By Michael Vasquez for The Hechinger Report.
Broadcast version by Trimmel Gomes for Florida News Connection reporting for The Hechinger Report-Public News Service Collaboration

Oklahoma wants some of its less-expensive universities to cut travel and operational costs, consolidate departments and reduce energy use — all in the name of saving money.

Already, earning a degree at one of these regional institutions is relatively inexpensive for students, costing in total as much as $15,000 less per year than bigger state universities in Oklahoma. And the schools, including Southeastern Oklahoma State University and the University of Central Oklahoma, graduate more teachers and nurses than those research institutions. Those graduates can fill critically needed roles for the state.

Still, state policymakers think there are more efficiencies to be found.

Higher education is one of the specific areas targeted by a new state-run agency with a familiar name, with the goal of “protecting our Oklahoma way of life,” Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said in the first DOGE-OK report this spring. The Oklahoma Division of Government Efficiency, created around the same time as the federal entity with a similar title, counts among its accomplishments so far shifting to automated lawn mowers to cut grass at the state capital, changing to energy-efficient LED lighting and cutting down on state government cell phone bills. The Oklahoma governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment about this effort.

Oklahoma is one of about a dozen states that has considered an approach similar to the federal DOGE, though some state attempts were launched before the Trump administration’s. The federal Department of Government Efficiency, established the day Trump took office on Jan. 20, has commanded deep cuts to federal spending and the federal workforce, with limited justification.

As academia becomes a piñata for President Donald Trump and his supporters, Republican state lawmakers and governors are assembling in line: They want to get their whacks in too.

Beyond Oklahoma, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launched FL DOGE in February, with a promise to review state university and college operations and spending. Republicans in the Ohio statehouse formed an Ohio DOGE caucus. One of the Iowa DOGE Task Force’s three main goals is “further refining workforce and job training programs,” some of which are run through community colleges, and its members include at least two people who work at state universities.

The current political environment represents “an unprecedented attack on higher education,” said Veena Dubal, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and general counsel for the American Association of University Professors.

The state-level scrutiny comes atop those federal job cuts, which include layoffs of workers who interact with colleges, interdepartmental spending cuts that affect higher education and the shrinking of contracts that support research and special programs at colleges and universities. Other research grants have been canceled outright. The White House is pursuing these spending cuts at the same time as it is using colleges’ diversity efforts, their handling of antisemitism and their policies about transgender athletes to force a host of changes that go beyond cost-cutting — such as rules about how students protest and whether individual university departments require more supervision.

Higher education, which relies heavily on both state dollars and federal funding in the form of student loans and Pell grants, research grants and workforce training programs, faces the prospect of continued, and painful, budget cuts.

“Institutions are doing things under the threat of extinction,” Dubal said. “They’re not making measured decisions about what’s best for the institution, or best for the public good.”

For instance, the Trump administration extracted a number of pledges from Columbia University as part of its antisemitism charge, suspending $400 million in federal grants and contracts as leverage. This led campus faculty and labor unions to sue, citing an assault on academic freedom. (The Hechinger Report is in an independent unit of Teachers College.) Now Harvard faces a review of $9 billion in federal funding, also over antisemitism allegations, and the list of universities under similar scrutiny is only growing.

Budget cuts are nothing new for higher education — when a recession hits, it is one of the first places state lawmakers look to cut, in blue states or red. One reason: Public universities can sometimes make up the difference with tuition increases.

What DOGE brings, in Washington and statehouses, is something new. The DOGE approach is engaging in aggressive cost-cutting that specifically targets certain programs that some politicians don’t like, said Jeff Selingo, a special adviser to the president at Arizona State University.

“It’s definitely more political than it is fiscal or policy-oriented,” said Selingo, who is also the author of several books on higher education.

“Universities haven’t done what certain politicians wanted them to do,” he added. “This is a way to control them, in a way.”

The current pressure on Florida colleges extends far beyond budget matters. DeSantis has criticized college campuses as “intellectually repressive environments.” In 2021, Florida state lawmakers passed a law, signed by the governor, to fight this perceived ideological bent by requiring a survey of public university professors and students to assess whether there is enough intellectual diversity on campus.

At New College in Sarasota, DeSantis led an aggressive cultural overhaul to transform the college’s atmosphere and identity into something more politically conservative. The governor has cited Hillsdale College, a conservative private Christian institution in Michigan, as a role model.

