Demetri L. Morgan: In the ways that some groups and associations have been talking about academic freedom, they’ve been trying to very intentionally pair it with the, the sort of notion or concept of students’ right to learn. Um, and I think that is a version of student protection, right? Where it says, Hey, if we’re, if we’re only focused on academic freedom.

And, and its lineage being, you know, strongly connected to tenure. Then what protections do other people have on campus? Name, mainly students, but you know, also staff and, and, and others. And so it’s interesting to track the sort of student. Right to learn argument and movement and then pair it with this, because this is, I do not think is that, but it’s related to this question that I think, you know, Felicia’s helping us name around what is going on in the classroom, you know, at the end of the day.

Heather Shea: Welcome to Student Affairs Now, the Online Learning Community for Student Affairs Educators.

I’m your host, Heather Shea. It’s March, 2026, and this week we are back with our current campus context series, our monthly look at the biggest shifts shaping higher education right now. This episode was recorded at 4 0 7 Eastern Time on Friday, March 20th. As always, things might have changed by the time you listen.

Okay, so over the last few weeks we’ve seen a couple of noticeable shifts, not just in policy, but in how higher education itself is being defined from federal pressure on accreditation and DEI to new challenges around academic freedom and classroom control. To a growing emphasis on return on investment, or ROI and workforce outcomes.

Again, these are not isolated issues together. They point to a deeper question about power, purpose and who gets to decide what student success really means. So today’s conversation is about making sense of those shifts. What’s new, what’s changing quickly, and what student affairs and higher ed professionals should be paying attention to.

Right now, joining me are three colleagues who bring critical perspectives to this moment and help us think through what it means for our work. Welcome back, Dr. Brendan Cantwell, Dr. Felicia Commodore, and Dr. Dmitri Morgan. So let’s dive in to today. We’re asking the beg, the big through line question is who gets to define student success right now and what is being lost in that shift?

So first area we’re gonna talk about accreditation and funding pressure. So this week the US Department of Education warned accreditors that their DEI standards may violate federal law signaling that even the bodies that determine whether institutions can access federal funding are now being pushed to eliminate equity from their criteria.

This isn’t just campus policy anymore, it’s about this broader control of who controls the game. And Felicia, I know you have been thinking and worrying about accreditation for a long time. I feel like now is your moment to tell us what has changed in the land of accreditation this week, and what should those of us who work in higher ed student affairs be trying to make sense of right now?

Felecia Commodore: Yeah, this is this is my Roman empire. It’s on my mind all the time. Ultimately what I took away from this new development is that the Department of Ed, really the under secretary of higher ed felt like the accrediting agencies. And it really was just two of them did not go far enough.

In removing their DEI middle states and it was a, like a physical therapy. Professional accrediting group. So when you look at what they did, they suspended the that the institutions under the agencies had to meet these things, but they did not eliminate the language from their requirement.

And it really didn’t do anything yet. Because all it did is they said they have to report back to them that no institutions weren’t granted accreditation for this and X, Y, Z, and they have to make more reports to this agency. So they didn’t, it was like a warning. And then they have to follow up with some things and so ultimately they can come back and say.

Nobody got dinged for this. And I don’t know that it has any implications, but I think it’s more of a signal to other accrediting agencies, which we’ve seen some of them already begin to just roll back things. And we know, again, if we go back and read Project 2025, this was always the way in which to use accrediting bodies.

To push forward some of the ideologies around DEI and removing it, quote unquote, from institutions. So I think it, it’s more of, I don’t know that anything actually happened as more of a signal to what they expect from accrediting agencies that they’re gonna approve. And I think also we have to keep in mind that they’ve already been.

Having a conversation that they want to open up the market on accrediting agencies. And we’ve seen the group in North Carolina create a body. We’re hearing rumors and murmurs of certain sectors of institutions trying to create their own accrediting bodies. And so I think more so we’re seeing this lays the groundwork for saying these.

Agencies only do this because they can, and they have a monopoly on the space. And we’re gonna open up the, like a free market on accrediting. Which I think will then lean itself to more lax standards, more. Standards that may not have to do necessarily with quality of education, but lining up with certain ideologies.

And ultimately do we see the, an opening up for more predatory institutions, more for-profit institutions being able to. Gain accreditation in ways that they weren’t before the second, and then I’ll, ’cause I’m the gapper in the group. The second thing I’ll say is also, I think it’s really important to note that they highlighted a accrediting body for a program.

And just for institutions, and I think that’s really important to think about as we think about programs, particularly professional programs that need accrediting bodies to run teacher education, counseling, physical therapy, nursing, social work. Social work. And so if the federal government is able to say you can’t be accredited in this particular field of study or field a professional field because you include DEI standards, how will that impact the curriculum and offerings for these professional fields that often service the public?

So I think those are things to think about.

Heather Shea: Oh my gosh. I immediately looked at up this pt accrediting agency. ’cause I was like, why both? It felt like an interesting juxtaposition. Dmitri, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that because I think programs, when I think about academic programs that are centered around, I named social work because at its heart is.

