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ALERT! Teachers College Faculty Opposes Trump Attacks on Higher Education and DEI

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2025 //
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The following statement was drafted and signed by faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University.

The Trump administration is cynically using the pretext of “fighting anti-Semitism” to attack universities and control them. It has withheld $400 million from Columbia University and demanded changes to its curriculum and other policies.

This is outrageous. It is fascistic. It is an attack on academic freedom. Columbia University is a private university, one of the best in the nation. It should rebuff this repellent effort to strip it of its independence and academic freedom.

A Statement by Teachers College, Columbia University Faculty

The Attack on American Education, from our Perspective as Teachers College Faculty

March 19, 2025

We are a group of Teachers College faculty with expertise in the areas of education, health, and psychology. We write in response to the attacks by the federal government on Columbia University, and education. Teachers College is an independent institution, with its own charter, president, board of trustees, and regulations, yet we are also affiliated with Columbia University and are thus deeply affected by the current moment. We emphasize that this statement is not an official response by Teachers College, and represents only the views of its authors.  

As researchers and teachers, we share with our colleagues in higher education a deep concern about the many ways that higher education is under threat at this moment. But as scholars at a graduate school of education, whose work covers the lifespan, from infants to elders, we have a distinct perspective. We see the attack on Columbia as part of a larger offensive by the Trump administration and the Republican party against education at all levels. An attack on academic freedom and the First Amendment is taking place on multiple fronts, all of which impact the basic human activity of learning in all of its forms and meanings. 

Efforts to dismantle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, erase curricular content that speaks to our nation’s true and difficult past and its ongoing inequities, and intrude into the processes by which educational institutions from local school districts to universities make decisions on what and how to teach: all are connected to a desire to stifle critical thinking and prevent us from actively participating in our democracy. The intention of the Trump administration is clear. By gutting important systems of education, they can shape our thoughts and words, creating a new generation without the skills required to actively participate in our democracy and push back against oppression.

 At Columbia University specifically, the Trump administration has cancelled over $400 million in research and intervention funding and is threatening further action unless the university caves to a series of demands that would radically transform the institution and undermine its fundamental role in a democracy, as our colleagues in the Columbia chapter of the AAUP detail in this letter. Such actions also violate the constitutional law and the substance and process of TItle VI, as detailed by several of our colleagues in the Columbia Law School.

The broad strategies of the administration’s attack on higher education were outlined earlier in Project 2025, but the particular tactics have been shaped by both world and local events since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the Israeli war on Gaza that followed and continues. The accusation that Columbia is unable and unwilling to protect its Jewish students is being used to strip it of funding, especially for research in its medical school, as well as other areas of the institution. Several funded projects in education, health, and psychology at Teachers College have already been cancelled, affecting research and programs ranging from higher education access, graduate training for much-needed school psychologists, social services  for students, and more.

We recognize that Columbia, like many institutions, has much ongoing work to do to ensure campus is a place that can foster and support everyone’s learning, by actively addressing antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of discrimination and hatred. Yet the disproportionate response to anti-war protest on our campus must be acknowledged. We take note of the “Palestine exception,” which blocks discourse by treating Palestine and Palestinians as topics beyond First Amendment and academic freedom protections. Such a pattern has barred necessary speech and difficult dialogues on our campuses, causing division and fear amongst students, staff, and faculty members. To be sure, maintaining space for anti-war protest and other forms of political dissent within a community needs to be done with sensitivity and care, alongside respect for the rights of students to challenge one another and express ideas, including deeply controversial ones.

