Compiled by SUSAN JONES
The July 4th holiday slowed down some of the news about higher education during the past two weeks, but there’s still some to catch up on:
June 26: The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Harvard in its investigation into whether Ivy League universities have coordinated their pricing, the New York Times reported. In the subpoena letter, Reps. Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who chairs the committee, and Scott Fitzgerald, a Wisconsin Republican, demanded documents and communications about the university’s tuition and financial aid by July 17. They said they were issuing the subpoena after Harvard’s response to an earlier request for information was “inadequate” and “substantively deficient.” Harvard disputed the committee’s assessment. “We are disappointed that the committee has chosen to issue a subpoena and believe it is unwarranted, unfair and unnecessary,” a Harvard spokesman said, adding that the university “has produced thousands of pages of documents regarding our tuition setting process and financial aid program.”
June 30
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Brown University’s top officials warned of “significant cost-cutting” amid the Trump administration’s cuts to research funding and the likelihood of more reductions ahead, according to Higher Ed Dive. The leaders said staff reductions along with changes to faculty and staff hiring are possible later in the summer. Additional measures include scaling back capital spending and adjusting graduate admissions levels after limiting budget growth for doctoral programs earlier this year.
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A Trump administration investigation found that Harvard violated federal civil rights law by failing to protect Jewish students on campus. The finding puts the school at risk of losing additional federal funding, according to NPR. In a separate letter to the university summarizing the investigation’s findings, a federal task force said, “Harvard has been in some cases deliberately indifferent, and in others has been a willful participant in anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students, faculty, and staff.” A spokesperson for the university said, “Harvard is far from indifferent on this issue and strongly disagrees with the government’s findings.” Harvard says it has taken a number of steps to better protect against antisemitism and support Jewish students on campus.
July 1
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A new law went into effect that mandates that any institution receiving Title IV funding must include hazing incidents in its annual security reports, which are sent to the federal government. It also requires colleges and universities to implement hazing-prevention programs and to publish online both their hazing policies and a Campus Hazing Transparency Report.
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The Trump administration released $175 million in previously frozen federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania, after reaching an agreement with the federal government to block transgender athletes from female sports teams and erase the records set by Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who was on Penn’s women’s swim team three years ago, according to CNN.
- Yale University has paused 10 construction projects due to uncertainty around federal funding, a university official said during a recent real estate forecast panel, according to the New Haven Register.
July 7
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Boston University plans to lay off 120 staff members — about 1% of its employees — and eliminate another 120 vacant positions, senior leaders said in a community message. Another 20 positions will undergo an unspecified schedule change. The moves are part of a 5% overall reduction to the university’s budget, the leaders said.
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Barnard College has settled a lawsuit brought by Jewish and Israeli students who said they had faced severe and pervasive antisemitism on campus, with administrators pledging that they will maintain a “zero tolerance” policy regarding discrimination and harassment, the college and lawyers representing the students announced. As part of the agreement, Barnard leaders will no longer interact with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition that has led many pro-Palestinian campus protests, or any successor groups.
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More than 200 Harvard University students have signed an open letter calling on their institution to resist what they characterize as unreasonable federal demands, as the Trump administration claims progress toward reaching an agreement with the prestigious university, according to Diverse Issues in Higher Education.
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North Carolina’s Democratic governor Josh Stein vetoed two bills the Republican-led General Assembly passed targeting what lawmakers dubbed “diversity, equity and inclusion”; “discriminatory practices”; and “divisive concepts” in public higher education, according to Inside Higher Education.
July 8: Faced with an “unsustainable compounding deficit,” George Washington University is freezing hiring and could lay off employees down the road, the private Washington, D.C.-based institution said in a community message. The hiring freeze applies to positions funded directly by the university and is set to last until at least Oct. 1. GWU also plans to review large procurement contracts, cut back on capital spending, and tighten budgets for travel, events and entertainment, among other moves.
July 9: The U.S. government underreported the number of international students on American campuses last year by more than 200,000 — an error that made it appear that overseas enrollments were falling when in fact there was steady growth, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Department of Homeland Security quietly corrected the data ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, weeks after being alerted by an international-education group. The Student and Exchange Visitor Information System figures, posted on the Study in the States website, previously showed an 11-percent decline in international enrollments last year. Instead, foreign-student numbers increased by 6.5 percent.
July 10: The U.S. Senate subcommittee that oversees the budgets for the Justice and Commerce Departments as well as related science agencies proposed only a small cut to the National Science Foundation budget next fiscal year — $16 million instead of the $5 billion reduction that President Trump has proposed. The bill also would send about $10 million more to the National Weather Service and boosts funding for National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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