U.S. Education May 2024-

Education May 2019 – March 2024

‘It Is Facing a Campaign of Annihilation’: Trump’s War Against Academia
Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists M. Gessen, Tressie McMillan Cottom and Bret Stephens about Donald Trump’s attacks on Columbia University and other elite colleges and how they became vulnerable to a political and ideological reckoning.
Trump’s Assault on Speech | The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich (video with transcript)
… so I’m a professor emeritus; I care a lot about our universities, not just because I care about learning and teaching and research, but also our universities are the key to our national
competitiveness …free speech is essential to our universities; it’s a Cornerstone of democracy and this week was a real blow. -15 March 2025

31 March
Villanova to Scoop Up Small Neighboring College to Expand Campus
Villanova University is poised to merge with Rosemont College, a small school just minutes away from its main campus in the Philadelphia suburbs.
The arrangement, announced on Monday, marks the second time in two years that the university has moved to expand its footprint by scooping up a neighboring school. Villanova acquired the 112-acre campus of shuttered Cabrini University in 2024.
Rosemont is located less than one mile from Villanova’s main campus and though the schools both stem from the Catholic faith, they represent two sides of an increasingly bifurcated higher-education landscape. Small schools across the US are facing declining enrollment, hitting their bottom lines, while larger, more prestigious ones are in growth mode, looking for way to expand their brand.
University Announces Acquisition of Rosemont College

28-31 March
Trump Administration Will Review Billions in Funding for Harvard
The administration has already canceled hundreds of millions in federal grants and contracts at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania.

Two leaders of Harvard’s Middle Eastern studies center to step down
Departures of Cemal Kafadar and Rosie Bsheer are seen by critics as ‘shameful attempt’ by school to appease Trump
The leaders of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies are leaving their positions after the center faced accusations of anti-Israel bias.
The departures come as the Trump administration scrutinizes institutions that have had pro-Palestinian protests over the last year. Earlier this week, Columbia’s president announced she would step down after Trump targeted the university for protests on campus last year.
On Wednesday, Harvard’s interim dean of social science, David Cutler, said in an email to center affiliates that the Center for Middle Eastern Studies director, Cemal Kafadar, a professor of Turkish studies, would be stepping down by the end of the academic year, according to the Harvard Crimson. Rosie Bsheer, a professor of history, is also stepping down as associate director. Both are expected to remain in their faculty positions.
Columbia University’s head steps down after concessions made in feud with Trump over funds
(Reuters) – Columbia University’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, has stepped down. …
Columbia made dramatic concessions last week so that it can negotiate to regain the funding, drawing harsh criticism that it had quickly caved to government pressure and not stood firm on academic freedom and free speech.
Board of Trustees Co-Chair Claire Shipman was appointed acting president with immediate effect, while the board searches for a new president.
… Groups representing Columbia University professors on Tuesday [25 March] sued Trump’s administration over its effort to force the university to tighten rules on campus protests and put a Middle Eastern studies department under outside oversight, among other measures.
Columbia was at the center of demonstrations in the summer of 2024 that spread around the United States. Protesters demanded an end to Israel’s military assault on Gaza and urged their colleges to divest from companies with ties to Israel.
… U.S. President Donald Trump has also threatened to withhold federal funding from other institutions over pro-Palestinian campus protests.
Separately, the New York Times reported late on Friday that two of the leaders of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, director Cemal Kafadar and associate director Rosie Bsheer, will be leaving their positions.

