Vilda Westh Blanc
City Journal
Excerpt: Higher education accreditation is in crisis. Accreditation was once an important signal, giving parents and students useful information about the value of a college degree. Now it has been reduced to a political weapon wielded against those who deviate from progressive orthodoxy.
This year, six public university flagships—Texas A&M and the Universities of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee—joined forces to create the Commission for Public Higher Education. CPHE focuses on a different model of accreditation. By focusing on real student achievement, job readiness, and research productivity, these universities aim to make accreditation a tool for competitive enhancement, not a bureaucratic straitjacket.
Ariel Kaminer, Sian Beilock, Jennifer L. Mnookin and Michael S. Roth
New York Times
Excerpt: It’s an eventful moment in American higher education: The Trump administration is cracking down, artificial intelligence is ramping up, varsity athletes are getting paid and a college education is losing its status as the presumptive choice of ambitious high school seniors.
To tell us what’s happening now and what might be coming around the corner, three university leaders — Sian Beilock, the president of Dartmouth; Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan; and Jennifer Mnookin, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison — spoke with Ariel Kaminer, an editor at Times Opinion.
Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Education Department is planning to move TRIO and numerous other higher education programs to the Labor Department as part of a broader effort to dismantle the agency and “streamline its bureaucracy.”
Instead of moving whole offices, the department detailed a plan Tuesday to transfer certain programs and responsibilities to other agencies. All in all, the department signed six agreements with four agencies, relocating a wide swath of programs.
Associated Press/NPR
Excerpt: The Trump administration cannot fine the University of California or summarily cut the school system's federal funding over claims it allows antisemitism or other forms of discrimination, a federal judge ruled late Friday in a sharply worded decision.