As colleges around the country resumed in-person learning in the fall of 2021, many educators expected students to return to campus after taking a pandemic gap year. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Ivory Tower: even fewer students showed up than during the worst months of the pandemic in the fall … Continue reading
Filed under Enrollment …
Affirmative Action Has Got Nothing on White Privilege
Conversations about affirmative action underscore an ugly truth about America — that a country founded as a racial apartheid continues to dance around issues of race. On Wednesday December 9th, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas, in what may turn out to be a landmark case regarding affirmative action … Continue reading
Liberty University Owes Rapid Growth to Federal Student Loans
Liberty University is not just your average school down the road. The once small Christian college founded in 1971 by the Rev. Jerry Falwell now has the largest student body of any private nonprofit university in the country. With over 70,000 students, the university has become a destination for political candidates seeking the GOP’s more … Continue reading
Concern at Low Share of Foreign Students Taking PhDs
Applications from foreign students to US graduate programmes increased 2% to a record 676,484 this year, driven primarily by a 12% upswing in numbers from India but tempered by a 2% drop from China, a preliminary report says. Half of all international applications were for programmes in the key STEM fields of engineering, mathematics and … Continue reading
The Growth in College Costs Is Slowing, Particularly for Poorer Families
In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, President Mitch Daniels of Purdue University said, “For decades college tuition has outpaced inflation, forcing students to increase their borrowing.” While this sort of hyperbole is rampant in the media, it’s disconcerting, to say the least, coming from a college president. Daniels claims “tuition has outpaced inflation” for … Continue reading
Are Public Universities Becoming Bastions of Privilege?
Is a state university still fulfilling its mission if it enrolls nearly as many out-of-state students as in-state ones? Is a public university fulfilling its mission if it’s reducing the number of seats for low-income students while increasing spots for wealthier ones? These questions are increasingly being asked in many states around the country—and for good … Continue reading
Students Are Returning to For-Profit Colleges
Here’s a puzzle. Enrollment continued to decline at public community colleges this 2014-15 academic year, but not so much at private, for-profit ones. Of course, the for-profit colleges offer not only two-year degrees, but also four-year and graduate ones too. But they’re both drawing from a similar pool of older, low-income students. So you’d expect … Continue reading
The Community College/‘Real College’ Divide
I heard it again, another community college putdown. This one came from an educator explaining criteria for high school graduation. She followed her summary with these words to her audience of parents and incoming freshmen: “So that’s the minimum requirement. But here’s what you should take if you want to go to real college — … Continue reading
Tracking the Elusive Ph.D.
Due in part to a weakening academic job market, some colleges and higher-education groups are scrambling to collect data on what sorts of jobs Ph.D.’s are getting. The American Historical Association recently pinpointed where 2,500 history Ph.D. recipients were working, while many university departments and individual researchers conduct formal and informal tracking projects of their … Continue reading
What It Takes to Get Into New York City’s Best Public Colleges
Since it went through an aggressive, system-wide overhaul that began in 2000, the City University of New York’s top five colleges—Baruch, Hunter, Brooklyn, Queens, and City—have been raising admission standards and enrolling fewer freshmen from New York City high schools. Among the results has been the emergence of a progressively starker two-tier system: CUNY’s most … Continue reading
Professor Van Ry 