About access and addressing systemic oppression and doing one-on-one, but also, that larger macro work. What does this look like on campuses for programs that are centered, whether it’s academic programs or other types of student affairs type programs?

Demetri L. Morgan: Yeah, it’s a, it is a great question and the way that I try to think about it to help me make sense of it is trying to like.

Zoom out and, accreditation or, you might hear about the regulatory triad, right? There are, there’s the federal government through the Department of Education, there’s the accrediting bodies, and then there’s the state. The state role in higher education, and they’re supposed to work in their independent lanes to ensure that there is stability and predictability and quality in the higher education realm.

And whenever you start to mess with one of those three pieces you start to in raise questions about what is somebody getting with a particular degree. I think how that then shows up for the, individual programs or a collective of programs is it starts to dovetail or coalesce around the fears that people have around the, what are they getting from higher education, right?

It’s, we’ll talk about this a little bit later, but what is the ROI of this particular degree? When you have a healthy system, you should be able to say, you will get these sorts of outcomes. And we’ve gone through a process of peer review of working with the accrediting body that helps to establish that, what we say we are gonna deliver is going to be delivered via our programs, via our assessments, via the things that make up a curriculum.

And so when you start to remove some of these pieces or just even sow some doubt, and it, it very quickly can be sped into what is going on here? What is this for? And it makes it harder, right? You used to just be able to say, we’re an accredited institution, or we’re an accredited program, and that

Heather Shea: yeah,

Demetri L. Morgan: that meant something that, that was enough.

But when you start to pull off, pull out the threads of what that means to be accredited it starts to harm programs. And which ultimately impacts who they can attract, which impacts enrollment. And when you’re already, with so many institutions being impacted by enrollment declines any little I always think of that meme that has like the Cheeto that’s like in between the door and it’s like the Cheetos holding the door closed. And it’s like any, wind that blows through can, can, rupture it. And so I think that’s what it means and why it puts programs on edge because they’re already facing so many things and now this is just another one.

Now we have to be, worried about accreditation and what’s gonna happen to our accrediting bodies and what that means for our program. And it’s a really difficult thing to layer on top of all the other things that programs are dealing with.

Heather Shea: Yeah. Brendan, I’d love to bring you in as well. ’cause I think behind the scenes governing boards, executive councils, vice presidents, they’re probably trying to quietly figure out some of the moves that they might make to address this different landscape.

What do you think is happening and your thoughts just in general on this move?

Brenden Cantwell: Yeah. So one thing that comes to my mind is. The reluctance of institutions of, presidents and boards to immediately snap back to the kinds of programs that language that they used, the kinds of offices that they housed prior to the Trump administration.

And so we found out that the Dear Colleague letter from February of last year so a little bit over a year ago was. Not legal or and does not have the force of law, that’s judges determined that and the administration has stopped pursuing its appeal saying, Hey we think that this is law, which means that all of the, like DEI is illegal stuff goes out.

The window. So why didn’t campuses snap back to to offering those programs? A couple possibilities. One possibility is that they were happy to shed that stuff in the first place and this was an excuse that allowed them to do it. Another possibility, and these aren’t mutually exclusive by the way, but another possibility is that they were thinking about alternative methods for the administration to get at this stuff.

Like through accreditation and that is a kind of side door way of limiting the way that universities consider race and gender in the ways that they serve their students. That that maybe not. Be as obvious as a straight on like frontal assault from the federal government, but that that the boards and presidents would be sensitive to.

And so I think that they may be thinking about that as they decide, in part as they decide how to manage the competing demands that are put on them for for that kind of activity on campus.

Heather Shea: Yeah.

Demetri L. Morgan: Can I just add

Heather Shea: Yeah, of

Demetri L. Morgan: course. Super quickly that I think too, when we zoom out, one of the things that the Trump administration the Federal Administration has been really good at is when they have to Brennan’s point, the full frontal assault on things that are legible to people.

You get tons of lawsuits. You get the sort of media backlash, which they’re impervious to, but it still creates friction that then eventually unravels. But where they’re the, they being the federal administration is really good as the super technical, the, in the we things, the things that don’t capture the headlines.

And you see it in, in the budget world, right? With ruvo and the like, the rescission, using the rescission. Technique to be able to comb through almost line by line and pull back and excise, certain bun, like that’s super technical, right? It’s much different to be like, oh, they’re defunding snap benefits, but going through and this sort of opaque, obscure process is much different.

And so I see a parallel here and I thought of it ’cause of Brendan’s point that this is the more technical way to

Dismantle and disrupt certain. Programs and policies that the administration finds, not aligned. But doing it in the more technical where it’s, it doesn’t have as sexy of a headline is, something that they’ve found success in.

And so I’m also tracking that as why maybe there’s a shift here.

Brenden Cantwell: Yeah.

Felecia Commodore: And I just wanted to jump in to connect some things too that were said. One when Dmitri talked about. How, pulling that Cheeto out the door can affect all things. I think this is really important to think about when we talk about these programs.

