Compiled by SUSAN JONES

On Aug. 3, the U.S. Department of Education issued a letter calling on every postsecondary institution to describe its commitments on topics including admissions, academic rigor, free expression, institutional governance and the value colleges and universities provide to students and society, Pitt Chancellor Joan Gabel told the Pitt community in an email Aug. 4.

Institutions have until the end of the year to share information about these commitments on their websites. Pitt, which already shares much of this information publicly, has not responded yet to what the Trump administration is calling “Compact 2.0.” So far, only the University of North Carolina system has responded.

AUG. 27

More than 40 Carnegie Mellon University faculty members have formed a local advocacy chapter of the American Association of University Professors, the Tribune-Review reported. The organization, leaders say, comes as a way for faculty to collaborate with each other, given the strong headwinds facing academia and higher education. Those include politically motivated attacks, cuts to research funding, unethical artificial intelligence use, and freedom of expression on campus.

AUG. 25

• A number of faculty members at Texas A&M University–Victoria have quit after the university announced in late June that full-time faculty are required to be on campus for eight hours a day, five days per week this fall, Inside Higher Ed reported. As a result, multiple classes have been canceled and some departments are nearly empty, said Teresa Klein, president of the Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

• The Massachusetts Institute of Technology must revise its governance processes to allow for more rapid changes to its curriculum in response to the evolving capabilities of artificial intelligence, a university committee recommended in a report. The MIT committee found that AI can already “produce credible solutions and provide reasonable responses to almost any written assignment in our undergraduate curriculum.” 

AUG. 24

• The U.S. Department of Education is seeking to give itself more leeway in how and why it cancels federal grant funding, according to a proposed rule published in the Federal Register. The rule would codify controversial approaches to canceling funding that have landed the agency in hot water in the last year, during which a slew of grant funds were abruptly ended because the Education Department said they don’t align with the Trump administration’s priorities. 

• After a federal court struck down the Trump administration’s effort to levy a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applications, the Department of Homeland Security is trying a different approach to impose a similar fee. Under a proposal released Monday, new H-1B visa petitions will have to pay $103,265 in addition to the other required fees. DHS expects the new fee to generate about $3 billion, which will be used to offset costs related to administering the lawful immigration system. The plan is open for public comment for 30 days.

• The Department of Defense has directed a group of 30 research-focused universities to conduct an “immediate and comprehensive” audit of their partnerships with foreign institutions that it says could be a threat to national security, Inside Higher Ed reported. Each university has until the end of the month to submit its findings and terminate any relationships found to be “problematic,” the department said in a news release. Any university that does not comply could lose federal research funding. Pitt is not on the list, but Penn State is.

• The University of Chicago’s undergraduate social-sciences division will go “analog” this fall, implementing a blanket policy banning technology in class and AI assistance on coursework across the division’s core courses, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. New restrictions apply to students and faculty members in required social-sciences core sequences, which students typically complete in three phases during their sophomore year.

AUG. 20

International student applications to American colleges dropped by 10 percent in the most recent application cycle — a decrease of roughly 16,000 students — according to data Common App released.

AUG. 19

The U.S. Department of Education released a proposed rule  to overhaul the accreditation system to carry out key pillars of the Trump administration’s higher education policy agenda. The proposed rule, which was published in the Federal Register on Aug. 20, would give accreditors significant new duties, such as ensuring colleges have policies to prioritize intellectual diversity among faculty and protect civil and free speech rights.

AUG. 17

The Trump administration’s civil rights investigations into three Ivy League universities were politically motivated and designed to pressure those institutions into settlements, a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney alleged in a whistleblower account. Officials pressed for deals with Columbia and Harvard universities despite hasty or incomplete investigations, Haley Van Erem, who worked in the Justice Department’s civil rights division for almost a decade, alleged. At Brown University, officials pursued a deal even after investigators concluded that there wasn’t evidence to support a civil rights violation. 

AUG. 13

A federal judge  dismissed the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights lawsuit against Harvard University, marking a win for the Ivy League institution in its ongoing legal war with the Trump administration. The agency sued Harvard in March over allegations it failed to protect its Jewish and Israeli students from harassment and discrimination.

AUG. 11

• The Education Department’s Office of Federal Student Aid is warning hundreds of institutions that their access to federal grants and loans could be at risk if they fail to properly submit required student outcomes data by early 2027. Newly released data shows that of more than 4,640 colleges and universities with programs eligible for funding, about 1,930 are either missing or have underreported some or all of the data they are required to provide under federal accountability rules. Pitt has submitted all its data. That’s about 42 percent of the institutions in the database department officials attached to the warning. A deeper Inside Higher Ed analysis of the data shows that 578 of those institutions—or roughly 30 percent—haven’t properly submitted any of the seven required files, which span three academic years.

• Jacksonville State University trustees abolished the university’s Faculty Senate and Staff Council as the school begins carrying out a new Alabama law that gives university boards more control over faculty senates, tenure and curriculum, the Alabama Daily News reported. The Board of Trustees approved a resolution dissolving both groups, along with their constitutions, bylaws and other governing documents, effective immediately. The resolution directs President Don Killingsworth, working with the provost, university counsel and other officials, to develop new policies for faculty and staff advisory groups, tenure and post-tenure review and curriculum.

AUG. 10

The University of Texas at Austin is revamping its general education curriculum to narrow its spread and focus on topics such as Western civilization and broad U.S. history classes. The aim is for students to “grapple with big questions of human meaning and purpose, citizenship and self-government, scientific discovery, and the opportunities and challenges of technological innovation,” UT Austin President Jim Davis said  in a public letter introducing the new curriculum standards. The university plans to pilot new core courses in fall 2027 and make the full curriculum available by fall 2028. 

AUG. 6

• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will soon propose a rule to eliminate the 60-day grace period that H-1B and similar nonimmigrant visa holders receive if their employment ends before the expiration date of their visas. The rule was submitted to the Office of Management and Budget on Aug. 6, but it has yet to be published in the Federal Register, with no indication from White House officials when it will be approved for publication.

• Beginning in fall 2027, the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts will assign pass/no credit grades rather than traditional letter grades during the first semester for all incoming students. Students will still receive grades and instructor feedback in all their first-semester courses, but final letter grades will not be recorded on their external transcripts, and calculations of their GPAs will not include first-semester letter grades. 

Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.

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