Free Republic

A year ago, the White House was unleashing a blitz on higher education. At one campus after another, Trump officials opened investigations and cut federal funding unless schools fell in line with the Republican president’s political agenda. Now, after a campaign that put dozens of universities under investigation, President Donald Trump’s administration is taking a wider approach, moving to rewrite the federal rules that govern all of higher education. Demands that were being pressed on individual schools are being written into the fine print for thousands of U.S. universities. “We’re coming over the higher education system and course correcting,” Nicholas...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is asking nine major universities to commit to President Donald Trump’s political priorities in exchange for more favorable access to federal money.Universities were asked to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” committing them to adopt the White House’s vision for America’s campuses. It asks the schools to accept the government’s priorities on admissions, women’s sports, free speech, student discipline and college affordability, among other topics.Signing on would give universities priority access to some federal grants, but government money would not be limited solely to those schools, according to a White House...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The downfall of Harvard’s president has elevated the threat of unearthing plagiarism, a cardinal sin in academia, as a possible new weapon in conservative attacks on higher education. Claudine Gay’s resignation Tuesday followed weeks of mounting accusations that she lifted language from other scholars in her doctoral dissertation and journal articles. The allegations surfaced amid backlash over her congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus. The plagiarism allegations came not from her academic peers but her political foes, led by conservatives who sought to oust Gay and put her career under intense scrutiny in hopes of finding a...

The latest target is Harvard President Claudine Gay, who resigned Tuesday. In her case, the outrage came not from her academic peers but her political foes, led by conservatives who put her career under intense scrutin y. Conservatives zeroed in on Gay amid backlash over her congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus. Her detractors charged that Gay — who has a Ph.D. in government, was a professor at Harvard and Stanford and headed Harvard's largest division before being promoted — got the top job in large part because she is a Black woman.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced his long-awaited plan to deliver on a campaign promise to provide $10,000 in student debt cancellation for millions of Americans — and up to $10,000 more for those with the greatest financial need — along with new measures to lower the burden of repayment for their remaining federal student debt. If his plan survives legal challenges that are almost certain to come, it could offer a windfall to a swath of the nation in the run-up to this fall’s midterm elections. Proponents say cancellation will narrow the racial wealth gap —...