English Language Feeds

Education gaming startup Wibbu has announced a partnership with Cambridge Assessment English and Cambridge University Press to see the development of a blended-learning game-based English course for children who are preparing for the Cambridge A2 Flyers exam.

ÔÇ£We see this as a momentous step, not only for our company but for the entire education industry”

FUN with Ruby Rei launches this month for schools in Spain and Mexico after a successful Beta launch in Turkey in August 2019 that saw 2,500 students join the platform.

The product has taken the name FUN with Ruby Rei to sit within CambridgeÔÇÖs existing line of FUN products for young learners.

Shortly after the launch of WibbuÔÇÖs consumer language-learning mobile game Ruby Rei, former director of Digital for Cambridge Assessment English Geoff Stead approached Wibbu to discuss and subsequently formalise the partnership.

ÔÇ£We see this as a momentous step, not only for our company but for the entire education industry, that a world leader in English language teaching is publishing a game-based course for schools,”┬áWibbu CEO Dean Jacobs explained.

“We could see this trend in consumer desire six years ago when we first founded Wibbu, and itÔÇÖs great to see it being introduced in classrooms, providing maximum impact.”

Head of Digital Partnerships at Cambridge Assessment English,┬áBelinda Cerd├í, added that there were clear synergies between WibbuÔÇÖs ambitions and the areas CAE were interested in exploring.

“All the teachers we have met who are using FUN with Ruby Rei, have said that their children just want to keep learning. ItÔÇÖs so satisfying to see the positive impact it is already having on language learners and their relationship with English.”

In 2020, it is expected FUN with Ruby Rei will reach more than 10,000 primary school learners.

The post Gaming startup Wibbu partners with Cambridge appeared first on The PIE News.

Most college leaders seem surer of economic futures -- but worries grow for sizable segment, annual Inside Higher Ed study reveals. Survey also finds worsening assessment of campus race relations and overwhelming opposition to free college and debt forgiveness.

Students across the country are making hurried plans to move out of their dorm rooms as the number of campus closures over coronavirus concerns skyrocketed past 200 Thursday.

Away from their dorms and dining halls, many students and parents are wondering if and when they’ll be refunded room and board fees.

But for colleges relying on such fees -- called auxiliary fees -- to support their operating revenue, refunds could be devastating.

“Every residential college and university in America relies on that auxiliary revenue stream. It is baked into the budget,” W. Joseph King, president of Lyon College and co-author of How to Run a College, said in an email. “Significant refunds will cause real problems at many institutions. It will just be worse for those with tighter or deficit budgets.”

Auxiliary services are becoming an increasingly important part of colleges’ operating revenue, especially for private, four-year institutions.

“Most colleges run their own housing. It is usually their biggest source of auxiliary revenue,” King wrote. “Assuming the residence hall is paid for, the net auxiliary revenue can be substantial. Even if it is financed, there is usually a positive revenue stream.”

Smith College, a women’s liberal arts college in Northampton, Mass., with approximately 2,400 students, is requiring all students to move out of on-campus housing by March 14. Smith said it will offer prorated room and board refunds. In fiscal year 2018, Smith collected $40.4 million in residence and dining fees -- about 16.5 percent of its total operating revenue.

Amherst College also announced Tuesday it would refund room and board fees for students who left campus. Room and board revenue made up nearly 9 percent of Amherst’s operating revenue in fiscal 2018.

“Refunds are a sticky business since they are definitely not in the budget. Any significant refunding will create a budget hole,” King said. “It just depends on how it is prorated. Most institutions have policies about refunds (or no refunds) if a student withdraws. Few (if any) have closure policies.”

Private universities are also collecting less net revenue per student from tuition and fees than they used to, according to Craig Goebel, principal at Art & Science Group, a higher education consulting and research firm.

“There’s much steeper discounting going on at private colleges and universities,” he said, noting that the average discount rate for private institutions is 50 percent. If the college is already under financial stress, “this could be disastrous,” Goebel said.

On top of that, added financial stress could impact a college's credit ratings. A lower credit rating could make it more difficult for colleges to borrow money in the future.

“For some of the schools that have weaker resources or are more pressured, this could create a credit challenge,” said Jessica Wood, a senior director at S&P Global Ratings.

It's unlikely that colleges will receive insurance payouts for refund-related revenue hits.

“Because colleges are sending students home as a preventative measure, not because of an event that triggers coverage under their property or business interruption policy, these refund claims will likely not be covered,” Bret Murray, who leads higher education strategy at Risks Strategies Company, a national insurance brokerage and risk management firm, said in an email Thursday. “With that said, colleges should still put carriers on notice and keep track of all financial impacts related to COVID-19.”

Colleges with substantial endowments or other significant sources of income, like federal and state grant money or land leases, will not be cut as deeply by refund requests.

Harvard University, one of the first colleges to explicitly require students to leave campus, will offer prorated room and board refunds. Board and lodging fees made up less than 4 percent of Harvard’s operating revenue in fiscal 2018, far surpassed by federal grants, gifts for current use and returns on endowment made available for operations.

A wealth gap may be emerging between colleges that choose to close or cancel in-person classes and those that, so far, will remain open. In Pennsylvania, West Chester University -- with an endowment of $40 million -- decided to end face-to-face instruction Wednesday, while Mansfield University of Pennsylvania -- with a $1 million endowment -- did not.

That said, Wood doesn’t believe colleges are making any decisions about closures and remote learning with finances at front of mind.

“While financial considerations are always important, I do think … their decisions are first and foremost being made around their communities', students', staff and faculties' safety,” she said.

Two-year colleges are somewhat shielded from this particular revenue hit. According to the College Board’s 2019 trends in college pricing report, in 2015-16, 96 percent of full-time undergraduate students at public two-year colleges lived off campus or with their parents.

Still, today most colleges are scrambling to scale up their online learning resources and put precautionary plans in place. Few have disclosed whether they will offer room and board refunds to students who leave campus.ÔÇï

Room and board is a sizable chunk of what students pay each semester, and the fees are often excluded from scholarship calculations. The College Board report states that students at a public four-year universities paying in-state tuition spend on average 43 percent of their budgets on room and board fees. For out-of-state students, room and board makes up 27 percent of budgets, and for students at private four-year colleges, 24 percent of budgets are room and board fees.

Requests for room and board rebates aren't the only way colleges could lose money as a result of the coronavirus. Many have canceled admitted student days and student tours, and closing campus could affect enrollments in the fall. Institutions that rely heavily on endowment payouts could see them dip in a falling market.

The virus will "certainly roil the admission market" just as student deposits and commitments are due, said Brian Mitchell, King's co-author on How to Run a College and the founder of Brian Mitchell & Associates, a higher education consulting firm, in an email.

"Effectively, the crisis has the potential to create a double whammy -- unexpected [costs] and highly unpredictable future revenue at tuition-driven institutions," he said.ÔÇï

The U.S. Department of Education has issued guidelines that seek to give colleges and universities more regulatory flexibility as they close campuses and move classes online amid coronavirus concerns.

A March 5 guidance document included temporary waivers from the feds and accreditors on new or expanded distance education programs.

“The department is providing broad approval to institutions to use online technologies to accommodate students on a temporary basis, without going through the regular approval process of the department in the event that an institution is otherwise required to seek departmental approval for the use or expansion of distance learning programs,” the document said. “We are also permitting accreditors to waive their distance education review requirements for institutions working to accommodate students whose enrollment is otherwise interrupted as a result of COVID-19.”

The department also on March 12 issued guidelines on privacy requirements for students.