While this week’s education news has been dominated by Columbia, previous weeks focused on the K-12 landscape. Developments included the appointment of a Secretary of Education with no education expertise, unable even to correctly identify the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) – one of our nation’s largest pieces of federal education and civil rights legislation, which she is charged by Congress to administer. The administration laid off half of the Department of Education’s workforce. The firings have all but shuttered the more than 150 year old National Center for Education Statistics, on which countless areas of education research, including “The Nation’s Report Card” via the National Assessment of Educational Progress and studies that focus on measuring equity, rely. These are the staffpeople who ensure that Congressionally-approved funds for Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (for children living in poverty), the IDEA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act for disabled students, and federal financial aid to higher education make their way to their intended students, families, and communities. Major staff reductions at the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights intentionally impede this division from ensuring equitable treatment of children in our nation’s schools. 

As in higher education, the Trump administration not only seeks to usurp the Congressional power of the purse but does so in the name of false and misleading representations of the state of our educational institutions. Whatever claims to the contrary, American public education is governed chiefly by state constitutions and local school districts. They decide what students learn, how teachers teach, and how student success is measured. When, for example, executive orders seek to disregard that law and tradition, we applaud leaders who, like Maine Governor Janet Mills, respond with “See you in court!”.

As experts on teaching and learning, we know that the most profound moments of learning are usually uncomfortable, as they may lead people to question taken-for-granted assumptions about themselves and the society they inhabit. The goal of good teaching is not to eliminate that discomfort, but to give it a productive use. The barrage of Executive Orders, threats to the Department of Education, and mandates such as the March 13 letter are aimed at restricting discourse and generating fear in teachers and students, especially those most vulnerable: non-US citizens, racially or ethnically minoritized populations, gender and sexually diverse and expansive people, and disabled people. Teaching and learning are much more difficult when one is afraid, and pedagogy can easily turn to rote memorization and repetition in order to avoid controversy.

While the White House accuses elementary and secondary schools as well as higher education of indoctrinating students, against the evidence, what we see is an attack on the capacity for criticism — paving the way for authoritarianism and fascism. The idea that directing criticism at the US or its geopolitical allies is un-American runs counter to much of the history of this nation. As James Baldwin once stated, “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” It is extremely hard, if not impossible, for people of any age to do the difficult work of learning, of understanding multiple perspectives on an issue, of offering counterpoints to commonly assumed views, when people are scared of losing their livelihoods and/or their visas, being arrested or deported, or being deemed enemies of the state by the highest office in the land.

As educators and researchers concerned with justice and equity, we cannot stay silent.  What becomes of the University if it succumbs to the demands of a political party or leader and cedes its rights of free speech, free expression, and free inquiry? What becomes of research if its pursuit of truth is shaped by what faculty are not allowed to say, and the topics they cannot investigate? What becomes of our students if they are only permitted to think, speak, and be in ways that follow the political winds? 

We call on university leaders, on our campus and beyond, to use all of the tools at their disposal, including collective efforts across the sector and litigation, to stand for academic freedom, and for First Amendment rights of free speech, inquiry, and debate, and thus to stand for our democracy.

And we pledge, as faculty members in an institution of higher education, to recognize that the challenges facing us are not unique to our institution or to higher education. They are shared challenges that at this moment link us to all those devoted to education and to learning at all stages across the life span. We celebrate the efforts such as the suit filed by the National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union to stop Trump administration efforts to curtail diversity, equity, and inclusion in education. We must find ways to work with one another for our students, our communities, and our still-developing democracy. 

Daniel Friedrich, PhD, Associate Professor of Curriculum, Department of Curriculum and Teaching

Ansley Erickson, PhD, Associate Professor of History and Education Policy, Department of Education Policy and Social Analysis

Melanie Brewster, PhD, Professor of Counseling Psychology, Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology

Ezekiel Dixon-Román, PhD, Professor of Critical Race, Media, and Educational Studies Director, Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Advanced Study. 

Kay James, PhD, Associate Professor of Neuroscience & Education, Department of Biobehavioral Sciences

Additional signatures, added at 6pm daily. 

