describe this Robert Kelchen applies the term “institutional isomorphism,” while I prefer “a lot of offline conversations among leaders;” I suspect some would choose “herd mentality.” The key point is a shared and growing sense that these campuses cannot assent to the compact, nor can they remain silent. 

How many other colleges and universities will follow suit, out of the roughly 4,000 in the United States? Who else will refuse publicly? Perhaps ones expressing a progressive heritage, such as Oberlin College or Evergreen State College, will make a point of this. Yet it’s a risky move, given Trump’s well established tendency to strike at perceived enemies and to nurse grudges. What benefits might such refusing campuses – or their leaders – anticipate?  Some of these institutions might experience pressure to do so internally, from organized faculty, staff, or students.  Activist boards, interested donors, Democratic state politicians, local communities might also encourage their colleges and universities to publicly resist the compact.

Conversely, we haven’t had one embrace the compact. How many will sign up, and which ones, or what types?  Perhaps we should expect some very conservative private institutions to join the compact, like Liberty University. Northwestern might join up, maybe for a modified version.  Elsewhere we should also expect pressure from red state politicians on their public universities to get them on board. Doubtless that’s happening in Texas now. Some private donors, meanwhile, are similarly nudging both private and public campuses to accept terms. Hillsdale College might, but that would be largely symbolic as they historically refuse federal funding.

We might expect some suites of campuses to join up on either side, given institutional isomorphism/peer conversations/herd mentality. If and once we see a few colleges and universities sign up for the compact, more should follow.  And more refusals should beget further refusals.

I do wonder about the process nature of such decisions.  To what extent are a given institutions’ senior administrators involving their full community? How much deliberation and decision making on the compact occurs behind closed doors, in executive sessions and offline conversations?  Anecdotally I’ve heard from professors and staff that they feel shut out from decisions.

I also wonder about the impact of associations like AAUP, ACLS, and AAC&U.  Some of these have really stepped up, taking strong and very public positions.  Have such groups become the leading edge of academic resistance to Trump? Are members protesting this internally?  I am interesting in how the risk/benefit calculus differs for associations compared to campuses.  And I do wonder if and when the Trump administration will turn its attention to them.

Yet it’s important to step back and consider the broader picture.  This second Trump administration has sought to intervene in higher education at an extraordinary level, as I’ve been documenting in this YouTube series.  For months it targeted individual, often elite campuses, trying to punish them and to alter some of their internal operations.  As historian Ellen Schrecker told us, this goes beyond the McCarthy period, as those campaigns went after individual faculty and staff largely for extramural activities.  In contrast, the Trump administration specifically targets academic teaching, research, and professional activities.  Now that Trump enlarged his compact offer to all of higher education, we are seeing an immense effort to intervene in and to redesign colleges and universities. That is the context within which we make our individual campus decisions.

Let’s close with speculation about the Trump administration.  How might they take this compact further, given how it’s played out?  If a group of campuses agree to the compact, will the administration celebrate them, lavishing federal support? If a majority of campuses either explicitly or quietly refuse it, what will the government do next?  One can imagine doubling down on the offer, perhaps tweaking its contours, more aggressively courting institutions, or adding threats to the noncompliant.  Perhaps we should anticipate a second compact offer, with new dimensions.  Or might Trump TACO (chicken out) and drop it in the face of massive refusal, especially as other topics and events occupy the president’s short attention span?

Over to you all.  What conversations and decisions are you seeing, or engaging in, at your institution?  The comment box is open. If you’d rather not write in public, please use my contact page to reach me directly.

(thanks to Corey Robin)

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From the Washington, DC No Kings rally this weekend

Posted on October 20, 2025 by Bryan Alexander

On Saturday I joined thousands of people in Washington, DC protesting the Trump administration. The No Kings event seems to have a massive turnout. A mass email from Bernie Sanders estimated 200,000 people in that city’s event.  At a larger level, according to a No Kings/MoveOn email: “7 million people gathered at 2,700 No Kings events in all 50 states and abroad, making it the single largest day of protest in modern U.S. history.”

Here’s what I saw.  I’ll share photos and videos that I took.  This post is pretty media heavy and might end up more like a slideshow in the end.

Saturday morning was a bit chilly under only slightly cloudy skies. I prepared myself against the possibility of problems, putting on slacks and button-down shirt to present a decent-looking, neutral appearance to law enforcement or any right wing activists.  I added my passport to my driver’s license, in case I needed to prove my citizenship.  I checked in with my family on a group chat, including a lawyer in case I needed legal help.  I took my smartphone (Galaxy Fold), regretting I hadn’t gotten a burner.

I took the DC Metro train (Orange line) in from Virginia. Some passengers carried protest signs and some wore themed clothes.  I chatted with a few, who were friendly and upbeat.  When we reached the Smithsonian stop there were plenty of people detraining and walking towards the surface, many in protest mode.

I reached the National Mall around 11:30 am. The event was scheduled for noon, so I strolled around, meeting people, then joined the mass who were gradually walking towards the Capitol.

Some sported or were engulfed by cute, whimsical, and just creative costumes, mostly of animals, and usually carrying explanatory signs:

Good Latin use.

NoKings DS 2025 Oct_four in costume

NoKings DS 2025 Oct_koala

For a while there wasn’t a clear plan or direction to the event. I saw many individuals milling in various directions, then some large groups in motion, sometimes from a distance.  You could see themes appearing and repeated: Trump as dictator, ICE as kidnapper, Americans are anti-monarchy, Epstein.

I eventually found one group near me and joined in as it flowed along a major street.

The mood was often ebullient, energetic, bright.  People weren’t bitter, although they were sometimes quite mad at the administration. They seemed happy to be with others who felt anywhere near as they did.  Costumes and clever signs entertained us. Many people were recording the scene on phones and other devices.  A few people performed on drums and loudspeakers. The skies cleared and the temperature rose, keeping our spirits up.