Typically, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) does not allow colleges to disclose information about students without their consent, including details about their health.

But in the case of a health or safety emergency, the department said FERPA allows colleges to share personally identifiable information about students without their consent. The coronavirus pandemic qualifies as an emergency.

“Educational agencies and institutions, such as school districts, schools, colleges and universities, can play an important role in slowing the spread of COVID-19 in U.S. communities,” the March 12 guidelines said. “Through information sharing and coordination with public health departments, educational agencies and institutions can help protect their schools and communities.”

Amelia Vance, director of youth and education privacy at the Future of Privacy Forum, said much of the new guidance was outlined in what the department released during the 2009 spread of the H1N1 virus.

For example, if a student were to test positive for coronavirus or had symptoms, the college could release a statement saying a student tested positive, without identifying the student.

Colleges also could send emails to students who shared specific classes with the sick student. While the guidance released today says those situations are typically rare, Vance said that likely will not be the case with coronavirus.

For those worried about violating regulations, Vance pointed to a 2009 FERPA regulation that said the department won’t second-guess a college’s determination in an emergency unless most people would consider it unreasonable.

The second exception allows colleges to identify students to public health departments. If the college declares an emergency, it can provide that information without students’ consent. If a college said it’s not an emergency, the department could hypothetically issue a subpoena to get the information, Vance said.

College officials should keep in mind that they are required to record instances when they share students’ information without consent, Vance said. She recommends they keep track in real time so they don’t have to retrace their steps after the situation calms down.

Q&A on Distance Education Guidance

To learn more about what the March 5 release from the department means for colleges, Inside Higher Ed exchanged emails with Phil Hill, an analyst with Mindwires Consulting who blogs at PhilOnEdTech.com, and Daniel Madzelan, assistant vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education.

Lightly edited versions of their responses follow below.

Q: How long will the department’s waivers on the approval of distance education programs be in effect?

Madzelan: The Education Department grants Title IV eligibility to an institution’s educational programs. One aspect of that eligibility is mode of delivery. A program that is approved only for on-site instruction is not eligible for online delivery unless/until ED approves the institution’s application to deliver that program online.

The department is saying that an on-site-only program can switch to online eligibility without going through the ordinary ED approval process if that on-site program was otherwise eligible in the current payment period. Said a bit differently, if the current semester (i.e., payment period) includes March 5, then the institution can now offer the program online for the remainder of the semester without getting prior ED approval.

After this semester (i.e., payment period), institutions would need to secure eligibility for online program delivery via the normal process (unless ED provides guidance to the contrary at a later date).

Q: In courses that have been moved to online delivery, will the department or accreditors enforce the requirement for instructors in distance education programs to regularly initiate substantive communication with students?

Madzelan: Presumably ED’s usual program review protocols and audit procedures will remain in place.

Q: From a regulatory perspective, what specific quality concerns with online programs do colleges need to monitor most closely?

Hill: One quality concern that is very important to monitor is equitable access to courses and the tools required to complete them -- essentially trying to ensure we don’t increase the opportunity gaps. Yes, we are in an emergency mode that supersedes some other concerns, but institutions should not ignore the effect that unplanned remote delivery of face-to-face courses can have on a broad set of students.

On the accessibility front, institutions should provide guidance to instructors on how to include reasonable transcription of virtual discussions (e.g., through Zoom) and how to take advantage of existing tools to do so. For example, Flipgrid automatically adds captions to videos created through its platform and can be used for asynchronous video-based discussions.

The same principle applies to addressing the needs of people who are deaf or hard of hearing, etc. Campuses that have access to the Ally accessibility check tool should be proactive in checking instructional materials from classes in which students who use screen readers are enrolled. We have good knowledge of what works and how to implement within courses from the people that have been immersed in online and hybrid course delivery, and institutions should share this information and monitor, as well as provide ongoing guidance.

On the equity front, institutions should provide guidance on the potential needs of disproportionately impacted student groups. Students might not have reliable broadband at home -- can the institution help with a list of where to find off-campus internet access or keeping facilities available to all students? Some student groups need additional support structures over distance, including online tutoring, technology support for navigating online environment and time management guidance. Institutions should share online training resources for students (and instructors), and they should consider increasing investment and availability of online tutors and advisers.

-- Madeline St. Amour contributed to this article.

Amid virus fears, hundreds of colleges and universities have now moved face-to-face instruction online. Some, like the University of Washington, have decided to keep campuses open and to let students decide if they want to stay.

Other colleges, however, have said in no uncertain terms that students, barring extraordinary circumstances, need to leave campus.

The landscape is changing at an exceptional pace. But for now, the fate of support staff members at these institutions remains unclear. Many office workers are able to take their jobs online and work remotely. But how food service workers, custodians and groundskeepers will fare without meals to serve, wastebaskets to empty or prospective students to impress has yet to be figured out in many places.

The possibilities could range from retaining full employment to reduced hours to layoffs or unpaid furlough.

At Bucknell University, the administration told students they needed to leave by March 17, though they can petition for an exemption.

In regard to the staff members who provide services to students, "the situation is evolving so quickly that it's really hard to speculate on issues like this at this point," a university spokesperson said via email.

Stanford University has asked students to leave before the spring quarter begins on March 30, if at all possible.

Francisco Preciado, executive director of Service Employees International Union Local 2007, which represents 1,300 workers at Stanford, said Thursday that the union has been in conversation with the administration. What happens next for dining and housing staff depends on how many students decide to stay on campus, he said. While the goal of the university is to keep people working, it has not made any guarantees about layoffs.

The dining and housing departments at the university have discussed absorbing staff members who no longer have work to complete into other units. For example, staff who work in Stanford's cafes or catering enterprises could be absorbed into custodial staff, Preciado said, to keep people working. If they are not able to be absorbed, they may be laid off. Layoffs may be massive if the university decides to shut down all residence and dining enterprises. Those decisions have not been made yet, he said.

Events staff at Stanford, who set up and work the large gatherings that have now been banned by the state, have been guaranteed work for the next few weeks, Preciado said. Beyond that, there have been talks about absorbing those workers into grounds work.

"People are worried with the fact that it's going to affect their livelihood if they get laid off for this extended period of time," he said.

The union has also asked the administration for expanded sick time for employees, but those decisions have also yet to be made.

"Although fewer students will be on campus in the coming weeks, we continue to rely on the vital work of our service employees," a spokesperson for Stanford said via email. "They keep dormitories and other buildings clean and provide food for the students, faculty and staff who remain on campus, as we continue fulfilling our mission to the greatest extent possible."

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst told students that the administration is identifying lab, studio and capstone classes that require face-to-face instruction. Students in those classes will be notified if they can stay on campus. All others should "remain away from campus until further notice," with exceptions for those in extreme circumstances.

A representative from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 93, which represents support staff at Amherst, said Thursday afternoon that he did not know more about the future for those employees than what was on the university's website. Staff will continue working for the time being. The administration is still making further decisions.

Cornell University told students they needed to move out March 28, but they can petition for an exception.

If workers who cannot work remotely must miss hours due to being quarantined, they will be placed on paid leave, the university announced in employee guidance.

Though many operations will remain open, how service staff will be affected currently is less firm.

"It is the case that some direct service operations will change, and I want to assure you that we are working to understand what our needs will be and how we can best support all who work at Cornell," the university said in guidance to employees.

The president of United Auto Workers Local 2300, which represents dining staff at Cornell, said Wednesday that he did not have more information about the future of those members.

Some institutions have told employees that work will continue as usual. Employees at Santa Clara University, who like those at Stanford are represented by SEIU Local 2007, have been told the university will remain open and they will keep working as normal.

