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  • Federal grant cuts hit California universities hard, putting research in limbo

    Federal grant cuts hit California universities hard, putting research in limbo


    Noé C. Crespo, a professor of Health Promotion & Behavioral Science, poses outside the School of Public Health at San Diego State University.

    EdSource

    Noé Crespo, a professor of public health at San Diego State University, was on the verge of cracking a question he had spent years trying to answer. 

    In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Crespo and his colleagues applied for a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study ways to boost vaccination rates among Latinos. They designed a community outreach plan, paid a team to implement it, and collected results. All that remained this spring was to analyze their hard-earned data.  

    But in April, Crespo’s grant was terminated by the Trump administration as part of a controversial pullback on research funding in both the sciences and humanities nationwide.

    Crespo has all the data he could want, but no money to pay a statistician to analyze it. 

    “We invest so much — time, energy, resources — to implement a project that is meant to help the public,” he said, “and so it does feel discouraging that we’re put in a position where we can’t continue that work.”

    Around the country this spring, many faculty members who rely on federal funding for research have received similarly abrupt termination notices. The moment is particularly poignant for Crespo’s institution, San Diego State, which this year accomplished the long-awaited goal of joining a prestigious club of top-tier research universities known as R1s. 

    While a dip in federal support is unlikely to jeopardize that coveted recognition, it has disrupted research at San Diego State into subjects like mental health care and HIV/AIDS. The university’s research and development spending hit $158 million in the year ending June 2023, much of it fueled by federal dollars. 

    The cancellations are part of efforts under President Donald Trump to cut federal funding and align it more closely with the president’s political objectives. The White House has targeted grants related to a wide range of areas, from climate change to gender and sexuality. Critically for Crespo, Trump’s NIH has also axed research related to racial inequities in health, vaccine hesitancy and Covid.

    California’s colleges and universities have much at stake when it comes to federal research funding. The state’s higher education institutions notched $7.2 billion in federal research and development (R&D) spending in 2023, according to the Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey. 

    That figure includes more than $250 million spent at California State University campuses like San Diego State and more than $4.6 billion across the University of California system. The state’s private universities, including Stanford University and the University of Southern California, spent a combined $2.3 billion in federal R&D.

    Fear of ‘losing a whole generation of scientists’

    Putting an exact figure on grant cancellations nationwide has proven elusive, in part because the federal spending databases that track such spending sometimes contradict each other. 

    One recent analysis by researchers at Harvard, Yale and associated teaching hospitals estimated that $1.8 billion in NIH grants were terminated in a one-month period. Meanwhile, as selected grants get reinstated — and as attempts to block terminations advance through the courts — the number of canceled grants has become a moving target. 

    The impact on California could be substantial, even counting terminations at NIH alone. Grant Watch, a project tracking the cancellation of federal scientific research grants since Trump returned to office in 2025, estimates that California researchers have lost $273 million in NIH grants, counting funding that was not paid out because of terminations.

    At San Diego State, Hala Madanat, the university’s vice president for research and innovation, estimates that the university typically receives about 70% of its research funding from the federal government, though that can vary from year to year. The university has so far identified 50 terminated federal grants with about $26 million remaining to be spent, she said, many of them related to climate change, LGBTQ communities and workforce pipeline programs.

    “If we halt doctoral education because there’s no funding for three to four years, you are losing a whole generation of scientists,” Madanat said.

    San Diego State has appealed virtually every grant termination, Madanat said. So far, none have been restored, though two subcontracts were reinstated outside the formal appeal process.

    With appeals still pending, two federal grant recipients reached while reporting this story declined to comment, saying they are worried speaking out could endanger their chance of having funding reinstated. That potential risk is on Crespo’s mind, too.

    “Do I have concerns? Yes,” he said. “At the same time, I was trained in public health to speak the truth, and that’s what scientists do.”

    A poster on the campus of San Diego State University advertises the university’s new status as an R1 research institution.
    EdSource

    A ‘soul-crushing’ loss of federal funding

    As Trump took office in January, San Diego State was capping off an ambitious campaign to become an R1, a distinction requiring it to spend at least $50 million on R&D and confer at least 70 doctoral research degrees. 

