Lost Track

Sad to say, this blog lost track of a case from a California community college involving such issues as free speech, academic freedom, etc. It involved a faculty member at Bakersfield College who objected to DEI statements and related matters. We had previously covered it at an earlier stage.*

The case was initially dismissed, appealed, largely won by the plaintiff through a temporary injunction, and finally and recently made permanent. From Inside Higher Ed:

...In a 2023 lawsuit, [history professor Daymon] Johnson accused administrators of penalizing him and other professors for expressing conservative political and social views based on the system’s DEIA principles, including that faculty “employ teaching, learning, and professional practices that reflect DEIA and anti-racist principles” and demonstrate “proficiency in DEIA-related performance to teach, work, or lead within California community colleges.” He claimed the mandate would force him to express views he didn’t believe...

The settlement turns a preliminary injunction granted by a federal court in February into a five-year permanent injunction that prevents administrators from investigating, disciplining or terminating Johnson for political speech.** But he’s still required to attend mandatory DEIA training to serve on a faculty screening committee. Johnson also won $150,000 toward his attorneys’ fees, according to the Institute for Free Speech, which represented him in the lawsuit...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/07/13/bakersfield-settles-professor-suing-over-dei-principles.

Note that although the case involved DEI issues at a community college, a similar case arising from UC would likely produce the same effect, regardless of the particular topic. Forced speech in an academic setting maintained by a state entity would likely be found illegal,

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/02/more-on-community-college-dei-statements.html. 

**The court decision is at:

https://ecf.caed.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_temp.pl?file=14621022-0--95548.pdf&type=application/pdf.

Straws in the Wind - Part 408

From Inside Higher Ed: Democrats’ confidence in higher education has hit a record low, with just 50 percent expressing confidence, according to the latest Lumina Foundation–Gallup Confidence in Higher Education survey... That’s down from 61 percent last year who said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher ed, and 68 percent who said the same in 2015, when Gallup first began collecting such data. For Courtney Brown, Lumina’s vice president of impact and planning, Democrats’ declining confidence in higher ed is driven by their concern over college affordability and outcomes. Democrats are asking themselves, “Is somebody going to get a good job?” she said. “If they’re going to invest this amount of money and time, we want to make sure there’s a good job on the other side.”

Still, Republicans have expressed a steeper long-term decline in confidence in higher education, down 33 percentage points since 2015, from 56 percent then to 23 percent in the latest survey. The data was collected during phone interviews with 1,001 adults in the first 15 days of June. All told, 38 percent of American adults said they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher ed, down from 42 percent last year. The survey also revealed that 37 percent of Americans have “some” confidence in higher ed, while 25 percent expressed “very little” or “none.” Last year, 23 percent had very little or no confidence...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/institutions/2026/07/14/democrats-confidence-higher-ed-hits-record-low.

When is it over? - Part 2

Remember the Canvas hacking that brought instruction at various universities including UCLA to a halt?

From Inside Higher Ed: Two months after Instructure made a deal with hackers to salvage troves of stolen user data, the company—which owns the popular learning management system Canvas—may have another breach on its hands. And this time, the incident is delaying Instructure’s efforts to be transparent with its customers about their compromised data. 

In May, a criminal extortion group known as ShinyHunters twice hacked Canvas and claimed that it gained access to the personal identifying information of 275 million people across 9,000 institutions. At the time, the company said the leaked information included names, email addresses, student ID numbers and user messages, but it “found no evidence that passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers, or financial information were involved.” 

In the aftermath, Instructure CEO Steve Daly vowed to be “transparent about what happened” and provide K–12 schools and higher education institutions “with information as quickly as we responsibly could.” Over the past two months, Instructure has worked “to conduct a detailed forensic review of the data involved in this incident,” Daly said in a memo last week. On Tuesday, the company was set to deliver to institutions the first wave of data related to the breach. Instead, Daly said Tuesday that the company is “pausing data delivery out of an abundance of caution” after learning that “the third-party platform we’ve selected to deliver your data may have been subject to a security threat.” ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/07/16/another-security-threat-canvas.

Yale Deal - Part 7 (background)

From the Yale Daily News: After the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that banned race-conscious college admissions, Yale administrators quickly assured the community that the University would comply with federal law while attempting to maintain diversity. Now, the University is under federal investigation for allegedly failing to comply with the ruling. In May, the Department of Justice announced an investigation into the Yale School of Medicine’s admissions practices, alleging the school had discriminated against Asian and white applicants. The investigation’s scope has since expanded to admissions at Yale College and Yale Law School, and University President Maurie McInnis confirmed... that Yale is in the process of seeking a voluntary resolution with the federal government over the probe.

