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Steven J. Berberich, associate provost for faculty and staff affairs and professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Wright State University, in Ohio, has been appointed senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Keith Brown, interim president of Jefferson State Community College, in Alabama, has been named to the position on a permanent basis. Cheryl de la Rey, vice chancellor of the University of Pretoria, in South Africa, has been appointed vice chancellor of the University of Canterbury, in New Zealand. Daniel DeMarte, executive vice president for academic and student affairs at Tidewater Community College, in Virginia, has been selected as president of Jamestown Community College, in New York. Robert J. Graham, provost and vice president of academic affairs at Grove City College, in Pennsylvania, has been chosen as president of Redeemer University College, in Ontario. John F. Healy, associate vice president for academic affairs at Minnesota State University Moorhead, has been appointed vice president for academic affairs at the College of St. Mary, in Nebraska. Thomas Krise, president of Pacific Lutheran University, in Washington, has been named president of the University of Guam. Wilma Mishoe, interim president of Delaware State University, has been appointed to the job on a permanent basis. Pelema I. Morrice, vice provost for enrollment management and strategic development at the University of Missouri at Columbia, has been named president of Great Bay Community College, in New Hampshire. Latha Ramchand, dean of the C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston, has been appointed provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Gillian Siddall, vice president academic and provost at the OCAD University, has been selected as president and vice chancellor of Emily Carr University of Art + Design, in British Columbia. Reggies Wenyika, president of Southwestern Christian University, in Oklahoma, has been chosen as president of Ottawa University, in Kansas. Editorial Tags: College administrationNew presidentsIs this diversity newsletter?: Newsletter Order: 0Disable left side advertisement?: Is this Career Advice newsletter?: Magazine treatment: Trending: College: Pacific Lutheran UniversityUniversity of HoustonUniversity of Missouri - ColumbiaWright State University-Main Campus

With a growing body of research showing the benefits of early-childhood education and increasing pressure on childcare centers to hire more educated and skilled workers, one of the largest childcare providers in the country is offering free college tuition assistance to its employees. Bright Horizons Family Solutions announced last month that the company is launching a tuition assistance program for all full-time employees who want to pursue an associate or bachelor’s degree in early-childhood education. The program will also cover fees and textbooks. “We really see this as an investment in our people,” Bright Horizons chief executive officer Stephen Kramer said. “Our view is that we’re going to be driving higher quality to our programs.” The move by Bright Horizons follows the steps taken by other companies, such as Walmart, Starbucks, McDonald's and Fiat Chrysler, to offer employees free or low-cost tuition to help improve their skills and knowledge base, while also reducing turnover and fostering company loyalty. It's also an opportunity for employees to increase their wages. Bright Horizons' tuition-free program is largely viewed as positive, but there are some strings attached to the deal. Employees who participate in the program are expected to stay employed with Bright Horizons for 18 months after they complete the program and receive their degrees. Employees who decide to leave the company during that period will be required to pay back Bright Horizons for a portion of the cost of their education. Kramer would not say how much the free tuition program will cost the company, but he said he expects Bright Horizons will “invest millions of dollars each year” on it. “And we believe our teachers are worth it.” A representative for the company said Bright Horizons employees who complete the program would see a bump in salary. Bright Horizons is partnering with Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania and three for-profit institutions, Walden University, Rasmussen College and Ashford University, to administer the program. Kramer said the universities met the company's criteria for teaching employees and helping them earn two- or four-year degrees in early-childhood education. All four colleges have early-childhood education programs accredited or recognized by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. The colleges also offer degrees online, meeting the company’s need for flexible schedules. A significant number of Bright Horizons employees have attended the same institutions in the past to earn degrees in early education. Bright Horizons officials were motivated to act after local lawmakers in cities such as Washington and New York took steps to increase education requirements for staff at childcare centers, Kramer said. The District of Columbia last year became one of the first cities in the country to require lead teachers in childcare centers have at least an associates degree by the end of 2020. While it’s common for childcare workers not to have college degrees, a 2015 report from the National Academy of Sciences found that the childcare