State and federal policy decisions are restricting educational opportunity in higher education

At first glance, funding cuts, accreditation debates, anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion legislation and shifts in research priorities can seem like separate conversations. A closer look reveals these developments are part of a larger effort to reshape who higher education serves, which institutions have the resources to thrive, and who has access to educational opportunity. The Alliance for Higher Education brought together a panel of leading scholars and researchers to discuss “How State and Federal Disinvestment is Resegregating Higher Education,” how these trends are reinforcing longstanding inequalities and what they mean for the future of educational opportunity and the ability of students and scholars to learn, teach, and pursue new ideas. 

If you weren’t able to make the webinar, you can view the recording here or read through the recap below.

What’s the issue at hand?: At the state and federal levels, politicians are launching coordinated and structured attacks on higher education to subject it to political control and make it less accessible. They are simultaneously attacking funding priorities, curriculum content, broader student success structures, and educational opportunity programs to advance political agendas that will harm the next generation of students, scholars, and educators.

Why does it matter?: These interconnected efforts are leading to funding cuts that directly  undermine higher education’s day to day operations and academic freedom including limiting what students can learn, what research can be pursued and funded, and institutions’ faculty and capacity. 

What’s the field seeing?:  Panelists’ research highlighted how these attacks are working toward the shared goal of creating increasingly unequal conditions of access, support, and opportunity in higher education.

• Through over 100 interviews with faculty engaged in racial equity work across 38 states, Dr. Laura Hamilton and team found that critical areas — new hires, college access programs, scholarships, cultural centers, and identity-based retention support — are being targeted in order to dismantle the Faculty Racial Equity Infrastructure: the interconnected network of institutional programs, policies and structures designed to help racially marginalized students and scholars enter, persist and advance within higher education. Losses to these areas purposely compound across the entire pipeline, specifically along racial lines, creating resegregation in higher education. 
• Dr. Jackie Pedota and team found that universities are engaging in suppressive compliance in response to vague laws, rules or directives. This led a Texas university to restrict activities that the state’s anti-DEI law doesn’t prohibit. This included eliminating programs, firing more than 60 staff and implementing greater oversight over teaching and research. Eventually, these overly restrictive responses are embedded into ordinary university processes and become additional legal reviews, website scans, compliance trainings, grants and syllabi reviews, and approval processes that are harder to question or challenge.
• Through a survey of over 4,000 academic researchers, Dylan Ruediger and team found that federal and state policies are driving researchers to try and limit their risk exposure. Researchers avoid certain topics, adjust to constrained funding environments, leave their academies or lose confidence in their institution-level leadership, weakening the institutional and national capacity for research, specifically surrounding climate change, public health, and marginalized communities.
• Dr. Rebecca Perdomo, Dr.Melissa Salazar and team’s research found that the Department of Education’s grant cuts to programs for Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) lead to the loss of the Faculty Racial Equity Infrastructure at HSIs all over the country. 
• As highlighted by Dr. Kaleb L. Briscoe and team’s report, increased efforts by state and federal government to influence and alter the educational landscape have lasting impacts on marginalized students, faculty, and staff. These efforts include eliminating student funding, restricting international students enrollment, and rolling back more flexible student loan plans.

What’s the big takeaway?: Attacks on higher education should be viewed not as a series of isolated policy changes but instead as a broader, more widespread restructuring of higher education meant to make our colleges and universities less accessible, less racially equitable, and less intellectually rich. Recognizing the interconnected challenges that all of higher education is facing is important for understanding how we shift against and resist these attacks.

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