By Catherine Komp, Engagement Director
How are your local universities affected by cuts to federal funding? Have university leaders received “Dear Colleague” letters and what have they told faculty, students and staff about federal investigations? Is your local campus prepared for potential Homeland Security raids and the targeting of international students and faculty?
The impact of Trump administration actions on local campuses is sweeping and has significant impacts on local communities.
“The Trump administration is applying unprecedented pressure on colleges—political, financial, regulatory pressure—and it could affect everything from the research they do, to the things that they teach, to the programs that they offer and the scholarships that are available,” said Open Campus’s Colleen Murphy, managing editor for the local network at Open Campus.
As Managing Editor for Open Campus’s Local Network, Murphy works with higher education reporters across the country including WUNC’s Brianna Atkinson. While few newsrooms have a dedicated higher ed reporter, Open Campus just launched a new initiative to help reporters on any beat, with any experience level, cover the local impacts of these rapid changes.
“We’ve seen the power of having people on the ground who can explain what’s at stake: what’s changing and what’s unclear, what questions people have, how a university president is or isn’t responding or defending the work that they’re doing in this moment,” said Murphy. “What is playing out right now is really significant and having local reporting on this really, really matters.”
“Higher Ed Under Pressure” is free for any newsroom or reporter to join and offers:
📖 A starter guide to key issues
❓Questions to ask your higher ed institutions right now
🔎Source recommendations
📊Help with data analysis and suggestions for public records requests.
📝Coaching on story and reporting plans.
✅Regular virtual briefings on the top stories of the week and ways to cover local impact.
💬 A Slack community
I had the chance to chat with Colleen about “Higher Ed Under Pressure,” what it offers newsrooms and how you can get plugged in.
Why did you launch “Higher Ed Under Pressure” and who is it aimed at?
This is really aimed at any local news room who wants to get in on coverage of higher ed right now. Whether or not they have a higher ed or education reporter, that doesn’t matter to us because it’s a higher ed story, but it’s also a political story, an economic story, a health story, anyone could do smart coverage of what’s going on at their local universities.
We work every day with the higher ed reporters that we have in our 17 partner newsrooms, and we’ve seen the power of having people on the ground who can explain what’s at stake and what’s changing and what’s unclear; what questions people have, how a university president is or isn’t responding or defending the work that they’re doing in this moment.
That kind of local focus is what helps people actually understand what’s happening. It’s a lot, there’s a lot changing, there’s a lot going on and being able to bring down what’s happening out of Washington and explain concretely, here’s why that matters in El Paso or Minneapolis or Jackson or Cleveland, is really key.
We’ve seen in the work that we’ve done with our reporters over the last couple of months that they’ve really benefited from the expertise that our team can provide. Some of what’s happening has been going on for a couple of years, like the attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. That’s played out in states like Florida and North Carolina and Texas. But then some of what is happening is probably new to most beat reporters like the threat of federal funding cuts or NIH funding cuts.
We wanted to take the expertise that we’ve been giving to our network and offer a version of it to any local news room who’s trying to do this coverage in the hopes of helping seed more analytical, accountability-oriented and truly local coverage that explains what is happening in communities right now.
Could you run through some of the things that you’re providing to newsrooms?
We just launched this on Friday, so we have a couple of things available to people who’ve signed up already. Right now, what we have available for them are a source database, a list of questions that they should be asking leaders of their colleges and universities right now, kind of a landscape analysis of what all has happened over the last couple of months, at a pretty high level.
We did our first briefing Tuesday afternoon to talk through how to get going on some of these stories, particularly for people who haven’t covered higher ed at all, going over where to start and just reiterating that there’s a lot of uncertainty right now and that is a story in and of itself. So, explaining how to do that, talking through some records people could start requesting.
We’re planning to do these briefings at a regular cadence. We’re going to see what people end up needing the most from us. But, at the most basic level, it will be tip sheets and policy analysis. Our team can do data analysis, give high-level coaching on story and reporting plans and then we’ll have these briefings.
One thing that we found over the years in working with our network of reporters is that if you’re a higher ed reporter who’s working in partnership with Open Campus, you’re probably the only higher ed reporter at your newsroom, you might be the only higher ed reporter in your state. And so having a network of colleagues is really valuable to just bounce ideas off of and vent with. So we created a Slack channel for this group of reporters and editors as well for them to use however they want, we’re not going to be too prescriptive about that. But hopefully to help them see that this is something that a lot of other newsrooms are covering and that it’s okay to not feel like you’re an expert on higher ed, we can help you get going and start doing some smart coverage.