Costumes were very creative, playing with animals, gender, politics, myth:

Naturally there were folks in giant frog costumes, which seems to be the season’s anti-Trump figure:

Some costumes scaled up into larger forms of street theater:

Noon came and apparently there were speakers addressing the crowd, but they were invisible and impossible to hear.  It didn’t seem like anyone had set up audio amplifiers or Jumbotrons, so I and others worked our way forward, trying to get to the head of the line. I asked others about the situation and they expressed frustration. Some seemed happy just to be there. After this went on for a while parts of the crowd started chanting classic formulations (“this is what democracy looks like!” “the people, united, can never be defeated!”), creating their own soundtrack.

My favorite photo of the day.

Gradually I heard speakers.  One was a male voice, perhaps Medhi Hassan. Another was a woman’s. A moderator was a bit better. It was hard to make out more than a few words at a time, but yard by yard I could hear more: in favor of Gaza, against Trump’s tyranny, against ICE.

Finally I could glimpse the edges of a stage setup and the MC announced Bill Nye. The crowd went wild, chanting “Bill! Bill! Bill!”  Maybe he projected better, maybe they switched gear, or I was just close enough, but I could hear him very well.  He spoke to memories of growing up in DC, attending various protests and historical moments back to the 1960s.  He slammed Trump for attacking science and research.

You can just make out Nye there in the middle.

There was a sense of unity and shared purpose, a pleasant insurgency against a commonly held opponent.  I saw no tempers flare and certainly zero violence.  There was very little police presence, to my pleasant surprise, other than a few smiling Metro police in a subway station.  (At one point I could glimpse a few nondescript people with dark caps on top of one building overlooking the march. They just seemed to be peering down at us, but some in the crowd pointed at them and a couple of guys booed.)

I notice some people were moving back through the crowd.  A couple apologized, saying they were too crowded, too hot, or tired, which made a lot of sense.  Around 1:20 pm I joined them, not for those reasons, but because an afternoon meeting expected me.  I worked back through the press, criss crossing for some time until the swarm thinned out.  There were still plenty of people, some resting on low barrier walls or sprawled out on the ground.  One person had a nicely Andor-themed sign:

As I retreated more people passed me, moving to the front.  Later on a local friend told me he was part of a second wave of participants, and that sounds right.

Kangeroo court

Purely by chance I met another local friend and we walked back to the Smithsonian Metro stop, chatting about the event.  I took the train to my town at the meeting.

What to make of this?

In a sense there were no surprises. The arguments and points raised are well known now, circulating widely through journalism, political statements, and social media.  The event fulfilled its plan of getting a lot of people together and to have some speakers.

At the same time I was pleasantly surprised that there were no bold actions from ICE, law enforcement, or troops.  There were also no confrontational counterprotestors that I saw or heard.  Perhaps the authorities and conservative activists decided to just let No Kings October 2025 play out, retaining the ability to swoop in if needed for the former, and providing plenty of fodder to mock and criticize afterwards for the latter.

I was delighted by the atmosphere and the creativity shown. A festival atmosphere arose. Demotic political art is, I think, underappreciated.  For many there surely was a sense of connection and mutual support.  People who felt isolated, marginalized, threatened may well have enjoyed a moral boost.  Folks who thought the Democratic party wasn’t listening to them got to get a message out loud and clear.

At the broader level, I’m not sure what impact this might have.  There wasn’t a call for action. There were no connections to Democratic party actions or programs. I didn’t see any Democratic figure; independent senator Bernie Sanders was apparently there earlier, but we couldn’t hear him. The discourse was about resisting Trump, but that was attitudinal, not programmatic. No actions appeared for us to take, no bills or candidates to fight for.

Yet the rally might be something to build upon.  If millions participated then the Democratic party could connect with that.  Organizations who helped make the rallies happen could reach out to participants. And perhaps the event energized some people to contribute in their own ways: financially, as organizers, as media creators, as candidates for office.

One last thought: I was surprised by how little climate change appeared as a topic.

Did any of you participate in a No Kings event?  What’s your take on the protests?

Posted in personal, politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

Campus cuts, mergers, and closures: August-September 2025 update

Posted on October 11, 2025 by Bryan Alexander

It’s already October, nearly the middle of the month.  Somehow I’ve put out some Halloween decorations and arranged for my surprise costume.  Here in the American eastern seaboard the weather is veering between the last hot gasps of summer and the chills of autumn.

Fall’s many associations set the stage for today’s post. Here is share an update on one particular and grim dimension of higher education developments.  As a futurist, I prefer to ground my extrapolations deeply in the present, so I spend a lot of time scanning the horizon for documentable seeds of potential futures. For American colleges and universities that includes, sadly, and among other things, more stories of campus closures, cuts, and mergers. In this post you’ll see a list of these, with links to supporting news stories and official documents.  Alas, this string of posts has become a tradition here.

(From 2024: March 1, March 20, March 28, April, May, June, July, September, November. From 2025: February, June, July, August. So far. I need to tag these retrospectively.)

Most of this post is about cuts.  There isn’t a closure to report and only one and a half (you’ll see) mergers, but a disturbing number of program and personnel terminations.  As per usual, I’ve added a few keywords describing each institution, along with a link to their Wikipedia article if you’d like to learn more about them.

1 Mergers

Elon University (private, North Carolina) and Queens University (private, North Carolina) announced they would merge.  This seems more like an acquisition, with statements like Elon will “assum[e] governance of Queens by Aug. 1, 2026.”

Elon Queens page

The new Elon-Queens web page

Why the merger? One view is that Elon will win a larger presence in the city of Charlotte. Elon News Network reports alumni asking if Queens was in poor financial health: “In the 2023 fiscal year, Queens lost $20 million. Since the pandemic, the university has been drawing from its endowment to make up for losses.”