San Francisco State University has said the campus will remain open but with reduced services.

"During this time of remote instruction and services, all faculty, staff and student employees will continue to be paid," the university said in an announcement Monday.

Amherst, Boston College, Berklee College of Music, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Colby College administrations did not respond to requests for comment by Thursday evening.

NCAA Cancels March Madness

March 12, 4:30 p.m. The National Collegiate Athletic Association canceled the Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, along with all other winter and spring championships scheduled for the remainder of the 2019-20 academic year, the association said in a statement.

“This decision is based on the evolving COVID-19 public health threat, our ability to ensure the events do not contribute to spread of the pandemic and the impracticality of hosting such events at any time during this academic year given ongoing decisions by other entities,” the NCAA said.

-- Greta Anderson

Feds Issue Guidelines for FERPA

March 12, 4 p.m. The U.S. Department of Education has issued guidelines for institutions regarding the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, and the novel coronavirus COVID-19.

Generally, FERPA doesn’t allow colleges to provide information about a student to others without their consent. But there are some exceptions that could allow colleges to send information to others without consent as they deal with the spread of coronavirus, according to Amelia Vance, director of youth and education privacy at the Future of Privacy Forum. Vance said much of that guidance was already outlined in what the department released during the spread of the H1N1 virus.

The first exception allows colleges to disclose students’ personal information without their consent if that information is necessary to protect the health and safety of others. For example, if a student tests positive for coronavirus or has symptoms, the college can release a statement saying a student tested positive, without identifying the student.

Colleges could also send emails to students who shared specific classes with the sick student and identify them by name. While the guidance released today says those situations are typically rare, Vance said that likely will not be the case with coronavirus.

For those who are worried about violating regulations, Vance pointed to a 2009 FERPA regulation that said the department won’t second-guess a college’s determination in an emergency unless most people would consider it unreasonable.

The second exception allows colleges to identify students to public health departments. If the college declares it’s an emergency, it can provide that information without students’ consent. If a college said it’s not an emergency, the department could hypothetically issue a subpoena to get the information, Vance said.

College officials should keep in mind that they are required to record instances when they share students’ information without consent, Vance said. She recommends that they keep track in real time so they don’t have to retrace their steps after the situation calms down.

-- Madeline St. Amour

Ratings Agency Details Coronavirus Risks

March 12, 2:30 p.m. Operating and enrollment pressure could build on some colleges and universities as COVID-19 spreads, according to a note out this afternoon from Fitch Ratings.

Institutions with limited liquidity, those that rely heavily on tuition revenue and those that rely more heavily on endowment draws to fund operations generally have less ability to absorb revenue volatility before their finances take a hit, the note said. Those with larger operating margins and cash flow flexibility enjoy a stronger position.

Sources of operating risk include campus closures or other restrictions on students, faculty and staff. They also include lower dorm-occupancy rates and branch campuses abroad closing. Closures of only a few weeks aren’t expected to have a large impact on colleges’ operating performance, but pressures will build the longer campuses are shuttered.

Fees loom as an important issue. Income from auxiliary services like housing, dining and parking have grown in importance for many colleges and universities. A decline in fee revenue from services could affect margins if it stretches into the fall 2020 semester, according to the ratings agency.

Normally, universities don’t have to refund auxiliary fees, but some colleges may be choosing to do so on a prorated basis for services no longer being provided.

Fitch expects reliance on online classes to grow in the next few months, adding to an expected increase in online education over the long term. Enrollment during campus shutdowns could decline at institutions without strong online learning platforms.

Universities with significant international student populations could be in line for reduced enrollment and subsequent pressure on net tuition revenue in the upcoming academic year. The risk is notable because research universities tend to have the largest numbers of international students, but they also have stronger financial profiles than other types of institutions.

Market declines are expected to hit endowments but not have an impact on bond ratings. Fitch also mentioned the possibility that reduced economic activity could hit state budgets and in turn public funding for colleges and universities. But the ratings agency called the size of such effects unclear at this point.

-- Rick Seltzer

Duke Suspends All Athletic Activities

March 12, 2:20 p.m. Duke University appears to be the first power-conference institution to cancel all its athletics events. Vincent Price, Duke's president, said the university was suspending all practices and games, effective immediately.

“We are taking this action to protect the safety of our student-athletes, coaches, staff and others who are essential to these activities,” Price said in a statement. “I know it is a great disappointment to our student-athletes and coaches, whose hard work and dedication to their sports and Duke is inspirational to so many, but we must first look out for their health and well-being. This is clearly an unprecedented moment for our university, our region and the wider world. As we take steps to confront the spread of this virus, I’m grateful for the cooperation and support of the entire Duke community.”

The decision means Duke's perennial powerhouse men's basketball team, currently ranked No. 6 nationally in some polls, will not be participating in the NCAA tournament.

"We emphatically support the decision made by Dr. Price today regarding the suspension of athletic competition at Duke," Mike Krzyzewski, the men's basketball coach, said in the statement. "The welfare of our student-athletes, and all students at Duke, is paramount, and this decision reflects that institutional priority. Certainly, I want to applaud Dr. Price, who took a leadership role with his presidential peers and the Atlantic Coast Conference in arriving at this decision."

The University of Kansas, Arizona State University and West Virginia University followed with similar announcements on Thursday afternoon.

-- Paul Fain

Conferences Cancel Basketball Tournaments

March 12, 12:25 p.m. The Big Ten, the Southeastern Conference and the American Athletic Conference will not proceed with men’s basketball conference tournaments, fearing the spread of COVID-19.

Some men’s basketball games for these conferences have already taken place this week, and the women’s basketball conference championships for the Big Ten, SEC and AAC are complete.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association announced Wednesday it would hold Division I championship tournament games without public spectators, but it has made no indication of plans to postpone or cancel the tournament.

-- Greta Anderson

NASPA Cancels Annual Conference

March 12, 12:10 p.m. The annual conference for the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, NASPA, has been canceled due to growing concern over the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.

The conference was scheduled to run March 28 through April 1 in Austin, Tex. After the city declared a public health emergency and the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, the organization sent out an email canceling the event.

Those who were registered for the event must email NASPA to cancel and receive refunds. Otherwise, the payments will automatically go toward fees for next year’s conference.

The organization plans to hold free virtual, live-streaming keynotes and other session from March 30 to April 10 in place of the conference.

The only other time NASPA has canceled its largest annual gathering was during World War II. Several other higher education organizations have canceled conferences, including the American Council of Education, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the International Studies Association.

-- Madeline St. Amour

Growing Number of Two-Year Colleges Move Online

March 12, noon. Community colleges face a broad range of challenges in moving classes online, most notably a relative lack of resources among both the colleges and their students. But large numbers have begun making the switch in the last 24 hours. The Los Angeles Community College District and its nine colleges, for example, announced yesterday that it would suspend as many in-person classes as possible and move them to an online platform.

A spokesman for California's community college system, Paul Feist, said Thursday that the system's 115 colleges, which enroll 2.1 million students, can start moving courses online now and submit requests for approval after the fact. He said more than a dozen colleges had already told the chancellor’s office they are making the change. Very few are choosing to shut down campuses completely.

“The colleges are working very hard to protect the health and safety of students and staff while continuing with the educational mission,” Feist said. “We are accustomed in California to dealing with disasters, and community colleges will be a critical resource as we work through this.”

Other two-year institutions making similar moves include Long Beach City College, Des Moines Area Community College, Parkland College in Illinois, Maryland's Harford Community College, Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Rhode Island Community College and Northern Virginia Community College. The City University of New York, which includes seven community colleges, yesterday announced the transition.