    The university saw research funding rise 64% in just three years. It conferred 123 doctoral degrees in 2022-23. And to cement its R1 bona fides, it plans to invest in a multiuse “innovation district” with technology and research facilities.

    But funding for some of the university’s vaunted research projects is starting to vanish as the White House slashes selected grants and contracts.

    In 2023, for example, the university celebrated the establishment of the SDSU Center for Community Energy and Environmental Justice. Equipped with $10 million in federal funding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), San Diego State would guide historically underserved communities to apply for grants that could help them weather environmental threats like droughts and pollution. 

    “What we were doing was sort of the ‘teaching to fish,’” said Rebecca Lewison, a professor of biology at San Diego State who led the center, one of more than a dozen EPA Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers nationwide.

    But then came some bad news. In February, EPA terminated the center’s funding, citing an obligation to ensure its grants do not support diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The center is likely to lose an estimated $8 million it left unspent.

    The funding reversal came as the White House has moved to roll back environmental justice-related initiatives. An EPA spokesperson said in an email that the San Diego State grant had given “radical [non-governmental organizations] millions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars” and that those groups were “forcing their agenda of wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ preferencing on the EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment.”

    For Lewison, the loss of federal support for San Diego State’s center has been “soul-crushing.” She said such technical assistance is “really a bipartisan initiative” and that the EPA statement appears to misunderstand the nature of the center’s work.

    “I appreciate that we were in the environmental justice sort of program umbrella and that that’s become a word that is associated with something negative,” Lewison said. “But honestly, ‘Thriving Communities’ is really what it sounds like: it’s wanting communities all over to thrive.”

    Lewison is now exploring options to keep the center alive. San Diego State has set aside $1 million to sunset certain projects, Madanat said, and is also turning to private philanthropy. 

    ‘I would love to know that answer’

    At the time that Crespo filed a project summary for his vaccine grant, Covid had taken a dire toll on Latinos in California. UCLA researchers would later confirm that Latinos had experienced a disproportionate rate of Covid cases and deaths during the pandemic’s first year.

    “If there’s a wildfire in a particular part of town, we would want to send the firefighters over there to put out that fire,” Crespo said. “And that’s what we do also in public health and in research: we identify where there are problems, and in some cases, there are subgroups of people that are disproportionately affected.”

    NIH awarded Crespo and his colleagues a grant of $1.8 million in 2022, as highly transmissible subvariants of the Covid virus circulated. The team finally could put in motion the study they had planned at 10 San Diego-area health clinics.

    There was still $314,690 remaining in the grant at the time it was canceled, according to data on grant terminations published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Without the ability to use those funds, the team will have to seek other ways to pay collaborators with data analysis expertise. 

    In the meantime, Crespo is left wondering: What worked and what didn’t?

    “The data are there,” he said, “so I would love to know that answer.” 





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  • California’s public universities come through – at least for one family

    California’s public universities come through – at least for one family


    UC Santa Barbara bids farewell to the class of 2024 across eight ceremonies on June 15.

    Credit: Rebecca Caraway / Noozhawk.com

    Last weekend I had the moving experience of attending one of the last of dozens of commencement ceremonies held on various campuses of California’s massive system of public higher education this academic year.

    The one I went to took place at a scenic site at the University of California, Santa Barbara next to the landmark UCSB Lagoon and the glittering Pacific Ocean beyond.

    Over 6,000 undergraduates received their bachelor’s degrees over the weekend — requiring the commencement to be staged in multiple ceremonies over two days to accommodate all of them. 

    The sight of thousands of students walking — or ambling or skipping — across the stage offered a graphic representation of what California has been able to accomplish on a scale not seen anywhere else in the United States, or perhaps the world.

    I was moved not only by the sheer numbers, but also when I reflected that almost all of them had missed out on their high school graduation because of the pandemic, and then had to start their college education by studying remotely from home.  And then this year, until just a few days earlier, even the location of the event had been in doubt against the backdrop of possible protests triggered by the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

    I was also moved because my daughter was among the graduates. 

