Anyone know more? If it isn't a self-driving car, what is it and why is it there?
From the Stanford Review: Marriage Pact, Stanford’s online matching platform, has released its aggregated data from the 2025–26 cycle, covering 4,177 submissions. Its annual questionnaire asks students about academic interests, professional ambitions, faith, preferences, and politics. Libertarian, Conservative, Republican, Apolitical, Independent, Democrat, Liberal, and Socialist are independent self-selected groupings. Throughout, groups are sorted from highest to lowest mean agreement.
The 2025–26 results show a clear political shift to the right at Stanford. Students are notably more right-wing than they were five years ago, and right-wing students are both more ambitious and more optimistic about their ability to change the world than their left-wing or centrist peers.
From Fall 2020 to Fall 2025:
• The Right (Libertarians, Conservatives, and Republicans) nearly doubled, from 6.9% to 12.1% of the student body.
• Socialists and Communists were roughly cut in half, from 10.7% to 5.0%.
• The broader Left coalition (Communist, Socialist, Liberal, Democrat) declined only slightly, from 70.6% to 67.3%.
• The middle (Independent, Apolitical, Other) edged down from 22.4% to 20.7%...
Full story at https://stanfordreview.org/number-of-right-wing-students-at-stanford-nearly-doubles/.
California State Assembly Democrats put out a document of priorities ahead of the governor's May Revise budget proposal that is scheduled to be unveiled May 14th.*
Just about everything is a priority, so what the priorities are is unclear, and there are no numbers attached. (Republicans in the Assembly don't have enough seats in that chamber - or the state Senate - to matter.)
The document does take note of the above-forecast revenues that have been coming in - and that we have previously posted about. Below is what they have to say about higher ed:
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*The full document is at https://abgt.assembly.ca.gov/system/files/2026-05/assembly-democrats-budget-road-map.pdf and the accompanying news release is at https://speaker.asmdc.org/press-releases/20260507-assembly-democrats-release-road-map-responsible-and-compassionate-budget.
Note: Yours truly will be on an airplane May 14th so reporting on the May Revised may be delayed.
From an interview in the Daily Bruin with Gareth James, the incoming dean of the Anderson School of Management: ...It’s a very challenging time for business schools in particular. Not only are there the challenges associated with topics that you raised in your question but while there’s increasing demand for business education at the undergraduate..., there’s some decline in interest in, for example, the MBA programs – which have been a mainstay for many business schools, including Anderson.
We need to figure out in the long run – how do we provide a high-quality product to our students at a price point that the average individual can afford? Because obviously there’s massive not just tuition costs associated with doing a full-time MBA, but the opportunity cost of giving up two years of employment to come back to school to do that program. So we have to ensure that when students do that, they get the best possible experience and end up with great jobs at the end and a great experience during that time period.
Then in higher education, there’s somewhat related questions. Technological advances and changes in cultural norms over the last five years since COVID-19, that over the last 10 to 15 years overall – the student experience is very different than it used to be. When I first started teaching, you would have a lecture, and the vast majority of students would turn up for that lecture as long as it was a good instructor. These days, more and more of my colleagues are frustrated by the challenges of getting students to actually come into the classroom and experience the classes. As a father with two sons in college, I know they have some of the same challenges themselves. And the reality is that there are many more opportunities for students to learn now. There’s a lot of high-quality video and related materials online. If faculty post their lectures online, often students would rather watch it at one and a half or two times speed than sit in the classroom.
As instructors, we have to ask ourselves: What is the value proposition that we’re providing?
We have to be very careful to ensure that there’s an added benefit beyond just sitting in front of a screen and watching that video. … That physical campus experience and the interactivity of the students on that campus is a real value proposition and differentiator that no online video can provide...
Full interview at https://dailybruin.com/2026/05/04/qa-incoming-dean-of-ucla-anderson-school-of-management-reflects-on-plans-future.
From WGLT: Illinois State University officials... acknowledged using external companies to perform custodial and grounds work on campus during the AFSCME strike, a claim that the union contends in a lawsuit is a violation of state law. ISU officials maintain they are in compliance with hiring and procurement laws. The AFSCME Council 31 has sued the university, alleging it has broken the state's Strikebreakers Act which states that “no person shall knowingly employ any professional strikebreaker in the place of an employee, whose work has ceased as a direct consequence of a lockout or strike.”
...ISU spokesperson Chris Coplan... said the lawsuit seeks to “restrict the university’s ability to utilize external companies performing custodial and grounds work on campus.” He said the university's use of these companies is legal. “These external companies are not strikebreakers — they are well-established, local businesses that perform custodial and grounds work in and around our local community every day,” Coplan said...
Full story at https://www.wglt.org/local-news/2026-04-24/isu-says-its-external-custodial-contractors-are-not-strikebreakers.
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From Inside Higher Ed: On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon found that the mass termination of more than 1,400 grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities was unconstitutional. In April 2025, NEH officials and staff from the Department of Government Efficiency canceled grants representing over $100 million in congressionally appropriated funds. The following month, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association of America sued to reverse the terminations.
In documents revealed during discovery of the summary judgment, DOGE officials admitted that they used ChatGPT to identify which grants were in violation of the president’s anti-DEI executive orders. Grants containing words such as “history,” “culture” and “identity” were flagged by AI as relating to DEI.
The judge ruled that DOGE officials violated the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights and the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment and terminated the grants without any statutory authority to do so...
Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/05/07/federal-judge-restores-millions-neh-grants.
From the Harvard Crimson: The Harvard Kennedy School is weighing a visiting faculty program to expand intellectual diversity on campus as administrators explore new ways to address criticism that Harvard’s faculty leans overwhelmingly liberal. The proposal, discussed with top-dollar donors at a Dean’s Council meeting last October, would bring scholars to HKS for yearlong fellowships with the goal of retaining some as permanent faculty, according to Mark R. Wittcoff, a member of the Council’s Leadership Circle.
The idea has also surfaced in recommendations from a task force convened by HKS Dean Jeremy M. Weinstein to reimagine the school’s leadership and academic priorities. Though not yet formalized, the initiative would align the Kennedy School with a broader University-wide push to expand “viewpoint diversity” among faculty. Over the past year, Harvard administrators have explored raising funds for new endowed professorships — which can cost roughly $10 million each — aimed at increasing ideological representation across schools and departments.
At the October meeting, Weinstein told donors the Kennedy School was working to build a more balanced professoriate, Wittcoff said. Weinstein raised the issue unprompted, according to Wittcoff, framing it as part of an effort to respond to public perceptions about the school. “He said, ‘We’re still being mischaracterized or misperceived as a liberal institution, we’re trying hard to get a more balanced faculty, and we’re doing it,’” Wittcoff said...
Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/22/visiting-faculty-viewpoint-diversity/.
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*https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/9146eed6fc5c4b7a9329dedce6200926.