Jack Duval ‘93, who created a website with other alums against the merger, brought up Queens’ financial struggles in response to Piatt.

“You’ll see they’re running an $8.7 million operating deficit right now. It’s worse than that if you look at all their operations, but it’s about $8.7 million a year right now,” Duval said during the session.

In response, “Jim Piatt, Senior Vice President for Advancement and External Affairs and co-chair of the Elon University and Queens University merger sprint team… [stated]

“There’s no crisis here. Nobody’s in crisis,” Piatt said. “They’ve had some enrollment struggles, and that translates to some financial challenges, for sure, in their more recent history. But, I think, in terms of their bond rating and all the things that you would point to for financial health or ratios, they’re in fine shape.”

More discussion here.and here.

Moving across the Atlantic Ocean for another merger, the University of Kent and the University of Greenwich, plan to merge this year, becoming the London and South East University Group. This seems to be done in anticipation of a worsening economic environment. Some criticism:

[T]he University and College Union told the BBC there would “almost certainly” be redundancies as a result.

UCU’s general secretary Jo Grady says that what is being described as a merger is “a takeover by Greenwich” as Kent was on “the brink of insolvency”.

“I also think this is a broader problem for the sector. Both of these institutions should have been on the government’s radar, and rather than stepping in, we’re seeing that this is how a crisis is managed. This isn’t offering stability to students, to staff or to the sector”, Ms Grady added.

Not quite a merger: the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (public) and Northcentral Technical College (community college) will mount an interesting collaboration. They will “share space, offer joint programming and develop transfer pathways between the institutions.”  Further, “UW-Stevens Point’s Wausau branch will relocate to nearby Northcentral Technical College’s campus.”  Behind the decision is declining enrollment and state support.

2 Campuses cutting programs and jobs

The University of Chicago (private, research) will lay off 400 staff. The causes are budget stresses plus “[o]ngoing federal policy changes [which] are creating new financial liabilities and greater risks than we had to contend with a year ago.”  This move comes after suspending new admissions to many PhD programs.  Chicago will also sell its Center for Research in Security Prices.

The University of Oregon (public, research) laid off 60 workers, including 20 faculty members.  The goal was to cut a budget deficit “driven by rising costs, falling out-of-state enrollment, federal policy uncertainty.” UO cut a similar amount earlier this year. Elsewhere in that state, Southern Oregon University (public) will cut “10 bachelor’s degrees, 12 minors and one graduate program.”  The reason? “[L]ong-term structural budget deficits.”

The president of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (land grant) proposed a series of program cuts and reorganizations, all of which would immediately or gradually end some faculty jobs.  Community and Regional Planning, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Educational Administration, Landscape Architecture, Statistics, and Textiles, Merchandising, & Fashion Design would end, with some functions distributed to other units. The Departments of Entomology and Plant Pathology and also Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication will become two new colleges, with faculty and staff encouraged to take early retirement.  Nebraska will also implement “administrative actions and efficiencies, as well as a Voluntary Separation Incentive Program (VSIP) for faculty.” The stated reason is to save $27.5 million.  Faculty members protested and criticized both data and process.

Barnard College (private, women’s, liberal arts) laid off 77 full time staff. The official announcement described this as a restructuring: “we’ve identified the need to more robustly utilize new technologies, improve coordination across teams, and better align our financial resources with our academic mission in service of the College’s long-term goals.”

Brown University (private, research) will lay off 48 staff as a result of continued federal government chaos.

The University of Arizona staff laid off nearly 50 staff involved in their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education program due to because of federal budget cuts.

Bucknell University (private, liberal arts) announced it would close its scholarly press, terminating two full time and one half time staffers.

Penn State University (public) decided to close its radio station, PBS affiliate WPSU.  The reason: “pressures on the university budget from inflation, enrollment challenges and state funding reductions pushed administrators to re-evaluate the station’s funding model,” according to Inside Higher Ed.

3 Budget crises, programs cut, not laying off people yet

In this section I list program cuts, departmental closures, and other events which don’t immediately involve personnel being laid off, but which could plausibly do so in the near term future.

East Carolina University (public, research) announced program cuts.  Degrees include: BA in African and African American Studies, BA in Economics (the BS in Economics is not impacted and will continue to be offered), BS in Geographic Information Science and Technology, BA in Theatre Arts (the BFA in Theatre Arts is not impacted and will continue to be offered), MS in Biomedical Engineering, and MS in Mechanical Engineering, according to a local report.  The reasons given will be familiar to readers:

[T]he changing landscape of higher education today; shifting demographics, including fewer graduating high school students in the years ahead, combined with budget challenges have led to this call to action. At the same time, there is evolving demand for the courses and programs that we offer – demands that we must nimbly seek to meet.

No word yet on which programs will grow or be added, as per that last sentence. Nor is there information of potential faculty and staff cuts.

Reflections

As I’ve said before, we should be cautious in generalizing, especially from a relative small sample as we have in this post (remember there are around 4,000 American colleges and universities). It’s important to recognize that each college or university has its own situation.  Yet at the same time these stories do constitute evidence, and based on them, along with the others I’ve shared, we can trace trends moving through the entire post-secondary sector.

Enrollment continues to be one of the leading drivers for cuts. Remember that the supermajority of campuses depend on student fees to operate; broadly speaking, enrollment drops mean revenue falls.  That’s at the general level.  Enrollment then drives decisions about specific programs.  For example, here’s the data East Carolina shared to explain why they cut certain degrees:

East Carolina U programs to be cut

While the arts and humanities have often led the way to the cutting room floor over the past decade, I’ll note other disciplines being hit today and admit to curiosity about them. The conventional wisdom is that STEM is growing, and enrollment data usually shows this. So why are these programs axed?  It’s possible there are local reasons, such as a given department having a hard time recruiting students, or rapid personnel turnover, or offerings simply being weak. I do wonder, though, if Nebraska going after Earth and Atmospheric Sciences is a reflection of a political shift against climate change work in academia, driven in part by the second Trump administration.