Possibly not being able to be accredited because often we think about larger institutions, but at a number of smaller institutions, it’s these professional programs that keep them afloat, right? These continuing ed programs that are professional programs. Or you are a smaller institution that has a really strong social work program or a really strong nursing program that really is the bread and butter of your enrollment.

And so when those things are affected, those institutions, if they’re not able. To enroll at the same rate that they were. Yeah, it really does impact them financially and their fiscal health and sustainability. And I wanna marry that. One thing I’ve read today was also the under secretary came out.

He was at a meeting and said that they’re trying to make it easier, roll back some of the regulations around mergers and closures and and making it easier for mergers and closures to happen and saying, there’s all this bureaucratic red tape that needs to be done away so it can happen faster.

And so the part, the suspicious part of me wonders if these two things start to become connected. And there’s a question of again, the role of for-profits, one of the regulations for mergers and closures help or the red tape help to keep from, for-profits, assuming institutions almost in a kind of.

Institutional grab situation. And so again, just seeing to, to Dmitri’s point, these technicalities that start to work with each other I think is just something we need to pay more attention to.

Heather Shea: Yeah. Really interesting. And I think when I think about accreditation, I think the large, vast majority, we know it’s important, but those of us who work and not do like daily accrediting kind of work, have no idea the larger implications of this kind of move on behalf of the federal government.

I would urge everybody who’s listening to, to. Go look this up. Find out who your accreditation, your institutional accreditation is through and other ways that your institution might be impacted. I’m gonna move us to our second topic, which has to do once again with academic freedom. It’s like the topic that just keeps coming back around.

And I brought this one because of something actually you posted on LinkedIn, Brendan. I saw and read about this article in Utah that was actually letting students opt out of assignments based on I think what they called sincerely held beliefs. This whole thing was framed at protecting the students, but there’s this kind of interesting overlap between how that impacts faculty or how that might actually end up resulting in less speech.

So let me start there. Talk us through a little bit about how this is actually not student protection, or we’re watching student protection become the way that we can control what’s taught in the classroom.

Brenden Cantwell: Sure. Yeah. I’m old enough to remember when trigger warnings and op outs were a fundamental problem.

Yeah. People on the right, but now they’re trying to create some of these carve outs for people who are ideologically and culturally aligned with them. So it’s, that is just. Interesting. And there’s the one level of hypocrisy, but then you start to think maybe this sort of thing could be useful.

And I’m reminded of the incident from last semester, I think it was at the University of Oklahoma. Somebody will correct me if it wasn’t the University of Oklahoma. There have been so many, but where a student, A-A-A-A-A, A student who identifies as a sort of, strong Christian objected to a study in their psychology or an assignment in their psychology class.

Heather Shea: That’s

Brenden Cantwell: right. That had them, that, required them to grapple with with with gender as a social construct and as something that could change, right? Somebody’s gender could change or they could identify as a different gender than people. Thought that they were, and they wrote what was, by all accounts, a poor assignment on this and received a poor grade and then, entered into a kind of conflict with the instructor, which ultimately led to the instructor being fired by the university.

And so you think maybe this sort of policy could could find a middle path where the. Where students faculty and instructors could continue to teach what they felt was appropriate, and students could opt out or have an alternative if it violated their sincerely held beliefs in some way.

And I don’t wanna begrudge anyone their religious or Sure. Or other beliefs. And so you think maybe this is an interesting workaround, but the more I started to think about it as I was reading the article. I was calling back to some things that I have been reading over the last year about the intellectual foundations of the kind of new the Maga.

And believe it or not, there are intellectual foundations to this, and some of these folks are really very conservative in a way that they don’t actually believe in. Individual freedom the way that we might think like Ronald Reagan would talk about, right? And actually they think that the individual ought to be subordinate to the community.

They’re actually right wing communitarians. And this idea is they’re very critical of neoliberal, modernity and so on, right? And their arguments are always that community values and traditions and hierarchies ought to set boundaries for speech and conduct. And you could see this as, and in some of the people who were saying this is a good idea, it would cause professors to think about the community that they’re teaching and respond to that and conform their teaching and their content to those students.

So this is, in some ways, a, a. A clever policy, and I don’t wanna sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it’s a clever policy that could put conservative religious. Communities in charge of establishing the speech boundaries in classes and the learning boundaries in classes. And that to me is somewhat concerning, I think.

And I think it’s, something we ought to think about, like who has the right to decide. What can be taught? And that’s a pretty basic question, but this this proposal in Utah opens that question up in, in my mind in interesting ways.

Heather Shea: Yeah. Felicia, I’d love to hear your take on this.

What do you make of this against the larger landscape of higher education and academic freedom in particular?

Felecia Commodore: Yeah. So first let me say Brendan, come on over to Tinfoil Hatland. I go, I, I frequent there. I have vacation there from time to time. It’s lovely. But and I also had a similar reaction when I read this was like not the right pushing inclusive teaching, like this is the I in DEI, I thought they didn’t like inclusion.

