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Toronto Star
5 hours ago
- Business
- Toronto Star
A look at colleges with federal money targeted by the Trump administration
Several elite U.S. colleges have made deals with President Donald Trump's administration, offering concessions to his political agenda and financial payments to restore federal money that had been withheld. Ivy League schools Columbia, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania reached agreements to resolve federal investigations. The Republican administration is pressing for more, citing the deal it negotiated with Columbia as a 'road map' for other colleges.
Winnipeg Free Press
5 hours ago
- Business
- Winnipeg Free Press
A look at colleges with federal money targeted by the Trump administration
Several elite U.S. colleges have made deals with President Donald Trump's administration, offering concessions to his political agenda and financial payments to restore federal money that had been withheld. Ivy League schools Columbia, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania reached agreements to resolve federal investigations. The Republican administration is pressing for more, citing the deal it negotiated with Columbia as a 'road map' for other colleges. There is a freeze on billions of dollars of research money for other colleges including Harvard, which has been negotiating with the White House even as it fights in court over the lost grants. Like no other president, Trump has used the government's control over federal research funding to push for changes in higher education, decrying elite colleges as places of extreme liberal ideology and antisemitism. Here's a look at universities pressured by the administration's funding cuts. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Columbia said July 23 it had a $200 million fine to restore federal funding. The school was threatened with the potential loss of billions of dollars in government support, including more than $400 million in grants canceled earlier this year. The administration pulled the money because of what it described as Columbia's failure to address antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war. Columbia has agreed to administration demands such as overhauling its student disciplinary process and applying a federally backed definition of antisemitism to teaching and a disciplinary committee investigating students critical of Israel. Federal officials said the fine will go to the Treasury Department and cannot be spent until Congress appropriates it. Columbia also agreed to pay $21 million into a compensation fund for employees who may have faced antisemitism. The deal includes a clause that Columbia says preserves its independence, putting in writing that the government does not have the authority to dictate 'hiring, admission decisions, or the content of academic speech.' BROWN UNIVERSITY An agreement Wednesday calls for Brown to pay $50 million to Rhode Island workforce development organizations. That would restore dozens of lost federal research grants and end investigations into allegations of antisemitism and racial bias in Brown admissions. Among other concessions, Brown agreed to adopt the government's definition of 'male' and 'female' and remove any consideration of race from the admissions process. Like the settlement with Columbia, Brown's does not include a finding of wrongdoing. It includes a provision saying the government does not have authority to dictate Brown's curriculum or 'the content of academic speech.' UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Under a July agreement resolving a federal civil rights case, Penn modified a trio of school records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and said it would apologize to female athletes 'disadvantaged' by Thomas' participation on the women's swimming team. The Education Department investigated Penn as part of the administration's broader attempt to remove transgender athletes from girls and women's sports. As part of the case, the administration had suspended $175 million in funding to Penn. HARVARD UNIVERSITY The administration has frozen more than $2.6 billion in research grants to Harvard, accusing the nation's oldest and wealthiest university of allowing antisemitism to flourish. Harvard has pushed back with several lawsuits. In negotiations for a possible settlement, the administration is seeking for Harvard to pay an amount far higher than Columbia. CORNELL UNIVERSITY The White House announced in April that it froze more than $1 billion of Cornell's federal funding as it investigated allegations of civil rights violations. The Ivy League school was among a group of more than 60 universities that received a letter from the Education Department on March 10 urging them to take steps to protect Jewish students or else face 'potential enforcement actions.' NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Like Cornell, Northwestern saw a halt in some of its federal funding in April. The amount was about $790 million, according to the administration. DUKE UNIVERSITY The administration this week froze $108 million in federal money for Duke. The hold on funding from the National Institutes of Health came days after the departments of Health and Human Services and Education sent a joint letter alleging racial preferences in Duke's hiring and admissions. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Dozens of research grants were suspended at Princeton without a clear rationale, according to an April 1 campus message from the university's president, Christopher Eisgruber. The grants came from federal agencies such as the Department of Energy, NASA and the Pentagon. ___ The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
Hamilton Spectator
5 hours ago
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
A look at colleges with federal money targeted by the Trump administration
Several elite U.S. colleges have made deals with President Donald Trump's administration, offering concessions to his political agenda and financial payments to restore federal money that had been withheld. Ivy League schools Columbia, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania reached agreements to resolve federal investigations. The Republican administration is pressing for more, citing the deal it negotiated with Columbia as a 'road map' for other colleges . There is a freeze on billions of dollars of research money for other colleges including Harvard, which has been negotiating with the White House even as it fights in court over the lost grants. Like no other president, Trump has used the government's control over federal research funding to push for changes in higher education, decrying elite colleges as places of extreme liberal ideology and antisemitism. Here's a look at universities pressured by the administration's funding cuts. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Columbia said July 23 it had a $200 million fine to restore federal funding. The school was threatened with the potential loss of billions of dollars in government support, including more than $400 million in grants canceled earlier this year. The administration pulled the money because of what it described as Columbia's failure to address antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war . Columbia has agreed to administration demands such as overhauling its student disciplinary process and applying a federally backed definition of antisemitism to teaching and a disciplinary committee investigating students critical of Israel. Federal officials said the fine will go to the Treasury Department and cannot be spent until Congress appropriates it. Columbia also agreed to pay $21 million into a compensation fund for employees who may have faced antisemitism. The deal includes a clause that Columbia says preserves its independence, putting in writing that the government does not have the authority to dictate 'hiring, admission decisions, or the content of academic speech.' BROWN UNIVERSITY An agreement Wednesday calls for Brown to pay $50 million to Rhode Island workforce development organizations. That would restore dozens of lost federal research grants and end investigations into allegations of antisemitism and racial bias in Brown admissions. Among other concessions, Brown agreed to adopt the government's definition of 'male' and 'female' and remove any consideration of race from the admissions process. Like the settlement with Columbia, Brown's does not include a finding of wrongdoing. It includes a provision saying the government does not have authority to dictate Brown's curriculum or 'the content of academic speech.' UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Under a July agreement resolving a federal civil rights case, Penn modified a trio of school records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and said it would apologize to female athletes 'disadvantaged' by Thomas' participation on the women's swimming team. The Education Department investigated Penn as part of the administration's broader attempt to remove transgender athletes from girls and women's sports. As part of the case, the administration had suspended $175 million in funding to Penn. HARVARD UNIVERSITY The administration has frozen more than $2.6 billion in research grants to Harvard, accusing the nation's oldest and wealthiest university of allowing antisemitism to flourish. Harvard has pushed back with several lawsuits. In negotiations for a possible settlement, the administration is seeking for Harvard to pay an amount far higher than Columbia. CORNELL UNIVERSITY The White House announced in April that it froze more than $1 billion of Cornell's federal funding as it investigated allegations of civil rights violations. The Ivy League school was among a group of more than 60 universities that received a letter from the Education Department on March 10 urging them to take steps to protect Jewish students or else face 'potential enforcement actions.' NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Like Cornell, Northwestern saw a halt in some of its federal funding in April. The amount was about $790 million, according to the administration. DUKE UNIVERSITY The administration this week froze $108 million in federal money for Duke. The hold on funding from the National Institutes of Health came days after the departments of Health and Human Services and Education sent a joint letter alleging racial preferences in Duke's hiring and admissions. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Dozens of research grants were suspended at Princeton without a clear rationale, according to an April 1 campus message from the university's president, Christopher Eisgruber. The grants came from federal agencies such as the Department of Energy, NASA and the Pentagon. ___ The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at . Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
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Business Standard
a day ago
- Politics
- Business Standard
Obituary: Meghnad Desai was true gadfly in the best sense of the word
Lord Meghnad Desai St Clement Danes, the Vadodara-born British academic-politician, who died yesterday at the age of 85, is often described as an economist. He was doubtless a renowned practitioner of the dismal science, but to call him a mere economist is to do injustice to his multi-faceted personality. His long-running weekly column in the Sunday Express covered his forthright thoughts on politics, governance, culture, and whatever else was happening in the world at large besides economics. His oeuvre of more than 20 volumes contains two novels and Nehru's Hero: Dilip Kumar in the Life of India (2004). He called this biography of the thespian, whom he called the best actor not just in India but in the world, his most satisfying work. For the record, his other books covered Marxian economics, econometrics, development economics, among others. Although an atheist, he wrote a well-received volume called Who Wrote the Bhagavadgita? A secular enquiry into a sacred text (2014). Lord Desai took his bachelor's and master's degrees from what was then the University of Bombay. He went on to do post-graduate work in econometrics at the University of Pennsylvania and obtained his doctorate at the young age of 23. He spent most of his academic career at the London School of Economics. Besides teaching, he held various administrative responsibilities at that Mecca of studies of economics. In the United Kingdom, he joined the Labour Party and was an active participant in its policy formations for three decades after 1980. He was made a life peer in 1991. He once ran, unsuccessfully, for the position of the Lord Speaker of the House of Lords. He became gradually disenchanted with the party and resigned his membership in 2020 after nearly 50 years, citing the Labour's increasing drift towards antisemitism, especially under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, as the reason. Although an early admirer of Marxian thought, he was not a doctrinaire Marxist. He was particularly critical of the statist version of socialism in Britain as well as in India. He held Jawaharlal Nehru in high esteem, but thought that the socialistic pattern of society ushered in after the 1963 Avadi session of the Congress held India back and was the main reason for its falling behind on the development curve post the mid-1960s. The title of his 2002 book, Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism, succinctly sums up his position. He was also increasingly critical of monetarists. After the 2014 crisis affecting many advanced economies, he wrote a volume Hubris: Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One. He was no blind admirer of what happened in India post liberalisation either. His 2010 interview with Sucheta Dalal and Debasish Basu of Moneylife was entitled 'If only bureaucrats and the politicians got out of the way, people would do fine.' Interestingly, he called KYC Kick Your Customer, a term which most accurately describes the process as it is practiced even today!\ He met Kishwar Ahluwalia in the course of writing his biography of Dilip Kumar. She was his editor. They married, both for the second time, in 2004. Lord and Lady Desai were very prominent in the social circles of London, Delhi and Mumbai. Given his widespread interests in politics, food, films and sometimes even cricket, he was a frequent guest on numerous talk shows. He made quite an impression with his distinguished appearance with a halo of hair and his sonorous voice. He wore his scholarship lightly in these discussions and was immensely popular. For decades, critics and biographers have claimed that W Somerset Maugham described himself as 'in the very first row of the second-raters.' This has no authentication on record. He was most likely a writer keenly aware of his strengths and limitations, but never self-deprecating to the point of dismissing his own work. Like Maugham, Lord Desai never took himself too seriously, but never doubted his contributions. He used his sharp wit and varied interests to provoke others into action, the mark of a true gadfly in the best sense of the word.