Yes, Trump also plays a key role here as we’ve been seeing.  His cuts to research, SNAP, PBS, and many other programs are apparent in these campus actions.  Note that some of the impacted institutions are wealthy and of very high status. (Here’s where I now share my reports on what Trump is doing to academia.)

What I’m not seeing this time around: none of these campuses are withdrawing from in-person learning to shift online.  No leaders are citing AI as a threat.

Let me remind the reader of the timing.  We’re 1-2 months into fall semester, depending on schedules, so enrollment has settled down. We should expect some public data to appear, which will drive new institutional decisions. I have many questions. How mich did international student numbers decline?  Did community colleges win even more dual enrollment (high school) students?  Were there any changes to underrepresented minority numbers as Republicans push diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs into retreat?  Has the battered Department of Education seen operations degrade, and, if so, were there any impacts on enrollment? How have campuses in deep red states fared in attracting traditional age students?

Next-to-last note: today we’ve focused on statistics, bureaucracy, formal communications, policy, and finances, but these are also all stories about real human beings.   The lives of students, faculty, staff and those in surrounding communities are all impacted by all of these events.  Don’t lose sight of that fact.

Finally, I’d like to invite anyone with information on a college or university’s plans to close, merge, or cut to share them with me, either as comments on this post, as notes on social media, or by contacting me privately here.  I write these posts based largely on public, open intelligence (news reports, investigations, roundups) but also through tips, since higher education sometimes has issues with transparency.  We need better information on these events.

(thanks to Thomas Beckett and Peter Shea; University Business published a good article)

Posted in horizon scanning | Tagged | 2 Comments

Trump’s new “Compact” for higher education

Posted on October 2, 2025 by Bryan Alexander

This will be a quick and dirty post, as I’m racing off for a day of meetings, teaching two seminars, and leading this week’s Future Trends Forum.  But what I’m writing about today is an important development for higher ed.  I’ll share what information I’ve found, as much of it is behind paywalls and the story is emerging.

The gist: the Trump administration just sent a proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” to a group of elite colleges and universities.  If one of the campuses agrees to the demands requests, the federal government will treat them generously.  In Bloomberg’s summary, they “will enjoy benefits including access to federal student loans, grants and contracts as well as research funding, approval of visas for foreign scholars, and preferential treatment under the tax code.”

Institutions receiving this proposal include Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Arizona, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, the University of Virginia, and Vanderbilt University.

The government’s demands requests are par for the administration’s course so far. I haven’t found a copy of the letter itself yet (readers?), so here’s Bloomberg’s list:

  • Disallowing consideration of sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious associations in admission or financial aid decisions
  • Requiring undergraduate applicants to take a standardized test like the SAT or ACT
  • Adopting policies protecting academic freedom and abolishing “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas”
  • Requirements against political demonstrations that disrupt study locations or harass individual students or groups
  • Hiring that does not consider sex, ethnicity, race, national origin, disability, or religion
  • Requiring all university employees to abstain in their official capacity from actions or speech related to politics
  • Fighting grade inflation or deflation for non-academic reasons
  • Maintaining “single-sex spaces” in bathrooms and locker rooms
  • Free tuition for students pursuing hard science programs at universities with an endowment exceeding $2 million per undergraduate student
  • Limiting undergraduate populations to have no more than 15% of students on foreign visas, with no more than 5% of students from any one country
  • Disclosure of all foreign funding

It wouldn’t be the Department of Education overseeing such agreements: “The compact also says that adherence to the principles will be subject to review by the Department of Justice, and that violations would result in a loss of access to federal benefits for no less than two years.”  The point person here is May Mailman, according to the New York Times.  (Weirdly, that Wikipedia article says she left government.)

The Dartmouth College paper notes that “Of the nine total [campuses addressed], presidents of five — including Dartmouth — did not sign an April 22 letter from the American Association of Colleges and Universities criticizing the Trump administration for revoking federal funding from universities.”

None of the universities issued a formal response in public.  There was one enthusiastic response from a member of the relevant Texas governance body:

UT System Board of Regents Chairman Kevin Eltife said in a statement shared first with the American-Statesman on Thursday that the system is “honored” to be selected and is “enthusiastically” working with UT to review the demands.

“Higher education has been at a crossroads in recent years, and we have worked very closely with Governor Abbott, Lt. Gov. Patrick and Speaker Burrows to implement sweeping changes for the benefit of our students and to strengthen our institutions to best serve the people of Texas,” Eltife said. “Today we welcome the new opportunity presented to us and we look forward to working with the Trump Administration on it.”

Bloomberg’s assessment sounds accurate to me:

It’s not clear to what extent the administration could implement a preferential system without running afoul of constitutional free speech protections. Universities put at a disadvantage in funding competitions are likely to mount legal challenges over how the administration is awarding grants.

Still, the compact will ramp up pressure on universities eager to avoid the fate of some top-tier institutions targeted by the White House, which has argued that higher education institutions aren’t doing enough to promote academic freedom and ideological diversity on campuses.

Along these lines, the Wall Street Journal article cites Ted Mitchell (American Council on Education), who

found the idea of a compact troubling, particularly its points regarding political expression and views.

“Who decides if the intellectual environment is vigorous and open-ended? This is not something the federal government should be involved in and adjudicating,” he said. “The implications for free speech are horrifying.”

Swarthmore College history professor Tim Burke thinks any institutional decision  agreeing to the compact would be “a dumb thing”:

You’re going to sign over control over every detail of your life, accept that you’ll have to betray the people you’ve chosen to be with and value, lose your values and self-respect, just to get some money that will likely be yanked from you anyway after you’ve put the collar on and agreed to servitude? What are you going to do with that money if you don’t have any mission, if you don’t have any values, if you have to betray people when you’re told to. When you’re likely to get whacked by a baseball bat the day that something goes wrong for the gangster, your new boss? You’re not even buying your own future.