workers' level of education and training have not kept pace with what research in children’s learning and early development defines as ideal qualifications. “Our goals have been to get out front and ensure our teachers certainly meet and, in most cases, exceed the expectations of whatever a municipality has,” Kramer said. “The vast majority of the nation does not have these stringent requirements, but obviously in those places, we’re still looking to push the boundaries on academic qualifications.” But some education analysts have criticized government-imposed education requirements as unnecessary and too costly for workers. Kramer said there is a diminishing pool of academically qualified staff available to fill these positions, but that hasn't stopped the company from hiring workers for its day-care centers. “We believe that we hire for aptitude and train for skill,” he said. “We felt it’s our opportunity and responsibility to upskill our staff.” About 1,000 full-time Bright Horizons employees have signed up for the program so far, and more than half of them are over age 35, Kramer said. The company employs about 15,000 full-time workers in 750 childcare centers worldwide. Returning to College One of those teachers is Sara Vanderhoof, of Flanders, N.J., who has been teaching children under age 5 for about 30 years, 22 of them at Bright Horizons. Vanderhoof, who got an associate degree in applied sciences in early-childhood education in 1989, had always wanted to continue her studies and earn a bachelor’s degree. But after getting married, paying off college loans and starting her own family, Vanderhoof said going back to college would have created a financial hardship for her. “With Bright Horizons offering this, it’s so amazing that I’m kind of giddy about going back to school,” she said. “I’m looking at Walden University, because they would allow me to be in my classroom and do all of my teaching, but also go to college on my own time.” Vanderhoof said it’s easy to think that with all her classroom experience there is no need to go back to college, but a lot has changed in early education in the last three decades. For instance, when Vanderhoof first started teaching prekindergartners, they typically just learned the alphabet. But now she’s the lead teacher in a Handwriting Without Tears program for the preschoolers. “If there is anything that can help me be a better teacher and help them learn and grow more, I’m ready for it,” Vanderhoof said. “Things are changing in the public school systems so fast and so much. The group I teach is a kindergarten prep class going into the school system. I want to make it so they’re prepared when they go into that kindergarten class.” Kramer said the company was pleasantly surprised to learn that many of the 1,000 teachers who signed up for the tuition-free program were older and had years of classroom experience, like Vanderhoof. “When people think of education, they think of people early in their careers,” Kramer said. “What we’re finding is many of our experienced people have recognized the value of going back to school. The challenge for them has been financial and getting into an appropriate program.” The Bright Horizons program was designed to eliminate the financial barrier for employees and the roadblocks many adult students encounter when juggling work, family responsibilities and college, Kramer said. The company is also training directors at each center to help employees participating in the program manage work and college, Kramer said. The company will also assign each employee an educational adviser to help them understand academic requirements, counsel them about course credits and degree paths, and help them navigate college. The adviser will be provided to employees through EdAssist, a tuition assistance management company owned by Bright Horizons. “We recognize that each employee has to balance their work and their life,” Kramer said. “We want people to take it at a pace that works for them, so we tried to put as few restrictions on the program as possible.” More Education, More Wages Despite the research pointing to the need for more early-education teachers with at least an associate degree, part of the problem of achieving that goal is the market structure built around the childcare sector. “The National Academy of Sciences clearly state that the incumbent work force should be supported and work toward higher education and that the cost burden shouldn’t fall upon them,” said Lea Austin, co-director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. “It speaks to this need to think about and finance our system differently. Where is higher compensation going to come from unless you’re raising parent fees, and parents, for the most part, can't afford more than what they’re paying.” Austin said families that rely on childcare centers shouldn't have to pay for upskilling the centers' workers, especially when the cost of childcare already takes up 20 percent or more of the budgets of low-income families. Instead, Austin said early education should be publicly funded, much like K-12 education. Regardless of education level, early-education teachers in public preschools make more money than those in private childcare centers. The average wage for an early-education teacher with a bachelor’s degree in a public school-sponsored program is about $22 an hour, compared to $15 an hour in a private preschool program, according to CSCCE. Over all, college students who major in early-childhood education have the lowest lifetime earnings projection of all college majors, according to the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Austin said supporting early education means supporting the education and service that preschool teachers provide. “I don’t want to lose the importance of supporting teachers to earn college degrees,” she said. “We should find ways to do that and we should ensure they’re adequately compensated in a way that doesn’t displace families.” Community CollegesFor-Profit Higher EdEditorial Tags: Financial aidImage Caption: Bright HorizonsIs this diversity newsletter?: Newsletter Order: 0Disable left side advertisement?: Is this Career Advice newsletter?: Magazine treatment: Trending: College: University of California-Berkeley