Anonymous (11)

Jennifer Lena, PhD, Associate Professor of Arts Administration, Department of Arts and Humanities

Brandon Velez, PhD, Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology, Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology

Luis A. Huerta, PhD, Professor of Education and Public Policy; Chair, Department of Education Policy and Social Analysis

James Borland, PhD, Professor of Education, Department of Curriculum and Teaching

Nathan Holbert, PhD, Associate Professor of Communication, Media, and Learning Technologies Design

Sonali Rajan, EdD, Professor of Health Promotion and Education, Department of Health Studies and Applied Educational Psychology

Carolyn Riehl, PhD, Associate Professor of Sociology and Education Policy 

Beth Rubin, PhD, Professor of Education, Department of Arts & Humanities

Lucy Calkins, PhD, Robinson Professor of Children’s Literature, Department of Curriculum & Teaching

Gita Steiner-Khamsi, PhD, William H. Kilpatrick Professor of Comparative Education, Department of International and Comparative Education

Mark Anthony Gooden, PhD, Christian Johnson Endeavor Professor of Education Leadership, Department of Organization & Leadership

Sandra Schmidt, PhD, Associate Professor of Social Studies Education, Department of Arts & Humanities  

Haeny Yoon, PhD, Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education, Department of Curriculum and Teaching

Judith Scott-Clayton, PhD, Professor of Economics & Education, Department of Education Policy & Social Analysis

Alex Eble, PhD, Associate Professor of Economics & Education, Department of Education Policy & Social Analysis

Prerna Arora, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology and Education, Department of Health Studies & Applied Educational Psychology

Megan Laverty, PhD, Professor of Philosophy and Education, Department of Arts and Humanities 

Ioana Literat, PhD, Associate Professor of Communication, Media and Learning Technologies Design, Department of Math, Science, and Technology

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Ph.D, Professor of English Education, Department of Arts and Humanities

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Higher Education, Lies, Trump

Talking Points Memo: Trump Bullies Columbia University

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2025 //
1

David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo writes about the Trump administration’s bullying of Columbia University. Under the guise of fighting “anti-Semitism,” Trump has singled out Columbia for extreme punishment. Not only has he frozen $400 million in federal funds for research, he is now threatening Columbia unless it removes certain international studies from its curriculum. Trump has no authority to do this. Columbia is sure to sue and should prevail. This is Trump’s basic authoritarianism showing and portent of worse to come. He wants the nation to bow to his whims and bigotry, and only the courts have stood in his way.

Kurtz writes:

If you still harbored any doubt that President Trump’s ongoing attack on Columbia University – a private institution – is drawn straight from the authoritarian playbook, then the latest development should be clarifying.

The Trump administration – specifically the Department of Education, HHS, and GSA – sent a letter yesterday to Columbia attempting to extortan array of concessions in how the university is run before it may consider restoring some $400 million in frozen federal funding.

Imposing an arbitrary March 20 deadline, the Trump administration demanded that Columbia complete a laundry list of internal restructurings, policy changes, and submissions to federal authority. Among the most alarming demands: put the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department in what it calls “academic receivership” for at least five years.

If Columbia complies by the deadline, then and only then will the Trump administration “open a conversation about immediate and long-term structural reforms” at the university. If it’s not clear, it sure should be: Even if Columbia submits to this extortion letter, it doesn’t get federal funding restored. It merely sets itself up for a later round of bullying, exorbitant demands, and more extortion.

The extortion letter came the same day DHS agents executed search warrants at the residences of two Columbia students. “According to the sources, it was part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on individuals it has described as espousing the views of Hamas and threatening the safety of Jewish students,” ABC News reported.

This all transpired as Columbia graduate and pro-Palestinian protest leader Mahmoud Khalil remained in federal detention as the Trump administration attempts to deport him even though he’s a legal permanent resident. His lawyers amended their filings as they obtained new information about his detainment. In an interview with NPR, a top DHS official could not articulate what wrongdoing Khalil was being accused of.