At the center of the investigation is the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — which bars racial discrimination for programs that receive federal funding — and a 2023 Supreme Court decision, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which outlawed race-based affirmative action. A May letter of findings issued by the Justice Department alleged the School of Medicine’s admissions process violated that law, as interpreted by the Supreme Court decision. Experts told the News that Yale’s alleged violation may depend on whether the University found ways to circumvent the Supreme Court decision — like using a proxy for race — and whether those methods are considered illegal...

[DOJ] pointed to materials and presentations distributed to admissions officers that included guidance on admissions after the Supreme Court decision — including a slide in an internal presentation with the words, “Admissions post-SCOTUS.” “This suggests that admissions personnel are given verbal instructions during this presentation encouraging the use of race/ethnicity in admissions, and such instructions are not put in writing,” the letter reads. “The Department also has evidence that Yale attempted to circumvent the Harvard decision by using racial proxies to indirectly discriminate against applicants based on race.”

The Justice Department has not publicly released letters of findings for its investigations into Yale College or the Law School, nor has it publicly commented on those investigations. The department did not respond to a request for comment...

Full story at https://yaledailynews.com/articles/yale-admissions-is-under-investigation-could-it-have-broken-the-law.

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Note: If you have been following this Yale sequence and have been wondering about the Hebrew writing on the Yale seal (shown above), see:

https://archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/01_03/seal.html.

Union News: Deal with Docs

From the news section of the UC website:

UC and CIR-SEIU Reach Tentative Contract Agreement

July 16, 2026

The University of California and the Committee of Interns and Residents, a local affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, reached a tentative agreement [last] Wednesday night on a new systemwide contract covering approximately 6,400 interns, residents and fellows. 

The agreement follows negotiations that began in August 2025 to replace eight separate location-based contracts with one systemwide agreement. 

“We appreciate the work of both bargaining teams to reach this tentative agreement,” said Missy Matella, associate vice president for Systemwide Employee and Labor Relations at the University of California. “It supports UC’s continued commitment to these valuable employees and to medical education, clinical training and high-quality patient care.” 

Interns, residents and fellows provide critical care across UC hospitals, medical centers and affiliated clinical sites while completing advanced medical training. 

The tentative agreement is subject to ratification by CIR-SEIU members. More information will be available after the ratification process is complete.

Source: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/index%2ephp/press-room/uc-and-cir-seiu-reach-tentative-contract-agreement.

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From the union website:

UC Resident Doctors Win Historic Statewide Contract after Year-Long Fight

July 17, 2026

Over 6,400 UC Resident and Fellow Physicians Secure Crucial Support for Fair Wages, Benefit Protections, and Workplace Safety with a Focus on Improved Patient Care 

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California — After a year of tough negotiations, coordinated collective actions, and increasing political support, the resident physicians and fellows at the University of California (UC) reached a tentative agreement on their first statewide contract with UC Health this past Wednesday. Represented by the Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR/SEIU), the doctors say that the deal – which includes 18% salary increase, preservation of fertility benefits, improved access to radiation exposure equipment, immigrant protections for patients, and critical improvements to address emergency room capacity, among others – will directly impact their wellbeing and their ability to provide the best patient care for the 2.5 million Californians they serve across the state in the largest public healthcare system in the country.     

“We are very happy with what we were able to negotiate for our futures, including the wage increases, better access to properly fitting lead, and enshrining our fertility benefits in this contract. However, we’re also really proud that we were able to win language for our patients, especially for the immigrant communities we serve so that they can receive care with less fear, and for all our patients who have had to contend with issues related to emergency room capacity. This is a great starting point and we look forward to ratifying this contract and to continuing to advocate for all of our patients at the UC’s from San Diego up to Sacramento,” said Dr. Diana Dayal, UCLA Emergency Medicine Resident. 