There are so many things happening right now: investigations, frozen or cut research grants, changes to DEIB programs, targeting of protesters, students with green cards or different visas are on edge, a chilling of free speech. For a small local newsroom, where do you recommend they start?
It’s a lot to wade through. All of the issues that you just laid out are important and pressing, so I don’t necessarily think a newsroom can go wrong by just picking a spot and starting there.
But, there have been a couple of investigations that the Education Department has opened into universities in just the last week or two. There’s a list of universities that are under investigation for alleged anti-Semitic activity and then there’s a list of universities that have partnered with this initiative trying to increase the pipeline into PhD programs. That would certainly be one place to start: check if your university is on one of these lists. (Editor’s note: UNC and Duke are currently listed as under investigation.)
That helps get to a bigger question that we would encourage people to be asking right now, which is how is my university president responding or not responding to what’s going on? We have seen examples across the country of presidents who have spoken out forcefully against either NIH cuts or in a few instances the “Dear Colleague” letter. But we’re also seeing a lot of examples of university presidents that are not saying anything publicly or they’re saying very muted things publicly. Trying to get a handle on that would be really important as a place to start. Is my university actively under investigation or going to be under investigation according to these lists and how is my university president talking about what’s going on right now?
And if you can’t immediately tell, if they haven’t put out a press release and your sources aren’t sure, then certainly asking them what they’re doing, how they’re responding, what their concerns are and seeing if they’ll be forthcoming about any of that. And if they won’t, that could be a story in and of itself also.
I imagine right now there’s a lot of faculty and students are reluctant to talk to reporters. Are you providing any guidance on anonymity and speaking to sources on background?
I think that’s going to come up more as we’re talking to these newsrooms in this cohort. We typically leave decisions about anonymity up to our partner newsrooms because our newsroom has sort of a different approach to that. But we’ve absolutely seen hesitancy to talk.
One example is if I’m a researcher who is getting NIH or NSF funding, we’ve seen examples across our network that those people don’t want to talk because they don’t want to put a target on themselves but also on the research assistance and staff who they work with.
Another example is on immigration or undocumented students. That’s always been a sensitive spot. That one is not new in the sense of people wanting anonymity or just being granted that outright depending on their immigration status. (Editor’s note: see this guide on protecting immigrant sources.)
It’s definitely something that we think about and talk with our reporters about and would talk with this cohort about too. If you’re exploring stories that are new to you and talking to sources that are new to you, being up front about what it means to talk to a reporter is really important.
Also I think sometimes being able to say clearly in your story that “researchers were unwilling or hesitant to talk because they worried about reprisal” is an example of the type of climate that we’re seeing on campuses. So I don’t think [anonymity] necessarily is a barrier to being able to do a story in the end.
Are you seeing any specific things happening in North Carolina that you think reporters should pay attention to?
The UNC system has been chipping away at DEI programming and course material over the last year or so, and so some of this predates the Trump administration. But I definitely think the level of scrutiny that DEI is getting at the national level could potentially give cover to university systems that want to take more drastic steps. That’s something to monitor and to look at what has changed since the system banned DEI over the summer and then they made the change to curriculum requirements just a month or two ago.
For the Research Triangle, in particular, drilling into what is at stake if research funding, that’s a really significant workforce and economy story. It’s not just an institution-specific one. So that would be another spot that I would be keeping an eye on.
Anything come to mind about what to look at with community colleges?
I think there are definitely interesting stories to do about how community college presidents position the work that they’re doing right now. These are institutions that are very mission-driven and the mission is to help people into jobs or get better jobs. And equity is at the center of that, but they don’t always talk about it in the same way that maybe a four-year institution does. That’s something interesting to explore.
I think workforce generally is an area with bipartisan support, like workforce training and short-term credentials or other pathways to getting training beyond just a degree. So there’s also stories to do about that, how the Trump administration fits into that but also how that work is continuing and how lawmakers are supportive of it on both sides of the aisle.
And then more broadly, if we’re seeing cuts to programs for DEI related purposes, those types of moves would impact community colleges as well. That’s another spot to keep an eye on.
There are some community college specific stories to do and it’s important to keep them in the conversation as we’re writing about anything related to higher ed. I don’t think that we should necessarily think of it as completely separate.
Is there something that I haven’t asked you that you want to share?
What is playing out right now is really significant and having local reporting on this really, really matters. It can feel relentless, but it’s really important and it’s really vital. That’s the spirit that we’re going about with this project, we want to encourage more coverage of higher ed and also encourage newsrooms that have already been covering these issues to keep going. It’s a lot, but there’s a lot at stake at the same time.
Learn more and sign up for Higher Ed Under Pressure.