Meanwhile, The Atlantic reported that the Trump administration had targeted at least one other person at the same time as Khalil:

It turns out Secretary of State Marco Rubio identified a second individual to be deported, and included that person alongside Khalil in a March 7 letter to the Department of Homeland Security. Both were identified in the letter as legal permanent residents, The Atlantic has learned. …

The officials did not disclose the name of the second green-card holder, and did not know whether the person is a current or former Columbia student, or had been singled out for some other reason. The person has not been arrested yet, the U.S. official said.

The Trump administration’s bullying of a private university is being done under the guise of rooting out antisemitism. But the real authoritarian move here is to bring higher education under the thumb of the president. Columbia’s not the only example, but it’s the most extreme.

“So far, America’s leading universities have remained virtually silent in the face of this authoritarian assault on institutions of higher education,” the Harvard student newspaper editorialized.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Higher Education, Trump

Julian Vasquez Heilig: Higher Education and “The White Flag of Cowardice”

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2025 //
2

Julian Vasquez Heilig is a scholar of equity. Until recently, he was provost at Western Michigan Hniversity. He stepped back to his role as a scholar, and he now speaks his mind freely and forcefully.

He wrote on his blog “Cloaking Inequity” about the choice facing the leaders of higher education: either stand up for academic freedom or hide in fear. His post is about “The White Flag of Cowardice.”

Categories Academic Freedom, Courage, Equity, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Higher Education, Trump

Dark Money: Manufacturing Prestige for Rightwing and Fringe Academics

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2025 //
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This is a fascinating article about an “academic” organization with shallow roots but a prestigious name. It was created in 2022. It confers awards on award-worthy recipients and on fringe academics. Its purpose seems to be to add luster to the latter.

Take the recent Trump nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health:

On October 24, an organization called the American Academy of Sciences and Letters (AASL) honored Stanford University Professor and health economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya with its Robert J. Zimmer Medal for Intellectual Freedom. 

Announcing the award, the group praised the professor for “resolutely” resisting “enormous pressure to compromise his scientific findings” and risking “his own personal and professional self-interest, repeatedly, without hesitation, to take a stand for the public’s right to unrestricted scientific discussion and debate.” A few days later, The New York Post picked up the story, running it with the headline, “Scientist who battled for COVID common sense over media and government censors wins top award.” 

“Few in the media seemed eager to attend a ceremony last week in Washington, D.C., where the prestigious American Academy of Sciences and Letters was awarding its top intellectual freedom award,” the article began. “The problem may have been the recipient: Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.”

It is true that Bhattacharya is a controversial figure for his contrarian stance on the COVID-19 pandemic. He first burst onto the national scene in 2020 as the co-author of an inaccurate and bias-prone, but influential, seroprevalence study that significantly underestimated the dangers of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Later, he was one of three authors of The Great Barrington Declaration, awidely rebuked document that outlined the failed pandemic herd immunity strategy embraced by the Trump administration. Since then, the professor has been a go-to expert for Republican politicians and right-wing groups working to politicize public health and government efforts to control COVID. He has taken to claiming that he was censored by the federal government for his views and even unsuccessfully sued the Biden administration over his claims.

Bhattacharya has also cultivated alliances with anti-vaxxers. Last month, a health policy symposium he organized at Stanford came under fire for featuring a number of them along with minimizers and lab leak enthusiasts. He spoke at the Robert Kennedy Jr. campaign’s vice presidential announcement, has been proposedby RFK Jr. for a leadership role in CDC, and is currently listed on Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again website as a potential pick for director of the National Institutes of Health.

But Bhattacharya’s reputation is not the only explanation for the lack of media attention given to the award ceremony, which took place in the vaunted Library of Congress. Another is the fact that the AASL is largely unknown. The group only emerged in 2022, fueled by the private family foundation of an investment fund CEO. A closer look at AASL and its origins and activities provides a disturbing window into how wealthy business interests are working to reshape academia in support of their agenda.

You should read the rest of the article. Can money buy prestige? Read on.