Now I’m off to the next meeting.  Over to you, readers.  What do you think of this Compact?

Posted in politics | Tagged | 3 Comments

Another jobs projection: support for the Health Care Nation scenario

Posted on September 27, 2025 by Bryan Alexander

Which academics fields are growing, and for what reasons?  Which are shrinking, and why?

I’ve been exploring these questions for years.  Today I came across a recent federal report which might give some insights.

One answer is that health care teaching and research is building up in colleges and universities because of medical advances, the unique way America structures medical support, and demographics.  I’ve built up a scenario from this, called Health Care Nation, wherein allied health (the full spectrum of health care, from nursing to psychotherapy to pharma, EMT, hospital administration, etc.) becomes the leading sector of the American economy.  In this future higher education reacts by expanding its health care teaching, research, and service commitments.

I started mentioning Health Care Nation in talked more than a decade ago, then began writing about it: in 2014 (EDUCUASE Review; blog post), 2017 (blog post; another one), 2018 (blog post; another one), 2020 (in Academia Next), and 2024 (video; blog post).

Which brings us to the present. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)* recently published a report estimating which jobs are likely to grow in demand over the next nine years.  The findings are fascinating:

American jobs changes and projection 2024-2034 BLS 2025 Sept

and:

American jobs changes and projection by group 2024-2034 BLS 2025 Sept

I note the low numbers for education.  Note, too, the high demand for social service jobs, including mental health:

[T]he projected fast growth for community and social service occupations (+6.6 percent) will stem from more individuals seeking assistance for a variety of challenges, such as marriage and family counseling as well as substance abuse counseling and support.

BLS is bullish on technology jobs, which isn’t a universally held view, given early signs of AI’s impact on computer jobs for a start.   The report is also keen on the energy transition, seeing growth in various forms of green jobs, plus the AI buildout:

Increased demand for electricity, primarily related to AI integration, electric vehicles (EVs), and new data centers, is expected over the next decade. As a result, the four top fastest growing industries are related to energy generation. Solar, wind, geothermal, and other electric power generation, which includes tidal power, are projected to be the fastest growing industries over the projections period… The four fastest growing industries combined are projected to add 41,600 jobs. The projected fifth-fastest growing industry, other electrical equipment and component manufacturing, includes battery production used for storage and in EVs, is projected to add 48,400 jobs.

There’s more to work through, but for me the clear employment winner is health care.  “Just as fast growth is expected in the healthcare and social assistance sector, healthcare support occupations and healthcare practitioners and technical occupations are projected to be among the fastest growing occupational groups, growing 12.4 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively, from 2024 to 2034.” It appears in particular terms of eldercare and disabilities:

Among the ten fastest growing industries, the services for the elderly and persons with disabilities industry (+21.0 percent) is projected to add 528,500 new jobs, the most of any detailed industries. Demand for in-home care will contribute to this growth…

The healthcare occupations with the fastest projected employment growth—such as nurse practitioners, physical therapist assistants, and physician assistants—assist in meeting this growing demand for care.

This is just one report, but a useful one. It’s speculative by nature, but backed up by a lot of research.  For now I’ll add it to the Health Care Nation pile. In the meantime, it seems hard to go wrong in supporting allied health education and professional development.

*I added an asterisk here not just for a footnote, but because I am increasingly skeptical of United States federal government publications, due to the Trump administration’s open interventions against research and intelligence. This report might be solid because it could have been written before Trump started crashing around, and might otherwise have escaped his and his allies’ influence. That said, it’s worth taking with a grain of salt for now.

PS: prepping this post, I Googled “Health Care Nation” plus my name, to see what came up.  Gemini offered this summary, with links –

Google Gemini on my Health Care Nation

Plus this:

Context within Bryan Alexander’s work
Alexander is a futurist and researcher who creates “scenarios” to forecast possible futures.
The “Health Care Nation” scenario is one of several futures he has developed and discussed in various contexts, including his blog, presentations, and in his own writings.
He continues to monitor the scenario to see if the predicted trends are emerging in the real world.

That’s actually pretty good.

Posted in automation, scenarios | Leave a comment

Americans’ opinions of higher education slide down, again

Posted on September 14, 2025 by Bryan Alexander

Greetings from mid-September, when the fall semester is in full swing.  There’s a lot going on with higher ed now, much not good, which I’ve touched on elsewhere and hope to say more here.

One datapoint: Americans’ attitudes towards higher education have ticked down, again.  A new Gallup survey is out and the results show a continued slide.  Gallup and other surveys have been showing the decline for some time. According, this new data probably won’t surprise many readers, but nonetheless remains a vital report to illustrate the context within which academia operates.  As Gallup’s headline warns, “Perceived Importance of College Hits New Low.”

(Previous posts on the topic: July 2025, July 2024, July 2023, 2020, 2019, 2016, 2015)

The main finding is that we collectively, generally see post-secondary education as less valuable than we used to:

Gallup Value-Americans-Place-on-College-Education

To be precise, the number of Americans who view college and university education as “very important” has slid steadily for the past fifteen years, from 75% way down to 35%.  This is, as Michael T. Nietzel put it, “a fifteen year low.”  The proportion who see higher ed as “not too important” has soared from 5% to 24%.  Meanwhile, the group who deems higher ed to be just “fairly important” has doubled, from around 20% to 40%, the biggest swath of the whole.

