Compiled by SUSAN JONES
JAN. 14
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California College of the Arts will close by the end of the 2026–27 academic year amid enrollment declines that have rendered its business model unsustainable, officials announced. But the announcement at a press conference at San Francisco’s City Hall also included news that Vanderbilt University is stepping in to purchase the campus, giving the private institution in Tennessee a foothold on the West Coast.
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The U.S. Department of Education announced a string of Title IX investigations into more than a dozen colleges and state and local school systems with policies that allow transgender students to play on sports teams aligning with their gender identity.
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The State Department announced that it will be freezing visa applications for individuals from 75 countries, starting next week, in what it says is an effort to crack down on use of taxpayer benefit programs. The pause only applies to immigrant visas, the Associated Press reported, so students, tourists and others seeking to travel from the 75 countries shouldn’t be affected.
JAN. 13
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Texas officials are encouraging college students, employees and the public to report violations of the state’s ban on faculty senates and diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education, Higher Ed Dive reported. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s newly created Office of the Ombudsman launched the Students First portal — separate from its existing student complaint portal — to give “the public easy access to file complaints and provide feedback” over colleges’ alleged legal violations.
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Groups representing Jewish faculty and students at the University of Pennsylvania moved to block the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from forcing the school to disclose their personal information, which they said would threaten their safety, Reuters reported. The groups filed a motion in Philadelphia federal court to intervene in a case brought in November by the EEOC, which says Penn has flouted a subpoena seeking a list of members of Jewish-related campus groups and the names of employees in the Ivy League school's Jewish Studies Program. The EEOC is investigating alleged antisemitic conduct at the university, but the groups said the forced disclosure of their names and contact information could harm the very people the agency is seeking to protect.
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The University of Michigan’s incoming president, Kent Syverud, could make up to $3 million a year, per his contract. At $2 million, his base pay would have set a new record last year, according to Chronicle of Higher Education data. The figure was first reported by Bridge Michigan. In addition to the $2 million, Syverud, who has been president of Syracuse University since 2014, can earn an annual performance award that is worth up to 30 percent of his base pay, or $600,000. The university will also contribute up to $36,000 a year to his retirement plan after one year of service.
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Indiana University in Indianapolis canceled a dinner in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. hosted annually in January by the Black Student Union, Mirror Indy reported. This year’s would have been the 57th consecutive annual MLK dinner. Officials in the Division of Student Affairs told the Black Student Union the event was canceled at the end of the fall semester, citing “budget constraints,” according to a letter the Black Student Union executive council posted on Instagram. In a letter to campus Tuesday, IU Indianapolis chancellor Latha Ramchand said, “The MLK Dinner is not going away — rather we are in a moment of transition,” and described a new task force that will “help us reimagine our affinity dinners and related events.”
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Portland State University will comply with an arbitrator’s order to reinstate 10 nontenure-track faculty members who were laid off last June, despite disagreeing with the decision. President Ann Cudd (the former provost at Pitt) issued a statement Tuesday saying that the layoffs were necessary, appropriate, and “implemented in good faith and in compliance with our collective-bargaining agreement. … Nonetheless, we’ve decided the best step forward for our campus at this time is to comply with the arbitrator’s order and reinstate the affected faculty members.”
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A Clemson University professor fired over a Facebook post about Charlie Kirk’s death will get paid through the end of the semester, though he can’t return to any classroom at the college, according to a legal settlement. Joshua Bregy, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences, sued the university in October, about a month after getting fired. A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union argued Bregy’s firing violated his First Amendment right to free speech. Along with dropping his lawsuit, Bregy agreed to resign effective May 15, the end of his original contract.
JAN. 12
The Department of State said in a post on the social media site X that it has revoked 8,000 student visas since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, as part of the president’s massive deportation campaign. In total, the administration has revoked 100,000 non-immigrant visas, the department wrote, which is about double the number revoked in former President Joe Biden’s last year.