AASL borrows prestige by honoring well-known figures in the arts, sciences, and letters, then confers prestige on rightwing academics who have been scorned by the mainstream.

Categories Ethics, Fake, Higher Education

The Most Terrifying Article You Will Read This Week or Month

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2025 //
31

This is the story of the takeover of a city and a political party and a state by the farthest right fringe of the Idaho Republican Party. These extremists want to defund education. They want to control everything, not just education.

The article focuses on one community college that they targeted, North Idaho College, which may lose its accreditation, not because of academic or financial problems but because its board is in chaos.

The extremists target all public education. They think education is indoctrination. They think it’s dangerous, even vocational and technical education.

Here are a few illustrative paragraphs:

The charter violations that kicked off this accreditation scandal four years ago never had anything to do with academics. The two-year community college offers a solid education and features the top nursing program in the state. Their finances are stable too. No, NIC might go under because the Board of Trustees has existed in a state of toxicity, chaos, and dysfunction ever since the far right gained a board majority four years ago.

It is difficult to overstate how catastrophic disaccreditation would be for the people of North Idaho. With a price tag 65 percent lower on average than four-year state institutions, community colleges place higher education within reach of the least advantaged Americans; over a third of their students make less than $20,000 per year. At NIC, 57 percent of students
receive financial aid. Local businesses depend on the college for employee training on everything from office software to forklift operation. High school students can enroll in dual credit programs, which let students get a head start on their first year of college and allow homeschoolers to obtain official transcripts….

How could this happen? The problem goes far beyond a three-person majority on the trustee board of a small community college. NIC and many other institutions are in danger because, over the last decade and a half, a core group of extremists has slowly taken over the Idaho Republican Party in the same way that a parasitic wasp slowly takes over its host. This required no astroturfing or Koch-fueled cash infusions, just a regular, everyday indifference to hyperlocal politics. The tactic is underway elsewhere, but Idaho got a head start. This crisis is what happens when insurgency bears fruit….

The consequences of that agenda go far beyond NIC’s accreditation crisis. Idaho’s abortion laws are among the strictest in the country; citing difficulty recruiting doctors given the risk of criminalization, two hospitals have already closed their labor and delivery departments, leaving many rural Idahoans hours from maternal care. Armed militia members have shown up in the children’s section of libraries looking for pornography, and libraries are limiting service due to legislation that holds librarians criminally liable for books deemed inappropriate. Idaho’s primary and secondary schools are literally falling apart; it spends less per student than any other state and ranks 43rd in education quality.

This “parasitic wasp” is at work in other red states.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Funding, Higher Education, Idaho, Ignorance

Florida: Professors File Federal Lawsuit Against DeSantis’s Anti-DEI Law

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2025 //
2

A group of professors in Florida filed a federal lawsuit against the 2023 state law banning teaching about diversity, equity, and inclusion, claiming that it restricts freedom of speech.

The law was enacted as part of Governor Ron DeSantis’s war on “woke,” meaning any teaching about or practice related to DEI.

The Orlando Sentinel reported:

TALLAHASSEE — A group of Florida university professors on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit challenging a 2023 state law and related regulations that prevent colleges from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, saying the restrictions are “punishing educators and students for expressing differing and disfavored viewpoints.”


The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP on behalf of six professors, alleges that the restrictions violate educators’ and students’ speech rights and is chilling expression in public universities. It targets the 2023 law (SB 266) and rules passed last year by the state university system’s Board of Governors.


“Continuing its effort to police the marketplace of ideas, the Florida Legislature again passed vague, viewpoint-discriminatory legislation that broadly restricts academic freedom and imposes the state’s favored viewpoints on public higher education, punishing educators and students for expressing differing and disfavored viewpoints,” the lawsuit said.


The restrictions ban funding for programs or campus activities that advocate for diversity, equity, or inclusion or that engage in “political or social activism.”

