Higher Education Quick Takes

Millikin University in Illinois is poised to lay off 15 employees and reduce a number of unspecified vacant positions, citing “the effects of the [coronavirus] pandemic, coupled with increased expenses, and changing demographics,” according to WAND-TV.

“The majority of the reductions will be made through a combination of open vacancies and retirements, and one-year contracts that will not be renewed. Fifteen layoffs are included, with several of those being part-time or reduced hours. All tenured and tenure-track faculty members laid-off will receive 10-month terminal contracts, and those affected by administrative and staff reductions will receive a 90-day notice to assist in planning and seeking alternative employment,” read part of a university statement to WAND-TV.

Employees affected by the layoffs will reportedly be informed by the end of this month.

A deeply divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Thursday resuscitated a class action that seeks to require New York University to reimburse students for tuition and fees they paid when it pivoted to remote instruction in spring 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A lower federal court had ruled that the parent of an NYU student who brought the lawsuit lacked standing to sue, and it rejected an effort to amend the original complaint to add a current student as a plaintiff, concluding that the case was unlikely to succeed on its merits. A majority of the three-judge panel supported the lower court’s view that the parent did not have standing to sue, since the parent herself did not suffer harm. But it concluded that adding a current student plaintiff would not be futile, writing that the revised complaint makes “plausible” claims for breach of contract and unjust enrichment.

“In doing so, we join three of our sister circuits that have recognized the plausibility of implied breach of contract claims brought by students seeking partial tuition reimbursements in the COVID-19 context,” the Second Circuit majority wrote.

One of the judges who joined the majority wrote separately to say that he believed the court should not have dismissed the original plaintiff’s right as a parent to sue NYU for unjust enrichment.

The third judge said the majority should not have agreed to hear the amended case, saying the current student’s claims lack merit.

Last summer, the White House mandated that any research based on federally funded studies must be made freely available to the public without an embargo. The new requirement, which updates an existing policy that allowed a 12-month embargo for making research freely available, will take effect by the end of 2025.

At the time, many open-access advocates celebrated the decision, but some scholars wondered who would fund the policy, given the high cost to researchers who publish open access.

Now, a paper published in the Journal of Science Policy and Governance offers recommendations for colleges, publishers and funding agencies interested in supporting open access moving forward. (Note: This article has been updated to correct the journal's name.)

Colleges might cancel subscriptions with major publishers in favor of paying for researchers’ open-access article processing charges, according to the paper. They might also “reevaluate the weight that journal impact factor carries in the tenure and promotion review process,” given an absence of evidence correlating journal impact factor with research quality. Such a change would facilitate researchers’ incentives to publish in newer, open-access journals over “established, expensive, higher impact journals.”

Publishers should be more transparent about journal operating costs and how article processing charges are used, according to the paper. They might also offer a wider range of open-access publishing options.

Funding agencies might increase grant budgets to offset the expected higher costs of open-access publishing, according to the paper. The authors of the study described such a measure as “temporary, if expensive.” Funders could also increase their scrutiny of publication costs in researchers’ proposed budgets and “openly endorse non-profit [open-access] journals and platforms with minimal or no fees for researchers.”

The new policy presents hurdles for colleges, publishers and funding agencies, but some expect that it will benefit society.

“When research is widely available to other researchers and the public, it can save lives, provide policy makers with the tools to make critical decisions, and drive more equitable outcomes across every sector of society,” Alondra Nelson, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote last August when the policy was announced. “The American people fund tens of billions of dollars of cutting-edge research annually. There should be no delay or barrier between the American public and the returns on their investments in research.”

Today on the Academic Minute: Britteny M. Howell, assistant professor of health sciences and director of the healthy aging research laboratory at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, explains why some of the things we need to age in a healthy way may be hard to obtain. Learn more about the Academic Minute here.