A Monthly Scan of What’s Shaping the Context for SoTL in the United States
Welcome to On Our Radar (OOR), a monthly spotlight on the context in which US higher education operates. The selected events, developments, and conditions may not be explicitly about SoTL, but they can shape how we engage with it, both locally and nationally. OOR features brief descriptions with links for further exploration. We provide no spin or interpretation but encourage you to consider how these developments affect SoTL in your context–and how these considerations might help us support one another in doing meaningful SoTL.
Join us for the July 22 Roundtable to discuss how these developments affect SoTL in our specific US contexts–and how we might navigate them.View info and register here.
In this ~30-minute podcast, hosts discuss the questions students face as they graduate into an uncertain job market, with a primary focus on career stability, the effect of generative AI on entry-level work, and whether college was worth its cost. The conversation frames these student concerns against the pressures universities themselves are under, including federal funding cuts and enrollment declines, and asks whether the long-standing model of college is due for rethinking.
The Department of Education announced that negotiators reached consensus on a proposed regulatory framework, developed through its Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization (AIM) rule-making, which it describes as advancing the Trump administration’s vision for reforming the accreditation system. Proposed changes include lowering barriers for new accreditors, presuming credit transfer between accredited institutions, tightening conflict-of-interest rules between accreditors and trade associations, shifting standards toward student outcomes, and adding requirements related to academic freedom and intellectual diversity.
The tenth edition of this annual report finds that, while degree attainment has expanded over five decades, progress on equity is stalling, with a 32% college-participation gap between the highest- and lowest-income students and roughly $20,000 in unmet tuition support for low-income students. It reports that college costs have risen about 2.5 times since 1974 in inflation-adjusted terms and that first-generation students attain degrees at rates below the OECD average, and it argues for targeting support to students facing the greatest barriers.
Officials from the AAUP and AFT launched a nationwide platform, A Blueprint for Strengthening and Transforming Higher Education, focused on affordability, increased research funding, and employee protections, with the goal of having lawmakers adopt some of its points. The coverage situates the launch alongside Texas’s Senate Bill 37, under which president-formed committees review general-education curricula. A related review at Texas A&M led to revised syllabi and some canceled courses, including a graduate course on ethics and public policy.
Science reported that NIH and NASA have placed new limits on US scientists publishing with co-authors at foreign institutions, with some NIH grantees saying they were asked to remove papers with foreign co-authors from their annual progress reports. A university-group observer cautioned that emphasizing who researchers publish with, rather than the science itself, could harm research.
Join us for the July 22 Roundtable to discuss how these developments affect SoTL in our specific US contexts–and how we might navigate them.View info and register here.