    She was just one of the over 60,000 undergraduates who received their degrees from the 10-campus University of California system over the last few weeks — and the more than 100,000 who received similar honors at the 23-campus California State University system.

    As the graduates filed by, with names reflecting a dazzling kaleidoscope of different ethnicities and backgrounds, I thought about the great effort it took to get each one of them to the finish line — effort on the part of the students themselves, of their families and of the institutions they attended. 

    I confess that when my daughter enrolled as a freshman four years ago, I worried about the quality of the education she would receive — simply because of the huge numbers of students most UC and CSU campuses have had to take on. I had the same concerns when my son enrolled at UC Irvine a few years earlier. 

    I need not have worried.

    At a celebratory dinner a few hours after her graduation ceremony, I asked my daughter to name the worst class she had taken — and the best.  She easily remembered the worst one, but then, with equal facility, named four courses — psychopharmacology, psychopathology, population health, and the history of architecture in the U.S. — she said were outstanding ones. She enthusiastically described each of them, including the professors who taught them. It was exhilarating to see a young person, and my daughter no less, so excited about learning and scholarship.

    My son had a similar experience at UC Irvine, where he majored in data science, and then, partially as a result of the pandemic, stayed for an extra year to get his master’s degree in statistics. He now has a job at Google.

    Both of them say they got a high-quality education on their campuses. This was achieved despite the huge increases in enrollment in recent decades.

    UC Santa Barbara this year, for example, awarded about 50% more undergraduate degrees than two decades ago. 

    I could easily see the impact these increases had on my daughter and her friends. Before moving to an off-campus apartment, she lived in a three-bedroom campus apartment with six other students, with two students in each of two tiny bedrooms, and three in the small room my daughter was in.  It was tough to get into all the classes she wanted to take.

    But she made it through, pandemic and all.

    Unbeknownst to them, what she and my son benefited from were the fruits of California’s ambitious Master Plan for Higher Education, drawn up in 1960, which aimed to provide postsecondary opportunities to “anyone who could benefit.”

    At the time, only 11% of adults of prime working age had bachelor’s degrees. As researchers from the Public Policy Institute of California point out in a just-issued paper, by 2021, that number had risen to 37%.  The state has now set a goal of 40%, which according to the authors, should be much higher.

    So enrollments are likely to increase, and there obviously is still work to be done to make sure all students are able to take full advantage of what our public universities have to offer. That includes making sure they graduate not only within a reasonable amount of time, but graduate at all.

    The overall four-year graduation rate for UC is 73%, a respectable number, but California can do better — especially among low-income students and those from underrepresented groups who graduate in significantly lower numbers. At the California State University system, which serves an older student body, many of whom are working, graduation rates are even lower.

    But California is at least on the right track. Rather than simply creating degree-granting factories, the state appears to be able to offer a high-quality academic experience to its students — one that they, and California, will benefit from for many decades.

    Louis Freedberg is Interim CEO of EdSource.

    •••

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Q&A: Big drop in enrollment of low-income undocumented students at California’s public universities

    Q&A: Big drop in enrollment of low-income undocumented students at California’s public universities


    People rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 as oral arguments are heard in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decision to end the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The University of California brought the case to the court.

    Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon

    The number of low-income undocumented students newly enrolled in the University of California and California State University plummeted 50% between 2016-17 and 2022-23, according to a study released this month.

    The study by William C. Kidder of the UCLA Civil Rights Project and Kevin R. Johnson of the UC Davis School of Law comes at a moment of heightened debate about policy proposals aimed at defraying the cost of college for undocumented students, who are not eligible for federal Pell Grants and often lack legal work permits. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday vetoed Assembly Bill 2586, which would have cleared the way for undocumented students to take on-campus jobs at the state’s public colleges and universities.

    “Given the gravity of the potential consequences of this bill, which include potential criminal and civil liability for state employees, it is critical that the courts address the legality of such a policy and the novel legal theory behind this legislation before proceeding,” Newsom wrote in his veto statement. “Seeking declaratory relief in court — an option available to the University of California — would provide such clarity.”