A country that is not fascist may still experience fascist politics. And those politics are based on efforts to divide society and demonize groups. That is a major theme of How Fascism Works (Penguin Random House), by Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Stanley identifies 10 "pillars" of fascist politics, among them "the mythic past," propaganda and appeals to the heartland. One of the pillars is anti-intellectualism. Stanley discussed that pillar in the following email interview, which has been edited. Q: Anti-intellectualism has been present throughout much of American history. How is the kind of anti-intellectualism linked to fascist ideas different? Or is it the same? A: Our suspicion of elites and what could be seen as anti-intellectualism can be healthy at times; we can see the American philosophical traditions of pragmatism and empiricism in this light, which can in fact serve as counterweights to the grandiose myths of fascist politics. But even this version has proven to be a weakness, one that makes us more susceptible to being manipulated politically. We have seen this play out in the case of climate change, where essentially apolitical scientists were successfully demonized as ideologues. We also have a history of what I think of as more classically fascist anti-intellectualism. Fascist anti-intellectualism sets the traditions of the chosen nation, its dominant group, above all other traditions. It represents more complex narratives as corrupting and dangerous. It prizes mythologizing about the nation’s past, and erasing any of its problematic features (as we see all too often in histories of the Confederacy and the Reconstruction period, or of the treatment in history books of our indigenous communities). It seeks to replace truth with myth, transforming education systems into methods of glorifying the ideologies and heritage of the members of the traditional ruling class. In fascist politics, universities, which present a more complex and accurate version of history and current reality, are attacked for being places where dominant traditions or practices are critiqued. Fascist ideology centers loyalty to power rather than truth. In fascist thinking, the university is simply another tool to legitimate various illiberal hierarchies connected to historically dominant traditions. Q: You mention David Horowitz and his various books and websites that offer names of professors for criticism as liberal, something also supported by Turning Point USA. Why are such lists a sign of a dangerous kind of anti-intellectualism? A: Above all, the mission of the university is truth. Fascist ideology, by contrast, traffics in myth; for example, the myth of the cultural or ethnic superiority of certain groups, the myth of patriarchy, various historical myths about the nation’s past, and the erasure of any sins done in the name of the dominant national ideologies. Fascist politics requires the demonization of certain groups that are the enemies, which of course requires spreading simplifications and falsehoods about them (for example, in the U.S. today, those of the Muslim faith). The organizations you mention specifically target academics who deviate from the myths that support American far-right ideology. They try to intimidate into silence scholars whose work reveals the complexities and contradictions of capitalism; they target gender studies scholars, scholars of Islam and the Middle East, and those for example in African American studies and indigenous studies whose work threatens the rosy picture of the past they wish our education systems to present as objects of veneration. By harshly attacking those who seek to show the truth in its full complexity, the organizations you mention undermine the search for truth. This is the essence of anti-intellectualism; it is an attack on truth. Q: Historically, many professors who have been targets have been either real or imagined Marxists. Today many of the targets in the United States are scholars of race or gender. What is the significance of that shift? A: In illiberal far-right ideology, equality is rejected, and hierarchy is embraced in its stead. Liberalism (and Marxism) in contrast each have some notion of equality as an ideal. So those whose work criticizes failures of equality are targets of reactionary illiberalism, whether that failure is systematic economic inequality, racial inequality or gender inequality. The goal is to delegitimize those who call attention to unjust inequalities along any dimension. Fascist ideology specifically focuses on hierarchies of race and gender, and so increased attacks that focus on those who defend equality along these dimensions are a particularly worrisome sign. Q: You note attacks on scholars