27 March
Trump administration detains Turkish student at Tufts, revokes visa
Student’s lawyer says she has been unlawfully detained
International students have been focus of immigration crackdown
Student had criticized university response to calls to divest from companies with Israel ties
(Reuters) – U.S. immigration authorities have detained and revoked the visa of a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University near Boston who had voiced support for Palestinians in Israel’s war in Gaza.
Rumeysa Ozturk’s supporters say her detention, late on Tuesday, is the first known immigration arrest of a Boston-area student engaged in such activism to be carried out by President Donald Trump’s administration, which has detained or sought to detain several foreign-born students who are legally in the U.S. and have been involved in pro-Palestinian protests.
University of Michigan closes its DEI office, ending multi-million dollar investment into diversity
The university’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs have long been a model for schools across the country
(Politico) In an email on Thursday, the university’s leaders pointed to the court-order enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive orders on “restoring merit-based opportunity” and ending DEI programs across the country, as well as the “Dear Colleague” letter from the Department of Education that threatened to eliminate federal funding for universities that did not eliminate their DEI efforts.
Multiple universities and school systems across the country have caved under scrutiny from the Trump administration, removing DEI content from their websites and shutting down DEI programs. But the University of Michigan has long been considered a model for DEI initiatives across the country.
The end of its DEI office signals a big win for the Trump administration as it moves to end the focus on DEI in the American education system.
Yale professor moving to U of T due to ‘far-right’ Trump administration’s pressure on universities
Prof. Jason Stanley made decision after policy changes at Columbia University
Stanley, whose books include How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, said he was considering joining U of T’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy for over a year. But he decided to move after Columbia University made sweeping changes to its policies last week under pressure from the U.S. government.

25 March
As Trump’s Policies Worry Scientists, France and Others Put Out a Welcome Mat
European universities have begun recruiting researchers who lost their jobs in the administration’s cost-cutting efforts, or are anxious over perceived threats to academic freedom.
Philippe Baptiste, the French minister of higher education and research, has been working with French university presidents to come up with a government program to attract leading U.S. scientists whose jobs are threatened or lost by White House cuts to funding.
(NYT) Just hours after opening its new program for American researchers called Safe Place for Science in reaction to Trump administration policies, Aix Marseille University received its first application.
Since then, the university, which is in the south of France and is known for its science programs, has received about a dozen applications per day from what the school considers “scientific asylum” seekers.
Other universities in France and elsewhere in Europe have also rushed to save American researchers fleeing drastic cuts to jobs and programs by the Trump administration, as well as perceived attacks on whole fields of research.
In France, Aix Marseille University is considered a leader in the push to bring in American researchers.
Since that program started, a cancer research foundation in Paris announced it was immediately putting up 3.5 million euros to welcome American cancer researchers. And last week, two universities in Paris announced they were offering positions to American scientists whose work has been curtailed or halted by the Trump administration.

21 March
Brookings scholars analyze Trump’s order to dismantle the Department of Education
Michael Hansen, Senior Fellow – Brown Center on Education Policy, Katharine Meyer, Rachel M. Perera, and Jon Valant
The Trump administration issued an executive order calling for the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education.
A close read of the order reveals many ways in which the order is misleading and omits important context.
Major legal, political, and logistical hurdles remain if the administration chooses to continue its efforts to dismantle the Department.
Why is Trump dismantling the Department of Education – and what’s next?
The process of gutting the department will require approval from Congress, which might be hard to secure.
… [On Thursday 20 March] Donald Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education in a bid to deliver on a campaign promise.
The department has long been pilloried by conservatives who argued that education should remain under state control and the department is polluted by liberal ideas.

13-21 March
Robert Reich: The shame of Columbia University
In surrendering to Trump, it’s opening all universities to Trump’s tyranny
Columbia Concedes to Trump’s Demands After Federal Funds Are Stripped
The administration has moved to cut $400 million in federal funding to the university without changes to its policies and rules.
(NYT) Columbia University was accused by the Trump administration of a systemic failure to protect students and faculty members “from antisemitic violence and harassment.”
Columbia University agreed on Friday to overhaul its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern studies department in a remarkable concession to the Trump administration, which has refused to consider restoring $400 million in federal funds without major changes.
The agreement, which stunned and dismayed many members of the faculty, could signal a new stage in the administration’s escalating clash with elite colleges and universities. Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan and dozens of other schools face federal inquiries and fear similar penalties, and college administrators have said Columbia’s response to the White House’s demands may set a dangerous precedent.