Faculty and students at New College sued. Their complaints included allegations of academic censorship and a hostile environment for LGBTQ+ students, many of whom transferred elsewhere. One lawsuit was ultimately dropped. Since the takeover, the college added athletics programs and said it has attracted a record number of new and transfer students.

Across America, Republicans control both the legislature and the governor’s mansion in 23 states, compared with 15 states fully controlled by Democrats. In those GOP-run states, creating a mini-DOGE carries the potential for increased political might, with little oversight.

In Florida, “state DOGE serves as an intimidation device,” one high-ranking public university administrator told The Hechinger Report. The administrator, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said “there’s also just this atmosphere of fear.”

In late March, university presidents received a letter signed by the “DOGE Team” at the governor’s office. The letter promised a thorough review by FL DOGE officials, with site visits and the expectation that each college appoint a designated liaison to handle FL DOGE’s ongoing requests.

The letter highlighted some of the items FL DOGE might request going forward, including course codes, descriptions and syllabi; full detail of all centers established on campus; and “the closure and dissolution of DEI programs and activities, as required by law.”

The state did not respond to a question about whether FL DOGE is designed to attack higher education in the state. Molly Best, the deputy press secretary, noted that FL DOGE is now up and running, and cities and counties are also receiving letters requesting certain information and that the public will be updated in the future. 

DOGE in Florida also follows other intervention in higher education in the state: Florida’s appointed Board of Governors, most of whom are chosen by the governor, removed dozens of courses from state universities’ core curriculum to comply with the Stop WOKE Act, a state law that took effect in 2022. The law, which DeSantis heavily promoted, discourages the teaching of concepts such as systemic racism or sexism. The courses removed from Florida’s 12 state universities were primarily sociology, anthropology and history courses.

“You can’t erase history,” said Meadow Swantic, a criminal justice major at Florida Atlantic University, a public institution, in an interview at its Boca Raton campus. “There’s certain things that are built on white supremacy, and it’s a problem.”

Fellow Florida Atlantic student Kayla Collins, however, said she has noticed some professors’ liberal bias during class discussions.

“I myself have witnessed it in my history class,” said Collins, who identifies as Republican. “It was a great history class, but I would say there were a lot of political things brought up, when it wasn’t a government class or a political science class.” 

At the University of Central Florida in Orlando, political science major Liliana Hogan said she had a different experience of her professors’ political leanings.

“You hear ‘people go to university to get woke’ or whatever, but actually, as a poli-sci student, a lot of my professors are more right-wing than you would believe,” Hogan said. “I get more right-leaning perspectives from my teachers than I would have expected.” Hogan said.

Another UCF student, Johanna Abrams, objected to university budget cuts being ordered by the state government. Abrams said she understands that tax dollars are limited, but she believes college leaders should be trusted with making the budget decisions that best serve the student body.

“The government’s job should be providing the funding for education, but not determining what is worthy of being taught,” Abrams said.

Whatever their missions and attempts at mimicry, state-level DOGE entities are not necessarily identical to the federal version.

For instance, in Kansas, the Committee on Government Efficiency, while inspired by DOGE, is in search of ideas from state residents about ways to make the state bureaucracy run better rather than imposing its own changes. A Missouri Senate portal inspired by the federal DOGE works in a similar way. Yet the federal namesake isn’t taking suggestions from the masses to inform its work.

And at the federal level, then-DOGE chief Elon Musk in February emailed workers, asking them to respond “to understand what they got done last week,” he posted on X. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” Employees were asked to reply with a list of five accomplishments.

The Ohio DOGE Caucus noted explicitly it won’t be doing anything like that.

“We’re not going to be emailing any state employees asking them to give us five things they worked on throughout the week,” Ohio state Rep. Tex Fischer, a Republican, told a local radio station. “We’re really just trying to get like-minded people into a room to talk about making sure that government is spending our money wisely and focusing on its core functions that we all agree with.”


Michael Vasquez wrote this article for The Hechinger Report.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.


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Most Gen Z high school students and their parents are unaware of the range of options available to kids after graduation, according to a new survey.

The Gallup Panel findings revealed more than half of families know "a great deal" about working at a paid job or earning a bachelor's degree but feel far less informed about alternatives, such as certification programs or apprenticeships.