One of the rules defines DEI as “any program, campus activity, or policy that classifies individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation and promotes differential or preferential treatment of individuals on the basis of such classification.” Colleges and universities risk losing funding if they violate the restrictions.
The lawsuit alleged that the regulations’ definitions are “ambiguous, inconsistent, and far too broad to provide any real guidance other than indicating the Legislature’s and the BOG’s (Board of Governors’) intent to disfavor certain speech.”


The restrictions “have left instructors and students fearful for the future of not only education, but also free thought and democracy in Florida,” the professors’ lawyers wrote.
The rules have “stripped hundreds of university courses” from being designated as “general education” courses, according to the lawsuit. Universities also have denied scholarship and research money to faculty and students who have received it in the past.

Categories Democracy, DeSantis, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, Resistance

Biden Announces $4.28 Billion in Student Loan Forgiveness

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2024 //
12

President Biden announced today that the government will forgive student debt for another 54,900 borrowers, all of whom took jobs in public service to qualify.

The U.S. Department of Education released a statement:

The Biden-Harris Administration announced today the approval of $4.28 billion in additional student loan relief for 54,900 borrowers across the country who work in public service. This relief—which is the result of significant fixes that the Administration has made to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program—brings the total loan forgiveness by the Administration to approximately $180 billion for nearly five million Americans, including $78 billion for 1,062,870 borrowers through PSLF. 

 “Four years ago, the Biden-Harris Administration made a pledge to America’s teachers, service members, nurses, first responders, and other public servants that we would fix the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, and I’m proud to say that we delivered,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “With the approval of another $4.28 billion in loan forgiveness for nearly 55,000 public servants, the Administration has secured nearly $180 billion in life-changing student debt relief for nearly five million borrowers. The U.S. Department of Education’s successful transformation of the PSLF Program is a testament to what’s possible when you have leaders, like President Biden and Vice President Harris, who are relentlessly and unapologetically focused on making government deliver for everyday working people.” 

The Trump Administration has promised to cease any student loan forgiveness. Project 2025 treats loan forgiveness as a racket and a political trick meant to buy votes. Since Biden has taken action after an election that his party lost, it’s hard to know whose votes he is “buying.” It seems more likely that he is keeping a promise made by the government to students who agreed to enter public service jobs after taking a loan. They kept their promise. Now Biden is keeping the government’s promise to them.

Categories Biden, Higher Education, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

Florida: Candidate for Congress Wants to Cancel College Aid for Dreamers

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2024 //
2

Florida is one of 18 states that allow the children of undocumented immigrants to receive a lower tuition rate on state colleges. That law is under attack by Randy Fine, a state legislator who is running for Congress. Fine is an ardent supporter of Trump.

The Orlando Sentinel reported:

TALLAHASSEE — For a decade, children brought into the country illegally by their undocumented parents could enroll in a state college or university for the same fee as in-state residents, if they attended a Florida high school for three years.

But now, State Sen. Randy Fine, a Brevard County Republican who plans to resign mid-session to run for Congress, wants to repeal that law and end the educational benefit designed to help young immigrants known as “dreamers.”

Fine wants to end “sweetheart deals for college degrees to those who should not even be here,” he said in an email put out by his senate aide. “President Trump has made clear it is time to close the border and stop giving illegal immigrants rewards for breaking the law.”

His bill revives an effort to squelch the dreamers’ benefit that Gov. Ron DeSantis and some other Republicans tried — and failed — to make part of an immigration reform package in 2023.

Fine claimed the state spent $45 million to provide out-of-state tuition waivers to undocumented college and university students in 2021, but his staff did not respond to questions about the source of that figure.

Fine, a combative conservative who calls himself the “Hebrew Hammer,” filed a bill Monday that would repeal the waiver, which was signed into law in 2014 — two years before he was elected to the Legislature. The law was sponsored by Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez when she was a state senator. It was approved with bipartisan support and signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Scott, now the junior GOP senator from Florida.