    Johnson wrote in an email that Newsom’s veto of AB 2586, also called the Opportunity for All Act, “will make it more difficult for undocumented students to attend public universities in California.” 

    “I hope that the University of California and California State University systems will consider ways to help financially support undocumented students,” he wrote. “Scholarships, fee remissions, and the like must be considered if lawful employment, as would have been permitted by the Opportunity for All Act, is not possible.”

    Since 2012, the federal program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, has allowed certain undocumented immigrants to temporarily work legally in the U.S. and live without fear of immediate deportation, but the program has ceased processing new applicants due to legal challenges.

    “When we think that we’re seeing a decrease in enrollment in California, CSU and UC, with all the support provided by the university and by the legislature in terms of allowing undocumented students to pay resident fees, you have to imagine that in other states it’s much worse in terms of drop off in enrollment of undocumented students,” Johnson wrote.

    Johnson and Kidder’s study seeks to fill an important gap in California policymakers’ understanding of how undocumented student enrollment has changed over time. 

    The state’s colleges and universities historically have avoided collecting official data on undocumented students, mindful of those students’ vulnerable legal status. To solve that problem, Kidder and Johnson examined the number of students awarded a Cal Grant under the California Dream Act, a state financial aid program for which low-income undocumented students are eligible. The numbers likely represent a subset of all undocumented college students at Cal State and UC campuses, since they do not include students who applied for a Dream Act award but were not eligible or who were offered an award but didn’t accept it.

    Kidder and Johnson find that Dream Act awardees at CSU and UC appear to have peaked around the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years.

    At CSU, they found that new and returning Dream Act awardees fell 30% between 2019-20 and 2022-23, outpacing an almost 7% decline in other Cal Grant awardees at CSU during the same period, as well as falling undergraduate enrollment within the university system.

    The story was similar at UC campuses, where Dream Act awardees dropped by roughly 31% between 2019-20 and 2022-23, a period in which other Cal Grant awardees only dipped 1%.

    Kidder and Johnson tie the decline in Dream Act awardees to the demise of the deferred action program. The Trump administration moved to rescind the program in 2017, and subsequent efforts to revive it have been stymied by court decisions that allow current DACA recipients to renew work permits but block new applicants. As a result, most current undergraduate college students are not eligible to apply for DACA and the youngest current DACA recipients are about 22 years old.

    That said, the study does not use the kind of granular data that would allow the researchers to test explicitly whether the rescission of DACA is causing the decline in Dream Act awardees. Previous research has found that the program boosted graduation rates among undocumented high school students and that harsher immigration enforcement correlated with lower academic achievement for undocumented K-12 students. Kidder and Johnson cite those studies — as well as the similar results they observed across UC and CSU — as pointing toward the likelihood that an external force is behind declining Dream Act awardees. 

    Supporters of AB 2586, the bill Newsom vetoed this weekend, argued that the UC system is not subject to a federal prohibition on hiring undocumented workers because it is part of the state of California. Johnson is among 29 scholars to sign a legal memo building that case, which was published by the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy.

    Neither CSU nor UC took a formal position on the bill. But in a letter to lawmakers, the UC expressed concerns that hiring undocumented students could jeopardize “billions of dollars in existing federal contracts and grants.” The university system also said the bill could expose students, their families and UC employees to criminal or civil prosecution. In July, CSU officials similarly said the bill rested on an untested legal theory that could result in litigation against the system. 

    EdSource recently spoke with Kidder and Johnson to discuss their forthcoming article in the Journal of College & University Law. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

    What do we understand about the impact that DACA had on undocumented high school students, and what has happened since the Trump administration began challenging the Obama-era program?

    Johnson: The data that we were able to put together shows that, basically, the dismantling of DACA —-the refusal to accept new applications – is having an impact that one might expect. While DACA created some kind of stability, initially, in high school students and boosted college enrollments, its dismantling has had the effect of reducing undocumented enrollment and destabilizing students and, the way I’d put it, it’s making them wonder whether they have a future in this country. …

    It’s a wake-up call in all kinds of ways for colleges and universities to claim that they want to be open, be more accessible.

    What did you find when you looked at how many students at Cal State and University of California campuses received California Dream Act grants in recent years?

