The Higher Ed Workplace Blog

On August 16, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Biden administration’s request to partially overturn preliminary injunctions from lower courts that block the Department of Education from enforcing the administration’s April 2024 Title IX final rule. The decision leaves the preliminary injunctions from the lower district courts in place, blocking the new Title IX rule from taking effect in 26 states and hundreds of schools in other states.

CUPA-HR General Counsel Ira Shepard’s overview this month includes updates on student-athletes’ labor cases. Student-athletes have reached a $2.8 billion settlement with the NCAA and the Power Five conferences, but their status as employees under the FLSA remains undecided. In other legal news, union activity continues to rise, the EEOC will again attempt to collect employee data, the NLRB is criticized for its handling of mail-in union election ballots, and Texas’s attempt to block EEOC guidance on LGBTQ+ employees is temporarily halted.

On August 6, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued a memo, “Clarifying Universities’ and Colleges’ Disclosure Obligations under the National Labor Relations Act and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.” The memo was issued to all NLRB regional offices and is meant to provide guidance to institutions of higher education clarifying their obligations “in cases involving the duty to furnish information where both statutes may be implicated.”

A full picture of neurodiversity in the workplace includes understanding how gender shapes employees’ experiences of neurodevelopmental disorders. Although they’re diagnosed at roughly the same rates as men, women with ADHD may be overlooked in conversations about attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Awareness about how ADHD can manifest differently in women — and how gender stereotypes play a significant role in diagnosis and treatment — can help foster a culture that uplifts neurodiversity and the skills that neurodiverse employees can offer an organization.

On August 1, the Biden administration’s Title IX final rule goes into effect, implementing new requirements for compliance with Title IX for institutions of higher education. However, ongoing legal challenges have blocked the rule from taking effect in 26 states, as well as at certain institutions in states that have not sued the Department of Education.

The road home may have been a bit bumpy (thanks, CrowdStrike), but the two days CUPA-HR leaders spent in Kansas City at the annual Association Leadership Program (ALP) were packed with opportunities to smooth the way for higher ed HR in the year ahead. On July 18-19, leaders from CUPA-HR’s national, region and chapter boards; cohorts from the Ignite and Emerging CUPA-HR Leaders programs; team members from the CUPA-HR national office; and key corporate partners gathered to discuss higher ed HR challenges, share successes, learn from one another, and build relationships. Here are some of the takeaways from this year’s event.

New research from CUPA-HR on the state of the professional workforce in higher education shows that women and people of color are not only being paid less than White men in the same position, but also are less likely to hold higher-paying positions. CUPA-HR’s research team analyzed data from the Professionals in Higher Education Survey, a comprehensive data source that collects salary and demographic data on more than 293,000 professionals in 409 positions from approximately 985 higher ed institutions, to evaluate representation and pay equity for women and professionals of color from 2016-17 to 2023-24.

Employers have enormous sway over employee health. That’s one of the major takeaways from the CUPA-HR webinar An Integrated Approach to Fostering Workplace Well-Being, led by Mikel LaPorte and Laura Gottlieb of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. They collected eye-opening data that helped them make the case to leadership for a mental health awareness campaign. For example, employees say that managers have a greater impact on their mental health than their doctors or therapists — roughly the same impact as their spouse! Learn how this robust, research-driven suite of content is helping to normalize discussions of mental health and gaining organic traction on campus.

On July 5, the Biden administration released the Spring 2024 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Action (Regulatory Agenda), providing insights on regulatory and deregulatory activity under development across more than 60 federal departments, agencies and commissions. The Spring 2024 Regulatory Agenda is the first of two that will be released during the calendar year, and it sets target dates for regulatory actions in the coming months. CUPA-HR’s government relations team reviews each Regulatory Agenda that is released and has put together the following list of noteworthy regulations included in the current edition.

CUPA-HR General Counsel Ira Shepard’s overview this month includes the end of the University of California graduate student strike, a Title IX lawsuit alleging student sex harassment at a private party off campus, court challenges against workplace DEI programs, a transgender woman’s claim that she was wrongly denied medical coverage, and recent and pending Supreme Court decisions concerning NLRB injunctions and FLSA overtime exemptions.