in Hungary, Russia and elsewhere. Do you see similarities between those attacks and those against scholars in the United States? A: Yes, as I emphasize in my book, we are seeing very similar attacks on universities in the United States as we have seen in Eastern Europe, where universities such as Central European University and the European University of St. Petersburg have been attacked specifically for spreading liberalism -- a charge we are familiar with in the United States. As I document, harsh attacks on gender studies are a common feature of attacks on universities in both Eastern Europe and in the United States. Q: Do you believe we are in a period in which fascist ideas pose a danger to the values of academe? A: There is an unprecedented tidal wave of money directed at universities to help promote unfettered free market capitalism -- that remains, I think, the greatest danger to the autonomy of the university in the United States today. But there is also a worldwide nationalist attack on liberalism, which includes attacks on universities with a global, cosmopolitan ethos. I’m concerned about their convergence. Fascist politics are often useful tools for business elites, who are often not committed to the ideology behind them, but may find them useful as strategically useful weapons (think for example of the way that powerful elites in the United States have used racist appeals to attack government programs such as the Affordable Care Act). My concern is that we could see a consensus forming that universities should be solely for job skills training, together with “Great Books” programs that glorify the various values of the ruling class -- from European identity to unfettered free market capitalism. We also cannot forget our history, that professors with voices critical of dominant ideologies have long been targets. Even David Bohm, one of the greatest physicists who ever lived, lost his position at Princeton University during the Red Scare, robbing the United States of a substantive connection to his legacy. It is far from impossible that those days will return. If universities are to retain their values, it will be key for university administrators to hold the line, specifically to protect controversial faculty members -- of whatever ideological stripe -- who challenge the status quo. New Books About Higher EducationEditorial Tags: BooksIs this diversity newsletter?: Newsletter Order: 0Disable left side advertisement?: Is this Career Advice newsletter?: Magazine treatment: Trending: Trending text: Anti-IntellectualismTrending order: 1

Grand Canyon University enrolls nearly 20,000 students at its Phoenix campus, has among the fastest growing online enrollments in recent years and this past spring qualified for the National Collegiate Athletic Association's men's basketball tournament for the first time. But as a for-profit institution, Grand Canyon could not accept charitable contributions, apply for federal research grants or take part in NCAA governance, the school's president and CEO Brian Mueller told investors last year. So when the university’s accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, said in 2017 that it would adopt new guidelines governing outsourcing of various university functions, Grand Canyon jumped at an opportunity to pursue a corporate restructuring that it would allow it to operate as a nonprofit entity. The change would also mean fewer federal regulatory burdens for the company, although Mueller and Grand Canyon have insisted that was not a factor in the decision (as it has been for some other recent converts). The accreditor had rejected an earlier proposal from GCU because it did not believe its standards allowed for an arrangement Grand Canyon proposed: to set up a nonprofit that would outsource a range of services to a separate for-profit company. But the new guidelines helped clear the way for one deal in a series of recent transactions in which large for-profit entities have sought to change their tax status. Mueller noted to investors in the 2017 earnings call that HLC could approve the deal, reject it or kick a decision down the road. “It would be difficult for us to believe it would be the last two because the thing is so similar to what is going on everywhere in the industry,” he said. That corporate restructuring trend has attracted the notice of consumer advocates and Democratic lawmakers as well. Those critics see pursuit of nonprofit status as attempts to dodge federal regulations and have increasingly focused their attention on the role played by accreditors, pushing those organizations for tougher scrutiny of the deals.  As the approving agencies for higher ed institutions, accreditors are among several entities that must give the OK to such transactions. And under the Trump administration, skeptics of for-profit conversions say their role has become even more crucial as the Department of Education has backed off previous skepticism of nonprofit conversions. Accreditors aren’t necessarily responding to the new scrutiny by taking a tougher stand publicly on those deals, to the dismay of for-profit critics. The WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) clarified its standards in response to a string of applications from for-profit colleges to restructure several years ago and says it’s well positioned to evaluate those deals now. HLC added to its guidelines where they previously did not conceive of the outsourcing deal, known as shared services agreements. “The regionals have