Week in review: Navigating ‘relentless’ college leadership roles

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At the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ annual conference last month, several institutional leaders shared practical advice for tackling day-to-day challenges. “Leadership right now is not just demanding. It is cognitively and emotionally dense,” Francine Conway, chancellor of Rutgers University–New Brunswick, said at the event. “The pace is relentless.”

Number of the week: 3

The number of general university counsel positions that Virginia’s new attorney general, Jay Jones, is hiring. Jones, a Democrat, framed the search as a way to counter “federal overreach” into the state’s institutions. 

The three open positions are for University of Virginia, George Mason University and Virginia Military Institute. UVA struck a deal with the Trump administration last year to pause and eventually close civil rights investigations, while George Mason has been under pressure from federal officials over its prior diversity efforts. 

States target college H-1B hiring: 

• Florida’s Board of Governors voted Thursday to move forward with a plan that would bar the state’s public universities from hiring new employees under the H-1B program through the rest of the year. The policy will now be open to public comment for two weeks, after which the board will vote on whether to officially approve the policy. 

• Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott ordered the state’s public colleges and agencies to not hire any new employees under H-1B visas through May 2027, citing unspecified “recent reports of abuse” of the program. Under his order, colleges will have until March 27 to disclose how many H-1B employees they sponsor, where those workers come from and when their visas expire, along with other information. 

• Faculty and students have opposed the moves in both states. For instance, Brian Evans, president of the Texas conference of the American Association of University Professors, said in a statement that Abbott’s directive “will hurt the student experience and diminish the value of teaching and research at Texas institutions of higher education.”

Accreditation takes center stage: 

• The U.S. Department of Education aims to overhaul regulations governing accreditation this spring, including by making it easier for new agencies to gain federal recognition. The department plans to conduct a process called negotiated rulemaking, in which it brings together different stakeholders — such as students, college officials and accreditors — to hash out new policy language. 
• Accreditors and higher education experts discussed the rapidly shifting federal policy environment at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation’s annual conference last week. The administration is “moving away from the individual targeting of institutions to a broader, systematic set of changes that will impact all institutions — and accreditation is the forefront of that effort,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education. 
• Accreditation was also top of mind for Florida Board of Governor’s new chair, Alan Levine. He said he has asked State University System of Florida Chancellor Ray Rodrigues to review accreditation standards for medical schools, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. “If they’re anything but merit-based, Florida should consider its options,” Levine said.