Numbers

We seem to get budgetary numbers on the fiscal condition of the UCLA Athletics program from external sources, but not from UCLA. CBS News carries a story concerning the recent firing and replacement of the UCLA AD.* It notes that there was donor dissatisfaction building with the old regime, expressed as declining donations:

UCLA's donation rank was towards the bottom of the Big Ten:

It appears the Athletics program was a chronic money loser through June 30, 2025. UCLA provided some offsetting subsidy money, mainly in the last two years available. No data were provided for 2025-26.

It would be nice if these numbers were readily available from UCLA - as opposed to CBS News. And it would be nice to have data for last year. It would be nice to know exactly what the definitions are of revenue and expenses. It would be nice to know exactly where the money to finance the reported deficits came from since the cumulative deficits substantially exceed the "subsidy." Is all this going to be revealed during the upcoming budgetary "retreat"?

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*https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/ucla-money-problems-donors-martin-jarmond-firing-athletic-director/.

Digital Humanities

From CalMatters: UCLA is launching the nation’s first digital humanities department and bachelor’s degree this fall. The new discipline combines classical humanities with technical know-how to examine a digitized and increasingly AI-enhanced world. The major fuses technological tools for statistical analysis, coding, 3D mapping and data visualization with traditional humanities subjects like history, literature and global cultures. It’s a multidisciplinary approach to education that capitalizes on employers’ growing desire for recent graduates to think critically while also being able to harness new technology. And the major requires a great deal of teamwork among students, another skill hiring managers seek. 

Students will learn how new technologies shape culture and the human biases that enter into the use of these new tools. Top of mind is the rise of generative artificial intelligence and training students to use it ethically while also understanding how easily it can produce misleading content...

Full story at https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2026/08/ucla-digital-humanities/.

Straws in the Wind - Part 453

From Inside Higher Ed: Twenty-three percent fewer student visas were issued in 2025 compared to the previous year, according to newly released Department of State figures. Some countries, like Iran, Myanmar and Venezuela, saw declines over 70 percent from year to year. India, the second-largest supplier of international students to the U.S. in 2024, also experienced a precipitous 56.6 percent drop. An Inside Higher Ed analysis of the data shows that visa issuances were essentially in line with the previous year for the first several months of 2025 but dropped in May—the same month President Donald Trump paused all student visa interviews to implement new social media screenings for those applicants. The number of student visas issued remained below 2024 levels for the remainder of the year.

The largest decrease was among F-1 visa holders, who are in the U.S. seeking a degree and who are at the center of concerns about how the Trump administration's international student policies will impact enrollments; those visas declined by 33.4 percent, versus 9.9 percent for J-1 and 6.7 percent for M-1 visas. (J-1 visas are for students and scholars in certain exchange programs, including the Fulbright program, while M-1 visas are for students in nondegree or vocational training.) ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/international-students-us/2026/08/26/new-student-visas-dropped-23-2025.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 195

From the Harvard Crimson: Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh told Peer Advising Fellows... that Harvard plans to enforce its new cap on A grades by automatically converting all of a course’s A’s to A-’s if professors refuse to bring their grades under the limit — but backtracked in [a later] interview..., saying the mechanism remains only a proposal. Claybaugh told PAFs that professors who entered too many A grades would first receive an alert instructing them to bring their course into compliance. If they nevertheless submitted grades above the limit, she said, all of the course’s A grades would automatically become A-’s, according to four students in attendance and a recording of the event obtained by The Crimson.

...The comments, made during a fireside chat that attendees had been told was off the record, offer the clearest indication yet of how Harvard could enforce the controversial cap once it becomes mandatory, answering a question that has loomed over the policy since faculty approved it in May. Claybaugh [later] backed away from the certainty of her...  remarks, saying the automatic conversion mechanism was only one option under consideration. She said a committee is still considering how to enforce the cap. While she said the mechanism “seems like the easiest enforcement option,” she added that she was unsure whether it was “physically possible in our system.”

“It sounds mean to hold a gun to the student’s head, but the thing about our faculty is they really care about our students,” Claybaugh said... The enforcement question has taken on added urgency as some professors have publicly said they may refuse to follow the cap...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/8/28/harvard-grade-cap-enforcement/.

Only NFL?

From the NY Times: Since the degenerative brain disease known as C.T.E. was first scientifically linked to football about 20 years ago, and as hundreds of former professional football players have been diagnosed with the disease after their deaths, a haunting question has lingered: Just how many N.F.L. players will end up with C.T.E.? New data provides a sobering indication: At least one in four of all the people who have played in the N.F.L. might expect to end up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, according to a study of hundreds of cases over a recent six-year period.

Researchers considered every former N.F.L. player who died from 2016 to 2021. There were 878. Some died in their 20s, some in their 80s, most in between. The study’s main finding was simple math: At least 215 of those 878 former players — 24.5 percent — had C.T.E. ... C.T.E. is a progressive neurological disease caused by repeated impacts to the head. It can be definitively diagnosed only by examining the brain after death. Studies have shown that the rate of C.T.E. in people who have not sustained repeated impacts to the head is nearly zero...

Experts say that the rate of brain disease represents an occupational safety hazard with little comparison in the American workplace...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/us/nfl-cte-brain-disease.html.

As the distinction between professional football and college football becomes murkier, with NIL, etc., is there anyone who seriously believes CTE is somehow a risk only to players in the former?

Straws in the Wind - Part 452

Ronald Daniels, President of Johns Hopkins in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education: We developed the partnership with the American Enterprise Institute. We recognized it was going to take time to see a shift in the recruitment of faculty, but we wanted to move with some dispatch to make sure that our students and faculty were exposed to these ideas. 

The fact that conservative scholarship is underrepresented in our institutions ultimately means that the left gets flabbier because it’s not being tested and challenged in the way it ought to be. At the same time, the right, to the extent that it moves outside the university and finds itself in think tanks and is not subject to challenges or critiques from the center and the left, becomes more radicalized. This is not just a problem for our institutions. It’s a problem for America. So I do feel urgency in trying to remedy this issue. It was my colleague Steve Teles, who wrote in The Chronicle about this, who said he was hard pressed to identify a single tenured conservative scholar in the social sciences and humanities at Hopkins. I took that as a very serious critique.

Interviewer: A recent article about various political-diversity initiatives at Hopkins describes the university under your leadership as being on “an ambitious and uncharted journey to transform itself into a citadel of ideological pluralism.”

Daniels: I take it as a compliment. That’s something that I proudly embrace...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/conservative-scholars-are-rare-johns-hopkins-wants-more-of-them.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 194

From the Harvard Crimson: The Department of Justice appealed the dismissal of its antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard... seeking to revive a sweeping case accusing the University of violating federal civil rights law in its treatment of Jewish and Israeli students. The government filed a notice Thursday afternoon asking the First Circuit to review U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns’ August 13 decision granting Harvard’s motion to dismiss the case. The appeal comes two weeks after Stearns dealt a major blow to one of the Trump administration’s most aggressive legal efforts against Harvard, finding that the incidents cited by the government were “too isolated and episodic” to prove an ongoing violation of Title VI...

Stearns left open the possibility that should the government be able to present compelling instances of ongoing noncompliance, their case might be seen in a different light. And he did not quarrel with the government’s assumption that it could recuperate previously awarded funds under the Title VI or breach of contract arguments outlined in the original complaint...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/8/28/doj-harvard-antisemitism-appeal/.