Under the law, undocumented students who attended a Florida high school for three years and enrolled in a state college or university within 24 months of graduation would pay in-state tuition rates. But they are not eligible for state financial aid.

Without that waiver, they would pay out-of-state rates that are three to four times more. At the University of Central Florida, for example, the in-state rate is about $6,300 while out-of-state tuition is over $22,000…

More than 43,000 undocumented students are currently enrolled in Florida’s public colleges or universities, according to the American Immigration Council and the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. They make up just a sliver of the more than 1 million enrolled.

The state university system said it issued 2,005 nonresident tuition waivers last year but does not track how many of them went to undocumented students. The state also doesn’t track of the number of undocumented students enrolled in its universities.

Florida has already invested millions of dollars into the K-12 education of these students, and the 2014 law was seen as an incentive to get them to stay in Florida and complete their postsecondary education, said Renata Bozzetto, deputy director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition.

The result is a “a higher educated population and individuals who can pursue a career while working on their immigration status,” Bozzetto said.

Florida’s undocumented workers contribute $1 billion in spending power and $113 million in state and local taxes, according to the American Immigration Council….

“It’s a publicity stunt,” Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat from Orlando, said of Fine’s new bill. “I’d be surprised if my Republican colleagues in the Senate even give it a hearing. It’s a mean-spirited and petty attack on immigrants that really defines the MAGA base.”

All in-state residents pay a tuition rate lower than the cost of their education, so state taxpayers are subsidizing all of them, and there is not a limit on the number of students who can receive in-state tuition, he said.

“They are paying tuition like every other student ,” Smith said. “They are not taking something away from other Floridians.”

Categories Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Funding, Higher Education, Immigration

Hechinger Report: Rural Students Lose Options, as Universities Cut Majors

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2024 //
19

A team of reporters at The Hechinger Report describe the damages of budget cuts at rural universities. The universities respond to declining enrollments and declining revenues by eliminating majors; students who want those majors are left in the lurch. Chemistry, science, math, foreign languages, philosophy, physics—Almost everything is on the chopping block somewhere.

The Hechinger Report team limns in the details:

Even some flagship universities that serve rural places are making big cuts. The most widely reported were at West Virginia University, which is eliminating 28 undergraduate and graduate majors and programs, including most foreign languages and graduate programs in math and public administration. The University of Montana is phasing out or has frozen more than 30 certificate, undergraduate and graduate degree programs and concentrations. A similar review is under way at branch campuses of Pennsylvania State University.

But most of the cuts have occurred at regional public universities, which get considerably less money from their states — about $1,100 less, per student, than flagships — even as they educate 70 percent of undergraduateswho go to public four-year schools. These kinds of schools are also more likely than other kinds of institutions to enroll students from lower-income families and who are the first in their families to go to college.

St. Cloud State University in Minnesota is cutting 42 degree programs, for example, including criminal justice, gerontology, history, electrical and environmental engineering, economics and physics. The University of Alaska System scaled back more than 40, including earth sciences, geography and environmental resources and hospitality administration. Henderson State University in Arkansas dropped 25. Emporia State University in Kansas cut, merged or downgraded around 40 undergraduate and graduate majors, minors and concentrations.

The State University of New York at Fredonia is dropping 13 majors. SUNY Potsdam is cutting chemistry, physics, philosophy, French, Spanish and four other programs. The University of North Carolina Asheville is discontinuing religious studies, drama, philosophy and concentrations in French and German.

The states could intervene but so far they have not. The federal government could help, but under Trump, it won’t.

.

Categories Higher Education, Rural Schools

Chris Tomlinson: Texas Republicans Want to Drive Out Free-Thinkers. They Will Be Sorry.

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2024 //
10

Chris Tomlinson is an opinion writer for The Houston Chronicle and one of the best critics of the state’s loony leadership. In this column, he warns of the perils of pushing out the free-thinkers. As Forrest Gump famously said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

He writes:

Texas lawmakers are targeting colleges and universities in the next culture war battle, putting our most vital economic drivers at risk.