JAN. 9
Faculty in South Dakota could lose their tenure status if they don’t meet expectations, per a new policy the South Dakota Board of Regents approved in December, according to Inside Higher Education. It requires tenured faculty at the state’s six public higher learning institutions to undergo a performance review every five years, beginning during the 2026–27 academic year. While all faculty members already receive an annual performance evaluation by their immediate supervisor, the new policy adds another layer of review and considers five years’ worth of those evaluations to rank a professor’s performance.
JAN. 6
Texas became the first state in the nation to formally sever its reliance on the American Bar Association (ABA) for determining which law school graduates are eligible to sit for the bar exam, according to Insight into Academia. In a recent order, the Texas Supreme Court announced it will no longer require graduation from an ABA-accredited law school for admission to the Texas bar. Instead, the court will establish and maintain its own list of approved law schools — ending a 42-year arrangement under which the ABA effectively served as the gatekeeper for legal licensure in the state. This week, Florida also dropped its requirement that lawyers in the state hold a degree from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association, The Tallahassee Democrat reported.
JAN. 4
Starting the week of Jan. 7, the Education Department began sending out notices to approximately 1,000 defaulted student loan borrowers of the resumption of administrative wage garnishment, according to a U.S. Department of Education spokesperson. After that initial wave, the number of notified borrowers will continue to increase substantially in the following weeks and months. The move marks an end of a five-year suspension of collection activities. This development represents a significant shift in federal student loan policy and will be the first time a portion of borrowers' paychecks has been at risk since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
DECEMBER
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Pennsylvania Western University — the merger of state system campuses in California, Clarion and Edinboro — is considering ending more than 100 degree programs, minors, concentrations and certificates at its three campuses as the public institution continues to battle financial challenges and enrollment declines, the Post-Gazette reported in December. PennWest officials have said this academic program review reflects the university’s mission to prioritize high-demand degrees and ensure long-term academic and financial sustainability.
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Texas A&M will not reinstate Melissa McCoul, the instructor fired in September after a video showing a student confronting her over a gender identity lesson went viral, The New York Times reported. McCoul’s lawyer Amanda Reichek said the system’s vice chancellor for academic affairs, James Hallmark, wrote in a memo that he had “determined that Dr. McCoul’s dismissal was based upon good cause.” A faculty panel determined in late September that McCoul’s academic freedom was violated and that former Texas A&M president Mark Welsh flouted proper termination processes when he fired her. McCoul “looks forward to pursuing her First Amendment, due process and breach of contract claims in court very soon,” Reichek said in a statement to the Times.
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The Department of Education is investigating whether Brown University violated the Clery Act in relation to a campus shooting in December that left two students dead. “The department is initiating a review of Brown to determine if it has upheld its obligation under the law to vigilantly maintain campus security,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a news release announcing the investigation. The release also questioned whether Brown’s video surveillance system was “up to appropriate standards”
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The U.S. Department of Justice issued a legal memo declaring that several of the U.S. Department of Education’s grant programs for minority-serving institutions and students from underrepresented backgrounds are unconstitutional. The memo said the DOJ considered the grant programs — some of them decades-old — unlawful because they have racial criteria, such as requiring institutions to have a certain share of students from a particular racial or ethnic group.
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The University of North Carolina System will treat class syllabi as public records effective Jan. 15 and require instructors to post their syllabi to a “readily searchable” online platform beginning in the 2026-27 academic year, according to Higher Ed Dive. Under the policy change, each syllabus will have to include a course’s name, description, methodology for student assessment and required course materials, as well as a “statement noting that the course engages diverse scholarly perspectives to develop critical thinking, analysis, and debate and inclusion of a reading does not imply endorsement.”
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Purdue University will begin requiring that all of its undergraduate students demonstrate basic competency in artificial intelligence starting with freshmen who enter the university in 2026, Forbes reported.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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