News: Colleges say they’re not taking any stances

Monday, September 30, 2024

Colleges say they’re not taking any stances

Sep 30, 2024

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Supporters of Palestine gather at Harvard University to show their support for Palestinians in Gaza.

Supporters of Palestine gather at Harvard University to show their support for Palestinians in Gaza at a rally in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 2023. | Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images

STAYING NEUTRAL: Several colleges are now saying they won’t be weighing in on any social or political issues anymore.

This comes after a tumultuous spring of demonstrations regarding the war in Gaza, student arrests, college presidents testifying on the Hill — and some of those leaders stepping down.

This fall, a string of elite colleges had put out statements saying they were adopting institutional neutrality, which means what the name implies: they won’t be taking a stance on anything, unless it directly affects university operations. The University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Stanford, USC and the University of Texas system are just a few examples of universities that recently adopted the policy.

The ideology rose to prominence in the 1967 Kalven Report on the University of Chicago’s “Role in Political and Social Action.” At the time, students on campuses across the country were protesting against the Vietnam war and the draft. They demanded that universities divest from companies with ties to South Africa. The Kalven Report called for neutrality saying it was necessary for universities to serve its core mission of education.

But not many universities have followed Kalven’s guidelines for the last half-century or so. After George Floyd was murdered several institutions put out statements saying they stand in solidarity with Black students. Others voiced their support for Ukraine and offered support to their students, faculty and staff that were affected by the war. Some university officials released statements expressing concerns after controversial Supreme Court decisions.

Daniel Diermeier, the chancellor of Vanderbilt University, which is one of the few universities that has long had an institutional neutrality policy, said he is heartened to see more universities to do the same.

“The problem with universities taking official positions is that they lay down a party line. What that does is that it creates a chilling effect,” Diermeier said in an interview. “It's already challenging for students to already engage in these types of discussions because there is a lot of peer pressure and so forth.”

However, Vanderbilt can weigh in on issues that directly affect university operations, he said. For instance, university leaders might comment on policies regarding student visas. On the other hand, he doesn’t believe divesting from certain companies is in line with the policy. He said such divestments could hurt their endowment, which provides funding for student financial aid and faculty research.

Not everyone shares Diermeier’s view. The president of Oakland University, Ora Pescovitz, wrote in an op-ed in The Detroit News that she fears universities are using the policy as a crutch, and it could actually prevent them from extending support to members of their community. She has issued statements that have decried Islamophobia and antisemitism.

“Because public universities are not partisan, religious or ideological institutions, they should remain neutral on most issues,” Pescovitz wrote. “However, there are rare times when moral clarity, comfort, direction and leadership are required of a university president. It is at such times when I, as the institutional leader believe I must speak out.”

IT’S MONDAY, SEPT. 30. WELCOME TO WEEKLY EDUCATION. I’m your host, Rebecca Carballo. Spill the tea: rcarballo@politico.com. The team: Bianca Quilantan at bquilantan@politico.com, Juan Perez Jr. at jperez@politico.com and Mackenzie Wilkes at mwilkes@politico.com.

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A message from Sallie Mae®:

While students and families know that higher education is an important investment in their future, Sallie Mae’s How America Pays for College 2024 report found they’re still missing out on scholarships and other opportunities to make college more affordable. Learn more about how students and families plan and pay for higher education.

THE FAFSA

A SLOW START: Tomorrow is typically the launch of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, but instead it’s being released to a small group of students for testing purposes.

The form won’t be released to the masses until Dec. 1, two months later than normal. Federal officials revamped the form after a bill was passed in December 2020 that called to simplify the application.

But the cycle last year was anything but simple: Applicants discovered they could not complete the application if they were born in the year 2000. Signatures disappeared. About three-quarters of applicants’ calls from students seeking help went unanswered in the first five months of the rollout.

The phased rollout is supposed to help catch these kinds of glitches earlier on instead of having to fix them on a large scale, said Jennifer Pahlka, former deputy chief technology officer in the Obama White House.

The federal government has only begun to warm up to the idea of soft launching new systems in the last ten years, although the practice is common in the tech world, she said. Agencies and elected officials fear selecting small groups first may create inequity, or may indicate a lack of momentum, but those fears are misguided, Pahlka said.

“They don't realize how normal it is — not just normal — but it's best practice in consumer technology,” Pahlka said. “We have a principle in government that you’re supposed to serve everyone equally. If you have a staged rollout, there is a concern that some people have access to a service others don’t.”

A Government Accountability Office report found that the department did not do enough testing last cycle. Federal Student Aid officials told GAO that they accepted the risk of doing less testing in the 2024-25 cycle because the application was already late and the agency was required by law to launch by Jan. 1, 2024.

Federal officials tapped Jeremy Singer, who leads the nonprofit that oversees the SAT, to help fix the troubled form for the 2025-26 cycle. When started his role in June, he discovered the agency was still behind on testing, and still fixing issues from the previous cycle. An Oct. 1 launch was looking unlikely.

“That is a suicide mission,” Singer recalled thinking, speaking to a room of financial aid advisors and college counselors at the annual National College Attainment Network conference two weeks ago. “If we launch Oct. 1 it's likely going to have a lot of bugs; it’s going to go down.”

The department ultimately decided to delay the form again after the higher education community said they would rather have a fully working FAFSA at a later date. This gave the department more time to do that sorely needed testing.

More than 20 technical issues still weren’t resolved by August, GAO officials said.

But the Education Department seems to be showing more confidence in the December date. FSA’s 2025-2026 FAFSA launch is running on schedule, according to documents reviewed by POLITICO, with the testing period starting tomorrow and the form being fully available to all students on or before Dec. 1. But the office is still asking Congress for more funding to ensure that it can continue its work.

Singer also publicly stated confidence in the December deadline.

“We are quite confident about the Dec. 1 date,” Singer said. “The staff at FSA working at this for years feel like it’s the first bankable date they’ve had.”

A message from Sallie Mae®:

2024 ELECTION

ICYMI: Vice President Kamala Harris released her extensive plan for the economy: an 80-plus page report with proposals that touch on topics ranging from housing to health care. Let’s unpack what this plan says about education.

Child tax credits

One of the first policy goals she outlined was her goals to expand the child tax credit. Lawmakers temporarily expanded the benefit during the pandemic, giving as much as $3,600 per child to families who met certain income requirements. When that expansion expired in 2022, many families slipped back into poverty.

She also advocated for a new $6,000 tax cut for middle-income and low-income families for the first year of their child’s life.

Jobs that don’t require a four-year degree

The proposal says Harris and her running mate Gov. Tim Walz believe that anyone with the skills for a job should be able to get it regardless of their degree status. They say they will eliminate four-year degree requirements for half a million federal jobs.

Student debt is acknowledged, but no clear solutions mentioned

For those who do seek college degrees, Harris said she will provide a path to “high-quality, affordable education.” The plan said she’ll continue working to “end the unreasonable burden of student loan debt,” but didn’t specify exactly how she would do that.

Syllabus

Students paid thousands for a Caltech boot camp. Caltech didn’t teach it. The New York Times.

Sorry, Harvard. Everyone wants to go to college in the South now. The Wall Street Journal.

I oversaw education on Rikers Island. Early mistakes don’t have to define a young person’s life. Chalkbeat New York.

A message from Sallie Mae®:

Roughly half of families reported borrowing for college last year most often using federal student and parent loans. That said, just 40% of families who borrowed discussed who would be responsible for paying back student loans. Borrowing to pay for college makes sense for some families but it’s critical they do so responsibly. Learn how Sallie Mae supports responsible borrowing.