definitely paid inadequate attention to this issue,” said Bob Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a former Obama administration official. “And a few years ago that was understandable.” Changing Regulatory Landscape Grand Canyon's corporate overhaul comes as a number of for-profit colleges have pursued similar deals. Purdue University, a public state institution, announced last year that it would acquire the for-profit Kaplan University. The nonprofit Dream Center Foundation said in 2017 it would purchase the chain of campuses operated by Education Management Corporation. And Ashford University said earlier this year it would pursue plans to go nonprofit. In previous years, those transactions could expect to face more regulatory hurdles at the federal agencies that oversee such transactions. The IRS in particular devoted more resources and manpower to reviewing new applications for nonprofit status. But the unit responsible for reviewing nonprofit applications has dramatically reduced enforcement activity thanks to political pressure in recent years. That means accreditors can't rely on IRS scrutiny to safeguard the public interest, wrote Brian Galle, a Georgetown University law professor, in comments to the federal panel that oversees accreditation. In announcing the denial of an application for nonprofit conversion by a Utah-based for-profit college chain in 2016, the Obama administration said explicitly that those looking to avoid oversight by reclassifying shouldn’t waste their time. Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos, however, has praised the Purdue-Kaplan deal as the kind of arrangement that promotes necessary innovation in higher ed. Early reviews of the Purdue-Kaplan proposal appeared to signal that HLC was open to the more novel corporate arrangements, another signal to Grand Canyon on top of the new guidelines that it should make another go of converting to nonprofit status. The accreditor eventually approved the Purdue-Kaplan and Grand Canyon proposals in March. (The Education Department said it is considering the Grand Canyon request to convert to nonprofit status in its review of the change of ownership transaction.) The new Purdue University Global is a novel partnership between public and private institutions. The Grand Canyon deal would involve selling off the academic units of the university to a new nonprofit that would contract a range of functions to a for-profit in exchange for 60 percent of tuition and revenue. Those involved in the proposal say HLC has begun to recognize wider changes in the higher ed sector. The larger context of the GCU transaction is the growth of online program management companies -- known as OPMs -- that distribute online courses and provide other services like enrollment management, said Neil Lefkowitz, a lawyer who advised Grand Canyon on its application. Restructuring deals where colleges contract out services to outside providers, proponents argue, would allow them to expand access and improve affordability. “You want to recognize trends in the market. Accreditors don’t want to be the ones saying, ‘We’re inhibiting access and affordability,’” Lefkowitz said. Supporters expect other for-profit institutions to take their cue from the Grand Canyon deal in pursuing similar arrangements. Steve Kauffman, a spokesman for HLC, said the accreditor developed the standards in recognition that “higher education is shifting as new and innovative forms of structure and control evolve.” The new guidelines clarified which types of agreements would require the accreditor's approval, including a scenario where a college creates a separate corporation that would provide a number of services to the accredited institution. And the guidelines require that an institution upgrade its conflict of interest policies and that it be allowed to terminate an agreement with or without cause. What was critical about HLC's new guidelines is they explicitly addressed the kinds of arrangements that the accreditor's rules hardly conceived of previously. And although they don't even mention the terms "for-profit" or "nonprofit," they set out in detail how an institution could restructure its organization in a manner similar to the one pursued by Grand Canyon. Rather than converting its entire operation to a nonprofit, the university under those guidelines could contract out many of its operating functions from a new nonprofit university to a separate corporate entity. But the details of the Grand Canyon arrangement came under fire anyway for the role the president, Mueller, would play -- he would continue to serve as company’s CEO and board chairman and also remain as president of the university and serve on the nonprofit board. The HLC guidelines allowed for those dual roles, but critics called them a conflict of interest. A university spokesman said its December 2017 proposal amended its previous application to address each component of the guidelines governing shared services agreements but said there was nothing materially different between the two proposals. Long History of Attempts to Reclassify Democratic lawmakers put a spotlight on nonprofit conversions this year after a string of recent applications from large for-profit institutions. Before conversions involving large institutions attracted the attention of lawmakers, though, smaller educational entities sought to reclassify as well. Two years ago, the Obama administration blocked an application by Utah-based Center for Excellence in Higher