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Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
The Trump administration wants to streamline its existing higher education accountability measures with a new earnings test, holding all postsecondary programs to the same standard—regardless of the certification level or institution type involved. But doing so could water down an existing accountability measure for certificates and for-profit programs.
Under a new policy proposal, released by the Department of Education late last week, undergraduate programs would be required to show that on average their graduates earn more than a working adult with a high school degree. Programs that fail to meet those standards for multiple years could lose access to all federal loans.
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Ghent University suspended postdoctoral scholar Nathan Cofnas as a “precautionary measure” pending a “preliminary disciplinary investigation.” The reason he is being suspended, however, has little if anything to do with him legitimately criticizing Jason Arday’s scholarship last month by documenting plagiarism in Arday’s doctoral thesis. Ghent is instead suspending Cofnas because his expressed public views are misaligned with the university’s values and therefore “creates a reputational risk”. This is not how academic freedom should work.
In July of this year, the American Association of University Professors endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate in Michigan’s Democratic primary election for U.S. Senate. Reactions from higher ed commentators played out exactly how you might expect: where defenders saw an obligatory bulwark of academic freedom against GOP incursions, critics saw an own-goal that only further justified those attacks.
However justified the AAUP’s decision may have seemed to some, new research suggests that it will only further fracture public trust in higher education.