    Kidder: New California Dream Act awardees, both freshmen and students, had declined by half between 2017 and 2023, which is just a remarkable drop. … I was a little surprised at the scale of the decline, just given the situation in California and how it’s different from Texas or Florida or some other states where there’s greater opposition and hostility to supporting undocumented students.

    Do you see the same pattern of decline in awards among California residents who are citizens and who received Cal Grants during this period?

    Kidder: We tried to adopt what social scientists call a “difference in difference” methodology. That’s where you study the rate of change over time with one group compared to a matched comparison group. 

    So, we looked at low-income students who are not undocumented, primarily U.S. citizen residents of California — who are going to the same high schools; the same age group; similar, but not exactly the same, income levels; very similar academic profiles in terms of high school GPAs, etc. We did that to confirm that there weren’t other systemic effects on the California budget and economy that might be unaccounted for outside factors. 

    What we found is that other Cal Grant students, both within UC and within CSU, were flat at the same time that both the undocumented students at UC and CSU had this 50% decline. So it did shore up our inference that there was something uniquely challenging in the current environment for undocumented college students.

    You write that back in the 2016-17 school year, 56% of new Dream Act students attended a UC or Cal State campus, while the remainder attended a California Community College campus. By the 2022-23 school year, that dynamic had flipped: 40% of those Dream Act students attended UC and Cal State, and the rest attended community college. What do you make of that shift?

    Kidder: We did include in the data that we are capturing not just new freshmen, but also new entering transfer students. It is of concern that somehow, in recent years … it’s not translating into those (community college) students still having higher education access to a university education through the transfer pathway. There’s a blockage there, and that was clear in the data. 

    From a public policy level, that’s troubling, given that these are students, many of whom have been living in California since age 5 or age 8, and the California taxpayers and the system of California laws has invested in their future. For those students to be blocked in their pathway lowers their future life chances. 

    State university officials can’t control what happens with DACA. If educators at UC and Cal State are concerned about losing undocumented students, what could they do to encourage those students to enroll and help them to stay enrolled?

    Johnson: I think one of the assumptions in the question is that there’s limited possibilities for what the university could do. It was the University of California that brought the lawsuit that ended up in the Supreme Court stopping the rescission of DACA, and that was a controversial move in some quarters. But I do think the university– legally, politically and otherwise — is a powerful advocate for students, and can and has, at various times, pushed for reform and change. 

    I think that the university, if they’re really committed to undocumented students, can support things like the Opportunity for All Act, which has been basically briefed and set on their desk, showing that it might be legal for the University of California to allow its students, all students, to be employed by the University of California. …

    I think that the university could also think about, “How do we create more scholarships and funding for undocumented students?” If we’re really designing, or we really want to have, a university that serves all, shouldn’t we commit ourselves to enrolling all students who we admit and making it possible for them to attend? 

    Then the question is, how you raise money, how you distribute that money, how you create scholarships. The University of California often takes great pride in bringing in large chunks of money for research projects and, for example, spends years talking about and invests mounds of money in Aggie Square in Sacramento for research. … Why not work to create more funding for all students, including undocumented students? Why not think carefully about your tuition increases at various points in time, and what impacts it has on the people that you say you want to enroll in the university?

    I want to talk to you about AB 2586. The first Cal State board of trustees meeting I attended was in July, and there was some discussion about this bill. The trustees were asking staff to brief them on what they think of this bill. The gist was, ‘We see this as risky. We see this as potentially putting us on a collision course with the federal government, where we would open ourselves up to litigation. What do you think about that approach?

    Johnson: I think it’s a cowardly approach. It’d be like the university saying “We’re not going to weigh in on the civil rights movement because it’s controversial politically, and it’s risky to do so, and we’re not going to move forward because we’re afraid of getting sued.” 

    It’s funny, but (former UC President) Janet Napolitano could have taken the same position, saying “We’re not going to challenge the rescission of DACA, don’t want to alienate the federal government, which gives a large amount of money to the University of California. We’re just going to sit on our hands and let these DACA recipients be poorly treated.” …

    I’m an attorney. I was dean of the (UC Davis School of Law) for 16 years. Attorneys are always going to tell you there are risks. There are also risks driving to the grocery store, but we still go to the store. So I don’t buy that risk assessment argument, and I think that this is the time for universities that are truly committed to these issues to show their commitment to these issues.