Jeff Bulanda, vice president of the American Student Assistance Center for Career Navigation at the nonprofit Jobs for the Future, said too often, family conversations about postgraduation plans occur too late.

"Young people actually really trust and rely on their parents' guidance," Bulanda explained. "Ninety percent of young people said they rely on their parents' guidance when it comes to education and careers."

In the survey, just over half of all parents reported they "frequently" have those conversations with their high-school-age child, raising to 65% among parents with high school seniors. Bulanda pointed out students engaged in the discussions are far more likely to show interest in career and education alternatives.

Experts noted without early and well-informed discussions, students are often forced to make life-shaping decisions on their own. Working parents' schedules and a severe shortage of high school guidance counselors nationwide can add to students feeling unprepared.

Bulanda added Jobs for the Future is working to build an online navigation tool to help students better connect their interests to potential career pathways and inform graduates entering the workforce about the right questions to ask.

"Does this employer offer tuition assistance or some form of education benefit?" Bulanda asked. "Where they may start in a front-line job but have the ability to earn money, as well as have their employer pay for their education."

Bulanda stressed today, fewer than three in 10 high schoolers say they feel "very prepared" to pursue postsecondary options. Uncertainty about federal spending for higher education does not help. He emphasized the key is to take a step back and consider all potential funding sources, including at the state and local level, where grants for short-term training programs often help move students into in-demand careers.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.

Artificial intelligence is expected to significantly change people's lives and New Mexico State University is meeting the challenge by offering the state's first AI degree.

The higher ed institution located in Las Cruces will introduce the state's first Bachelor of Science degree in AI starting in fall 2026.

Enrico Pontelli, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at New Mexico State University, felt AI should not only be taught at Ivy League schools but made accessible to learners in New Mexico. He said no matter what kind of job you have, learning a bit about AI is essential.

"We see a lot of students who come to college, they understand something about AI but they don't understand how to use it properly," Pontelli explained. "AI can be a great tool to learn, using AI as your companion to help you, not to replace you."

Pontelli noted the university's bachelor of science degree is not only for students just out of high school but for those whose current job may demand new skills. He hopes the university's training will eventually include graduate programs and offer micro-credentials to community members.

AI jobs are those in which a significant portion of the tasks can be performed or aided by artificial intelligence. Pontelli knows a lot of fear has been generated around the emerging technology but said it is nothing to be afraid of and it isn't going away.

"There is a lot of talk about, 'Yeah, I'm losing my job to AI,'" Pontelli observed. "Nobody's going to lose their job to AI. People are going to lose their job to people that know how to use AI."

By offering the degree, Pontelli hopes graduates can contribute to the state's economic development and use AI to work on solutions to address societal and environmental challenges. He added the new program dovetails with the 2024 launch of the statewide New Mexico Artificial Intelligence Consortium.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.


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Journalism and the way people consume news is changing, and Arizona State University will soon launch an initiative it claims will "build a stronger, more trusted and financially stable news ecosystem."

The Knight Center for the Future of News will be housed within the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, set to open July 1. The school's dean, Battinto Batts, said the Knight Center will be made up of three labs - to address declining public trust in news, explore new revenue models for news organizations, and experiment with new forms of storytelling.

Batts said an information hub will gather insights and promote best practices across the industry.

"So, we have all those things going on at the same time," he said, "and so the Knight Center for the Future of News looks to embrace those disruptions and say, 'OK, how do we embrace those disruptions that are going on and then find a path forward?' We're seeking to be engineers."

He said the Knight Center will bring together educators, researchers, students, working journalists and newsrooms.

Polling shows Americans continue to express record low levels of confidence in the media, with only one-third saying they have confidence that news is being reported fairly and accurately.

Batts said journalists who have remained committed to gathering, writing, editing and disseminating news believe in the cause and know how important it is to a healthy democracy.

"The importance of media, and news and journalism to be able to inform people, to give them the information that they need to make healthy, important decisions that impact their daily lives - that's going to exist whether or not the business model changes or not and so, it has evolved," he said.

Batts added the threat posed by information isn't a new concept - but it's been intensified because of new technologies. And he encouraged current and future journalists to focus on the vital mission of keeping audiences informed.


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