Since the emergence of generative AI a couple years ago, higher education has been forced through a period of rapid change as each institution attempts to adapt to this new reality. With the release of their new action plan, EDUCAUSE encourages institutions to go on the offensive and chart their own vision for how AI should be incorporated into their campuses. In this week’s issue, we discuss the possibilities found in their action plan before turning our attention to the importance of contributing your voice to the proposed changes for the Institute of Education Sciences. We close with a new report that is near and dear to my heart on first-generation graduation rates.  

After reading today’s issue, share your thoughts about GenAI action plans in use on your campus in the comments! 

EDUCAUSE Action Plans 

From 2025 EDUCAUSE Horizon Action Plan: Building Skills and Literacy for Teaching with GenAI 

Considering the sweeping impact, EDUCAUSE assembled a global panel of experts to envision their preferred future of GenAI in higher education and create an action plan to get to that future. 

Our Thoughts  

What I like most about this Horizon Action Plan is that it turns a vague “figure it out” into a concrete starting point. EDUCAUSE’s panel is explicit that higher education does not have to wait and react. We can imagine the future we want and move toward it, with actions scoped for individuals, departments, and cross-campus teams. The report opens by asking us to stop reacting and instead play an active role in creating the future we want to see. It then lays out a 10-year horizon with steps any campus can take now. That is the kind of practical clarity people need when they are not sure where to start.   

The preferred future in the report is not one where tools run the classroom. Instead, it is a future where educators lead, students build AI literacy, and technology companies design with academic needs in mind. Faculty and staff are not replaced; they use AI to enhance assignments and assessments. Industry collaboration has a role, but the direction setting is clearly in the hands of educators. Who better to imagine AI use in education than the people who teach and support students every day?   

I also appreciate that this is an action plan you can put to work today. It encourages local, discipline-aware policies at the unit level, co-created guidelines that respect autonomy, and ongoing professional learning tied to how people actually learn with AI. It pushes multi-unit collaboration to build communities of practice, so no one is solving the same problems alone. Educational policy and practice are better when educators have a hand in crafting them. This action plan gives higher education a chance to lead with our value and vision for how best to serve our communities in regard to AI adoption and use. We should seize it.  

IES Proposed Changes 

From Education Department takes a preliminary step toward revamping its research and statistics arm | The Hechinger Report 

The public has until October 15 to comment on a Federal Register notice to reform the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) to make its research more relevant to student learning.   

Our Thoughts  

If you care about higher education data, this is one to watch and one to weigh in on. The Department of Education’s cuts earlier this year hollowed out core statistical capacity and hit IES hardest, leaving a tiny staff and canceling scores of contracts that keep the nation’s education data moving. Inside Higher Ed and The Hechinger Report have documented both the scale and the consequences of those moves. That is not an abstract problem for researchers. It touches every campus that relies on federal data to set policy, benchmark performance, and explain value to the public. 

The importance of getting this right is hard to overstate. IPEDS is the country’s backbone for postsecondary information, used by institutions, policymakers, journalists, and families to understand cost, completion, enrollment, and outcomes. If you have experience using these datasets or you depend on them to inform decisions, this is the moment to submit comments and make the case for what must be preserved and why. The process is moving, and practical voices from campuses and the research community should be in the record. 

There is also a quality question on the horizon. New federal pushes to expand admissions reporting come with compressed timelines and added elements that experts warn will be hard to collect and easy to misread, especially if the statistical agency remains understaffed. Additionally, the first higher education data release under the new staffing reality arrived with communication and formatting issues even as NCES said the underlying data were sound. When the federal data system wobbles, public trust wobbles with it. This request for input on IES is a real chance to help steady the system. The credibility of our sector depends on data that are timely, accurate, and explained in ways people can actually use. 

First-Generation Completion Gaps 

From Contextualizing Completion Gaps for First-Generation Students | Inside Higher Ed 

First-generation students’ enrollment rates match their peers’, but a new report found these students face stubborn graduation rate gaps—regardless of their levels of income or academic preparation.  

Our Thoughts  

As a first-generation student, I find these results hard to read. We have spent years building better on-ramps and supports, yet the completion gap stubbornly remains. First-generation students enroll at healthy rates and then graduate at lower rates than their continuing-generation peers even when you account for academic preparation and income. That the gap might be even larger without the work campuses have already done. Advising redesigns, emergency aid, peer mentoring, bridge programs, and belonging initiatives have kept many students on path. Early, sustained support helps students stay enrolled and reduces their likelihood of stopping out.  

Research links higher instructional and student-services spending to better graduation outcomes, particularly at public institutions and at campuses that serve students with wider academic ranges. State appropriations matter as well. When states invest, degree attainment tends to rise, and cuts move the needle in the other direction. None of this is magic, but it is consistent. How much we invest in students, and how we invest, shows up in the results. 

While this gap may be disheartening, it is not inevitable. We can continue the work that closes small but decisive gaps in time, money, and information for first-generation students —whether by making the hidden curriculum visible or by focusing on the middle years when life and school often collide. The more we show students that we are invested in their success, the more likely we are to close long-standing equity gaps.