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A week before colleges must report years of admissions data to the federal government, a group of Democratic state attorneys general sued the Trump administration to block what they say is an unlawful demand.
In recent weeks, colleges and the institutional research offices tasked to collect and report the data have been sounding the alarm about the looming deadline. An association recently requested a three-month extension. The Education Department responded with a conditional three-week extension.
Almost immediately after Donald Trump took office for the second time, the White House and the Department of Education launched a shock-and-awe assault against its perceived foes in higher education, announcing a new investigation or seizure of funding seemingly every week. Their targets appeared overwhelmed by the speed and severity of the offensive.
But the aggressive pace that won the administration so many early victories eventually proved to be its great weakness. The government could move so quickly only by skipping almost all of the procedural steps required by federal law. Once universities and their allies recovered from their shock and challenged the Trump administration, they were able to block many, if not most, of the White House’s moves in court. Trump has certainly left his mark on America’s universities. But he has not broken them.
Iowa is considering a slate of bills that would limit speech in college classrooms and threaten academic freedom. These measures would mandate reviews of classroom content for DEI or critical race theory, remove topics like “multiculturalism” from teacher training programs, and enshrine a viewpoint-discriminatory definition of “antisemitism” into university policy.
These proposals test longstanding constitutional limits on government interference with academic freedom and classroom discussion, so let’s take a look at each one in turn.
Almost 10 months after the Trump administration temporarily froze all student visa interviews in spring 2025, the State Department has released data showing the impact of that pause.
According to Inside Higher Ed’s analysis of the data, which was released Friday and covered the months from June to August, the number of student visas issued in summer 2025 declined by more than 100,000 from the previous summer, to 186,160. While the sharpest drop was in F-1 visas, which are for international students studying at a college or university and is the largest category of student visa, the number of J-1 and M-1 visas also declined.
Higher education needs a “hard reset.” That was the message from Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent last week at the American Council on Education’s (ACE) annual meeting. The remarks by a government official offered a stern warning to get on board or get out of the way. “I hope that you all are ready, having made it through the five stages of grief and, most importantly, reaching the final state of acceptance,” Kent explained (while referencing bunk psychology research).
With the pressure on higher ed holding steady, it’s a question of what’s next after over a year of targeted attacks on elite universities. Jon Fansmith, ACE’s senior vice president for government relations and national engagement, thinks that something like a second “compact” is coming. This time, focused on “systemic change” across all 4,000 institutions of higher education rather than a select handful.
Last month, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made several announcements, stating he was ending partnerships with multiple highly selective colleges and universities that have long educated military service members. But it remains unclear what he’s actually canceling, why specific universities have been targeted or favored and what he plans to replace these programs with.