I did find it ironic. But I think. I also echo some of Brendan’s sentiments in that one, I think we are wrestling with what is academic freedom and what is not academic freedom in ways that are long overdue. We have taken that term for granted and we just throw it around willy-nilly in higher ed for a very long time and in academia for a very long time.

And I don’t know that even we really knew. What academic freedom was unless you took a really good higher ed law class. I think I think to some extent I like the conversation that is being forced in academia about we need to reestablish and redefine or maybe think about more concretely, what does academic freedom mean and how is it actually embodied in a classroom?

And so I think we’re at a, we’re getting to a point where not just a UP, but institutions are gonna start to have to make some declarations on what academic freedom is at their institution. And so that faculty and students know what academic freedom means at this institution. And, not to be cheeky, but they can opt in or opt out, right?

And so I think there’s that, the, something I’ll say is particularly thinking about assignments, what we ask students to do, how we approach learning. Actually, this may surprise folks. I actually think this is pushing faculty to really consider how they design their courses. Ways that I don’t know has been happening in the past.

We really now have, because of all these challenges, have to think about what are the objectives we’re trying to get across by this assignment? What is it we’re trying to accomplish in this class as far as learning? Outcomes and learning objectives and being creative and thinking about how we design that class and maybe also a little more inclusive in how am I designing or including materials and concepts in ways that think about all the various viewpoints that might come into this classroom.

And so to some extent, I think this is a good for pushing us in our craft as faculty. Because I, I always joke with my students, you have to take zero classes on teaching to get a PhD and then they throw you in a classroom. I think this pushes us, I think.

Ultimately, legally though, we need to become more savvy about the laws and the legalities around academic freedom. And we need to push our institutions, like I said, to make some declarations. Where do you stand? We need to know where our administrations stand on academic freedom and if they’re gonna stand with us or against us when these cases come up.

And I think that push needs to happen from faculty on administrators.

Heather Shea: Yeah. I’m also really curious that you were talking about this, like thinking about faculty who are trained in a research one institution and perhaps on the east coast landing in Utah. And so if you’re thinking about this community context and like what do we then assume about the students there and then how might that be navigated?

You have faculty who are in this maybe completely different headspace about what kinds of assignments might work. Dmitri, I’d love to hear your thoughts and particularly on the supporting students, right? Because I do think that’s the other piece to this, is that students are sincerely holding beliefs that may be in contrast.

They may also be experiencing harm. For those beliefs, what does that mean for folks who are, trying to hold that but also address academic freedom at the same time and it’s a really complicated situation.

Demetri L. Morgan: Yeah. I think about this in two ways. So one, I think there is the tension of in.

In the ways that some groups and associations have been talking about academic freedom, they’ve been trying to very intentionally pair it with the sort of notion or concept of students’ right to learn. And I think that is a version of student protection, right? Where it says, Hey, if we’re only focused on academic freedom.

And its lineage being, strongly connected to tenure. Then what protections do other people have on campus? Name, mainly students, also staff and others. And so it’s interesting to track the sort of student. To learn argument and movement and then pair it with this, because this is, I do not think is that, but it’s related to this question that I think, Felicia’s helping us name around what is going on in the classroom, at the end of the day.

Yeah. And what are students, what should students feel? Entitled to, to expect is going to happen in terms of their instructional experience and their learning experience and the pedagogy that is deployed. And who is responsible for doing that and how well prepared are they and how much guidance do they need to deploy that.

And I think, Brendan, lays out an important case. So I think that conversation is important to have where I think it’s challenging. Is and this to me is, especially for student affairs professionals that are connecting and helping students think through this, is that we know that to actually learn, you have to experience some discomfort.

Felecia Commodore: Yeah.

Demetri L. Morgan: And how much discomfort and who that, who is imposing that discomfort and for what reasons? Is where all of this gets really murky, but you cannot learn without dissonance, right? That is that’s just established. And dissonance can be experienced as discomfort as in, in the learning process.

And I think for student affairs professionals, it’s helping students parse through that. And it’s gonna be different for every student, right? Some students are gonna have, a large capacity for dis dissonance and seek it out even because that thrill of i’m confused, but I don’t wanna be confused anymore.

So I’m gonna learn more is what drives some students. For other students, they’re gonna conflate it with discomfort or attack even. And having a trusted, mentor, having a trusted. Person that they can go to help say Hey, what is this feeling that I’m feeling when I go into this class?

And, my faculty member is teaching me about, gender on the spectrum. What is that attached to? And can you help me think through what that is and how many spaces do students have? To engage in, in that. And so I would love for us as student affairs professionals and those that, honor the craft of being, being a student affairs professional, to see this as an opportunity to get in there and say yeah, where some of this sense making is gonna happen is not in the classroom.

’cause that’s where students are experiencing the dissonance. It’s gonna happen in the dining hall, it’s gonna happen in the residence hall, it’s gonna happen in the student group organization where it’s like. Oh, like I just heard this thing today and I’m still trying to make sense of it. And are we prepared and are we equipped enough to help students see that?

