Mark DeRosa, Yadier Molina, and Albert Pujols are all managing in the World Baseball Classic. That 2009 Cardinals team deserved a better fate than Matt Holliday taking a ball to the groin in Dodger Stadium in the playoffs.

"Some athletic departments are running up larger deficits and taking on debt, while others are looking to private equity or Middle Eastern investors for capital" The option to just spend less is never on the table, which makes the political economy of higher ed fraught

man WHAT www.dispatch.com/story/news/e...

This is a good piece diving into the recent Department of Education report on a possible rebuilding of IRS after it got DOGEd last year. hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

Georgia seeks to become the 49th state with a need-based financial aid program (hi, New Hampshire!). Legislation would provide $25 million next year (3% of merit-based HOPE spending), and there is a requirement for work or volunteer hours.

Queens University in Charlotte is getting effectively acquired by another institution, but their basketball team has something to celebrate right now.

It's springtime in Tennessee! The flowers are in bloom and the peas have sprouted in the garden.

Ugh. Back to a month of morning darkness, which is rough as a parent of small children.

NEW: The bad news about international-student enrollments at American colleges just got worse. An exclusive @chronicle.com analysis of just-released State Department data shows new visa issuances in the summer of 2025 dropped by more than a third. www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

I love that Brazil has a competitive baseball team because of Japanese immigrants coming to the country. It's fun to see each nation adopt its own style of play.

The finances of NIL aren't easy, but big-name universities aren't going out of business due to athletics expenses. And this is following a question about war in the Middle East.

This is why the wealthiest segment of higher ed has a hard time pushing back against endowment taxes.

I'm keeping an eye on today's college athletics meeting at the White House. As with most events right now, expect the unexpected. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

I am zero percent surprised that "predictions markets" are focusing on fraternities as an audience. The thing that doesn't make sense is how these don't violate insider trading regulations or fall under gambling statutes.

If you knew that a free month-long summer program would increase your chances of staying in college by 18%, but the program was 8 to 16 hours a week, would you do it? Or would the need to work outweigh the benefits? My story describes the program. It's one way a campus seeks to grow enrollment.

Remember the Oklahoma EO to "phase out" tenure at regional institutions and community colleges? This bill would extend that directive, meaning no hires with tenure at U. of Oklahoma or Oklahoma State U. after Jan. 1, 2027 - renewable contracts instead. www.chronicle.com/article/stat...

The University of Louisville deserves credit for being the first Power Four athletic program to propose a cap on athletics spending. It's also strategic as they fall farther behind the SEC and Big Ten in terms of resources.

#AcademicSky: Have you come across AI-generated citations that attach your name to nonexistent papers? Have you reviewed papers that cite made-up published works? If so, tell me your story below 👇

I always appreciate the Chronicle's annual Trends in Higher Education report, and it's even better to see a look back at how good their crystal ball has been.

Does anyone here use a point system for faculty workload? As in, we figured out points for different service activities, then set a point-based expectation for the year? What do you think of that approach? Are there pitfalls? I like the idea of also thoughtfully surfacing how much folks are doing.

A proud Research I university selling off a branch campus...to Amazon to build a data center...and to help shore up a budget struggling with research cuts feels like a prototypical 2026 American higher education story.

New working paper: I use detailed spending data from HelioCampus to look at universities' non-academic spending. Institutional budget models and centralization appear to influence administrative spending, and there are some strategic decisions made during tough budget years. (1/)

Florida officially joins Texas as the second state to limit merit-based hiring at public universities by banning H-1B visa sponsorship. In higher ed, hiring via H-1B is a high bar to clear (and requires a lot of paperwork).

GW‘s student newspaper appears to have broken the story that the institution has sold a satellite campus to Amazon to be turned into a data center, which is just about chef’s kiss for the state of American higher education rn

A few blue states have tried to redo higher ed funding formulas to prioritize regional publics over flagships. Just like in K-12 education, that is an exceedingly difficult task because the losers are politically powerful.