Education to reclassify as a nonprofit, a decision that prompted a lawsuit from the for-profit’s owner. An earlier round of nonprofit conversions drew scrutiny from Shireman, who labeled those institutions “covert for-profits” in a Century Foundation report. Among them were Herzing University, Remington Colleges and Keiser University, whose president, Art Keiser, chairs the board that oversees accreditors. Keiser said that institutions have been changing tax status since for-profit colleges became part of higher education. “They key is looking at the governance [of the institution] to make sure it’s done for the right reason,” he said. But Kevin Kinser, a professor of education at Pennsylvania State University who studies accreditors, said those organizations are being asked to play a larger role in the regulatory and oversight process than they were originally designed to take on. “I am not sure that accreditation agencies have the expertise to make these kinds of judgments in the ways they're being asked to do it when regulatory implications that are not about accreditation are so significant,” he said. That perspective is shared by the Education Department's top higher ed official. Diane Auer Jones, principal deputy under secretary, announced recently that the department wanted to rethink the proper role of accreditors through a new rule making. Jones told Inside Higher Ed that accreditors have been asked to do too much that goes beyond their core mission -- including oversight of complex financial transactions where they might not have the necessary expertise.  "The job of the accreditor is to make sure the school continues to operate well and its students continue to be served and that there are adequate resources to keep the thing running," she said. "They've been asked to do a lot more and to opine on financial conditions that are really the expertise of accountants and financial managers." Jones said the department itself is better suited to provide the scrutiny of conversion deals that many want to see from accreditors. "Those at the department absolutely have to be scrutinizing these carefully," she said. "That is where the department has expertise, and that is where the department has to take responsibility."  (Note: this story has been updated from a previous version to more accurately reflect the quote from Jones.) The structure of nonprofit conversion attempts has changed as well. Antoinette Flores, associate director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress, said that a decade ago accreditors were reviewing proposals from for-profit companies for to simply purchase nonprofit colleges. More recent classifications have become increasingly complex. If corporate higher ed restructuring is becoming more sophisticated, regional accreditors say they’ve taken steps to build up their own expertise on areas well outside academics and curriculum. The teams reviewing restructuring proposals at the WSCUC are versed in corporate organization issues, said Jamienne Studley, the president of the organization. “For complex transactions involving structural changes, we deliberately choose accreditation teams made up of individuals with sophisticated expertise in organizational governance, financial and business arrangements,” she said. “We further backstop these teams with advice from leading lawyers and finance consultants experienced in these issues.” Studley said accreditors have long been under the microscope at the federal level -- whether for their scrutiny of conversion transactions or for monitoring of poor institutional outcomes. As an Obama administration education official, she spent considerable time examining those agencies herself. “Given accreditors’ responsibilities and the consequences of our work, that attention is appropriate,” Studley said. WASC three years ago issued a policy on agreements with unaccredited entities as well as a corporate restructuring questionnaire. The guidelines the organization already has in place as well as the expertise of its staff prepare it to evaluate those proposals, WASC says. Other accreditors have taken more recent steps to update their own guidelines for the transactions. The Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges, the national accrediting body that accredits CEHE, in July approved a policy change barring anyone with a financial stake in a for-profit provider from serving on the board or being a member of a nonprofit entity. Those deals aren’t just a question of what may happen soon. WASC gave its approval last month to a merger of Ashford University and the University of the Rockies, two online for-profits owned by Bridgepoint Education. That deal is part of broader plans at Bridgepoint for Ashford to eventually go nonprofit. Shireman, of the Century Foundation, doesn’t believe either accreditor has done enough, though. And he said the problem has gotten worse, not better. “Consumers trust colleges labeled ‘public’ and ‘nonprofit’ because public and nonprofit control has been effective in preventing predatory behavior, making the schools safer places for students to enroll by separating institutional control from the financial stakes of investors,” he said. For-Profit Higher EdEditorial Tags: AccreditationImage Source: Getty ImagesAd Keyword: Accreditation Is this diversity newsletter?: Newsletter Order: 0Disable left side advertisement?: Is this Career Advice newsletter?: Magazine treatment: Trending: College: Grand Canyon UniversityPurdue University-Main Campus