    Why should CSU and why should the UC prioritize helping undocumented students to get a college degree?

    Kidder: Both my data analysis as well as my personal experience as a university administrator working with lots of undocumented students confirms my conviction that this is a very talented pool of young people in California. If their hopes and dreams are allowed to flourish in California, it benefits all Californians, and I mean that both in an economic sense and in a larger democratic sense.





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  • How universities are helping student-athletes have a ‘typical’ college experience

    How universities are helping student-athletes have a ‘typical’ college experience


    Credit: Steve Cheng, Bruin Report Online

    College athletes are often in the news because of their achievements on fields or in arenas, or because of the fame resulting from the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision to allow amateur athletes to profit from their names, images and likenesses, or NIL.  But what is sometimes overlooked is that these athletes are also trying to get through college.

    Division I student athletes at California public universities have all the obligations of their fellow students, along with additional responsibilities to their teams that can feel like a full-time job. The student-athlete who competes at the highest level is typically taking a full load of courses while juggling practices, weight training sessions, travel and the games and competitions themselves. 

    With such a wide range of demands on student-athletes, many university sports programs provide additional resources specifically for student-athletes, with an emphasis on academics. Among the benefits are academic advising, priority class registration, mental health support and tutoring. 

    “One thing that they tell us is that you’re a student first, an athlete second, and your main priority is doing well in the classroom,” said Ebba Adinew, a UC Riverside track and field athlete. “If practice starts to affect you performing well in the classroom, then maybe we’ll have to tone down the amount of work you’re putting in for your sport and focus on the classroom instead.” 

    Adinew found that having priority registration for course selection is a major advantage that allows him to align his practice and competition schedule with his class schedule. Because of the required time for travel and practice schedules, priority registration for student athletes was made policy by the UC board of trustees in 2016. Adinew also said there is a specific academic adviser for each sport, who creates quarterly schedules for student-athletes to ensure they are meeting their academic requirements. 

    The importance of a good academic adviser for student-athletes is stressed particularly at Division I universities with nationally ranked athletics programs like UC Berkeley. The recent appointment of Tarik Glenn as UC Berkeley’s new Athletic Study Center (ASC) interim executive director reflects this; Glenn not only has been working with the ASC for the past 10 years, but is a former Cal football player and Berkeley Hall of Famer himself. 

    According to a June news release from former Chancellor Carol Christ, his personal perspective on student-athletes and “the partnerships he has built over 10 years as an ASC staff member … will help athletes succeed in academics and in becoming independent, self-reliant adults.” Glenn’s mission will be to focus on the “holistic development” of student athletes and will include character and leadership development, along with career coaching. 

    Other athletic programs have placed an emphasis on career success, as well. UC Riverside assists student-athletes through career fairs and advising. Monea Jennings, a spring 2024 graduate of the UC Riverside track and field program, said her athletic adviser helped her get an internship for her last quarter. 

    Beyond advising, some schools have programs that focus on future careers for athletes. UC Davis hosts a program called EVO, allowing student athletes to undergo core clinics to help prepare them for earning their degrees and life post-graduation, according to Danielle Shank, the senior associate athletic director for external relations at UC Davis. These clinics are required for every year of undergraduate education and hold focused sessions on career development, including preparing an elevator pitch, writing a résumé and creating a LinkedIn profile. EVO also focuses on diversity, equity and inclusion training, implementing career fairs and separate networking socials for student-athletes. 

    “It’s our goal to launch student-athletes into a career or graduate school that requires their undergrad degree,” Shank said. “We are constantly working with them so that once they graduate, they already know what’s happening in the next step.” 

    At San Diego State, Danielle Kelly, senior associate athletic director for student athlete support services, said the athletics program has developed an initiative called Aztecs Going Pro, which began in 2015. Aztecs Going Pro includes one unit pass or fail courses focusing on civic engagement, personal growth and career development. Student-athletes are required to have excellent time management skills and self-discipline, while also spending as much time on sports as one would working a full-time job, Kelly said. 