New working paper: I use detailed spending data from HelioCampus to look at universities' non-academic spending. Institutional budget models and centralization appear to influence administrative spending, and there are some strategic decisions made during tough budget years. (1/)

ED seems vulnerable to a lawsuit along these lines after they added one program in psychology to the list of 10 programs that were previously considered to be "professional." There need to be clear criteria by outcomes and/or public good.

Excited to release this policy brief exploring the college enrollment impacts of Massachusetts' recent dramatic expansions of free community college. TLDR: The clear messaging and simple design of MassReconnect & MassEducate sparked substantial increases in community college enrollment.

Hi friends - I'm working on article about efforts to measure, track, and adjust WORKLOAD in higher ed, both for staff and faculty. I'm interested in talking to people who have experiences w/: -Workload management gone wrong -Exemplars of workload measurement -True tales of workload being adjusted

This is a great idea, especially since the new IPEDS admissions data will have so many cells that it will be difficult for most to comprehend.

This was a fun thing to see this morning. I'm going to pretend that none of these citations are AI slop or papers dunking on me.

Institutional researchers are asking for three more months to try to retroactively create data on admissions that will likely violate privacy standards and represents a massive expansion in the size of the federal footprint in higher ed. I love data, but retroactive data won't be useful.

7/10

Giving Week 6 of the semester vibes

McDonald's Malaysia is offering 1 million free meals to students this year (meals consist of rice, curried potatoes, an egg, Spicy Ayam Tenders and Iced Lemon Tea).

This is trivial in the grand scheme of things, but I have been hesitant to let the gas tank in my car to get past halfway to empty over the last year. Prices here already jumped 30 cents this week, so it's not great to have two 400-mile day trips next week.

Friday evening news dump: The National Student Clearinghouse is cutting ties with a prominent survey on voting engagement after the White House issued a threat of an investigation.

I started my day listening to a speech from ED undersecretary Nicholas Kent who had a lot to say about higher ed's need for a "hard reset." And while the college leaders in the room appeared to agree that there are problems within the system, many took issue with Kent's approach to solving them.

My friends at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators are seeking a research and evaluation analyst for a two-year remote position. www.nasfaa.org/research_eva...

Here are the Department of Education's recommendations for next steps with the Institute for Education Sciences. My two cents: to help improve education, we need timely data and more support for pressing questions. ies.ed.gov/ies/2026/02/...

The White House is hosting a meeting on the future of college athletics next week. The guest list is heavy on football and donor representation, has only a handful of women (including my chancellor at UTK), and also includes two pro golfers.

I have officially reached the "I'm old enough that my work belongs in the archives" stage of my career. Seriously, though, this is still quite relevant.

New from APPAM: The Journal of Policy Implementation & Evaluation (JPIE)! JPIE will publish short, peer-reviewed articles with timely, real-world insights on policy design, implementation & evaluation. Learn more: https://ow.ly/TPNW50YmzVr

🧵 Jake Goss and I have a new paper where we study how legalized mobile sports betting affects consumer credit and how betting spills across state lines into places where it’s still illegal. newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr1184

Dolly Parton is both a local and national treasure. This makes my heart happy on a dreary early spring day. dollychildrens.org

NEW EXTRA POINTS: shared a guest post today that highlights the folks who keep the official stats...who are under WAY more pressure this time of year...and how that job is even hader/more important in the mass gambling era: www.extrapointsmb.com/p/the-hidden...

I spend a bit of time thinking about higher ed finance. If departments can find ways to fill upper-level classes with non-majors to support a small number of majors, they're passing any reasonable financial test. But it's more complicated than using the simplest metric...degrees.

I use this chart in most presentations that I give. AI could be a game changer, or it could be meh. But many costs are upfront while benefits are uncertain and delayed. That makes investment decisions tricky for leaders with short time horizons (hi, higher ed!).

In today's acquisitions news, Washington University is acquiring the nearby St. Louis College of Pharmacy to add to its portfolio of academic programs. Specialty institutions with good locations have no shortage of suitors.

DC district court has denied the Department of Education's motion to dismiss our case challenging IES's termination of four research studies, its peer review program, and restricted data use application processing! ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...