A Statement from Constitutional Law Scholars on Columbia
Eugene Volokh, Michael C. Dorf, David Cole, and 15 other scholars
The government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing . First Amendment–protected speech
The First Amendment protects speech many of us find wrongheaded or deeply offensive, including anti-Israel advocacy and even antisemitic advocacy. The government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing such viewpoints. This is especially so for universities, which should be committed to respecting free speech.
At the same time, the First Amendment of course doesn’t protect antisemitic violence, true threats of violence, or certain kinds of speech that may properly be labeled “harassment.” Title VI rightly requires universities to protect their students and other community members from such behavior. But the lines between legally unprotected harassment on the one hand and protected speech on the other are notoriously difficult to draw and are often fact-specific. In part because of that, any sanctions imposed on universities for Title VI violations must follow that statute’s well-established procedural rules, which help make clear what speech is sanctionable and what speech is constitutionally protected.
Under Title VI, the government may not cut off funds until it has
conducted a program-by-program evaluation of the alleged violations;
provided recipients with notice and “an opportunity for hearing”;
limited any funding cutoff “to the particular program, or part thereof, in which…noncompliance has been…found”; and
submitted a report explaining its actions to the relevant committees in Congress at least thirty days before any funds can be stopped.

A Warning for Columbia University
Surrendering to the Trump administration’s $400 million ransom demand would be a disaster for higher education and for the United States.
By David A. Graham
(The Atlantic) Columbia University faces one of the most consequential choices of its nearly three-century history this week. The Trump administration has given the school a deadline of tomorrow to make a series of concessions in exchange for keeping $400 million in federal funding. Columbia has not publicly signaled what it will do, but The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the university was close to yielding to the demands. That would be a disaster for Columbia, for American higher education, and for the United States.
Why Trump’s Ultimatum to Columbia Could Upend Higher Education
A demand for the university’s administration to place the Middle Eastern studies department under receivership could signal a broader crackdown across the United States.
(NYT) It was an obscure, 44-word demand toward the end of the Trump administration’s ultimatum to Columbia University this month ordering a dramatic overhaul of admissions and disciplinary rules. But it could prove to have consequences for colleges and universities nationwide.
With $400 million in canceled government grants and contracts on the line, federal officials ordered Columbia’s administration to place the university’s Middle Eastern studies department under academic receivership for at least five years.
The call for a receivership is coming from outside the university — and directly from the White House. And it arrives at a moment when dozens of other colleges and universities are facing federal inquiries and fear a fate similar to Columbia’s.
The interdisciplinary program at the center of the government’s demand — the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department — has been in a pitched battle for decades over its scholarship and employment of faculty members who describe themselves as anti-Zionist.
Several historians and veteran professors said that the move by the federal government to intervene in an academic department at a private university would be unparalleled in the modern history of U.S. higher education.
16 March
The Culture War Is No Longer Just a Culture War
By David French, Opinion Columnist
Columbia University is now the epicenter of the American culture war. The Trump administration is targeting a former Columbia student — and the university itself — as a test case for its new authoritarian regime.
Make no mistake, the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil are a direct attack on free speech.
The story of Columbia isn’t simply about Mahmoud Khalil… But when federal immigration officials showed up at his apartment building last weekend and whisked him away to a facility in Louisiana to begin deportation proceedings, they brought the malice and incompetence of the Trump administration into stark relief. …
Columbia isn’t a public university, so it is not bound by the First Amendment (which only protects against government censorship), but I’m persuaded by the moral force of the Supreme Court’s words in a 1957 case called Sweezy v. New Hampshire: “Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise, our civilization will stagnate and die.”
In other words, universities possess a double obligation — to protect students and faculty and staff members from discrimination and harassment, while also protecting free expression on campus. It’s not an easy task. It requires a combination of wisdom and courage.
But the Trump administration possesses neither wisdom nor courage, and it is now in the process of using claims of antisemitism on campus as a justification for grave violations of due process and free speech. The Red Scares of 20th-century anti-communism are being replaced by a new frenzy, whipped up against left-wing supporters of the Palestinian cause.

14 March
Office for Civil Rights Initiates Title VI Investigations into Institutions of Higher Education
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened investigations into 45 universities under Title VI following OCR’s February 14 Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) that reiterated schools’ civil rights obligations to end the use of racial preferences and stereotypes in education programs and activities. The investigations come amid allegations that these institutions have violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (1964) by partnering with “The Ph.D. Project,” an organization that purports to provide doctoral students with insights into obtaining a Ph.D. and networking opportunities, but limits eligibility based on the race of participants.
OCR is also investigating six universities for allegedly awarding impermissible race-based scholarships and one university for allegedly administering a program that segregates students on the basis of race.
These OCR investigations are being conducted pursuant to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (1964), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in education programs and activities receiving federal funding. Institutions’ violation of Title VI can result in loss of federal funds.

