This year was my first visit to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) conference since 2022. I went every year from 2015 to 2022, so I had a pretty good sense of what it had typically been like. The tonal shift this year was striking.

Middle States is the formerly regional accreditor that covers most colleges and universities in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. It has an annual conference in December, typically in Philadelphia, at which the formal focus is on updating and preparing institutions for self-studies and the informal focus is networking. (I enjoyed brief reunions with some of my erstwhile New Jersey peeps.) The panels were usually focused either on assessment or local projects that worked, and the plenaries on either diversity or federal politics.

This year brought a new bluntness. I hadn’t expected that, but probably should have.

I noticed it early on day two, when Hayley Hanson, an attorney from Husch Blackwell, presented on “The Impact of Federal Shifts on Institutional Sustainability.” She opened by noting that in the wake of DOGE, the federal Department of Education’s staff has gone from 4,133 people to about 2,200, with more cuts expected. As of November, it has announced that it won’t enforce the “disparate impact” civil rights standard anymore; Hanson predicted, ironically enough, that the lack of enforcement will foster more lawsuits against colleges and universities as private enforcement will be the only option left. Granted, she’s a lawyer, but the prediction sounded plausible.

She went on to note that the American Association of University Professor’s 1940 standards for tenure and removal of faculty with tenure reflected an environment in which change was gradual. For colleges that rely heavily on international student enrollments, the abrupt crackdown on immigrants is likely to mean much more severe and abrupt economic challenges than the 1940 standards assumed. Accordingly, we can expect to see more battles around tenure and its meaning.

She wrapped up by noting the case of Ohio Attorney General vs. Notre Dame College. As she summarized it, in the death spiral that led to its closure, Notre Dame College is alleged to have spent endowment funds against the instructions of the funds’ donors. The college is out of business now, but the state is suing its trustees and senior administrators individually. That’s a new level of vindictiveness, and I noticed squirming in the audience.

It wasn’t a feel-good session.

Most of them weren’t. I checked in next on “Budget Reduction Through Shared Governance: Lessons Learned,” featuring Matthew Gordley, Rhonda Maneval, and Aimee Zellers from Carlow University (in Pittsburgh). The panelists—two co-provosts and an associate provost—detailed how they worked with the faculty to cut $1 million dollars from the academic budget of the institution (out of overall cuts of $6 million).

Other than the timeframe—six weeks initially, though they extended it a bit—they pretty much followed the steps one would expect. They started with a deep dive into the budget for senior leadership, along with comparative data for similar institutions, and then recruited faculty volunteers for a Faculty Finance Task Force. (I think I got the name right.) They wound up recommending a hiring freeze but no layoffs, which reminded me of the old political saying “Don’t tax you and don’t tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree!” The generation that wasn’t at the table was on the menu.

More than the substance of the presentation, though, I was struck by its bluntness and the size of its audience. When a presentation on budget cutting packs a large room, that’s a sign in itself. To their credit, the Carlow folks didn’t try to sugarcoat the effects on campus morale. They noted that several senior faculty decided to walk away, having first gone through the COVID disruption and then campuswide discussions of cuts. As one panelist noted correctly, “Hard situations don’t always have a villain.” Without anyone to blame, anxiety can become more free-floating, and you just don’t know how that will play out.

During the Q-and-A, I asked if their faculty was unionized. Gordley replied “no.” I heard a chorus of “oooohhh’s in the audience. I’d bet money that the process would have played out differently in a collective bargaining environment.

The plenary on day three continued the new bluntness. It was billed as a fireside chat, though without a fire. Sara Custer from Inside Higher Ed moderated the discussion, which included Antoinette Farmer-Thompson, from Strayer University; Steve Rose, from Passaic County Community College (NJ), and Valerie Lehr, from St. Lawrence University.

In response to the “What keeps you up at night?” question, Rose mentioned ICE raids. With 75 percent of Passaic’s students either Latino or Middle Eastern, the potential damage from targeting is overwhelming.

In previous years, I don’t remember “ICE raids” as an answer to any question.

Lehr followed by noting that her university is near the Canadian border, so the combination of immigration restrictions and the new $100,000 fee for H1-B visas hits her university hard.

The discussion wasn’t all doom-and-gloom. Farmer-Thompson offered a rebrand of “soft” skills as “power” skills, which I thought had potential, and Lehr noted that the quality of student interaction is starting to approach what it was prior to the pandemic. I was charmed by Rose’s mention of the college hosting pre-K graduations as a way to build “community vibrancy.”

That said, though, the cumulative impact of focusing on lawsuits, immigration crackdowns, large-scale budget cuts, and ICE raids was a bit much. I was grateful to my Westmoreland colleagues Andrew Barnette and Adam Woodrow for ending the conference with a useful and entertaining panel on how to construct a self-study to make it easier for the visiting team to read. The news-you-can-use tone, along with their characteristic humor, brought a welcome lightness to the conference. By that point, I needed it.

Even with the treat at the end, though, and the fun of seeing old friends again, it was hard not to come away struck by the new tone. Higher ed has always had challenges, but the environment in which it’s working is fundamentally different than it has been in my adult lifetime. As bracing as some of the discussions were, I’m glad that we’re having them, and that we’re having them in public. Getting past denial is the first stage.