Time of India
a day ago
- Science
- Time of India
Sam Altman vs Elon Musk: Who was a brighter student?
It's a tale of two rebels, each standing at the frontier of artificial intelligence, each reimagining the future of technology, and yet, each shaped by radically different relationships with education. Elon Musk and Sam Altman have both emerged as era-defining figures. One is rewriting the script for interplanetary life and autonomous machines; the other is scripting the very language that machines now use to write back. But beneath the rockets, bots, and billion-dollar valuations lies a question both urgent and timeless: whose educational journey speaks more to this generation, and the next? The premise: Learning beyond the lecture hall In a world where traditional college degrees are losing their monopoly on success, Musk and Altman offer two distinct case studies on how far vision, curiosity, and risk-taking can carry you. Not merely as entrepreneurs, but as self-architected thinkers, their stories challenge the notion that diplomas dictate destiny. And yet, their respective narratives, one shaped by escape velocity, the other by algorithmic reinvention, reveal more than personal ambition. They reflect two competing philosophies of what education should be: An accelerant for bold invention, or a blueprint for structured disruption. Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like These Are The Most Beautiful Women In The World Undo by Taboola by Taboola Elon Musk: The degree collector who defied the syllabus Elon Musk's educational trajectory was less a straight line and more a launch sequence, each stop a fuel station en route to ignition. Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk exhibited an early obsession with computers and engineering, coding his first video game by age 12. Education, for him, was not a finish line but a toolkit. He began at Queen's University in Canada and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, walking away with dual bachelor's degrees in Physics and Economics—fields that would later serve as scaffolding for SpaceX and Tesla. But the most revealing educational move Musk made was not one he completed. Enrolling in a PhD program in Applied Physics at Stanford, Musk dropped out within 48 hours, a footnote that speaks louder than any dissertation. That moment wasn't a rejection of knowledge, but of stagnation. He saw no value in waiting for permission to invent the future. Musk's lesson? Learn everything, but don't let anything keep you from building. Sam Altman: The dropout who reprogrammed Silicon Valley Then there's Sam Altman—quietly intense, intellectually omnivorous, and dangerously good at spotting what comes next. Long before he co-founded OpenAI or built ChatGPT into a global sensation, Altman was a precocious kid in St. Louis, disassembling his Macintosh for fun. He attended Stanford University for Computer Science but left after two years to launch Loopt, a geolocation app that fizzled financially but blazed his trail into tech's inner sanctum. His real education began after he dropped out. As President of Y Combinator, Altman became the oracle of early-stage innovation—nurturing Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe. He then pivoted into global AI leadership, co-founding OpenAI with a mission as ambitious as it is philosophical: ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Unlike Musk, Altman doesn't flaunt his dropout status. He doesn't need to. The way he's built OpenAI, Worldcoin, and his own brand of 'tech diplomacy' proves that he wasn't walking away from learning—he was walking towards a more useful version of it. Altman's lesson? Education is everywhere, especially when you leave the classroom. Two roads, one summit While Musk charges ahead with Martian colonization and neural interfaces, Altman is charting the evolution of digital consciousness. Musk imagines machines that move matter; Altman imagines machines that move meaning. And yet, their views on education converge in one quiet truth: school may start the fire, but it's your obsession that keeps it burning. Musk internalized the value of learning but refused to let school slow him down. Altman saw Stanford not as an institution to finish, but a springboard to jump from. Both treated education as modular—taking what served them and discarding the rest. So whose journey is more inspiring? The answer lies not in comparing GPAs or net worth, but in decoding the why behind their choices. If you believe that education should be structured, global, and multidisciplinary, Musk's journey offers the blueprint. His path assures you that yes, institutional knowledge matters—but only if it fuels your launch, not holds you back. If you see education as something lived rather than lectured, then Altman is your north star. His trajectory shows how a college dropout can still become an intellectual juggernaut—provided he's willing to build, break, and rewire systems from the ground up. In a way, both men are rebels—with a cause. And for students watching from the sidelines, the moral isn't 'drop out' or 'go all in.' It's this: Be relentlessly curious. Learn faster than the world changes. And most importantly—write your own curriculum. Because in the age of AI, Mars missions, and machine tutors, inspiration no longer belongs to degrees. It belongs to those brave enough to teach themselves what school never could. Ready to navigate global policies? Secure your overseas future. Get expert guidance now!