All the things that Brendan and Felicia about, I’m also like, this is an opportunity to show what and how, we can be value add to this enterprise of learning. Knowing that learning doesn’t fit neatly into the four walls of a classroom, but it actually spreads into all the spaces that students are into and while this might seem like a restriction in the classroom, it might also open up opportunities for us to think about other spaces as learning as well.

And I think that’s a really important component for us to. To do and do well.

Felecia Commodore: And Heather, can I add one?

Heather Shea: Of course.

Felecia Commodore: So just wanna point out that I think. That for, particularly for faculty who have had, who hold marginalized identities, this experience is not new. This is not new to them. To be in these classrooms and worry about how what they’re teaching is gonna be received, being challenged on assignments, being challenged on knowledge and expertise.

This is something that we see in research literature. And just narratives and anecdotes that come out from marginalized faculty of always for decades now having to be cognizant of how their syllabi are evaluated. How what they do is evaluated because of those identities. And so I say that to say that we already have experts.

On how to navigate this. If we would tap into that expertise. And I would add in student affairs practitioners who also have had to navigate these tensions with their advising student groups when they’re planning programs, when they’re doing this, especially again. For marginalized I groups of marginalized identities or even practitioners with marginalized identities.

And so there’s, there are groups of people in our institutions who already know the strategies to accomplish the learning outcomes they wanna accomplish while navigating these tensions around if what they’re doing is appropriate.

And so I think we need to tap into that already existing knowledge.

Heather Shea: Yeah. And it, it actually relates really well to our next and third segment.

Because as Dimitri, you were talking about, students as consumers and thinking about like they are. They are in the process of learning, but sometimes learning comes with a little bit of pain in order for you to get to the point the value of higher education associating that paying students, paying a lot of money to get a degree.

Do they wanna sit in the classroom where their views are gonna be challenged? That’s the segue, at least as how I’m seeing it. The third topic, and we’ve been talking about the the value of higher education or the way that higher education degrees have not been valued most recently, or institutions of higher education are being devalued in society.

I’m curious about this because I’m sitting in a couple of different situations on my own campus where we’re really talking about jobs and earnings and students return on investment. I also have a senior in high school who’s making really. Direct choices right now. Do I pay for the outta state degree at the, possibly the better school, or do I take the, in-state half off tuition that you get from your mom’s degree, right?

Like I, there’s a whole layer there which I know parents are also paying attention to. To me, that sounds, it sounds practical, but I think it does bring up the conversations we’ve had about student loan limits and all of that around certain degree fields. At the same time, we’re also seeing the US Department of Education roll back all these re repayment protections.

They’ve ended the save plan. Not to be confused with the save act, which we talked about in our last session, the save plan. It’s pushing millions of borrowers into a new repayment structure, which may put even more pressure on students to make sure that their degree pays off and that they can pay those bills.

So Brendan, let’s push on that a little bit. Are we reducing the value of higher education to what you shows up on your paycheck?

Brenden Cantwell: The big, beautiful bill. Turns out to have been one of the most important pieces of higher education legislation in decades, right? It is not a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, but it accomplished a lot of what a reauthorization might do, which is rejig the financial aid system.

So we’ve already seen some of this in the new loan limits for graduate students that lots of people know about, and I think we’ve talked about on this. Podcast. The other things have been, it created a new kind of Pell grant that could be taken to short-term vocational programs Yeah. And created some accountability standards around eligibility for that for.

To bring your Pell Grant to that kind of a program, and now it’s going to open up rulemaking. Dmitri mentioned the regulatory triad before. So one of the things that happens is that once Congress passes a law about higher education there’s this process where the Department of Education brings stakeholders to the table to negotiate how to implement and enforce that law and the kind of rules around that law.

And one of the things on the table is. Making eligibility to summer, all kinds of financial aid contingent upon the degree showing economic returns relative to high school or relative to some other standard. And this return on investment idea is something that is pretty mainstream.

That is pretty. Bipartisan. If you go back a few years to the to the Gates Foundation, created a commission on higher education affordability, and they produced a big report and lots of people who really care about higher ed and students participated in contributing to that report and one of their ma main.

Sort of findings or arguments of that report is that higher education should not leave students financially worse off. In that they have loans and that they’re not able to see a return on investment from their degree. And so there’s a, it makes a lot of sense in some ways, but it opens up all kinds.

Uncomfortable questions is, are we reducing learning to just income? And are we gonna be able to measure all programs fairly with this measure, right? Do all kinds of degrees at all kinds of institutions. Students who have working in all kinds of different labor markets and who may face labor discrimination for various reasons.

Are they, is it gonna be. Fair for all of them. At the same time, like higher education is bad for offering junkie programs, even at the best university sometimes, right? True scam adjacent programs. And so it opens up a bunch of really uncomfortable questions, both for higher education and for the people who want to hold higher education to account.

And I think that I, I don’t really have an answer to it, but. One of the things that I, I’m always thinking about are the pretext of these.