"By transitioning to distance learning, CUNY will be upholding its responsibility as the largest urban public university in the country and meeting our goal of minimizing exposure to those on our campus communities to coronavirus transmission," Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, CUNY's chancellor, said in a statement.

-- Madeline St. Amour and Paul Fain

Universities must create joint cybersecurity teams to protect themselves against ever more sophisticated hacking attempts, according to the vice president of a Dutch university hit by a ransomware attack over Christmas that forced the institution to pay the equivalent of about $226,000 to criminals.

Maastricht University’s Nick Bos said one of the lessons of the attack was that it was increasingly untenable for universities to each rely on their own security systems.

On Christmas Eve last year, Maastricht raised the alarm after hackers took control of servers critical to email and the storage of research results, initially using phishing emails to break in. It took more than a month to restore all systems -- and the payment of 30 Bitcoin to the attackers.

In a report looking at what went wrong and how to stop future attacks, Bos called on universities to join up their security systems, pointing to collaborations already under way in Canada and the U.S.

“It’s not just a question of whether universities can afford it,” he told Times Higher Education. “There is not much choice here; we will have to invest in greater cyberresilience.”

Since the Maastricht attack, Dutch universities have stepped up joint efforts, he said, discussing whether they could collectively monitor their IT networks around the clock, for example. Meanwhile, Dutch health-care institutions are already setting up their own security operations center.

There are concerns that universities make relatively soft targets for cyberattackers, because they host thousands of students using their own laptops, and researchers are used to the open sharing of information.

The Maastricht attack was just one of several to hit European institutions in recent months. Last December, thousands of students at Justus Liebig University Giessen had to queue up to receive new passwords manually after a cyberattack. In October, the University of Antwerp’s email and student information systems were affected in a separate incident.

“There is a real race, even battle, going on with internationally operating cybercriminal organizations,” said Bos, who predicted that universities would have to make “substantial extra investments” in cybersecurity.

Bos pointed to North America, where a number of universities are pioneering collective cybersecurity.

In 2018, Indiana, Northwestern, Purdue and Rutgers Universities and the University of Nebraska formed OmniSOC, a joint cybersecurity center, arguing that individual university systems were not enough to fend off mounting attacks.

The idea is that the center can monitor all university networks at once for suspicious activity, thereby detecting an attack more rapidly. The joint center claims to be the first of its kind.

Six Canadian universities are also trialing a joint security center explicitly modeled on OmniSOC. In 2018, McGill, McMaster and Ryerson Universities, along with the Universities of Alberta, British Columbia and Toronto, formed CanSSOC in response to an “unprecedented” increase in the scale and complexity of threats.

“As a result, the associated scope and costs of successful early prevention, detection and mitigation are unsustainable by one single institution,” the group warned.

US president Donald Trump’s announcement that travel for non-US nationals from 26 Schengen Area countries will be suspended for 30 days has been largely accepted by sector stakeholders in Europe as a means to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The suspension is due to come into effect at midnight EDT on March 13.

According to the US administration, as of March 9, the Schengen Area had “exported” 201 COVID-19 cases to 53 countries. Limiting the restrictions to the Schengen Area allows some notable exceptions across Europe, including the UK, Croatia, Cyprus, Ireland, Turkey, and Ukraine.

“The free flow of people between the Schengen Area countries makes the task of managing the spread of the virus difficult,” Trump said.

“We have to accept measures aimed at containing the pandemic”

The US government is “unable to effectively evaluate and monitor” all travellers arriving from the Schengen Area and undetected coronavirus transmission threatens the security of US transportation, infrastructure and the nation, the president added.

But despite the measures hindering international scientific cooperation, president of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Joybrato Mukherjee said that safety comes first.

“In this bleak situation, we have to be clear about one thing: We have to accept measures aimed at containing the pandemic, whether it be the closure of borders, a break in international air traffic or the cancellations of international conferences and meetings.” Mukherjee said.

“Nevertheless, we hope that closing the US border for students and scientists from Europe will only be a temporary measure.”

Mukherjee added that DAAD is contacting currently contacting German grant-holders who were looking to start their exchange semester in the US to “find flexible solutions for this challenge”.

In the Netherlands, Nuffic spokesperson Jeroen Wienen said the travel bans will affect student and research mobility to the US.

“It is difficult to determine what this decision will mean for future, long term student mobility,” he said.

“We see that conferences are cancelled or postponed, and in some cases organisers are doing their best to offer digital alternatives, reducing the need to travel and bring large groups of people together. Safety should come first.”

Wienen explained that Dutch immigration and naturalisation service is looking into situations where international students are experiencing problems with their right of residence due to travel bans.

EAIE president Sabine Pendl added that short term study will “clearly see an impact”.

“This semester for sure will leave open wounds at institutions around the world,” Pendl told The PIE News.

“This semester for sure will leave open wounds at institutions around the world”

She added that it now depends on the further development of the pandemic in terms of when educators will be able to go back to ‘normal’.

US students in Europe have already been asked by their home institutions to return home, but in some cases, students had chosen to stay on the continent and “focus on their international experience by following local societal and health instructions”, Pendl continued.

“The EAIE is set to release a report in the coming days revealing the extent of the coronavirus impact and what institutions are concerned about moving forward.”

Sweden-based STS Education “should be okay”, its CEO John Cederg├Ñrdh said ÔÇô as long as the ban is waived after 30 days.

It is “too early to fully determine the impact” of the US move, he added.

“So far though we have not seen the end of this virus outbreak. Naturally, we are worried about the impact on our future sales if the situation doesnÔÇÖt improve.”

STS continues to focus on keeping its employees safe, Cedergårdh added, as well as ensuring customers are not taking a financial risk if they are booking with the company.

“Most customers seem to trust that this will be over in six months and we have not seen a large wave of cancellations,” he explained.

According to president & CEO of InterExchange Christine La Monica-Lunn said she expects cancellations and delays “as the full impact of this global situation unfolds”.

“For those who have not yet arrived to start programs, timing will be the biggest factor.

“For those on their programs, it’s about providing support should they fall ill or have their placements cut short,” she said, adding that InterExchange has made immediate contingency plans due to the suspension of entry for travellers from certain countries.

“We need to take this day-by-day…and most importantly, stay hopeful”

“We are bracing for similar reciprocal restrictions to be enacted for American travellers but for the time being we have halted all non-essential business travel and won’t be attending some of the conferences we had hoped to be at both in the US and abroad,” she said

“We need to take this day-by-day, keep the wellbeing of our participants, staff and hosts at the forefront of all business decisions, and most importantly, stay hopeful.”

Acting secretary of United States Department of Homeland Security Chad F. Wolf said that the US move will “keep Americans safe and save American lives”.

Travel restrictions in January and February for individuals who had been in China and Iran had “proved to be effective in slowing the spread of the coronavirus to the US”, Wolf continued.

US passengers that have been in the Schengen Area will have to travel through select airports that have implemented enhanced screening procedures.

“While these new travel restrictions will be disruptive to some travellers, this decisive action is needed to protect the American public from further exposure to the potentially deadly coronavirus,” he said.

The post “Safety first” say European educators as Trump announces travel ban appeared first on The PIE News.