This victory for UC residents and fellows comes after a 12 month long contract fight, marked by UC executive representatives’ attempts to claw back existing benefits and protections while also submitting to pressures from the Trump administration around DEI and ICE. However, over the course of negotiations, the UC residents and fellows participated in a series of escalating collective actions that culminated most publicly in June in a series of eighteen unity breaks at multiple UC sites in Sacramento, San Francisco, Fresno, Riverside, Los Angeles, Irvine, and San Diego, and neighboring hospitals where the UC residents and fellows work. In these actions, the UC physicians called for a fair contract that addressed rising cost of living, keeping their fertility benefits intact, and demanding that UC administration address emergency room capacity so that patients can receive timely care with diginity when they are at their most vulnerable. 

Now that the UC resident bargaining team has reached a deal with UC executives, they look forward to providing the best healthcare possible while also continuing to transform residency for future generations of doctors, all with an eye on patient care. “Resident working conditions are patient care conditions,” said Dr. Gloria Tavera, UCSF Gastroenterology Fellow. She continued, “With a contract that covers all residents and fellows at the UC’s, we are more united than ever in ensuring that we keep the pressure on administration to ensure that the contract language is enforced – for our futures, for the futures of those coming up behind us, and for our patients’ futures.” 

The CIR UC bargaining team will be presenting the tentative agreement (TA) to the full membership with a ratification vote to occur in the coming weeks across California. Once the TA is approved by the CIR UC resident and fellow doctors, then the contract will take effect.

Source: https://www.cirseiu.org/uc-resident-doctors-win-historic-statewide-contract-after-year-long-fight/.

More on the need for a new Master Plan

As blog readers will know, the old Master Plan for Higher Education put together by UC President Clark Kerr and others, is rapidly eroding. We have argued that a new plan is needed so we have a roadmap of who should be doing what among the three segments of state higher ed: UC, CSU, and the community colleges. What we have now is ad hoc adjustments overseen by the legislature. There is no plan. We noted in a prior post that Regent Chair Anguiano seems to want to create one within the Regents. But it's hard to see how that could happen without some kind of participation of the community colleges, CSU, and the legislature.

One of the developments, given the absence of a plan, is pressure from community colleges to offer BA degrees, typically narrowly occupationally focused. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research study suggests that employers do value such degrees. Summary:

Community colleges are more financially, academically, and geographically accessible than four-year institutions. Yet despite most community college students intending to earn a bachelor’s degree, few successfully transfer and complete one. Community College Baccalaureate (CCB) programs have emerged as an alternative pathway, allowing community colleges to confer bachelor’s degrees directly. However, little is known about how employers value these credentials in the labor market. To address this question, we conduct the first resume audit study of CCB degrees, submitting fictitious applications to real job vacancies while experimentally varying applicants’ educational credentials, degree-granting institutions, and demographic signals. In this pilot study, we focus on the early childhood education (ECE) labor market, a rapidly growing CCB field characterized by labor shortages and increasing educational requirements. We find that employers view CCB degrees similarly to both traditional bachelor’s and associate degrees, with statistically indistinguishable interview-request rates across degree types. A text analysis of employer callback messages reveals little evidence that employers communicate differently with CCB applicants, while a net-price simulation suggests that sticker-price comparisons substantially overstate the affordability advantage of CCB programs. Together, these findings provide new evidence on the labor market value and affordability of CCB degrees and inform an ongoing large-scale audit study across additional fields and labor markets.

Full study at https://www.nber.org/papers/w35404.

A new Master Plan process would look at studies such as the one above and possibly commission others. And it would bring together interest groups, academics, and political leaders to hammer out a coherent approach. In other words, it would be formulated much as the old plan was.

Straws in the Wind - Part 407

From the Wall St Journal: A select group of colleges is making it easier to apply—but probably harder to get in. Top schools including Tulane University, Washington University in St. Louis and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are reducing the number of essays applicants have to submit. Colleges say that they are trying to ease students’ stress, and that artificial intelligence has made it harder to tell whether students are actually doing the writing. The moves will likely increase applications, potentially making admissions more cutthroat, college counselors say. Texas Christian University experienced a roughly 14% jump in applications after removing two of its supplemental essays last year.

Schools are “trying to become more competitive,” said Caroline Koppelman, founder of an admissions firm. For students deciding where to apply, an extra essay “can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back a little bit, or at least the straw that makes you not apply to that school.” A lower admissions rate improves schools’ rankings and “protects their prestige,” said Christopher Rim, chief executive of admissions firm Command Education. “A lot of that is really artificial.”

With the population of college-goers shrinking in coming years, higher-education institutions are fighting over a smaller pie—and supplemental essays can deter applicants...

Full story at https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/colleges-essays-supplemental-applications-admissions-9e7f8651.