Daily Briefing

Good morning, and welcome to Thursday, November 7. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

What does Trump 2.0 mean?

Scattershot reactions roll in after any election. That was all the more true on Wednesday for higher ed after Republicans swept into power in Washington, D.C., following a campaign that castigated colleges.

To start making sense of it all, the Daily Briefing compiled some of the biggest questions facing higher ed, drawn from interviews, commentary, and the latest news.

Who controls the House of Representatives? With the Senate firmly swinging to Republicans, which party wins the House majority will dictate the degree to which major higher-ed changes could run through Congress. A Democratic House would shift the emphasis to executive rulemaking and enforcement, which still would give the Trump administration plenty of tools to reshape how colleges operate.

Does the Department of Education end up as trash or a tool? Eliminating the department might be a tough sell even if Republicans control both houses of Congress. Some of its key functions could theoretically be moved to other agencies without lawmakers’ approval, but the agency offers many useful levers for conservatives who want to reshape education in their own image.

Can higher ed shield immigrant and international students? The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration reaffirmed its “steadfast commitment to undocumented, immigrant-origin, international, and refugee students.” Colleges can’t interfere with law enforcement without risking their federal funding, though.

Are for-profit colleges out of the woods? Career Education Colleges and Universities, a trade group, celebrated the Republican landslide as “a clear rebuke to the Biden-Harris administration.” CECU has objected to rules the administration wrote to protect students from low-value career programs. It’s déjà vu all over again after the first Trump administration nixed similar rules.

Will opponents of institutional neutrality backtrack? “We don’t have to pretend to be neutral, but we do have a job to do,” wrote Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan University and a vocal critic of policies prohibiting colleges from commenting on current events. “The work in this new political context is to continue to maintain Wesleyan’s commitment to an education based in boldness, rigor, and practical idealism.”

Do scientists have the tools to publicly defend their conclusions? The time for hand-wringing over messy public debate may be over. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told NPR the Trump administration will recommend removing fluoride from drinking water and review research on vaccines.

How much should colleges look in the mirror? Ideas that thrive on campuses have drawn particular scorn. “The politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity,” wrote Bret Stephens in a New York Times column. “It also, increasingly, stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms on hundreds of millions of Americans who want to live and let live but don’t like being told how to speak or what to think.”

Can higher ed find common cause with its antagonists? “We have an administration, and maybe a Congress, that doesn’t believe that we’re a positive good for society,” Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, said on a Wednesday podcast. “An awful lot of Americans think that higher education is one of the forces that is moving American society in the wrong direction.”

📱 For more on the election’s aftermath from The Chronicle:

• When Trump Was First Elected, College Leaders Wrote Statements About It. And Now?
• The College-Degree Divide Is Becoming a Chasm
• What Trump’s Threats of Mass Deportation Could Mean for Higher Ed

📧 Send us your post-election questions. Email dailybriefing@chronicle.com, and we’ll consider your submission for a future Daily Briefing.

State and local election results to know

Arkansas will open up lottery funding for students attending vocational-technical schools. Since 2009, the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery has funded $20 million in state aid each year for students attending two- and four-year colleges, according to the Arkansas Advocate. Voters approved a constitutional amendment that will allow lawmakers to add $2 million for students of vocational-technical schools.

For the second time in four years, voters rejected an attempt to curtail the Nevada Board of Regents’ autonomy. A ballot measure would have removed the elected board from the state’s constitution, giving lawmakers the ability to “review, reform, and improve” the state’s public universities, the Nevada Independent reported. Lawmakers backing the effort said they wanted more oversight.

The University of Nebraska Board of Regents was poised to remain unchanged. All four members of the eight-person board who were up for re-election were on track to retain their seats, according to the Nebraska Examiner.

Ballot measures around the country set colleges up for new funding. Measures seemed poised to pass in :

• California: A $10-billion batch of bond would fund facilities upgrades at aging community colleges and K-12 schools, CalMatters reported.
• New Mexico: A $230-million bond is set to pay for University of New Mexico projects, including a remodeling of its College of Pharmacy building, according to KRQE.
• Rhode Island: Bonding totaling $160.5 million would pay for construction at state colleges, The Providence Journal reported. More than half, $87.5 million, is bound for a new biomedical-sciences building at the University of Rhode Island at Kingston, and $73 million will be used to renovate a building to become the home of Rhode Island College’s Institute for Cybersecurity & Emerging Technologies.

Quick hits

• Northern Michigan U. shares logo with school district: Northwestern Area School District, in Mellette, S.D., contacted Northern Michigan University after learning it was using the higher-ed institution’s copyrighted wildcat logo and colors. The district announced an agreement on Monday allowing both to use the logo. (KSFY)
• Data-breach settlement nears: Our Lady of the Lake University, in San Antonio, could pay millions of dollars under a class-action settlement due for approval next week, putting to rest claims from a 2022 data breach that exposed the personal information of almost 42,000 employees and students. The university didn’t offer public notice of the breach until the San Antonio Express-News reported on it in 2023. The settlement would cap plaintiffs’ losses and provide two named plaintiffs with $5,000 each. (San Antonio Express-News)
• Students get transcript runaround: Former students report that Union Institute & University’s website sends them to a credential service when they seek transcripts from the Cincinnati-based online institution, which shut down in June. But the website of the credential service, Parchment, says transcripts can’t be ordered because Union is closed. State regulators are urging the institution to offer guidance. (WYSO)
• Students face hate-crime charges: Seven students at Salisbury University, in Maryland, have been charged with first-degree assault, false imprisonment, reckless endangerment, and associated hate crimes after police officers said they used social media to invite someone to an off-campus apartment in mid-October. When the person entered, the seven students allegedly kicked, punched, and spit on him while calling him derogatory names. Police officers say they were all members or associates of a fraternity and targeted the victim due to his sexual preferences. (Salisbury Daily Times)

Comings and goings

• Steve Angle, chancellor of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, will step down and join the faculty at the beginning of next year.
• Brian Burnett, senior vice president for finance and administration at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has been named executive vice president and chief financial officer at Case Western Reserve University.
• Alberto J. Román, president of East Los Angeles College, has been named interim chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District.

To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com.

Footnote

Should you visit the stone chapel at Thomas Jefferson University, in Philadelphia, over the next few weeks, you might find it bathed in confetti or covered in swimming koi.

It’s all part of a project in which six design students treat architectural elements as painstakingly mapped screens, transforming the likes of barrel vaults into a lake covered in fog. They’re working with researchers at Jefferson and nearby St. Joseph’s University to study the effects of art environments on people with autism. The goal is to illuminate questions like whether a display has a calming or exciting effect, or if it can help someone regulate their body.

A similar effort projected nature imagery on the chapel last spring. It suggested the environment can light up positive emotions and dim negative ones.

The work eschews the silos that so often divide disciplines.

“What typically happens is that design students design things, and they may design it with the intent that it would be healing in some way, but they never study whether that actually happens,” Lyn Godley, a light artist and professor of industrial design, told WHYY. “Researchers study what’s already out there but they’re not coming back with the information and giving it to the designers.”

Enjoy the image below, courtesy of Godley. It’s a pleasure to shine a spotlight on this work.