WALK NORTH-EAST along the Alameda, the main avenue of ChileÔÇÖs capital, Santiago, to the well-heeled neighbourhood of Providencia, and for several miles the scene on either side is one of desolation. Hundreds of businesses are boarded up, some operating through doors between shutters. The Baquedano metro station and a large hotel next to it are partly burned out. Pavements have been ripped up, leaving earth and rubble. Traffic lights are disabled. Walls and statues are plastered with graffiti. Many denounce as ÔÇ£murderersÔÇØ, variously, Sebasti├ín Pi├▒era, ChileÔÇÖs centre-right president, the Carabineros (the national police force), the state and capitalism. Others hail a coming revolution, or at least a new constitution.

The trouble began on October 6th with a 30-peso (four-cent) rise in the price of peak-hour metro tickets. That set off mass fare-dodging by school pupils. Days later much of the metro in Santiago suffered arson attacks (by foreign agitators, claimed the government, without evidence). Declaring that Chile was ÔÇ£at warÔÇØ, Mr Pi├▒era imposed a state of emergency for ten days and sent the army on to the streets for only the second time since the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-90). That prompted peaceful protests, including a march in Santiago of perhaps 1m peopleÔÇöin a metropolitan area of 7m. At the same time,...

Columbia UniversityÔÇÖs Middle East Institute in New York and the Aga Khan UniversityÔÇÖs Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations in London have signed an agreement at Columbia University to mark the launch of their dual masterÔÇÖs degree.

The unique degree brings together two of the worldÔÇÖs leading universities and gives students the opportunity to study a topic of global significance while based in London and New York.

ÔÇ£At this moment in history, such an endeavour is especially important”

Columbia University and AKU have jointly developed an advanced curriculum for the program that includes a two-and-a-half-year sequence of reading and research seminars, interdisciplinary electives, and intensive foreign language training.

Students will benefit from new cross-disciplinary frameworks and tools to understand Muslim cultures in a comparative and world-historical context, equipping them to engage creatively and critically with the opportunities and challenges faced by Muslim societies today.

ÔÇ£This partnership will foster the development of the theoretical and practical perspectives needed to understand how Muslim societies are responding to pressing global challenges,ÔÇØ said Ira Katznelson, Columbia UniversityÔÇÖs interim provost and Ruggles professor of Political Science and History.

ÔÇ£At this moment in history, such an endeavour is especially important.ÔÇØ

Carl Amrhein, AKUÔÇÖs provost and vice president, Academic, remarked that the world was changing at breakneck speed, and more than ever there was an urgent need to educate our future leaders to have a deep and nuanced understanding of issues that relate to Muslim civilisations.

ÔÇ£This masterÔÇÖs degree will shape our students into professionals who can offer society clear and thoughtful insight and guidance on┬áimportant and┬ácomplex issues┬áfacing this generation,ÔÇØ he said.

At the event, dean of ISMC, Leif Stenberg, said that the partnership between ÔÇ£two of the greatest authorities on Muslim civilisationsÔÇØ represents the importance of offering broad and in-depth academic experience in this area.

ÔÇ£Each institution brings its own history and unique perspective to bear, and students will benefit from studying in two of the worldÔÇÖs greatest and inclusive cities.

“This program will challenge and guide our students to develop critical thinking research and leadership skills which will help them make a positive contribution in a wide range of vocations,ÔÇØ he added.

The post AKU & Columbia U announce dual masterÔÇÖs degree appeared first on The PIE News.

As the coronavirus outbreak continues to upend study plans for international students across the globe, international students at UK institutions have called for measures including relaxed attendance monitoring and a move to online course delivery to ease some of the concerns students might have.

A group of over 100 international students sent a petition to the UK Home Office last week voicing fears over having their visas terminated due to self-isolating ÔÇô because of attendance rules attached to visa conditions.

However, the Home Office has confirmed to The PIE News it had put measures in place regarding visas and attendance since February.

“Decisions on whether to withdraw a student from their studies are for sponsors to make”

It states on the website that ÔÇ£decisions on whether to withdraw a student from their studies are for sponsors to makeÔÇØ and that they wonÔÇÖt take ÔÇ£any compliance action against students who are unable to attend their studies due to the coronavirus outbreakÔÇØ.

Advisory body UKCISA noted that it had received 37 calls since 22 January concerning coronavirus “but many of these preceded the updated UKVI guidance on visa conditions”.┬á

The student petition also pushed for the ÔÇ£video recording [of] all classesÔÇØ and to ÔÇ£consider students’ online attendance equal to physical attendanceÔÇØ.

The London School of Economics will be the first UK university to move all teaching for undergraduate and postgraduate students online later this month, while other institutions have spoken out about the impact that a complete shut down would have should the outbreak worsen.

Speaking with The Guardian, an unnamed vice-chancellor of a Russell Group university said that a complete shutdown of their institution would be impossible as students would be left with nowhere to go.

ÔÇ£We couldnÔÇÖt fully close. What do you do with thousands of international students who canÔÇÖt go home?” they said, adding that their university would provide free accommodation for international students who were stranded, even if the UK government told them to shut.

ÔÇ£We couldnÔÇÖt fully close. What do you do with thousands of international students who canÔÇÖt go home?”

According to several reports, international students ÔÇô particularly those from Asian countries ÔÇô also continue to be worried that wearing surgical masks in public will put them at risk of abuse and harassment.

Wearing masks to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses is common in many Asian countries as a prevention method that limits the spread of respiratory diseases.

ÔÇ£I have heard a few cases of Asian students being attacked. One of the cases involved someone I knew from the University of Manchester,ÔÇØ said an undergraduate from Malaysia studying accounting and finance, who was introduced to The PIE through the city’s International Society.

ÔÇ£It is worrying that these attackers target Asians… and it also shows the lack of public education of the situation now in the UK about the cause of the spread of the virus.ÔÇØ

Marlon Zeyuan Meng, the head of Coventry University’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association chapter, told The PIE that its members also had worries about wearing masks in public but that his university was attempting to promote greater public understanding of the motivations of mask wearers.

“We are very happy to see that Coventry University has responded positively to this issue. It was the first to release information explaining the cultural differences with regards to masks,” he said, adding that the university plans to release a short video on the matter.

He also highlighted several other concerns international students had. “It is really important that there is as little disruption as possible to students’ learning and so we need to have measures in place so that students feel comfortable staying in the UK,” he added.

“A key part of that is to relax attendance monitoring and also for UK universities to quickly move to more online delivery.”

ÔÇ£I think itÔÇÖs fair to say that itÔÇÖs not just the Chinese students or the SE Asian community that feeling worried about the Coronavirus,ÔÇØ Jackie Yip, president of the student union at Cardiff University, told The PIE.

ÔÇ£Students have every right to feel worried. This is a scary thing, especially when the media heightens everything up. We want to assure students that itÔÇÖs still safe to go to lectures, itÔÇÖs still safe to gather and we are following the guidance from Public Housing Wales.ÔÇØ

“It is really important that there is as little disruption as possible to students’ learning”

Student unions reported that they were keen for lessons to continue as normally as possible unless government advice changed.

Hina, an exchange student from Japan also at the University of Manchester, noted that with only a couple of months left in the country, she wanted to be able to take lectures and tutorials as usual.

“But I also know some of my friends donÔÇÖt want to go to lecture halls that lots of people gather in,” she added.

The post UK: Home Office confirms no action against self-isolating students appeared first on The PIE News.

Edvisor and Book&Learn ÔÇô both software providers that offer agencies course search, quoting and booking tools ÔÇô have announced that they will be merging, bringing more than 7,500 agency users and 1,500 schools together.

Vancouver-based Edvisor told The PIE News that Book&Learn technology will be integrated into the new Edvisor for Agents platform and combine the best features of each product.