Our public universities are why Texas outperforms, whether it’s petroleum engineering at Texas A&M, electrical engineering at UT-Austin or transportation at Prairie View A&M University. Multi-disciplinary research universities produce diverse workforces and innovative entrepreneurs that benefit state and local economies.

The right-wing thought police, though, are fed up with freethinkers. Recent laws and proposed bills aim to restrict what ideas faculty and students can explore. The brightest minds will not stick around if the GOP limits intellectual freedom.

Republicans spent the 2023 legislative session protecting white supremacy by attacking programs intended to help historically under-represented students succeed. GOP lawmakers worried that fragile white students may feel uncomfortable discussing the nation’s history of slavery and oppression.

State Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Conroe Republican who leads the Senate Education Committee, passed a law banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public universities. In a stunning example of Orwellian doublethink, Creighton said his law would boost diversity.

However, when UT Austin complied with Senate Bill 17, a third of the 49 people laid off were Black, even though African-Americans make up only 7% of employees. Roughly three-fourths of the employees let go were women, though they make up just 55% of the total staff.

Across all campuses, the University of Texas System eliminated more than 300 jobs to comply with the law, arguing it was a cost-saving measure.

“Why is it that you must save costs on the backs of Black and brown employees and female employees?” Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe asked.

Not only do Republican leaders want to wipe out programs trying to reverse the lingering effects of white supremacist rule, but they also want to stop research into how racism and bigotry have harmed our society.

The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, recently cut 52 academic programs, including global culture and society, LGBTQ studies, global health, Asian studies and a certificate in performing social activism in the College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts. Regent Michael J. Plank echoed UT officials, saying the board has a duty to “eliminate waste.”

Across the country, conservatives are using “cost saving” as a fig leaf for suppressing ideas they don’t like. For example, A&M had only offered the LGBTQ studies minor for three semesters before declaring it wasteful.

The University of North Texas made 78 changes to its course schedule, removing words such as race, gender, class and equity from titles and descriptions, the Dallas Morning News reported. Freedom of speech group PEN America accused university leaders of abusing SB17.

“UNT seems to be arguing that the principle of academic freedom only exists when state law allows it,” Jeremy Young, PEN’s Freedom to Learn project director, said. “This ludicrous interpretation effectively nullifies academic freedom as a protection against government censorship, setting a perilous precedent for higher education institutions across Texas and potentially beyond.”

Texas A&M and UNT may have only been obeying in advance of more restrictive laws to come.

“While DEI-related curriculum and course content does not explicitly violate the letter of the law, it indeed contradicts its spirit,” Creighton said during a Texas Senate Higher Education Subcommittee hearing. “The curriculum does not reflect the expectations of Texas taxpayers and students who fund our public universities.”

Newly elected state Rep. Carl Tepper, a Lubbock Republican, has introduced a bill requiring the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to calculate a ratio of student debt to annual salary for every degree or certificate offered. The board would then assign a rating: reward, monitor, sanction or sunset. The goal is to shut down programs in the latter categories.

Learning for learning’s sake would not be tolerated under House Bill 281.

Political leaders have long interfered with colleges and universities. Texas lawmakers started using professors as political scapegoats within three years of establishing UT. Institutions have long offered tenure to protect underpaid professors from political interference.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has repeatedly said he wants to ban tenure and make it easier to remove professors who teach or study ideas the Legislature doesn’t like.

Unsurprisingly, two-thirds of the 950 Texas faculty surveyed by the American Association of University Professors said they would not recommend teaching in Texas to colleagues.

Texas Republicans may feel a mandate to drive free thinkers out of public universities, but Texas employers looking for an educated workforce will pay the price.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Creativity, Extremism, Higher Education, Ignorance, Innovation, Texas
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