And why is it that the Trump administration is accomplishing this when it hasn’t been accomplished by other previous administrations who actually, both parties who actually saw the need for similar kinds of problems.

Maybe they were more attentive to the downside risks of this and just more careful, or maybe they were more susceptible to lobbying from. Higher education that of course always wants to make more federal aid money available to it. That’s a possibility. Or maybe this is also part of a broader agenda to reduce the amount of college going and the number of opportunities that there are in the country.

And I think that’s a reasonable speculation. And I think that opens up additional questions like. How much college should there be? Who should have access to college? Under what condition? Yeah. These are big issues. So I’ll stop rambling about that, but it’s something I think about a lot and I don’t have a lot of questions and a lot of ways to complicate it and not a lot of answers.

Heather Shea: I have two other kind of themes that I think really relate with student affairs work because I think if the, if we’re reducing the value of higher education to just a job outcome or a paycheck, what gets lost? All of the work that we do on college and university campuses around belonging, identity development, civic engagement, do those things necessarily, have a direct tie now.

And so Felicia I’ll let you pick up on, on either that, oh or, and Dmitri, you. The other part is like we could be better at framing or reframing the work that we do when it comes to career read. Like you have these co-curricular learning experiences that actually do contribute to your career readiness.

So there’s a whole, there’s a whole like intermingled conversation there as well. Oh, please, I’ll start with you.

Felecia Commodore: Yeah. I have, oof, I have so many thoughts I’m gonna try and make sense. So I wanna add to the question of what gets lost is also who gets lost. Yeah. And I think that’s important and points to something that Brendan shared.

But I’m going to talk a little bit about, you talk about what happens with identity developments. It’s a belonging, kind of civic engagement network that we’re doing. First I really want a t-shirt, someone make it that says. Higher ed did a poor job. And what, we really to b Brendan’s point, we’ve been having this conversation on ROI for decades.

Heather Shea: Yep.

Felecia Commodore: And we have done as a sector, a really poor job. Of communicating the interconnectedness of what we do on campuses, the labor market just all of these things. And we’ve let folks who think in business logics guide the conversation around higher education and that’s on us. And now we’re trying to figure out how to get out of the conversation.

We let get shaped by people who were not really part of our sector, but. I think the, there is some concern for me of limiting what we do and outcomes to. You know how much you’ll make if we’re not also simultaneously investigating or putting money into the infrastructure of jobs, right?

Heather Shea: Yeah,

Felecia Commodore: if I’m gonna say that you can’t have an education program ’cause your students graduate and teachers, their teachers are only making $50,000 a year. $40,000 a year is not comparable to their degree. What are we doing to make sure teachers get paid more? Like the two go hand in hand.

The colleges don’t control. What salaries are coming out. So I think that’s important and connects to my next point of what and who has lost. I think I, I think that when we are saying like. Where does identity development and sense of belonging and civic engagement is that loss not in the spaces for people who can afford it?

Yeah, I think it becomes a luxury. Because many of the people who are privileged enough not to have to take out loans and not to have to worry about. Get, getting assistance for education. Nobody’s asking them what jobs they’re getting. Nobody’s concerned about the majors that they’re majoring in, right?

Because we’re getting their chat. And so it begin then begins who doesn’t get the luxury of self-determination? And I think that’s really where we gotta wrestle with. And when I think about high access institutions who have a large number of students who are Pell Grant students, who have a large number of students who are on financial aid, now these are the institutions who are gonna have program shrinkage.

And then what does that mean for what these students get to explore as career options? And it’s almost dictating who will do what. In our labor market. And I think that’s concerning to some extent, right? I think you can still, I don’t, I think institutions can still do these things as well.

They have the money to, if these things go into effect. I went to a co-op institution that was all concerned about you getting a job after he graduated. We also had service learning requirements. We did a lot of career readiness stuff. It also was one of the most expensive institutions in the country.

And I really think that’s more how I look at it is who’s not gonna be able to determine what their career should be, but have the federal government tell them who they’re gonna be in the work, in the labor market if they are participating in it at all, at a professionalized or level.

And then two, the institutions that can still put a lot of investment in the things like belonging, identity development, institutions that can afford to.

Heather Shea: Yep. Dmitri your thoughts. Where are we headed and how can we reframe this and think about it, from a place of we are contributing to this experience.

Of not only gathering the academic experience but also. Brendan will remember the T-shaped professional, like you have broad knowledge across abilities, but also deep knowledge in one sector. Like where you get that broad knowledge across is sometimes in our co-curricular learning spaces. How do we wrestle with that?

Demetri L. Morgan: Yeah I have a lot of hot takes on this and largely informed by earlier this week at Michigan. We hosted AI in the Future of Learning Summit. Oh. And, they had tech representatives from, insert your AI platform of choice. Was there all of the learning management system. And to sit and listen to simultaneously.

Tech and AI and business people try to figure out how to solve educational problems that we’ve been talking about for decades. Divorced from, how people have been trying to thoughtfully attend to this, but also given the amount of resources that are invested in these spaces and the sort of share scale.