“WeÔÇÖre aiming to unite the industry onto a single platform”

Edvisor for Schools will be used to complement and power the new and expanded agency network.

ÔÇ£This is an exciting day for us,ÔÇØ said Nicolas Miller, CEO of Edvisor.

ÔÇ£[We] have always shared the same vision for the industry. Today weÔÇÖre taking a monumental step forward in making that vision a reality.ÔÇØ

Edvisor first launched its online platform in 2014 modelled on the standardised platforms used in the travel industry to connect agents and language schools.

Book&Learn launched the earlier incarnation of its product the following year before partnering up with Edvisor in 2018 to create a single channel linking up schools and agents.

ÔÇ£WeÔÇÖre aiming to unite the industry onto a single platform in order to drive away inefficiencies and increase profitability for schools and agents,ÔÇØ added CEO of Book&Learn, Gregorio Nieto.

According to the company, the merger will create the worldÔÇÖs largest agency network, spanning across fifty countries and including 80% of agencies in Latin America and Brazil.

It said that in 2019, the agencies in the network generated 1.5 million quotes for students combined.

ÔÇ£We have been using the Edvisor platform actively since 2016, and we believe that this system offers tremendous benefits to both schools and agents,ÔÇØ explained Robin Adams, president of CES North America.

ÔÇ£It has allowed our sales staff to support agents with real-time pricing and accurate information, and has improved our sales process significantly.ÔÇØ

The post Edvisor and Book&Learn announce merger appeared first on The PIE News.

As the new coronavirus continues to cause chaos and anxiety in the U.S., many colleges and universities are responding by closing up shop. Some have canceled face-to-face instruction and moved online, while others have gone a step further and called for residence halls to be emptied. One institution, Berea College, has said there will be no further instruction at all, effectively ending the semester early.

Yet some colleges have chosen to maintain classes and other services, sometimes despite complaints of students. In many cases those decisions are said to be based on individual location or the absence of confirmed cases within a college community.

In others, however, the divide seems to be resource-based. For example, the City University of New York was the subject of a barrage of social media complaints this week before the administration chose to suspend face-to-face instruction. Students pointed out that most other institutions in the city, including Columbia, Fordham and New York Universities, had already made the decision, making CUNY a holdout.

In another example, within the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, the relatively well-off West Chester University, with an endowment of over $40 million, has decided to suspend in-person instruction. But Mansfield University of Pennsylvania, with an endowment of $1 million, had not as of Wednesday evening made a similar announcement. ("We are located in a less-populated, rural part of the state, and our spring break has already occurred," Mansfield said in its latest statement, comparing itself to the PASSHE institutions that have made the switch.)

"Each institution will respond in ways that depend on their size, their wealth, the characteristics of their constituencies and the likely risk associated with this virus," John Lombardi, former president of the University of Florida and the Louisiana State University system, as well as the author of How Universities Work, said via email. "Small, rich, liberal arts colleges can do lots of things without much fallout because they have money, because they often are highly risk averse, and because they may well believe their [students'] parents are especially risk averse."

Small private colleges also have less complicated enterprises than their large and public peers, he said, which makes it is easier for them to temporarily shut down. Large institutions are more complex and serve a wider array of constituencies, he said. When they do choose to shut down, those institutions likely will experience a severe revenue hit.

Catharine Bond Hill, managing director of Ithaka S+R and former president of Vassar College, said well-resourced institutions also have better access to the technological assistance that makes going online possible.

"The better-resourced universities are in a better position to make the choice of shifting from in-person to online. They have greater access to IT resources, and many of them have centers for teaching and learning with support staff who can help faculty think about how to do that relatively quickly with short notice," she said.

Well-to-do institutions also tend to enroll smaller shares of low-income students, Bond Hill said. Although their leaders still need to be concerned about those students' access to the internet and devices, they have the resources to mitigate those issues.

Large institutions that have been financially struggling are likely to have become more reliant on adjunct faculty members, she noted. "Those faculty may be in an even worse situation in trying to help with this," she said. "And institutions are going to be a little bit more nervous about lending equipment and covering costs for faculty with whom they don't have a longer-term relationship."

Lombardi said that in some ways what is motivating choices is risk.

"It is important to recognize that many efforts to close serve to evade responsibility for any potential illness," he said via email. "We understand lots of other risks, such as those associated with alcohol and drug use on campus which will cause an reasonably predictable death toll, but we don't shut the place down because we know what the risk is and have experience managing it. In this case, although risk from the virus for most campuses is low, it is a risk we don't understand."ÔÇï

What the Future Holds

Bond Hill said that the challenges ahead for American higher education may be quite serious. A downturn in the economy, which is by some accounts already beginning, would mean a decline in returns for endowments, state revenue and funding, resulting in more limited ability to provide need-based financial aid. At the same time, families would be more limited in their ability to pay for college.

"All of American higher education is going to have to figure out how to respond to this," she said.

Bryan Alexander, a futurist, researcher and senior scholar at Georgetown University, agreed that there may be challenges ahead. If the U.S. goes into a lockdown, like parts of China and Italy have already done, in the fall students may be scared to enroll at a campus. With a larger total enrollment drop across the nation -- building on almost a decade of declines -- some colleges may offer alternatives to the campus model or simply choose to stay online, he said.

But it's also possible that this experience could damage the reputation of online education, Alexander said, if the hasty transition goes poorly for many places and negative stories circulate.

Depending on how the virus responds to seasonal changes, online instruction may continue through the spring, with a return to face-to-face classes during the summer. The experience of the outbreak might lead to colleges shoring up their online capacities, he said.

Bond Hill said that in the long run, online instruction may become part of a university's contingency plan. Like fire drills, institutions may run scheduled disruptions to face-to-face learning to see how prepared everyone is to work remotely.

"In the longer run, we're going to learn some things about how effective teaching online is," she said.

As colleges and universities move to clear their campuses of students and offer courses online to minimize the risk of exposure to or spread of the coronavirus, many institutions have urged students to go home and remain there. But those efforts are raising concerns about students who can't just easily pick up and go or may not have an actual home to which to return.

The precautions colleges are taking are creating logistical and financial hardships, among other challenges, for low-income and other vulnerable groups of students as well as international students, including students from China, Italy or other countries with high numbers of cases of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus.

“What I worry is the responses can actually exacerbate pre-existing inequalities,” said Anthony Abraham Jack, an assistant professor of education at Harvard University whose research focuses on lower-income undergraduate students. Harvard is one of a number of institutions that have asked students not to return to campus after spring break, which starts this weekend. While Harvard said students with extenuating circumstances will be permitted to stay, they've been warned to prepare for "severely limited" campus services.

“For a lot of students, college is the only place where they have access to food on a consistent basis,” said Jack, author of The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students (Harvard University Press, 2019). “Oftentimes, especially at residential colleges, it’s the only place that they have shelter without the worry of disruptions in utilities, disruptions in terms of feeling unsafe.”

“To say, ‘Don’t come back after spring break,’ assumes that students leave in the first place, and that is fundamentally not true, because the reality is a significant number of students -- disproportionately those from lower-income backgrounds -- remain on campus because they can’t afford to leave, they don’t have anywhere to go or they know that home and harm are synonymous. On the last point, that last group includes those who have fraught relationships with their families for reasons from political ideology to gender roles to sexual identity.”

An additional issue will be lost wages from campus jobs, which some students use to help support their families, he said.

Jack stressed that he is not a public health scholar and cannot comment on whether universities decide to shut down campuses or keep them open.

"But in the conversations about whether to close or how to close or the manner, I really hope that students who are often invisible in those conversations are seen," he said.