13 March
Trump Demands Major Changes in Columbia Discipline and Admissions Rules
A letter outlining “immediate next steps” arrived less than a week after the administration said it was canceling $400 million in grants and contracts.
The Trump administration on Thursday demanded that Columbia University make dramatic changes in student discipline and admissions before it would discuss lifting the cancellation of $400 million in government grants and contracts.
It said the ultimatum was necessary because of what it described as Columbia’s failure to protect Jewish students from harassment.
I Was a Columbia Student Journalist. Here’s What to Know About Mahmoud Khalil.
Here’s key context on the Palestinian activist arrested by ICE.

18 March
Academic recovery 5 years after COVID-19 disruptions
Megan Kuhfeld and Karyn Lewis analyze student test scores and other available evidence to provide an update on academic recovery and discuss what these trends mean for policymakers and educators.
(Brookings) In March 2020, U.S. schools closed to slow the spread of COVID-19, triggering the largest interruption to the American education system in generations. Five years later, a clear picture has emerged of how students have fared and the degree to which they have recovered.
Five years after COVID-19 disruptions, math scores have shown modest recovery, but reading scores continue to decline, with full recovery in math projected to take over seven years.
Learning gaps have widened, with historically underserved students and lower-performing students recovering more slowly, while higher-performing students have made gains.
The expiration of federal pandemic aid and declining school funding threaten recovery efforts, highlighting the need for sustained investment in evidence-based interventions.

12 March
Education secretary: Mass layoffs first step toward total shutdown
Education Secretary Linda McMahon affirmed late Tuesday that mass layoffs are the first step toward shuttering the Education Department — a longtime goal of President Trump’s since his time on the campaign trail.
“Actually, it is, because that was the president’s mandate,” McMahon told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Tuesday. “His directive to me, clearly, is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we’ll have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished.”

20 February
What does the US Department of Education do?
Katharine Meyer, Rachel M. Perera, Sarah Reber, and Jon Valant
Congress authorizes funding for a broad range of education initiatives, including grants to school districts, financial aid for students, and research investments, ensuring federal support reaches key areas of the education system.
The U.S. Department of Education plays a critical role in distributing these congressionally approved funds to students and schools while overseeing their use to maintain accountability and compliance with federal regulations.
Beyond fund distribution, the Department helps uphold federal education priorities, such as civil rights protections and support for disadvantaged students, ensuring equitable access to educational opportunities.
(Brookings) Education in the United States—from early childhood to higher education—is largely funded and governed by states and localities. The federal government plays a comparatively small financial and operational role in K-12 and postsecondary education. However, its role is vital to supporting students’ access to high-quality educational opportunities and preparing an engaged citizenry and future workforce.

13 February
DOGE rips through Education Department, cutting contracts, staff and grants
Contracts that are key to interpreting data about the American education system were cut as DOGE seeks to trim spending. Some contracts will be rebid.
(WaPo) The notices popped into email boxes all over the country Monday afternoon, notifying researchers who collect, analyze and study data on the American education system that their contracts were terminated, effective immediately. No reason was given.
The nixed contracts support the Institute for Education Sciences at the Education Department, known as IES, and inside the agency, staff questioned whether the cuts were legal, much less justified.
But the decisions were not made by the institute’s leaders or education experts. Rather, the canceled contracts were all on a list drawn up by a U.S. DOGE Service team that is working to unravel the Education Department, stripping the agency of staff, terminating contracts and — soon — canceling program grants, according to people familiar with DOGE activity who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs.