Also like really worrying. And so for one example there was one business that is trying to solve this gap between internship, the amount of internships that are available and the number of people that want or need an internship to, to get a job. And, they have this, sort of Fortune 500 company that had 168 available internships that serve as a pipeline into their job.

And they showed, the staff, there was like 40,000 people that applied and they were like, it’s harder to get a job at this Fortune five or harder to get an internship as a college student at this Fortune 500 company than it is to get into Harvard. And being like, how can we solve this?

And we can, do AI and virtual experiences and all of these things. And, for me, sitting there as a person who, is a fa and believer of student affairs and the co-curricular experience, I’m like, we’ve been trying to think about how to create access to, high impact practices, to internships at scale that are, designed, to also cater to different students, first gen students from minoritized backgrounds.

With Neri investment that some of these, businesses have. And yet here, are these, these, flashy websites and flashy experiences and, high, shot videos with all of these, cool graphics. And so all that to say like, where this is going for me is.

We also have to level up as, student affairs and think about, and I wanna be careful not to blame. ’cause I know people are like doing a lot of really great work.

Brenden Cantwell: Sure.

Demetri L. Morgan: But how do we also think about working with and alongside, some of these forces that are playing out and yes.

In it, right? We can embrace this. And there was another person who was like, yeah. The first question we asked and college students is what AI tools did they use? And I just thought of all, and literally earlier in the week, our faculty senate, president or was like, we need to divorce ourselves from ai.

And I’m like, you couldn’t be further apart. You have this multi hundred million dollar corporation that is gonna be hiring our graduates. Being like, we ask your students what AI tools they’re using and we have a faculty being like, we need to divorce our institution. That stresses me out that like, when we think about this like return on value question because students are hearing that.

They’re getting those things and saying, I need to know how to use ai. And my faculty don’t wanna teach me it because they think I’m gonna cheat on my Blue book, test. So we’re going to Blue Book. And solving that gap is something that I’m just super activated by because. We need to talk with faculty and student affairs professionals about these tools and how we’re preparing students but also be skeptical and critical of what it’s doing to us and what it’s our community.

And I just keep saying this all the time, like both things can be true. Like we can do both things well, and we need different voices in the course, but if we just like. Turn our, turn the static down and say, Nope, not for us. I do worry about how we’re gonna continue to lose this conversation, other the value of higher ed when we’ve already not been, effective in that conversation.

So I wanna say what does it look like to level up? To try to bring our values to these conversations and figure out how to use these conversations and resources and technologies in ways that find how to have the humanizing approach or find ways to think about who doesn’t get access to an internship because they didn’t even know to ask or attend the networking.

Conversation. I’m interested in that conversation, but it’s harder to have because, there’s so much reticence and necessarily, so I don’t blame people for the reticence, but I’m ready to be like, okay, but also can we also, try to get into the, to the game?

Brenden Cantwell: Yeah.

Heather Shea: Next month on, yeah, I just wanna say next month on, on this podcast, we’ve gotta unpack AI because that was topic number four. Keith was like, you’ve gotta talk about AI because there’s some interesting op-eds in the Chronicle this week. But yeah, Felicia,

Felecia Commodore: yeah I wanna say this ’cause I think this real point, I was in a conversation too with some higher ed and higher ed adjacent thought leaders around.

AI stuff. And one of the things I feel like we end up in two camps. Like it’s coming, this ominous thing is coming and we can’t do anything about it. And just get in your bunker and hide or we’re just so against it that we don’t,

Brenden Cantwell: We’re just like new, resist

Felecia Commodore: the machine.

Brenden Cantwell: Yeah. And

Felecia Commodore: so I and I just want us to learn what is being.

What is going on in that sector? Yeah. So we can speak to it. ‘Cause I don’t think the acting like it’s a, like it’s this inevitable takeover or just turning away from it is gonna be helpful for any of us and particularly the higher ed sector. Yeah. And I just, one of my things people are like we don’t know what it’s gonna do.

Wanky. And I say that because humans work in patterns. We can follow the money, we can follow the thought processes of these corporations. We can follow kind. They’re laying out what their plans are. We just gotta go dig into it and look at it and then make, we can have some conversation about where higher ed fits or doesn’t fit.

And I just. Again, we tend to be reactive as a sector, and I want us to be proactive as we know it’s here. We know funders are aligning with it. Let’s go find out what’s going on with the money and the plans and let’s get in the conversation so we can help shape it as opposed to waiting for it to happen to us.

Heather Shea: Brendan, you wanna add your hot take on AI or anything else related to ROI?

Brenden Cantwell: My hot take about AI is that I don’t have a lot of hot takes on a ai. Yeah, that’s is a, I don’t,

Heather Shea: same as what

Brenden Cantwell: was that? That’s all I’ll say.

Heather Shea: Yeah, I was gonna say, we were talking about athletes the other week too, or, and it was like, there’s, there are just things that just it’s hard to wrap your head around all of it.

