Illuminate the Future of Higher Education: Apply for the CSHE Capstone Fellowship
The Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) is pleased to invite applications from GSPP students whose innovative projects advance the Center’s mission of illuminating higher education. Award amounts will be determined based on individual project needs, with a strong commitment to ensuring that Fellows are fully funded to execute their Capstone projects effectively.
This edition of the CSHE newsletter features our newly released 2025–26 Annual Report, celebrating the dedication, research, and collaborative success that defined our past year. Beyond our retrospective, you will find:
As we launch into the 2026–27 academic year, we are excited to reconnect with our community following our summer break. Our scholars continue to generate key evidence and perspectives that inform higher education policy, practice, and public discourse.
Never has the need for coordinated global science been greater, and never has the political appetite for supporting it seemed weaker.
Read this commentary by John Douglass about the need for international scientific and cultural cooperation.
In this interview, CSHE Director Jesse Rothstein provides an overview of the nuances of the admissions process and what's at stake within it.
In 2020, the Regents of the University of California voted to stop considering SAT scores (or ACT scores) in undergraduate admissions. A group of UC faculty have recently signed open letters calling on the Regents to reverse this decision.
Wealthy students with high standardized test scores make up the majority of students at the most selective universities, which also spend far more on student instruction than less selective institutions. So where does that leave everyone else?
Roughly two-thirds of students at the top 50 private universities—and more than half of those at state flagships—come from families in the top income quintile.
Erin Clark/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
A new Cold War is emerging and in turn a Neo-Academic Cold War that reflects emerging geopolitical rivalries. The context of the Neo-Academic Cold War is different from the previous Cold War which featured bipolar competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for military superiority and spheres of influence that included distinct scientific and academic ecosystems. This has given way to a multipolar and complex world of rivalries and semi-autonomous silos of transnational science cooperation and science diplomacy.
In an analysis published in University World News, John Aubrey Douglass, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), addressed the impact of the new federal provisions limiting loans for graduate education in the United States.
Douglass explains how these changes “will likely come at a cost to the economy in terms of fewer professionals across a wide array of fields, as well as further erosion in socioeconomic mobility, for which access to graduate education is a key component.”
In this article, The Economist looked at international trends with declining math skills and falling levels of literacy for undergraduates.” A major question for colleges and universities is not just how they will respond to a growing pool of underprepared applicants, but whether they are themselves prepared to continue enforcing high expectations.” The college grading system is central to these concerns.
The LA Times interviewed CSHE Senior Researcher, Igor Chirikov, who co-led a large study of undergraduate AI use. The article in the LA Times, "Inside college AI cheating wars: extreme surveillance, false accusations, jarring confusion," addresses the prevalence of the technology in the classroom.
To access the research paper:
As the University of California Academic Senate deliberates whether to recommend reinstating standardized testing for freshman applicants, research from the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) is playing a central role in the systemwide conversation.
Our recent ROPS article Broadening Our Perspective Concerning America’s Education Attainment: Growth, Progress, and Data Gaps, by Michael Kirst and Victor Chan, was featured in Education Week. The media coverage dives deep into the findings on American educational attainment.
The Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) is pleased to announce that applications are now open for the Gardner Seminar and Fellowship.
UC Berkeley News interviewed Senior Researcher, Igor Chirikov about his study on AI use and misuse by undergraduate students.
This study of generative AI use by undergraduates was published in Science on May 21, 2026.
BERKELEY, CA — A new study led by Igor Chirikov, a senior researcher at UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) reveals that two-thirds of undergraduates at major U.S. public research universities utilized generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) during the 2023–2024 academic year. Both AI adoption and AI-assisted misconduct vary dramatically depending on the student's academic field.
CSHE senior researcher Igor Chirikov was recently interviewed by KCRA 3 News to discuss the findings of his study linking food security to higher education success.
The segment highlights a new working paper co-authored by Igor Chirikov and Jesse Rothstein. The study, The Impact of Nutrition Assistance on College Student Success, offers some of the most precise data to date on how California's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—known as CalFresh—directly impacts academic outcomes.