Trump’s pick for education chief, Linda McMahon, defends plans to unwind the department
Nominee stood by Trump’s plans to end department
McMahon promised congressionally approved funding will continue
Trump says he wants Education Department ‘closed immediately’
(Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s choice to run the Department of Education, Linda McMahon, advocated for the president’s plans to abolish the department at her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday.
Linda McMahon Just Showed the Senate How Little She Knows About Education
Trump’s pick to head the DoE will be in charge of gutting it.
(Mother Jones) During two-and-a-half hours of questioning (and opining) by senators, McMahon attempted to thread the needle between Trump’s plans to gut the 45-year-old US Department of Education and federal laws and constitutional guardrails that stand in his (and Elon Musk’s) way. Even as she expressed support for key Trump policies—including private-school voucher programs and bans on trans girls and women from sports—McMahon’s scant experience in education was on display as she misstated, or failed to answer key questions about, federal education law.
Trump’s pick for secretary of education is Linda McMahon. Here’s what to know
(NPR) McMahon’s background in education is limited. She served for about one year on Connecticut’s State Board of Education.
Up until recently, not much was known about McMahon’s policy positions on education. In January, she shared more about where she stands, including that she supports expanding school choice and career and technical education opportunities for students.
In recent days, the Trump administration has made sweeping cuts to an independent research arm of the Education Department and put dozens of staffers on paid administrative leave. The White House has also confirmed the president’s plans to shutter department programs that are not protected by law and his plans to call on Congress to close the department entirely.
If a recent House education committee hearing is any indication, McMahon’s confirmation proceedings are likely to focus on how she would handle Trump’s plans to dissolve the department, what she would do to address poor K-12 student achievement and how she would work to enhance school choice.
19 November 2024
Linda McMahon made a fortune with WWE. Wrestling scandals now shadow her rise.
Trump’s transition co-chair and Education Department pick, along with her husband, named in a lawsuit claiming they ignored abuse.

4 February
What the U.S. Education Department does (and doesn’t) do
By Nicole Cohen, Jonaki Mehta, Elissa Nadworny, Cory Turner
(NPR) Over and over, President Donald Trump and his colleagues have pointed to the U.S. Education Department as a poster child for government overreach. In fact, Republicans have been calling for the department’s dissolution ever since its birth.
That effort reached a new level this week, as the president began exploring dramatic cuts to programs and staff at the department, including an executive action shuttering programs that are not protected by law and calling on Congress to close the department entirely.

2024

23 December
Trump wants to end ‘wokeness’ in education. He has vowed to use federal money as leverage
(AP) — Donald Trump’s vision for education revolves around a single goal: to rid America’s schools of perceived “ wokeness ” and “left-wing indoctrination.”
How the Department of Education ended up on the chopping block
(Politico) President-elect Donald Trump insists that he wants to eliminate the Department of Education “very early” in his administration. The idea, he has said in speeches, is to “send all education work and needs back to the states.”
The woman that he’s chosen to lead the department for now — Linda McMahon, who served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term — is charged with dismantling the Biden administration’s education policy and spearheading Trump’s priorities. Trump is largely concerned with eliminating what he sees as a leftward shift in education policy — destroying “wokeness” and “left-wing indoctrination” in schools.
Fully eliminating the education department would be a bold, controversial swing at education policy — and it could be dead on arrival. The president would likely need 60 votes in the Senate to fully abolish the Department of Education, a significant hill to climb with Republicans holding onto a 53-vote majority.

17 December
Students overpaid elite colleges $685 million, ‘price-fixing’ suit says
Details released in an antitrust case against 17 top universities allege family wealth influenced some admissions decisions.
(WaPo) Documents and testimony from officials at Georgetown, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, MIT and other elite schools detail how they appeared to favor wealthy applicants despite their stated policy of accepting students without regard for their financial circumstances. That “need-blind” policy allowed the schools to collaborate on financial aid under federal law, but plaintiffs in the case say the colleges violated the statute by considering students’ family income.

