Author: IBL News

IBL News | New York

A market report from Validated Insights released this month notes that fewer colleges and universities hire external online program management (OPM) companies to develop their courses.

For 2024, higher education institutions launched only 81 new partnerships with OPMs —  a drop of 42% and the lowest number since 2016.

The report showed that institutions increasingly pay OPMs a fee-for-service instead of following a revenue-sharing model with big service bundles and profit splits.

Experts say revenue-sharing models, which critics denounce as predatory arrangements, incentivize service providers to use aggressive recruiting tactics to increase enrollments and maximize tuition revenue.

According to the report, fee-for-service has become the dominant business model for OPMs.

Under a revenue-sharing agreement, universities and colleges typically receive a bundle of services from an OPM, such as marketing, enrollment, retention services, and course development. Meanwhile, a fee-for-service arrangement offers services à la carte.

• Inside Higher Ed: Fewer Colleges Sharing Profits With OPMs

IBL News | New York

Harvard University rejected yesterday a list of demands from the Trump Administration, asking the university to change many of its policies, including shutting down diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. On Monday, the university wrote on its X account, “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

Hours after, in response, the U.S. Department of Education said it was freezing about $2.3 billion in federal funds to Harvard University over the school’s decision to fight White House demands.

“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws,” said the department in a statement.

The White House sent Harvard a letter on Friday that added to a list of requirements it said were designed to fight antisemitism on campus, including changes to its governance, hiring practices, and admissions procedures.

On Monday, in a letter titled “The Promise of American Higher Education,” Harvard’s President Alan Garber [in the picture above] said the university responded that it did not “take lightly” its obligation to fight antisemitism but that the administration’s prescription goes beyond the federal government’s power.

Some of the requested changes included reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty, reporting students who are “hostile” to American values to the federal government, and hiring an external government-approved party to audit programs and departments “that most fuel antisemitic harassment.”

Since re-entering the White House, President Donald Trump has put pressure on universities to curb antisemitism and end diversity practices.

In March, the Trump Administration said it reviewed roughly $256m in federal contracts and grants at Harvard, and an additional $8.7bn in multi-year grant commitments.

Harvard professors filed a lawsuit in response, alleging the government was unlawfully attacking freedom of speech and academic freedom.

The White House had previously pulled $400m in federal funding from Columbia University and accused it of failing to fight antisemitism and protect Jewish students on its campus.

When the $400m was pulled, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said: “Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding”.

Harvard’s rejection of Trump’s demands is the first time a major university has resisted the Trump administration’s funding threats. Harvard is the wealthiest university in the world.

• The Harvard Crimson: Trump Administration Freezes More Than $2 Billion in Federal Funding to Harvard.

IBL News | New York

Two groups representing Harvard University professors (the American Association of University Professors and the Harvard faculty chapter) filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration on Friday, saying that the threat to cut billions in federal funding for the institution violates free speech and other First Amendment rights.

The Trump Administration announced two weeks ago that it reviewed about $9 billion in federal funding that Harvard receives and would send a list of demands to unfreeze the money.

In a statement, Andrew Manuel Crespo, a law professor at Harvard and general counsel of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter, said the “Trump administration’s policies are a pretext to chill universities and their faculties from engaging in speech, teaching, and research that don’t align with President Trump’s views.”

“Harvard faculty have the constitutional right to speak, teach, and conduct research without fearing that the government will retaliate against their viewpoints by canceling grants,” Mr. Crespo added.

Other universities like Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, Brown, Penn, Princeton, and over fifty more have also been targeted over allegations of antisemitism or accusations of racial discrimination, stemming from their efforts to promote DEI programs.

This campaign has resulted in more than $12 billion in federal funds being suspended or canceled.

Earlier this month, the Trump Administration said it had frozen over $1 billion in funding for Cornell and Northwestern.

The funding pause involves mostly grants and contracts with the Agriculture, Defense, Education, and Health and Human Services departments.

IBL News | New York

According to a new report from OpenAI, one-third of college-aged young adults in the U.S. use ChatGPT, and a quarter of their messages relate to learning, such as starting papers and projects and exploring topics and ideas.

In terms of usage, the report highlights that while three in four higher ed students want AI training, only one in four universities and colleges provide it.

California, Virginia, New Jersey, and New York have the nation’s highest adoption rates, while those in Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and West Virginia have relatively low adoption rates.

Experts say these state-by-state differences in student AI adoption could create gaps in workforce productivity and economic development, impacting US competitiveness.

In addition, early studies⁠ show employers prefer hiring candidates with AI skills over more experienced ones without them.

OpenAI’s report outlines the need to demystify AI by addressing concerns about academic integrity and building proficiency in real-world applications like job searches, exam preparation, and internships.