    Beyond career preparation programs, student-athletes face struggles navigating their courses and assignments. When student -athletes have exams or assignments that conflict with a competition time, they can seek accommodations from their professors to take it at an alternative time, request an extension or take the test with a proctor. When UC Davis, San Diego State and UC Riverside athletes travel or have a scheduling conflict with an athletic competition, academic advisers can proctor their exam on the road. 

    However, some athletes said they have faced professors who won’t make accommodations. Jennings said she missed a quiz because she was away competing, and a professor refused to allow her to make it up. She said her athletic adviser and the athletic director got involved, and talked to the professor, which made her feel supported and like she “wasn’t trying to fight this fight alone.” 

    Jennings said she appreciated the support system she had at Riverside but wanted to better assist her peers. This led to her position as the president of the Student Athletic Advisory Committee, where she strived to make spaces for athletes’ mental health through hosting a variety of events, passing out goodies, running de-stress initiatives and making campus resources more accessible. In addition, she was the student representative for Big West Undivided, a committee that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion among universities that belong to the NCAA Big West Conference. 

    Jennings said her access to UC Riverside’s academic and athletic resources allow her to feel supported. 

    “Being a student-athlete is the best experience in the world,” Jennings said. “But also with that, it’s really hard. Being a college student is hard in itself, but being a college student-athlete is a whole different mindset, a whole different ballgame.” 

    Adinew agreed. “A thing that people don’t know is how tiring it can be, because every day you’re putting your body through much more stress than the average person goes through. Not only do you have to do that, you have to maintain your grades, you have to go to class as well.”

    Kelcie Lee is a second-year student majoring in history and sociology at UC Berkeley and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.

    Student Corps member Emily Hamill, a third-year student at UC Berkeley double-majoring in comparative literature and media studies and minoring in journalism, contributed to this story.





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  • More Than 100 Universities Sign Statement Rejecting Trump’s Interference in and Control of Their Campuses

    More Than 100 Universities Sign Statement Rejecting Trump’s Interference in and Control of Their Campuses


    More than 100 universities joined forces to oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to control their curriculum, their hiring policies, and their admissions policies. The initial statement was released this morning and almost another 100 universities signed on.

    The Trump administration’s threat to academic freedom by suspending federal funding and threatening the universities’ tax-exempt status alarmed the universities and spurred them to resist the administration’s unprecedented effort to stifle academic freedom.

    CBS News reported:

    Washington — More than 100 U.S. universities and colleges, including Harvard, Princeton, Penn, Brown, MIT, Cornell and Tufts issued a joint letter Tuesday condemning President Trump’s “political interference” in the nation’s education system. 

    The move comes a day after Harvard University sued the Trump administration, which announced an initial funding freeze of $2.2 billion and later signaled its intention to suspend an additional $1 billion in grants. The moves came after weeks of escalation between the administration and Harvard, which had rejected the administration’s demands to change many of the school’s policies and leadership, including auditing the student body and faculty for “viewpoint diversity.”

    “We speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education,” Tuesday’s letter read. 

    “We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion,” it said, adding: “We must reject the coercive use of public research funding.” 

    Mr. Trump has sought to bring several prestigious universities to heel over claims they tolerated campus antisemitism, threatening their budgets and tax-exempt status and the enrollment of foreign students.

    The letter said the universities and colleges were committed to serving as centers where “faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.”

    “Most fundamentally,” the letter reads, “America’s colleges and universities prepare an educated citizenry to sustain our democracy.

    “The price of abridging the defining freedoms of American higher education will be paid by our students and our society. On behalf of our current and future students, and all who work at and benefit from our institutions, we call for constructive engagement that improves our institutions and serves our republic.”

    Reuters reported that other higher education institutions added their names to the statement, which now has nearly 200 signatories.

    The New York Times reported today that some of Harvard’s major donors were urging it to settle with the administration. Eventually, the government’s threats to take control of the university made a settlement impossible.



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