Heather Cox Richardson November 16 2024
One of President-elect Trump’s campaign pledges was to eliminate the Department of Education. He claimed that the department pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” He promised to “return” education to the states.
In fact, the Department of Education does not set curriculum; states and local governments do. The Department of Education collects statistics about schools to monitor student performance and promote practices based in evidence. It provides about 10% of funding for K–12 schools through federal grants of about $19.1 billion to high-poverty schools and of $15.5 billion to help cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.
During the 2024 political campaign, Trump brought the longstanding theme of public schools as dangerous sites of indoctrination to a ridiculous conclusion, repeatedly insisting that public schools were performing gender-transition surgery on students. But that cartoonish exaggeration spoke to voters who had come to see the equal rights protected by the Department of Education as an assault on their own identity. That position leads directly to the idea of eliminating the Department of Education.
But that might not work out as right-wing Americans imagine. As Morning Joe economic analyst Steven Rattner notes, for all that Republicans embrace the attacks on public education, Republican-dominated states receive significantly more federal money for education than Democratic-dominated states do, although the Democratic states contribute significantly more tax dollars
There is a bigger game afoot, though, than the current attack on the Department of Education. As Thomas Jefferson recognized, education is fundamental to democracy, because only educated people can accurately evaluate the governmental policies that will truly benefit them.

19 May
Higher Education Needs More Socrates and Plato
By Ezekiel J. Emanuel, professor and the vice provost for global initiatives, and Harun Küçük, associate professor of the history and sociology of science, University of Pennsylvania
(NYT guest essay) … The problem is that higher education is fundamentally misunderstood. In response, colleges and universities must reassert the liberal arts ideals that have made them great but that have been slipping away.
By liberal arts, we mean a broad-based education that aspires to send out into society an educated citizenry prepared to make its way responsibly in an ever-more complex and divided world. We worry that at many schools, students can fulfill all or most of their general education requirements and take any number of electives without having had a single meaningful discussion that is relevant to one’s political life as a citizen.
19 November 2020
How Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Will Be Remembered
(NPR) To the president who asked her to run the Department of Education, she was a loyal lieutenant who argued for her department’s irrelevance in a nation where control of schools is a local affair — that is, until she argued the opposite, at the president’s urging, and threatened schools with a loss of federal funding if they refused to reopen mid-pandemic.
To Christian conservatives, she was a hero who once proclaimed, “I fight against anyone who would have government be the parent to everyone.” DeVos used her bully pulpit to champion religious education, push for school choice and help private schools in financial turmoil.

13 May
Hold On to Your Hats, America
If you were giving a graduation address, what would you say?
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
… Think of TikTok as your generation’s cocaine and get off it. Work hard on keeping a few good friendships, not gaining thousands of followers. Eschew envy, cynicism and virtue signaling. Ponder the meaning of the word “hineni.” Make only enough money so that you don’t have to think about it much. Preserve an independence of mind and spirit, and nurture a contrarian opinion or two, especially if it goes against your own political side. …

11 May
A Way Back From Campus Chaos
In the longer term, a lack of clarity around acceptable forms of expression and a failure to hold those who break those norms to account, has opened up the pursuit of higher learning to the whims of those motivated by hypocrisy and cynicism.
(NYT Editorial board) Protesting the world’s wrongs has been a rite of passage for generations of American youth, buoyed by our strong laws protecting free speech and free assembly. Yet the students and other demonstrators disrupting college campuses this spring are being taught the wrong lesson — for as admirable as it can be to stand up for your beliefs, there are no guarantees that doing so will be without consequence.

8 May
Universities must move past research and teaching, and do more to help society
By Sandra Lapointe
They don’t do nearly enough to actively transfer the talent and knowledge needed to make our communities, our country and the world a better place.
(Policy Options IRPP) Universities have three missions. Research and teaching are the better-known. Together, they underpin the third, equally important one – contributing to overall economic and social prosperity by producing talent and knowledge to address societal issues and socio-technological challenges through innovation.
Canadian universities are certainly doing more than their fair share of research and teaching. However, they are not doing nearly enough to actively transfer the talent and knowledge needed to make our communities, our country and our world a better place.
This problem is especially pronounced for social sciences, humanities and arts (SSHA) programs.
If the third mission is to be woven into the fabric of our SSHA programs in higher education institutions, then SSHA talent, knowledge and practices need to be better outfitted for innovation and channeled into the correct outlets.
There is no simple way to achieve this. But a good step forward is to have our universities identify needs, institutionalize new knowledge co-creation approaches and expect public and private funders to require innovation partnerships to leverage the wealth of expertise of our social partners.