Breaking down the top level data, Gallup found that nearly every group expressed decreased support for the “higher ed is very important” view.  Men and women, those with and without college degrees, all ages, both political parties and independents, white and people of color all shared this downward slide, albeit from different starting points:

Gallup Perceived-Value-of-College-Education-Among-U.S.-Subgroups 2025 Sept

Gallup notes the way party membership influences the view, with the GOP still far more skeptical than Democrats:

Confidence in higher education has declined much more among Republicans than Democrats over the past decade…

[T]he percentage of Democrats rating college as very important has fallen almost as steeply as that of Republicans since 2013. However, most Democrats who do not view college as very important now describe it as fairly important, while few say it’s not too important (49% and 9% of Democrats, respectively). By contrast, Republicans are equally likely to rate it as fairly important (39%) as not too important (39%). In fact, Republicans are about twice as likely to say college is not too important as to say it is very important (20%).

Why does this matter?

In previous years I’ve mentioned several reasons, starting with a declining popular opinion helping incline state governments to reduce funding to public universities. Now I’d add that a sector under continuous attack from the Trump administration receives even less support than before.  That makes it more difficult for us to win support as we try to defend our work.

Posted in horizon scanning, politics | 1 Comment

Starting my AI and higher education seminar

Posted on September 10, 2025 by Bryan Alexander

Greetings from early September, when fall classes have begun.  Today I’d like to share information about one of my seminars as part of my long-running practice of being open about my teaching.

It’s in Georgetown University’s Learning, Design, and Technology graduate program. I’m team teaching it with LDT’s founding director, professor Eddie Maloney, who first designed and led the class last year, along with some great guest presenters.  The subject is the impact of AI on higher education.

Every week students dive into one topic, from pedagogy to criticism, changes in politics and economics to using LLMs to craft simulations.  During the semester students lead discussions and also teach the class about a particular AI technology.  Each student will also tackle Georgetown’s Applied Artificial Intelligence Microcredential.

Midjourney-created image of AI impacting a university.

Midjourney-created image of AI impacting a university.

Almost all of the readings are online.  We have two books scheduled: B. Mairéad Pratschke, Generative AI and Education and De Kai, Raising AI: An Essential Guide to Parenting Our Future.

Here’s the syllabus:

Introduction to AI in Higher Education:
Overview of AI, its history, and current applications in academia

Signing up for tech sessions (45 min max) (pair up) and discussion leading spots

Delving deeper into LLMs
Guest speakers: Molly Chehak and Ella Csarno.
Readings:

  1. AI Tools in Society & Cognitive Offloading
  2. MIT study, Your Brain on ChatGPT. (overview, since the study is 120 pages)
  3. Allie K. Miller, Practical Guide to Prompting ChatGPT 5 Differently

Macro Impacts: Economics, Culture, Politics

A broad look at AI’s societal effects—on labor, governance, and policy—with a focus on emerging regulatory frameworks and debates about automation and democracy.

Readings:

Optional: Daron Acemoglu, “The Simple Macroeconomics of AI”

Institutional Responses

This week, we will also examine how colleges and universities are responding structurally to the rise of AI, from policy and pedagogy to strategic planning and public communication.

Reading:

How Colleges and Universities Are Grappling with AI

We consider AI’s influence on teaching and learning through institutional case studies and applied practices, with guest insights on faculty development and student experience.

Guest speaker: Eddie Watson on the AAC&U Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum.

Reading: 

Pedagogy, Conversations, and Anthropomorphism

Through simulations and classroom case studies, we examine the pedagogical potential and ethical complications of human-AI interaction, academic integrity, and AI as a “conversational partner.”

Readings:

AI and Ethics/Humanities

This session explores ethical and philosophical questions around AI development and deployment, drawing on work in the humanities, global ethics, and human-centered design.

Guest speaker: De Kai

Readings: selections from Raising AI: An Essential Guide to Parenting Our Future (TBD)

Critiques of AI

We engage critical perspectives on AI, focusing on algorithmic bias, epistemology, and the political economy of data, while challenging dominant narratives of inevitability and neutrality.

Readings:

Human-AI Learning

This week considers how humans and AI collaborate for learning, and what this partnership means for workforce development, education, and a sense of lifelong fulfillment.

Guest Speaker: Dewey Murdick

Readings: TBD

 

Agentic Possibilities

A close look at emerging AI systems and agents, with attention to autonomy, instructional design, and how educational tools are integrating generative AI features.

Reading

  • Pratschke, Generative AI and Education, chapters 5-6

Future Possibilities

We explore visions for the future of AI in higher education, including utopian and dystopian framings, and ask how ethical leadership and equity might shape what comes next.

Readings:

One week with topic reserved for emerging issues

Topic, materials, and exercises to be determined by instructors and students.

Student final presentations

I’m very excited to be teaching it.

Posted in automation, classes and teaching, teaching | Leave a comment

Academic closures, mergers, and cuts: heading into fall 2025

Posted on August 31, 2025 by Bryan Alexander

Greetings from the onrushing fall semester.  Well, for some of us the term has already begun. I’ve taught two of my three classes and the third is coming up fast.

Today I’ll share an update on one particular and grim dimension of higher education developments.  As a futurist, I prefer to ground my extrapolations deeply in the present, so I spend a lot of time scanning the horizon for documentable seeds of potential futures. For American colleges and universities that includes, sadly, and among other things, more stories of campus closures, cuts, and mergers. In this post you’ll see a list of these, with links to supporting news stories and official documents.  Alas, this has become a tradition here.

(From 2024: March 1, March 20, March 28, April, May, June, July, September, November. From 2025: February, June, July. So far.)

Most of this post is about cuts.  There’s only one closure to report and no mergers.  The cuts, program closures, department shut downs, buyouts, etc. happened across the country and in a variety of institutions.  I’ll also touch on a few developments in other countries, notably the massive cuts in Canada.  I’ve added a few keywords describing each institution, along with a link to their Wikipedia article.

1. Closing colleges and universities

The King’s College (Christian, New York City) announced it would close, after years of struggle with accreditation, COVID-19, and finances.

The Kings College closes

we must announce that The King’s College will remain closed permanently and that we will begin to dissolve it under the guidance of the relevant state authorities.