But Felicia, I’ll definitely say, we did a episode with a industry member in back when. Back in the earlier days it feels like of chat, GBT. And she said, AI is not gonna replace individuals, but those who know how to use it are gonna replace those who don’t. And that whole concept that if you don’t know how to use it, you’re probably gonna be behind at some point.

But it is really interesting as we look at how higher ed is making that all about, how the students are gonna cheat on their blue Book exams.

Demetri L. Morgan: Yeah. I will say too, that and this goes directly to the ROI conversation too. The other thing that was really interesting about being in the in, at the summit.

With AI in the future of learning is they, the, these companies are really good at branding things in ways that higher ed is not. One specific example, there’s one company that was like, we’re deploying AI and all of our tools and building infrastructure to get at the problem of preventable attrition.

Of students in higher ed and so anything that is preventable. And I was like, you mean like retention? You know what I mean? But I was like, preventable. Attrition sounds so agentic. It sounds so like we can

Felecia Commodore: that’s what we’ve been studying for 30 years.

Demetri L. Morgan: Preventable attrition. But it was like rebranded as we can bring data to bear and, make it so that no student, that leaves higher ed in a way that’s preventable.

And I was like. That is re that’s what we call retention persistence, but it was branded. They had all these spiffy slides and I was like, and you could just see the room nodding yeah, preventable attrition. And I was like, what is going on? But it’s that sort of thing, like it helps drive the narrative, so it’s yeah. Yeah, let’s invent in invest in preventable attrition. ’cause that will help us get to this ROI or keep students in schools. And we’ve been talking about that for a long time. But in making it in ways that are legible and being able to back it up with the legibility to connect with different audiences and ways that get people to understand.

And I was like, look, and this is where I might get in trouble ’cause I’m a pragmatic. If preventable attrition helps you understand that, black and brown kids should be in school too and be pre.

Then I will adopt that language. ’cause I want to be clear, but I think that it’s it is also divorced from now.

The last thing I’ll say is, in fairness, a lot of these organizations where we want to work with higher ed. Like we don’t know, like we are, we know the data we know, but and so that is also where I see some opportunity where. They, there is interest in like you all have expertise and now granted they were in a, on a college campus talking to administrators and student affairs professionals and groups.

So maybe they were, telling us what we wanted to hear. But I do think there is limits to how some of that technology can be deployed without more knowledge about what’s going on in college of universities. And so I do think there will be increasing opportunities in the coming years for us to think about what that looks like.

Heather Shea: Thank you, all three of you. If you have a final thought, I’d love to hear it or I can move on to close.

Felecia Commodore: I’m

Heather Shea: just

Felecia Commodore: gonna, I’m the yapper. Yeah. I think to sum all this up, but particularly the last point, like I think those of us who are in the classrooms and on the ground have to get in the conversation to to, in all the conversations.

I think. I love administrators. I work with them. They’re great. But they tend to be in the room. And our student affairs practitioners, our higher ed scholars aren’t always in the room. And I think we have a different vantage point and a different expertise and knowledge that not better or worse, but just different than upper level administrators.

And we need to figure out how to get in these conversations and bring that perspective into those conversation.

Heather Shea: I think as we think about the complexity of this question, that we started with today, which is just really who gets to define student success? What’s being lost? Who’s being left behind?

I think you’re absolutely right there. This is gonna be a multi-pronged approach and. I’m so grateful for these monthly conversations ’cause it helps me take stock of what’s happening and knowing that this isn’t just about one policy, it’s really about this like interconnected web of changes that are redefining how higher education is for our students, but for all of us who work in it.

And I think as, as long as we can continue to reflect on the full complexity of students’ lives, on our experiences working with students, I think we’re hopefully going in the right direction. So thank you to the three of you for joining me for another episode of Current Campus Context. Huge thank you also to Nat and Rosie, our awesome producer.

Matt, Nat is gonna turn this around quickly for next week to make all of that up. Possible. We’re really grateful for you. Na. If you haven’t already subscribed, you can get all of our episodes delivered directly to you every Wednesday. We have a newsletter as well as now a Patreon in which we’re populating a whole bunch of other additional resources which we’ll be talking about actually at a CPA at our session where we’re gonna talk about teaching.

With podcast. So if you are listening to this episode, hopefully right before the A CPA convention, we look forward to seeing you there. As always, thanks for our listeners and for just being a part of this community. I’m Heather Shea. We’ll keep, we will keep tracking what’s changing and what it means for our work.

We’ll see you all next month.

https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/the-trump-agenda/2-accreditors-say-they-paused-dei-standards-thats-not-enough-for-trumps-education-dept

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-judge-blocks-trump-forcing-colleges-disclose-data-race-2026-03-13

https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-trumps-demand-for-admissions-data-is-burdening-your-college

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/state-policy/2026/03/16/utah-could-allow-conscientious-objection-class-assignments

 https://ticas.org/accountability/ahead-neg-reg-session-2-recap-jan-2026/https://excelined.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2026-Higher-Education-Accountability.pdf