U.S. representatives Karen Bass and Danny K. Davis, Democrats from California and Illinois, respectively, plan to hold a press conference at 9 o'clock this morning urging colleges to consider needs of vulnerable students, including homeless students and students who were formerly in the foster care system, in responding to the coronavirus. The press conference will be broadcast on the Facebook page of the Congressional Caucus for Foster Youth.

The U.S. Department of Education issued guidance last week saying that colleges that close their campuses midterm can continue paying federal work-study wages, provided certain conditions are met.

Many colleges that have asked students to leave campus for periods ranging from several weeks through the end of the semester have provided options for students to request permission to stay in residence halls. Some have encouraged or even strongly encouraged students to leave but given students the option to stay; others are only allowing students to stay if they successfully petition for special permission.

Not all colleges that have shifted to remote courses have asked students to leave. Northeastern University in Boston said, for example, that it was not asking students to leave and was committed to "maintaining continuity of campus life" for students who stay on campus and largely keeping staffing at normal levels.

But at some colleges that have asked students to pack their things, students are pooling resources and information to help with everything from finding rides to the airport to housing.

Harvard Primus, a student group for first-generation college students or those who come from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds or underresourced high schools, has compiled a list of resources on everything with information such as how to apply for reimbursement of travel costs by Harvard (the university says in a FAQ it is committed to helping students meet unanticipated costs and that students on financial aid should reach out to the financial aid office) and options for storage of personal belongings. Primus also said it is partnering with the First Generation Harvard Alumni Association to help students seeking local employment in various cities.

“While many students can handle unexpected costs, this sudden change in housing highlights the large disparity within our student population concerning students’ access to disposable wealth and the resources necessary to evacuate and move off-campus,” Harvard Primus’s executive board said in a statement. “In addition to costs associated with unexpected flights home, students are being asked to ship or store all of their on-campus belongings with no promised full financial support. Students relying on term-time employment face additional financial concerns without their typical source of income in the coming months.”

“Students are expected to continue courses through online platforms and to pay the remaining tuition costs as courses will continue in this virtual format,” the statement continues. “This poses additional constraints on students who may be lacking access to high-speed internet and other necessary academic resources. Going forward, we hope that the administration takes into account the various financial and academic challenges that this could pose to students, particularly those in under-resourced communities. Classes will continue to meet as regularly scheduled this week -- meaning that the exhaustive tasks of studying and completing coursework have been made more severe by the emotional distress around the uncertainty regarding unexpected flights, storage costs, and financial burdens.”

International students at Harvard have also raised concerns, as did a student from Jamaica who took to Twitter to complain about the five-day notice given to leave the campus.

Harvard just gave students 5 days to pack all of their things, move out, and go home. many can't go home because of costs and travel restrictions, and they've provided no guidance. and we're expected to go to class for the rest of this week.

Wilder Brice, the student government president at Bucknell University, a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, said the student government is drafting a plan to provide transportation and hopefully storage assistance to students, who have been told to depart their dorms by 6 p.m. on March 17. (Students who need to stay longer can submit a petition requesting special permission.)

“It’s an extreme burden on students depending on where they’re from,” Brice said. “Students are a little frustrated, and they’re freaked out.”

At Tufts University, in Massachusetts, students have organized a “mutual aid” Facebook group in which students and alumni are offering support for students who suddenly need to leave campus. Tufts announced on Tuesday night that students should plan to depart the residence halls by March 16 and to complete the remainder of the semester online.

“Last night we had people offering frequent flyer miles, airline vouchers, even just straight money,” said Marley Hillman, a junior at Tufts and one of the organizers of the Tufts Mutual Aid Facebook group. She said the mutual aid group had raised more than $5,000 to distribute to students, not counting peer-to-peer contributions facilitated through the group's spreadsheets. “We’ve been able to fully cover people’s plane tickets home, and that’s been incredible. We’ve been collecting donations through Venmo, and we’ve been able to just distribute money, because one of the other things that’s going to hit vulnerable populations at Tufts pretty hard is that most students’ campus jobs are ending.”

Berea College, a tuition-free college in Kentucky where every student works on campus, announced it is ending its semester this Friday. Students were told to leave campus by Saturday, although administrators said accommodations would be made for students who can’t leave and that they would be provided alternative on-campus work placements. Students who leave the campus will also be paid their wages through the rest of the semester.

“Especially with my family being far away, I felt like Berea takes care of us every way possible,” said Ishara Nanayakkara, a senior and president of the Student Government Association. Nanayakkara was born in Virginia, but her family lives in Sri Lanka.

“I’m not sure what I should do,” she said. “Should I fly home? But flying is not safe. It’s been a struggle to figure out what to do and where to go on such short notice.”

Nanayakkara said there were many tears on campus Tuesday when the university announced plans to end the semester early.

“For most students -- freshmen and sophomores and juniors -- for them this is something like a longer summer, so they’re not too upset,” she said. “The people who are really affected are seniors who wanted to spend their months with friends and doing senior things. We feel like all that was taken away from us. Of course, it’s nobody’s fault, but you can’t help how you feel.”

An assistant professor of psychology at Marietta College says his contract isn’t being renewed because of what he’s said and was alleged to have said about differences between ethnic groups.

Many academics believe that race is mere social construct -- that there is no meaning behind being black, white or anything else, beyond what society assigns to it. Others say that that is mere orthodoxy and that race is real; this group often points to research demonstrating group-based differences in complex traits such as intelligence.

Scientists at the cutting edge of studying race and complex traits, meanwhile, say that these traits are always a mix between genetics and environment. And as of now, these experts add, it’s impossible to tell in any genuine way just what the mix is, because babies can’t be raised exactly the same way over two generations, as such experiments would require.

Bo Winegard falls in the middle camp and believes that purposely not talking about race-based differences is disingenuous and dangerous. The "rich, variegated tapestry of humanity" and its evolution have long interested him and ought to be among the truths that academics pursue, he said in a recent interview. Otherwise, he added, "literal racists" will fill the information void.

“I do think there’s an informational embargo on human population variation and certainly on race and IQ,” he said. “People have opinions, and they don’t want those to get out publicly.”

Whatever you think of Winegard’s ideas, he said in a recent essay in the conservative academic publication Quillette, you should care that he’s effectively being fired for them.

“If it can happen to me, then it can happen to any academic who challenges the prevailing views of their discipline,” he wrote. “You may disagree with everything I believe, say, and write, but it is in everyone’s interests that you support my freedom to believe, say and write it.”

Trouble Begins

Winegard, who is in his second year at Marietta and is scheduled to leave at the end of the academic year, says the trouble started in October. That's when he was invited to address the University of Alabama’s Evolution Working Group, which is affiliated with the university’s evolution studies program. Both parties agreed that Winegard would talk about population variation, or, in his words, “the hypothesis that human biological differences are at least partially produced by different environments selecting for different physical and psychological traits in their populations over time.”

The idea was to link the theory with natural selection, in line with a recent article Winegard co-wrote for Personality and Individual Differences. The article, called "Dodging Darwin: Race, Evolution and the Hereditarian Hypothesis," says, "Like most hereditarians (those who believe it likely that genes contribute to differences in psychological traits among human populations), we do not believe there is decisive evidence about the causes of differences in cognitive ability." Yet the "partial genetic hypothesis is most consistent with the Darwinian research tradition."

One class visit with students went well, Winegard recalled in Quillette. Then he received a number of texts from a campus host expressing concern about Winegard’s entry on the website RationalWiki. The website, like Wikipedia, is edited by volunteers, but is dedicated to debunking what it sees as junk science. And Winegard, according to RationalWiki, is guilty of writing “racist bullshit for the right-wing online magazine Quillette.”

