Our annual Trends Report examines the emerging forces shaping higher ed.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Last October Chronicle reporters and editors met to start plotting the package of stories you’ll find in our 2025 Trends Report. This special issue is a cornerstone of our annual calendar, and we aim to make it a durable document — a synthesis of how tectonic shifts we’ve begun to observe will make themselves felt in the year ahead. So the stocktaking process begins early.
This time, with Election Day barreling toward us, many of our glimpses into the future came with a caveat: Of course, we’ll have to see what the election brings. We now know. Less than two months into his second term, President Donald J. Trump has issued a flurry of orders and actions directed at the sector. Teasing out their implications has become a high-stakes game of daily catch-up. The cumulative effect, as my colleague Jennifer Ruark wrote in a recent special issue on the academic workplace, has been “head-spinning.” When your head is spinning, it’s hard to train your eyes on the crystal ball. Yet it’s as important as ever to try. |
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| | | | | | | To be sure, the Trump administration has immense power to set — and reset — agendas across the sector. You’ll see indicators of that in this year’s Trends Report, particularly Kate Bellows's look at how aggressive enforcement of the federal antidiscrimination law known as Title VI might spawn a new campus bureaucracy.
But Trump’s arrival in the Oval Office doesn’t negate the myriad other cultural, economic, and demographic forces that are profoundly transforming higher ed. The emergency pivot to online instruction undertaken during the Covid pandemic has ushered in an enduring revolution in how colleges teach. A wave of lawsuits taking aim at college athletics and enrollment has left the sector newly vulnerable to antitrust arguments. The sudden ubiquity of sports gambling, much of it done by young men on smartphones, threatens to stoke another campus mental-health crisis. And faculty and administrators, two of the key constituencies tasked with navigating these strong currents, are more likely than ever to be at loggerheads. |
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| | | | | | | | These forces matter, too, and they’re worth a bit of your headspace. We hope the Trends Report can provide that headspace — by connecting some dots you might not have had time to connect, or by offering you a chance to look up and around the corner.
The online presentation of this year’s report also includes a noteworthy feature: For the first time, we’ve made the articles available in audio form, allowing you to listen to them at your convenience.
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| | | | | | Whether you choose to read the Trends Report or play its stories on the go, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to The Chronicle for access to this essential coverage. What emerging trends are on your mind? We’d love to hear from you. Reach us with your thoughts and suggestions at [email protected].
Sincerely,
Brock Read
Deputy Managing Editor
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