Outside the United States, Spurgeon’s College (Baptist, London; founded 1856) announced it would close due to “significant financial challenges for several years, driven by declining student numbers and an increasingly complex and difficult financial landscape.”

2 Campuses cutting programs and jobs

Clark University (private research university; Massachusetts),”plans to cut more than a quarter of its faculty in the coming years,” according to local media.  The reason is dropping enrollment, both domestic and international.  For the latter, Clark is especially exposed: “[m]ore than a third of Clark’s undergrads and two-thirds of its graduate students come from abroad.”  On the chopping block are instructors who teach in what Clark President David Fithian described as “our lowest enrollment programs.”

(This is an example of what I’ve referred to as a queen sacrifice, assuming some or all of those cut faculty are tenure-track.)

The university will also redirect funds in order to “focus on fields like climate and environment, media and computing, and health and human behavior — areas Clark leaders say are more relevant to today’s world and job market.”  So they will presumably hire new faculty and redefine jobs of some current ones, while cutting others.

Notre Dame de Namur University (Catholic, California) will sell its physical campus and transition to a largely online teaching operation, after years of financial crises.  (I wrote about their financial problems back in 2020.). They tried selling to Stanford University, but Stanford backed out after four years of negotiations.

Middlebury College (private liberal arts; Vermont) announced it would shut down its Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California (MIIS) in two years.  President Ian B. Baucom described this as a financial decision, with MIIS losing enrollment and running a deficit.  According to Wikipedia, MIIS currently employs 70 full time staff plus 70 adjuncts.

Northwestern University (private; research; Illinois) will cut more than 400 staff positions, of which roughly half are already unfilled. It represents a 5% cut to total campus personnel expenses. The given cause: the Trump administration’s cuts and investigations.

Stanford University (private, research; California) laid off 363 staff in the wake of federal cuts and pressure. There aren’t many detailed about which positions and people have been axed yet, but that linked article mentions at least one librarian. Stanford is facing a $140 million budget cut.

Temple University (public research; Pennsylvania) is ending 190 positions, including laying off 50 people.  The reason is a $60 million budget deficit.

The University of Southern California (private, research) laid off 89 people from its Keck Medicine and the Keck School of Medicine.  The Morning Trojan counts 342 job cuts “since July.” USC’s interim president Beong-Soo Kim warned of cuts several weeks ago: “To deal decisively with our financial challenges, we need to transform our operating model, and that will require layoffs.”  Kim cited a persistent structural deficit as well as the Trump administration.

The University of Florida (public research) ended 75 positions, terminating an unspecified number of people.  The rationale: “University officials say the cuts are part of a 5 percent reduction in administrative expenses announced by the UF Board of Trustees.”

UF also shut down its sustainability office, firing three people.  Officials told local media the reasons were that budget reduction, especially “an effort to ‘identify new efficiencies.’”  I think it’s clear that there was also politics here, ending a climate change program in a state governed by a reactionary governor and under an anti-climate Trump administration.  Another local site cited an official statement which offered this defense: “UF has made great strides in adopting efficiency principles, environmental stewardship and economic viability through the Office of Sustainability, and those principles are now embedded into UF’s business practices.”

The University of New Hampshire (public, research) terminated 23 people and ended 13 unfilled positions. This follows a similar cut earlier this year, when “Thirty-five additional UNH employees were laid off in May as part of a $12.5 million reduction.”  One reason for this is New Hampshire’s state budget, which just cut public university funding by 18%.

Michigan State University (public research) announced it would lay off staff including the director of and some workers in its mental health services. The reason is ongoing financial problems.  The Detroit News added these details: “the 2025 budget shows the university spent nearly $4.5 million on mental health and trauma services counseling and psychiatric services. Most of the costs were to pay employee salaries, wages and benefits.”

Kalamazoo College (private liberal arts; Michigan) laid off eleven staff members and modified the jobs of four others, citing financial pressures including inflation.

Whitman College (private, liberal arts; Washington state) laid off 10 as yet unidentified people. In addition, Whitman is

leaving some vacant positions unfilled; and only giving 1% raises to most staffers earning more than $70,000 a year, instead of the 2% raises that had been scheduled. The salaries of cabinet members and the president were also reduced by 2% and 10%, respectively.

The reason: a $3 million budget shortfall.

Bennington College (private liberal arts; Vermont) announced on Facebook that it would lay off fifteen staff.

Bennington College cuts announcement 2025 August Facebook

Why these cuts? Bennington’s president Laura Walker told VTDigger that “[l]ike many peer institutions across the country, we are confronting an uncertain economy and a challenging overall environment for higher education.”

In Canada, Ontario’s public universities have laid off 10,000 faculty and staff as that nation’s cuts to international enrollment take hold, according to one count.

3 Budget crises, programs cut, not laying off people yet

In this section I list program cuts, departmental closures, and other events which don’t immediately involve personnel being laid off, but which could plausibly do so in the near term future.

The president of Southern Oregon University (public) announced a series of program cuts which might entail staffing reductions.

The new plan calls for the elimination of 15 of the school’s 38 academic majors, including chemistry, economics, international studies and Spanish. Dozens of jobs may be cut, including 29 faculty positions, as the university looks to become a $60 million-a-year operation, a decrease of 15 percent.

The reason is an enrollment drop, which means – officially – the institution is overbuilt: “By their calculations, the school has enough employees to support 7,500 students — about 4,000 more than it is actually enrolling.”  SOU has been struggling for several years: “The university, in Ashland, Ore., eliminated 82 jobs just two years ago, but school officials think their work force is still far too large.”

The University of Chicago (private, research; Illinois) responded to Trump cuts by pausing or reducing PhD program admissions.  In the first move Chicago focused on languages and humanities:

The departments that won’t be accepting Ph.D. students now include art history, cinema and media studies, classics, comparative literature, East Asian languages and civilizations, English language and literature, Germanic studies, linguistics, Middle Eastern studies, Romance languages and literatures, Slavic languages and literatures, and South Asian languages and civilizations, plus the music department’s ethnomusicology and history and theory of music programs.

