Alex C. Lange

a cartoon of a woman holding a broom in her hand . ALT: a cartoon of a woman holding a broom in her hand .

*dusts off the feed*

🤢

Once again, I'm asking technologists to ask not "can we do this" but instead "do people want this?"

DOJ Deems Definition of HSIs Unconstitutional, Won’t Defend The Department of Justice said it won’t defend against a legal challenge to the law defining HSIs as having at least 25 percent Hispanic undergraduates. The program’s future is in jeopardy.

This is why a number of us have expected the grants for enrollment-based MSIs to go

www.insidehighered.com/news/institu...

First day of school means a bunch of cross-institution emails flying and I have a small fascination with how campus IT departments deal with phishing. Mine (top image) is simple but we get fake emails from the university to “test” us. Meanwhile just saw the one at the bottom and it feels like ALOT 😳

a young boy is sitting in the back seat of a car with his legs crossed . ALT: a young boy is sitting in the back seat of a car with his legs crossed .

It’s the start of year 5 doing this professor thing. Let’s see how this round goes!

Tucked Into Columbia’s Deal With Trump: A Restriction on International Enrollments Under the settlement, the university will conduct a “comprehensive review” of its international-admissions processes and “take steps to reduce its financial dependence” on foreign students.

Columbia agrees to additional restrictions on international students as a part of their effort to potentially recoup a portion of withheld research funding.

Whoever is training these chat bots, I promise you: the performance of empathy in text does not translate to keeping calm or feeling understood when you know it’s auto-generated and you have an urgent issue.

Columbia functionally returning to its original name King’s College

A sad aspect of this situation is that other university leaders will think this is the way to appease an authoritarian. The other is that they’ll be surprised when more is demanded of them down the road.

In the years to come, people will remind them ‘I hear what you say, but I see what you do.’

In Extraordinary Deal With Trump, Columbia U. Agrees to Pay $200 Million to Restore Funds The university said the government would resolve its investigations and restore most of the $400 million in research funding it had stripped from the institution.

Breaking news: Columbia University has reached an extraordinary deal with the Trump administration, agreeing to pay $200 million to resolve the government's claims of antisemitism on the campus. chroni.cl/4mgRHO1

Feds Axed Grants Across Red, Blue States, Report Finds The Center for American Progress says the Trump administration has targeted for termination more than 4,000 grants across over 600 institutions. Adjusting for statewide enrollment, South Dakota is hit...

The assault on higher education is not just about coastal elite schools. "Federal agencies terminated or were attempting to terminate more than 4,000 grants across over 600 institutions. These grants are worth between $6.9 billion and $8.2 billion combined." www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” will make it harder for many community college students to afford food and healthcare. Read a new report from @americanprogress.bsky.social about how affording basic living expenses are increasingly a barrier for community college students’ success.

A calm 24 hours in Colorado: a former senator facing criminal charges for allegedly faking letters of support in an ethics probe; revelations about Rep. Gabe Evans’ background; the state saying it mistakenly gave data to ICE; & Gov. Polis pledging to stop himself from building a bridge no one wants.

An Outline of the Postliberal University: Public, Private, and Partisan Goods Published in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning (Vol. 56, No. 6, 2024)

I framed the week in part around Taylor and @cantb.bsky.social’s postliberal model of the university, and students kept coming back to it day after day. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Doing a weeklong policy course was exhausting, and wow was it good to get five days to pull apart and fully comprehend everything that’s happening in and to higher education in policy systems in the last seven months with insightful doc students.

I thought the press descriptions had to be at least slightly off. But they are completely accurate.

America First is literally arguing that the disparate impact of free tuition for all families making <$300K per year “masks racial preferences behind income thresholds.”

Note also that the lawsuit alleges that because race and class are correlated, providing free tuition to lower income students is also racial preference.

They just want a pure aristocracy of inherited wealth

Trans researchers under attack: LGBTQ+ biologists face hostile work environment Largest survey of LGBTQ+ biologists finds 40% of trans and gender-nonconforming, and 20% of lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer researchers, experience hostility, intimidation or offensive behaviour at w...

Straight from @Nature and @CooperBioEdLab:

The largest survey of LGBTQ+ biologists finds that 40% of trans and gender-nonconforming and 20% of LGBQ researchers face hostility, intimidation, or offensive behavior at work.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

It’s federal policy systems day in my education policy class! Felt like an apt opening image.

🧵 For our special issue on research, @chronicle.com dove into how the scientific enterprise has been buffeted by the Trump administration. As Jenny Ruark writes in her editor's note, "the speed of retrenchment is breathtaking." We wrote about how we got here, and what might be next. #AcademicSky

SCOTUS when Biden administration seeks to reduce student loan debt: Major question where they have to jump in and block before any action takes place.
SCOTUS when Trump eliminates the entire Department of Education: Lets see how this plays out, no need to intervene right now.

Welp. That was fast.
www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

It is the fifth day of our PhD summer intensive but my first day of class! Fingers crossed for no breaking higher education policy-related news this week 🤞🏼

They don't ask me about stuff like this because I would be curious how conservative you gotta be? Do you have to have voted at least twice for certain candidates? Believe that birthright citizenship isn't real? What's the litmus test you're using to implement this folks? They can ask JHU I guess...

Now I know the reasons and one of them is the cute manicure I got just in time for our nine day PhD summer intensive 💅🏼

At my new doctor’s office waiting to be called back. Tell me why the receptionist looked at me and then turned on Will & Grace.