The San Francisco-based research lab encourages institutions to drive student access to ChatGPT’s free products and subsidize equitable access to the latest models.

M. Amigot, IBL News | San Diego

Arizona State University (ASU) released new findings during the ASU+GSV 2025 Summit this week, showing the powerful impact of Dreamscape Learn immersive storytelling on student outcomes, after two years of research behind it.

The primary outcome was that students in the virtual reality lab group were 1.7 times more likely to score between 90 percent and 100 percent on their lab assignments than students in the conventional lab group.

ASU researchers studied more than 4,000 on-campus students from two biology courses over four terms — from fall 2022 through spring 2024.

According to the institution’s data, “The intense engagement that Dreamscape Learn virtual reality biology experiences create is leading to higher grades and more persistence for biology majors.”

ASU’s Dreamscape Learn Biology 181 course debuted in the spring 2022 semester, and now the experience is offered in Biology 181 and 182. These courses are intended for students in STEM majors and are required for graduation.

These biology courses include 15-minute virtual-reality scenarios every week. Students travel through space to an intergalactic wildlife sanctuary, where they encounter intriguing scenarios they must solve through science.

After the weekly Dreamscape Learn experience, students attend a three-hour lab, where the storyline continues. They solve the unique problems using careful reasoning.

The experience is straight out of Hollywood. It was created in collaboration with Dreamscape Immersive, a company co-founded by Walter Parkes, a writer and producer of films including “WarGames,” “Gladiator,” and “Twister.”

Currently, ASU is working with community colleges in California and K­–12 schools in Arizona to offer the technology, including the Pendergast Elementary School District in the West Valley.

IBL News | New York

Microsoft will start rolling out in April two AI agents to increase productivity at work this week: Researcher and Analyst.

According to the company, these agents analyze vast amounts of information and have secure, compliant access to users’ work data—emails, meetings, files, chats, and more—and the web.

Researcher helps tackle complex, multi-step research by combining OpenAI’s deep research model with Microsoft 365 Copilot’s advanced orchestration and deep search capabilities. It can be used to build a go-to-market strategy based on internal, emerging, and other web data to identify opportunities for new products and provide insights and reports. It integrates data from external sources like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Confluence.

Analyst has been trained to think like “a skilled data scientist, so you can go from raw data to insights in minutes,” according to Microsoft.

Optimized to do advanced data analysis at work, this agent is built on OpenAI’s o3-mini reasoning model, moving through problems iteratively, taking steps to provide answer that mirrors human analytical thinking.

It can run Python to tackle your most complex data queries, and users can view the code running in real time and check if it works. For example, this AI Analyst can turn raw data scattered across multiple spreadsheets into a demand forecast for a new product, a visualization of customer purchasing patterns, or a revenue projection.

Microsoft also announced deep reasoning and agent flows in Microsoft Copilot Studio, a platform for creating, managing, and deploying agents.

Microsoft also presented a Sales Agent to turn contacts into qualified leads. The agent draws on CRM, company data like price sheets, the web, and Microsoft 365 data such as emails and meetings to personalize every response.

In addition, Sales Chat helps accelerate the sales cycle, giving reps actionable takeaways from CRM data, pitch decks, meetings, emails, and the web.

Miguel Amigot, IBL News | San Diego

“I’m very interested in new technologies that stimulate kids and not in bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.; in fact, our goal is to eliminate bureaucracy,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon yesterday in San Diego, during the ASU+GSV 2025 ed-tech conference.

Addressing a packed auditorium at the event, Linda McMahon acknowledged, “I don’t have the blueprint for the best technology.” 

“I know we will fail if we don’t have the best educated workforce in the world.”

In a 30-minute interview conducted by education entrepreneur Phyllis Lockett, the U.S. Secretary of Education McMahon defended the Trump administration’s large-scale cuts to federal education staff, including the intended elimination of the Department of Education, as steps to remedy a system that fails students.

“We’ve just gotten to a point that we just can’t keep going along doing what we’re doing,” she said. “Let’s shake it up. Let’s do something different.”

This shakeup involves distributing financial aid to the state level.

The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that 90 percent of public school budgets already come from state and local sources.

The U.S. Secretary of Education promised attendees at ASU+GSV that her department would consider ways to revamp the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) following a 90 percent reduction in staff last month, dropping from 170 to 20.

McMahon deflected anti-DEI questions, saying, “There shouldn’t be any discrimination.”

She offered few specifics on the Trump Administration’s measures related to funding cuts if diversity programs are not eliminated.

The 16^th annual ASU+GSV Summit was held from April 6 to 9 in San Diego. This education technology summit brought together global leaders, educators, and entrepreneurs to explore trends, encourage collaboration, and address the biggest challenges in education.

Around 8,000 people joined us in person, with another 10,000 following online.

• All Videos of the ASU+GSV 2025 Conference