Next, not just the humanities:

The Social Sciences Division has also announced it will not admit Ph.D. students into four programs in 2026-27: anthropology, political economy, social thought, and conceptual and historical studies of science. The UChicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice had earlier announced it was pausing Ph.D. admissions and the Harris School of Public Policy said it was pausing admissions for the Harris Ph.D. (in public policy studies), the political economy Ph.D. and the master of arts in public policy with certificate in research methods.

It’s possible that, beyond the Trump crisis, the university held and lost money in crypto currency speculation.

Princeton University (private, research; New Jersey) ended its Wintersession mini-term as the campus “continues to reduce costs amid budget uncertainty.”  The announcement also includes quite a phrase: “This change and other cost-reduction efforts reflect financial challenges spurred by the federal government’s reassessment of its relationship with American higher education.” (italics added)

The University of Connecticut (public, research university) shut down seven academic programs, “four graduate certificate programs and three degree programs in mathematics and medieval studies.”  Additionally, “70 programs across multiple colleges will be monitored annually, with plans to improve enrollment and completion rates.”

The governing board of the University of Utah (public research) shut down a number of academic programs (official list here) for underenrollment.   They include, according to an official statement, “just under 30 master’s degree programs, 15 doctoral degrees, another 30 undergraduate and certificate programs, as well as 9 minors.”  The same document offers this context: “The university offers more than 100 undergraduate degrees and 200 graduate degrees across all colleges and departments.”

Milligan University (private, Tennessee) cut six programs: undergraduate degrees in computer science, cybersecurity, film, information systems, and journalism, plus a Master of Arts in Coaching and Sports Management.  According to that linked report, MU president Stephen Waers “said the college market is changing and there have been challenges in enrollment, which led to the decision to cut the programs.”

Cornell University (private, research; New York) posted a grim view of its finances. The joint statement by the campus’ president, provost, provost for medical affairs, and chief financial officer describes economic and political threats familiar to my readers, then added this warning of cuts to come:

Reducing costs will mean reconsidering how we handle all of our processes, from procurement to technology, and rethinking, in fundamental ways, how we allocate our resources. It will also, inevitably, mean reducing our workforce.

The University of Nebraska system will offer buyouts to one part of its professoriate: “tenured faculty age 62 or older with at least 10 years of service.”  The reason involves the flagship, at least: “The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is scrambling to cut $27.5 million from its budget by the end of the year.”

599 people took an early retirement offer from Duke University (private, research, North Carolina).  Even with those actions, “Duke officials said they also plan to start involuntary layoffs in August.”

The University of Wisconsin-Madison (public, research) closed two campus libraries, the Astronomy, Mathematics and Physics Library and the Social Work Library. The university did not announced any layoffs resulting.

Our Lady of the Lake University (Catholic; Texas) made program cuts earlier this year, but seems to have failed to teach out impacted students this fall term.  Here’s Texas Public Radio’s compiled list of said programs:

Our Lady of the Lake University program cuts 2025_Texas Public Radio

Reflections

As I’ve said before, it’s important to recognize that each college or university has its own circumstances and story. You can see that in these summaries with different campuses experiencing different challenges and exhibiting their own responses. Yet at the same time we can trace trends moving through the entire post-secondary sector.

Enrollment pressures continue to impact at least come campuses.  We can see that driving financial problems, especially for the supermajority of institutions which strongly rely on student tuition and fees for revenue.  Further, administrations are clearly using enrollment numbers when determining program cuts.

It’s clear that a major force driving these cuts, closures, etc. is the Trump administration’s campaign against higher education.  You’ll note the high number of high profile, very wealthy institutions on this list which are now bleeding out.  This shows no sign of slowing down. (Here’s where I now share my reports on what Trump is doing to academia.)

I’m seeing fewer mergers than I anticipated this year. Is it possible that finding a merger partner is just so difficult now that closure becomes more likely?  Or do institutions prefer to cut and shut down programs and staff before reaching out?

Notre Dame de Namur University offers one path for declining institutions, to give up on in-person instruction and bet all on online.

I was surprised but impressed to see Clark University decide to expand its climate change offerings, as it deeply cuts other programs.  The former shows some foresight.  It’s also a rare attitude, sadly.

I remain astonished by the sheer damage Canadian higher education is taking.  Americans might learn from that nation as we start to see international student numbers drop.

Note that this is pre-fall semester developments.  Worse may come over the next few months. We can expect some significant enrollment declines, notably from international students. Sustained pressure against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs will likely depress underrepresented minority attendance. Further Trump actions against research universities may result in more financial hits.  Cuts to the Department of Education may lead to problems in institutional operations, including processing financial aid.  At the same time Republican-led state governments have been taking other steps against higher education, like Ohio’s SB1, which passed this year.

Next-to-last note: today we’ve focused on statistics, bureaucracy, formal communications, and finances, but these are also all stories about real human beings.  By my very rough count the layoffs summarized here impact more than 1200 people. The lives of students, faculty, staff and those in surrounding communities are all impacted by all of these events.  Don’t lose sight of that fact or of these people.

Finally, I’d like to invite anyone with information on a college or university’s plans to close, merge, or cut to share them with me, either as comments on this post, as notes on social media, or by contacting me privately here.  I write these posts based largely on public, open intelligence (news reports, investigations, roundups) but also through tips, since higher education sometimes has issues with transparency.  We need better information on these events.

(thanks to Inside Higher Ed for tracking these stories (for example); ditto Higher Ed Dive (for example); also Robin DeRosa, Karl Hakkarainen, Steven Kaye, Peter Naegele,  Christopher Rice, Peter Shea, Ed Webb)

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