Winegard told his hosts that he disagreed with the characterization. He has previously argued, for example, that racism “isn’t wrong because there aren’t races; it is wrong because it violates basic human decency and modern moral ideals.”

This, of course, contradicts a broad literature asserting that race is a social construct, not a biological one, but it doesn’t endorse racism. As Winegard said in the same co-written article, “In fact, pinning a message of tolerance to the claim that all humans are essentially the same underneath the skin is dangerous. It suggests that if there were real differences, racism would be justified.”

Despite the texts, Winegard’s main talk at Alabama went on as scheduled, followed by what he described as a “rowdy” question-and-answer period. Someone yelled that he was a racist, and another accused him of promoting phrenology, a discredited pseudoscience having to do with skull shape.

But Winegard said via telephone that that he never spoke about phrenology or on race and IQ at Alabama. The most controversial thing he said was that psychology may someday, in the aggregate, provide some explanation as to why East Asian societies tend toward collectivism, he added.

One of his slides, however, did say that “groups may vary on socially significant traits (on average) such as intelligence, agreeableness, athleticism, cooperativeness [and] criminality.”

Alabama’s student newspaper published an article on the talk, vaguely linking the subject matter to eugenics, or reproduction to promote certain heritable traits. It also published an apology from the group that hosted him.

Winegard said this week that he never mentioned eugenics, and that he finds things such as forced sterilization morally repugnant. He didn't preclude having mentioned embryo selection once or twice on Twitter, he said, but he's never made a sustained argument.

Back at Marietta, Winegard was summoned to a meeting with his president and provost to discuss the article. While they weren’t pleased, Winegard wrote in Quillette, they “told [him] to be more strategic in my navigation of such a sensitive topic. I agreed that I would try.”

Months later, someone began emailing Winegard’s department and administration about things he’s written and said on Twitter. One tweet, in particular, read, “The greatest challenge to affluent societies is dealing openly, honestly, and humanely with biological (genetic) inequality. If we don’t meet this challenge, I suspect our countries will be torn apart from the inside like a tree destroyed by parasites.”

At a second, consequent meeting with his supervisors, Winegard explained (as he recapped in Quillette) that his tweet “was not about groups, but rather about individual genetic differences, and the need to create a humane society for everyone, not just for the cognitive elite and hyper-educated (a theme I discuss often).” The simile about parasites was a “reference to political conflict and not a reference to some group of humans or another,” he also said.

Winegard recalled his bosses expressing “disappointment in me and particular dismay about the tweet I had deleted, which they said evoked anti-black and anti-Semitic tropes.” He agreed and apologized but said he would continue to pursue potentially controversial research topics.

Termination

Termination never came up, even after Winegard published a co-written article on human population variation -- until two weeks ago.

“My boss informed me, without any warning, that the college was not renewing my contract,” he wrote in Quillette. “I don’t know if my paper was the proximate cause of my firing, but in the light of the foregoing weeks’ tumult, it was plausibly the last straw.”

Did Winegard see it coming? “I had worried vaguely about such an eventuality, but didn’t really think it would happen,” he wrote. “I naively assumed that the norms of academic freedom would prevail. They did not.”

Winegard told Inside Higher Ed that he’s had strong teaching evaluations and high research productivity since he’s been at Marietta. He sees no apparent reason for his effective termination, apart from the controversy surrounding what he has said and, more to the point, is alleged to have said.

In response to his Quillette article, some have argued that one should wait until tenure to pursue certain topics. But Winegard reiterated that he, perhaps naïvely, took academic freedom seriously. Beyond that, he said, if academics follow "pragmatic" advice about waiting until tenure to discuss controversial issues, it means waiting 10 or more years, through graduate school and the tenure track.

“I’m perplexed by the response,” he said of Marietta’s actions. “The best response would have been to come out with a bold, affirmative statement for academic freedom,” even if the college distanced itself from Winegard’s views in doing so.

Otherwise, he said, “You’re incentivizing this trollish behavior.” Trollish here refers to those Winegard says emailed his institution about him anonymously.

Marietta declined comment, saying Winegard’s case was a private personnel issue.

Relevant, widely followed American Association of University Professors policy says that even professors on probationary appointments should enjoy the same academic freedom as those with tenure, even if they don't have the same due process protections. Winegard said he's unaware of any paths to appeal, but AAUP policy also holds that a faculty committee should evaluate any concerns about non-reappointment related to a possible violation of academic freedom.

Winegard's department chair did not respond to a request for comment. Marietta's Faculty Council chair also did not respond to questions about the case.

Facts and Feelings

Attempts to link cognition to race have for decades happened mostly in academe's fringes. That's because it's either dog-whistle racist junk science or there is a conspiracy of silence surrounding it, depending on what you believe. In 1994, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life was immediately controversial, stirring concerns about lack of peer review and whether it represented mainstream science.

Race-based science debates don't just happen in psychology. In January, for example, Philosophical Psychology faced a boycott for publishing an article in defense of race-based research on intelligence. The gist of that article, written by Nathan Cofnas, a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Oxford, was that when advances in science reveal “genetic variants underlying individual differences in intelligence,” we won’t be ready for it.

One of the main criticisms of Cofnas's piece was that it speculated that these breakthroughs are close. They are not. So postulating about them is, in a sense, pseudoscience, critics maintain.

Cofnas said at the time that those "who argue that we should wait for the genetics and neuroscience of intelligence to become more advanced before we attempt to study this issue often claim that, in the meantime, we should accept the environmental explanation for the purpose of policy making" and more. But that is a "political, not a scientific, position."

Journalist Angela Saini, author of the 2019 book Superior: The Return of Race Science (which Winegard has reviewed), said that her research demonstrates there is simply "no conspiracy against talking about race and IQ in academia, largely because this matter was settled 70 years ago -- and reinforced by genetics since -- by the universal understanding that race is a social construct."

It's "impossible to say that any differences in attainment we may see between socially defined groups must be biological in origin," Saini added. "Scientists are overwhelmingly in consensus on this."

That a "few academics like to claim otherwise," she said, "in particular, a small number of social scientists on the margins of respectable academia, does nothing to undermine the scientific facts. The facts, I’m afraid, don’t care about their feelings."

Intelligence researcher Richard Haier, professor emeritus in the pediatric neurology division at the School of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine, said that the questions Winegard is working on are “controversial and emotional” -- and “well within the bounds of reasonable debate.”

What happened at Marietta is, therefore, “an apparent violation of academic freedom,” Haier said. “I don’t know all the details, but I do know that it is very hard to defend academic freedom for issues that are not just controversial but also extremely emotional. And a lot of people in academia are happy to say that they support academic freedom but there are many examples of occurrences that appear to violate academic freedom, and the local academic community has not stood up for academic freedom.”

Haier added, “The hard thing about science is to go where the data take you. Without tenure and even with tenure, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to address controversial ideas, where some points of view do not acknowledge the legitimacy of other points of view, and therefore shut down discussion. That’s not how science works.”

Lee Jussim, distinguished professor of psychology at Rutgers University and co-author of a recent paper on political bias in social science research, said that the topic of race and IQ "is poison." Further, he said, "I see no reason to believe the methods are capable of answering the question of how much race differences in intelligence are genetic versus environmental versus some combination.”

That doesn't mean that Winegard or anyone else “should be fired for trying to do so,” however, Jussim said. “Of course he has a right to pursue the line of inquiry.”